OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,28/12/2015,SPi Maximus the Confessor fi Jesus Christ and the Trans guration of the World Paul M. Blowers 1 OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,28/12/2015,SPi 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©PaulM.Blowers2016 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2016 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015946691 ISBN 978–0–19–967394–0(hbk) PrintedinGreatBritainby ClaysLtd,StIvesplc LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi Introduction As one of the most prolific theologians of the late ancient and early medievalperiodsinChristianhistory,andasatoweringfigureinOrtho- doxtradition,competingwithJohnDamasceneforthetitleof“Thomas Aquinas of the East,” Maximus the Confessor’s thought has been ana- lyzedthroughandthroughinitsproperlytheological,philosophical,and ascetical dimensions. There is an enormous bibliography of secondary studies of Maximus in numerous languages, and a new international burst of energy in Maximian studies has unfolded within the past two decadesalone.1Otherthanthefamouspositionsthathearticulatedinthe last great phase of the ancient controversies concerning the natures, person,operations,andwillsofJesusChrist,however,Maximus’larger theologicalachievementhasnotalwaysbeensocloselyscrutinizedwith respecttotheimmediatebackgroundandforegroundofhiswritingsor the concrete contexts in which he was formed and spent his career. Historical and dogmatic theologians, meanwhile, perpetually run the risk of extrapolating systems of ideas from historic Christian thinkers like Maximus and disembodying them from the messy world of vital theologywherethosethinkersstakedtheirclaimsandwheretheirspecu- lationsandinsightsfirstbegantotakeontrajectoriesoftheirown. One striking example of this interpretive risk can be found in the longstanding profile of Maximus as an essentially or systematically anti-Origenisttheologian.Theprofileisnotcompletelyunwarranted, tobesure,givenhissustainedcriticismofradicalOrigenists,explored many years ago by Polycarp Sherwood and investigated by many 1 SeetheexcellentbibliographiccompilationbyMikonjaKnežević,Maximusthe Confessor(580–662):Bibliography,Bibliographiaserbicatheologica6(Belgrade:Insti- tuteforTheologicalResearch,2012). OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi 2 MaximustheConfessor others since. Maximusclearlyconsidered systematizedOrigenism to be flawed as a reimagining of the economy of creation and redemp- tion.Butinfactthereweremultiple“Origenisms”afloatinthewake of both Origen himself and his influential fourth-century devotee Evagrius Ponticus, some more controversial than others. One was the radicalized version of Origenist cosmology and eschatology circulating in certain Palestinian monasteries in the sixth century. This is the version presumably most problematic for Maximus and othercritics, anditprovidedafoilforimportantfeaturesofhis own mature thinking on the origins and destiny of creation. Another stream, however, was the legacy of Origen’s own ascetical gospel, his compelling vision of the spiritual life, wherein Christ the Logos is the romancer and educator of souls who entices the deep-seated erôs of human nature toward the transcending beauty and goodness ofGod.Inhisdevotiontothisparticularlegacy,Maximuswashimself acertainkindofOrigenist,andsoweremanyothersbeforeandafter him, including the likes of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite, two of the Confessor’s most crucial sources. And yet some of the scholarship on Maximus, in its zeal to profile him as a philosophical anti-Origenist in the wake of the anathematization of OrigenismattheCouncilofConstantinopleof553,hasdownplayedthe recontextualization of Origen that still lay at the core of his spiritual teaching.IndoingsoitrisksbelittlingacrucialthreadlinkingMaximus to the earliest traditions of Greek Christian asceticism, as well as Maximus’ownuniqueimprovisationsonOrigenist–Evagrianascetical theology. What is demanded, especially in assessing the work of a thinker whosetheologyisasintricateandnuancedasMaximus’,isthekindof thick description that elicits not only the internal intelligibility or consistency in his literary corpus but also the often subtle signals thathisworkhasoncebeenaddressedtoliveaudiences,thatithasstood onthecuspofinheritedtraditionsandnewinterpretivecontexts,and thatitistheproductofpersonalcommitmentstonetworksofmentors, friends, and sympathizers as well as of carefully refined intellectual judgmentsdevelopedoverlongperiodsoftime.Inmostofhisspiritual and theological works, unlike some of his letters and christological Opuscula,Maximusnormallydoesnotfurnishanaccompanyingcom- mentaryonthelivecircumstancesinwhichhewaswriting.Likeother theologiansofhisage,andunlikemanypostmodernChristianthinkers sensitizedtoremainawareoftheirownculturalandhistoricallocation, OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi Introduction 3 he was not a self-consciously contextualizing theologian. This compli- catesthetaskofpenetratingmorethansimplythegeneralbackground andforegroundofhisworks. In the case of the Ambigua to John, for instance, we know that Maximus is rebutting Origenism, but we long to know more from himabouttheexactprovenanceandcharacteroftheOrigenismthat he is refuting. In the Questions and Responses for Thalassius, we see him developing elaborate exegetical and theological responses to scriptural queries posed to him by a friend who was the abbot of a Libyanmonastery,butwewishhewouldrevealmoreaboutwhathas prompted this particular set of questions on this particular set of ambiguous or perplexing biblical texts. At one level, the Questions and Responses for Thalassius is rather predictable and transparent. Thalassius’s monks want to know how certain obscure biblical texts are still relevant to their ascetical disciplines, and Maximus uses classic Alexandrian forms of “spiritual” interpretation, well-tested within monastic tradition, imaginatively to answer the queries in ways that are edifying, in the manner of what later became known aslectiodivina.AndyetweareleftwantingforawordfromMaximus on the antecedent debates in patristic exegesis over the possible abuses of non-literal exegesis, or on why he is so secure, now that Origen’s legacy has become controversial, in carrying forward the tradition of Alexandrian–Origenian allegory and anagogy, especially whenthesekindsofinterpretationhadbeenemployedinsupportof speculativeandcontroversialfeatures of Origenistdoctrine. Moreto thepoint,wewouldloveforMaximustoarticulatemoreexplicitlythe kindof“Origenist”hestillallowshimselftobeinanageofmultiple Origenisms.A“corrected”formofOrigenist–Evagrianspiritualdoc- trineandasceticismis,afterall,stillanappropriation,stillindebtedto a chemistry uniquely and organically related to these controversial thinkersofanearlierperiod.Theissueisallthemoreacutewhenwe consider just how much Maximus gleans from Evagrius, the most toutedOrigenistthinkerafterOrigenhimself.Iwilltakeuptheissue againinChapter2. Still another example from the earlier part of Maximus’ literary corpus is his Dialogue on the Ascetical Life (Liber asceticus), a work clearly resembling the “conferences” recorded in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata patrum) from an earlier generation. There is much in the work consistent with the “classic” Maximus, suchastheemphasisondivinekenosisandincarnationastheultimate OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi 4 MaximustheConfessor rationale of the ascetical life(and of allcreated existence),and onthe double love commandment as formative for all Christian virtue and praxis.ButwhydoesMaximusseefittodeploythisliterarythrowback totheolderdesertmonastictradition,andboldlytoretrievethestrin- gentmodelofpenitentialdisciplineandself-mortificationtypicalofthat tradition? Has he experienced this model for himself in Palestine or Egypt, or is this perhaps just one among other alternative literary artificesforexpoundingontheexigenciesoftheasceticallife? Thesekindsofquestionsespeciallyariseinconjunctionwithworks fromMaximus’earlymonasticcareer,priortohisdeeppublicinvolve- mentinthechristologicalcrisisofthemid-seventhcentury.Theyareall the more imposing because, as we shall see in Chapter1, there is extensive new biographical debate on his precise background and monastic provenance. At least with his more christologically-focused worksfromthelatterdecadesofhiscareer,wehaveabundantevidence of the immediate foreground of imperial and ecclesiastical politics in NorthAfrica,Rome,andConstantinople. Meanwhile, there are great challenges for bringing together the piecesofMaximus’lifetoformacompleteportrait,oneinwhichhis early work as a monastic theologian and spiritual pedagogue is fully integrated with his more controversial public persona in the mon- othelete controversy that preoccupied him from the 640s to the end of his life. Juan Miguel Garrigues has attempted one such portrait, claiming to find an evolution in Maximus’ thought commensurate with distinctive phases of his career. Garrigues maps five stages in Maximus’ development. First is “the monk” deeply engaged with Origenist spiritual doctrine and its strongly existentialist doctrine of human freedom enhanced by Gregory of Nyssa, the troubling elements of which Maximus supposedly corrected by appeal to the stabilizing ontology of Dionysius the Areopagite. Second is “the nomad” cast into monastic exile (xeniteia) in Africa by the Arab invasions, taking on a more eschatological outlook and preparing, undertheguidanceofhisspiritualfatherSophronius,fortheemerging battle with imperially-supported monothelete Christology. Third is “thetheologian”maturedthroughtherefiner’sfireofthemonothelete controversy. Fourthis “the confessor” whose commitment todyothe- leteChristologyleadshimultimatelytoRomeandadangerousalliance with the Roman Church against Constantinople. Fifth and finally is “themartyr,” Maximus’ destinyafter havingbeen takeninto custody, tried,tortured,andexiledbytheimperialauthoritiesinConstantinople, OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi Introduction 5 givinghislifeforhisOrthodoxconfession.2Commensuratewithallthis, Garriguesargues,wasMaximus’doctrineofdeification,theveryskel- eton of his theology. Maximus had to overcome the “intellectualism” and Platonic dualism of Evagrius, and to transcend the “dramatic existentialism” of Gregory of Nyssa, whose eschatological spirituality focused on the fulfillment of “nature” through free will. At last he discerned the superiority of “person” to “nature,” and re-envisioned deification as “personal adoption in the Son” through the kenosis of divinelove.3 Garrigues’s reconstruction is imaginative but far too tidy, and presupposes an artificial gap between the allegedly immature monk and the mature theologian; it also oversimplifies or misrepresents authenticelementsofdevelopmentinMaximus’thinking.4Garrigues is one among other scholars, moreover, who have tended to view Maximus as a precursor of Aquinas, anticipating the definition of deification more as a fruition of infused grace than of nature’s own aspirationinkeepingwithitstruetelos. Meanwhile, I do not disparage Garrigues’s attempt to construct a coherentportraitofMaximusinhiscontext,butmyowngoalinthis bookistotakefulleraccountofthecomplexitiesinhisformationasa theologian.LikeGarrigues,Iwriteasahistoricaltheologian,notasa socialorculturalhistorianofByzantium,andyetIamobligedtobegin thisstudyinChapter1withanextendedexaminationofthedifficul- tiesfaced in reconstructing Maximus’life. Here I rely heavilyon the best recent scholarship on seventh-century Byzantium, and on the newerstudiesanalyzingtherivalGreekandSyriacVitaeofMaximus, thoughrecognizingthatByzantinistsandhistoricaltheologianshave theirdifferencesofinterestandperspective.5Ialsotryinthefirsttwo chapterstosetthehistoricalstagefor myexploration,insubsequent chapters,ofsomeoftheprincipalthemesandguidingleitmotifsofhis theology. We will investigate, in Chapters 3 through 5, the “cosmic landscapes” of his thought, including his conceptualization of the 2 Juan Miguel Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur: La charité, avenir divin de l’homme(Paris:Beachesne,1976),35–75. 3 Ibid.,79–199. 4 SeeMarcelDoucet’sconvincingcriticismofGarriguesin“Vuesrécentessurles ‘metamorphoses’delapenséedesaintMaximeleConfesseur,”ScienceetEsprit31 (1979):267–302. 5 On this difference, see Averil Cameron, “The Cost of Orthodoxy,” Church HistoryandReligiousCulture93(2013):339–61,esp.340–3. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,24/12/2015,SPi 6 MaximustheConfessor basicarchitectureofthecreatedcosmos,thechristocentricfocusofhis cosmology,andtheeschatologicalinterfacesbetweenhisvisionofthe world and his vision for the Church. In these chapters I intend to enhance what Hans Urs von Balthasar first began to develop as a “theo-dramatic” reading of Maximus, with Christ the New Adam as the principal actor in the drama of the salvation and transfiguration of the world. I shall describe as well what I call Maximus’ “cosmo- politeian”perspective,whichseesall(especiallyrational)creatures,in theirparticularitybothinthestructureofthecosmosandinconcrete history,undertakingtheirsubsidiaryperformancesinthenewpoliteia ofcreaturelyexistenceinauguratedbyJesusChrist. In the next section, Chapters 6 through 8, I examine elements of Maximus’ theological anthropology, his teaching on the precise character of Christ’s redemptive work, and the yield of these things for his instruction in the moral and spiritual life of the Christian. Myaiminthesechaptersisnottorevisitallthesubordinatedoctrinal themes already treated in detail in other studies, but to demonstrate how Maximus’ overarching teleological and eschatological (and preeminently christocentric) perspective is determinative of his understanding of creation, human nature, and the fall. Humanity, I will argue, is for Maximus a theo-dramatic work-in-progress. His protology, ordoctrineof“beginnings,”isthoroughlyconditionedby anticipation of the revelation of the new eschatological humanity of JesusChrist.Thehumancreature’sownpoliteia,theparametersand protocols of performing her or his role in the denouement of the drama of Christ, is marked by forms of love and virtue—new life in the Spirit—that divulge the indwelling Christ, the Christ who (in a famous image that Maximus expands from Origen) “incarnates” himselfinthevirtues. In the final section, having considered Maximus at length in his owncontext,Iturntosomeofthehistoricattemptstorecontextualize his work in new theological settings both East and West. These diverse receptions go far in disclosing the breadth of his thought and the ongoing prospects of critical but constructive retrieval of hislegacy.InmyclosingEpilogue,Iattempttointegratethedifferent aspects and phases of his career into a refreshed portrait of his achievement as a contextual theologian—a portrait that commends itselftocontinuingengagementofMaximusasa“Confessor”forEast, West,andGlobalSouth. Part I Backgrounds Maximus in His Historical Setting: Betwixt and Between They were neither the best of times nor the worst of times for the Byzantine Empire. They were, however, unsettled and unsettling. Maximus the Confessor’s life as a monk, churchman, and theologian fell betwixt and between certain definitive historical developments in Byzantium in the late sixth and seventh centuries. Born in 580, he lived just past the grand age of Justinian (r. 527–65), the peak period of Byzantine power and imperial expansion. The Byzantium that Maximus knew was an empire aspiring to reclaim an already elusive greatness after the severe instabilities that dogged it during the troubled regimes of Justinian’s successors. And yet Maximus died in 662, well before the alternating expansions and shrinkages of the Byzantine Empire devolved into a final, fateful trajectory of decline. From Justinian to Heraclius: Byzantine Aspirations to a Christian World Order Justinian’s own imprint on Maximus’ world was enormous, since he had much to do with the overall configuration of Christianity in the Mediterranean basin in the sixth and seventh centuries.1 During his reign, a subtle transformation of the Roman Empire emerged, a “Byzantine alloy, (p.10) a world in which Christian, Roman, Greek, and many local elements fused to create a new medieval civilization within imperial borders.”2 Justinian, to be sure, inherited his fair share of monumental challenges to advancing such a civilization. But he also created new ones of his own. Endorsing a mode of interpreting Chalcedonian Christology in terms that invoked the revered (if controversial) legacy of Cyril of Alexandria, Justinian, with the counsel of his influential wife Theodora, set a precedent for later emperors maneuvering to draw the miaphysite churches of the East back into the fold of Chalcedonian orthodoxy even as that same “orthodoxy” was still being defined. But his mixed signals in dealing with the miaphysites, strong-arming them but also trying to appease them in the imperially orchestrated Council of Constantinople of 553, backfired badly, alienating those churches all the more while also deepening frictions with the Roman Church. The destabilizing fall-out of all of this lasted well into Maximus’ own time. The westward military campaigns undertaken by Justinian’s illustrious commander Belisarius took back Roman Africa from Arian Vandal occupation,3 so that the region was securely under Byzantine control during the years Maximus later spent with the Eukratas monastic circle near Carthage. But this military reconquest and cultural disruption only commenced a long process of “Roman” reclamation,4 a yet-to-be negotiated Byzantino-African identity that significantly muddied the African churches’ relation to Constantinople. Not all Catholics in North Africa were enthused about the arrival of a “Byzantine” orthodoxy, and even pushed back against some of Justinian’s theological initiatives and endorsements. Justinian was equipped with an extensive dossier of imperial legislation, the Corpus juris civilis, and even with a semi-official handbook of scriptural interpretation composed by his senior legal minister or Quaestor, Junillus Africanus, who sought to demonstrate the Bible’s support for the divine right of the emperor and the official (p.11) imperial orthodoxy.5With these sources at his disposal, Justinian projected a reconsecrated symbiosis of Church and state. Expressed in virtually mythic terms in his sixth Novella,6 this symbiosis would have Constantinople, capital and home to the rebuilt patriarchal basilica of Hagia Sophia, as the sacral center of gravity for Byzantium’s Christian world order. But at the level of the provinces, where the emperor remained dependent on governors, exarchs, other political or military officials, and even bishops to carry out his universally binding will, this elusive ideal was constantly tested. One reason was the sheer weight of its own hubris. The historian Procopius famously lampooned this in his Secret History, vilifying Justinian as a capricious rogue and “prince of demons,”7 a hard label to make completely stick given, among other things, Justinian’s personal studiousness with regard to matters theological and ecclesiastical.8 In the long run, however, local resistance in all its forms (religious, political, cultural, etc.) was an enduring and destabilizing reality on the ground. This situation prompted Justinian’s nephew and successor, Justin II (r. 565–78), to implement a policy whereby provincial governors would no longer be sent out from Constantinople but elected by local aristocrats and bishops.9 These kinds of appeasements, however, (p.12) did little to quell the resurgence of local unrest. Meanwhile, Byzantium was headed toward unrelenting pressures on its imperial borders by Lombards, Slavs, Avars, Persians, and Arabs, and the specter of new upsets to an already fragile imperial equilibrium. These external challenges would have much to do, then, with the strongly defensive posture that the empire assumed, but not before Justinian’s immediate successors attempted some awkwardly aggressive measures. Warren Treadgold appropriately titles the period between Justinian and Heraclius, 565–610, the era of “the danger of overextension.” Justin II not only further strained relations with the provinces, he also learned little from Justinian’s stormy relation with the miaphysite churches, repeating the calamitous mixture of negotiation and force in dealing with them. Justin prematurely attacked the Persians on the eastern front and thrust the empire into a very precarious position. His successor Tiberius II (r. 578–82) dipped lavishly into the imperial treasury to try to resolve problems of government and military security. Maurice (r. 582–602), an able military commander, nonetheless had “one major army and three major wars to fight,” and despite a glorious victory against the Persians, he presided over a dramatic depletion of resources and manpower. In the melee of trying to stage an army to ward off the impending threat on Constantinople from Slavs and Avars amassed in the Balkans, Maurice and five of his sons were captured and cruelly executed by co-conspirators of his successor Phocas (r. 602–10), whose subsequent reign saw a sustained famine and an even more disastrous weakening of the empire’s borders.10 The seventh century, Maximus the Confessor’s century, truly set the stage for the “reduced medieval state” that Byzantium was destined to become.11 In this respect, Heraclius (b. 575, r. 610–41), the emperor of Maximus’ early and middle career, was a crucial transitional figure who desired to reestablish the grandiosity of the reigns of his predecessors Constantine and Justinian while negotiating the fault line between imperial idealism and the stark realities of political, economic, military, and religious upheaval. Shortly after (p.13) Heraclius’s ascendancy, the Persians handed the Byzantine army a devastating defeat near Antioch, and eventually marched on Jerusalem in 614.12 There they allegedly attacked (but, it seems, did not destroy) the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Eastern Christianity’s holiest shrine. They captured the Patriarch Zacharias, massacred hundreds of Christians, and stole the cherished relic of the True Cross.13 The event was symbolically enormous, signaling the heightened stakes of controlling the empire’s borders. It is rightly compared to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, which sent shockwaves across the Christian population in the West and signaled the end of an era of security.14 In the meantime, another Persian army advanced through Asia Minor as far as Chalcedon, just across the Sea of Marmara from Constantinople. By 615 dispatches were sent to the Persian ruler Chosroes II to try to negotiate a settlement. The anonymous Paschal Chronicle quotes one of the dispatches as an appeal to Chosroes to recognize the divinely bestowed “providence” protecting the earthly “kingdom” (generically speaking) and deeming it worthy of freedom from disturbance. In highly deferential terms it blames Heraclius’s predecessor Phocas for having failed to pay due diplomatic respect to the Persian monarch, and begs “forgiveness” in order to appease Chosroes and obviate further Persian aggression.15 This appeal fell on deaf ears, and was probably laughable to the Persians who were doing well in battle and confident of further decisive victories against the Byzantines.16 Compounding difficulties, the Slavs and Avars were strengthening in the Balkans and poised to strike (p.14) Constantinople. In June of 623, feigning a diplomatic mission to Heraclius at Selymbria just west of the capital, the Avars ambushed the imperial party, forcing Heraclius to don plain clothes, grab his crown, and escape back to Constantinople.17 Only a hastily negotiated peace treaty, with the enemy receiving a massive sum of tribute money, temporarily staved off the Avar threat. Heraclius’s rocky first decade was not to have the last word on his reign. He had not been able for long to capitalize on the opprobrium cast on his predecessor Phocas, and had been thrust from the outset into a military and diplomatic nightmare. Technically, moreover, he was a usurper and had to prove his legitimacy.18His political and military prowess, however, was to be vindicated in a new and decisive campaign against the Persian Sassanid dynasty beginning in 624. Intermittently, the Persian support of, and involvement in, a coalition of Slavs and Avars that laid siege to Constantinople in 626 sent a clear signal that the very viability of Byzantium was in question.19 Though the capture of Jerusalem was disastrous for Heraclius, Byzantine historians and the esteemed panegyrist George of Pisidia predictably amplified the drama of Heraclius’s Persian campaign, hailing the conquering hero and quoting alleged speeches of the emperor in which he exhorted his troops to a spiritual as well as material showdown. They played it up as a crusade against infidels who had committed sacrilege by desecrating the Holy City and stealing the priceless relic of the True Cross,20 though the harsh reality, as Walter Kaegi notes, was a testing of military wits in “expeditionary warfare of maneuver over vast distances” across Asia Minor, the Caucasus, western Iran, and ultimately Mesopotamia.21 All the while Heraclius employed biblical (p.15) prophecy, especially Daniel, to prove how his campaign was divinely sanctioned, which helped justify, in turn, his intolerance and cruelty toward enemies who showed contempt for his aura as Christian emperor.22 Help came as well from the Syriac Christian Alexander Legend (c.629), a work that retold the story of Alexander the Great as a prophet of the Messiah who vowed to place his throne in Jerusalem, and whose own conquest of the Persians adumbrated Heraclius’s exploits and redemption of the Holy City.23 In 627–8, having forged an alliance with Kök Turks, Heraclius at last invaded the Persian heartland in Mesopotamia, defeated Chosroes II, and negotiated the Persians’ withdrawal from the Levant and Egypt. As important as the military victory was the recovery of the True Cross and its associated relics, which thoroughly sealed the religious interpretation of the Persian campaign. Heraclius, the Rise of Islam, and the Cosmos of Byzantine Christian Culture in the Seventh Century Heraclius’s ceremonial restoration of the True Cross to Jerusalem in 630 was no simple ceremonial accent mark on his defeat of the Persians. It was part of a concerted ideological campaign to retrieve the legacy of Constantine, for whose regime the cross also famously had unique meaning as a sign of sanctified dominion. With this powerful public gesture, Heraclius “aspired to the renewal of his reign, a new beginning, and the start of a new age after a successfully concluded war.”24 The poet laureate George of Pisidia,25 a deacon of (p.16)Hagia Sophia, in turn contributed to crafting an imperial myth according to which Heraclius’s reign was not only a new beginning but indeed, a “new creation.” In his poem On the Restoration of the True Cross, George set out the event’s eschatological significance as a signal of the emperor’s cosmic sovereignty on Christ’s behalf.26 Indeed, among his various panegyrics on Heraclius was an elegant epic entitled the Hexaemeron, which used the six-day creation story in Genesis 1 as the thematic backdrop for eulogizing the cosmic dimensions of the emperor’s military and political achievement. In the Creator’s struggle to bring new order and “rhythm” (ῥυθμός‎) out of the material chaos of nascent creation, George envisions a compelling analogy with the new cosmic order inaugurated by Heraclius’s victory over the Persians.27 In one segment of theHexaemeron, George styles an address on the lips of Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, extolling the Creator as Architect of the wonders of the world, and bidding the Creator to open wide the “lower gates” of the earthly city, the imperial capital, for Heraclius now to pass through as the “deliverer of the cosmos” (κοσμορύστης‎).28In another panegyric, the Heraclias, George praises the emperor in virtually apocalyptic terms as “commander of cosmic rebirth” (στρατηγός‎ κοσμικοῦ‎ γενεθλίου‎).29 As Averil Cameron has demonstrated in her learned and prolific studies of early Byzantine literary culture, there was already a transformation underway in Christian discourse and rhetoric well before Heraclius’s time. The developing Christian “rhetoric of empire” registered itself in manifold ways, from the writing of history to the writing of hagiography, seeking to surmount classical rhetorical forms both by exploiting them and creatively integrating figural language and religious symbols drawn from Scripture.30 “Imperial (p.17) historians and poets who had previously striven to keep up ‘classical’ styles of writing now presented their subjects unblushingly within the terms of Old Testament typology.”31 George of Pisidia both capitalized on this pattern and took it to all new heights in eulogizing Heraclius’s bid to inaugurate a world order even greater than that of his predecessors. Already in the opening lines of his early poem On Heraclius’s Return from Africa, which praises Heraclius’s extermination of Phocas, George had admitted a poetic inadequacy to use human words (logoi) to describe one who was so clearly ordained by the very Logos of God himself. The thrust here and elsewhere in George’s works was rhetorically to galvanize the interconnections between the divine Word, the word of Scripture, the word of the emperor, the word of the patriarch, and his own words of poetic eulogy in order to spin a sophisticated web of meaning that sealed the legitimacy, sanctity, and prophetic aura of the Heraclian regime.32 Historical critics may well want to drive a wedge here between the rhetoric and the reality. This was a ruler, after all, with much unfinished business. But the cultural power of this religious and political myth of Heraclius’s reign should not be underestimated. Divine sanction and public confidence were things the Byzantine emperor both wanted and desperately needed. As Kaegi argues, Heraclius, before and after restoring the True Cross to Jerusalem in 630, traveled about in the Middle East and Mesopotamia, and thereby gained “a richer perspective on his contemporary world than any emperor since Theodosius I,” which likely enhanced his own deeply religious as well as political and military vision.33 With these travels abroad, including a survey of the ecclesiastical as well as strategic landscapes of his domains, Heraclius imagined moving the empire at last toward the elusive resolution on Christology and the reconsolidation of Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches that his predecessors had so grievously failed to attain. The (p.18) historian Theophanes indicates that, while in Hierapolis (of Syria), Heraclius was met by Athanasius, the Patriarch of the Jacobite (Syrian miaphysite) churches. The Emperor allegedly promised him that if the Jacobites would embrace the Council of Chalcedon, he would make him (Chalcedonian/Melkite) Patriarch of Antioch. Athanasius at first feigned agreement with the dyophysite definition of Christ, but further inquired of the emperor whether there might yet be a single “energy” and “will” in Christ. Finding that this “monenergist” position was the emerging view of Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, himself of Syrian origin, Heraclius authorized Athanasius’s orthodoxy. With this, the Jacobites and their miaphysite counterparts in Alexandria claimed to have won a victory, boasting that the Chalcedonian establishment had effectively conceded “one nature” of Christ by virtue of affirming a single energy (ἐνέργεια‎) in Christ.34 The situation was an embarrassment to Heraclius, who hoped to create a viable doctrinal consensus, and though there were other intervening developments not mentioned in Theophanes’s account, the result was the Ekthesis (638), the emperor’s declaration, endorsed by Patriarch Sergius shortly before he died, that all language of one or two energies in Christ should be entirely avoided, and that the two natures of Christ were rather joined in a single will.35 Other evidence from Michael the Syrian’sChronicle (in Syriac) suggests instead that Athanasius remained dead-set against conciliation with Chalcedon and that Heraclius tried to force conformity by persecuting miaphysite communities in Syria.36 We will return later to the monothelete controversy that subsequently erupted, in which Maximus the Confessor would also be thoroughly embroiled. For now I want simply to emphasize Heraclius’s recognition of Christology as an indispensable factor in the direction of establishing a viable doctrinal—and cultural—consensus throughout the empire. As Heraclius and Maximus realized from their very different perspectival locations, Christology, even in its most precise definitions, was crucial to the web or “cosmos” of Byzantine culture and religion. For Heraclius it nurtured the Eusebian myth of divinely sanctioned imperial rule and of the emperor’s prerogatives as Christ’s cosmic viceroy. For Maximus, as we will see in more detail later in this study, Christology grounded and (p.19) shaped the specific moral and ascetical disciplines that he commended to his fellow monks, and more broadly those “modes of existence” (τρόποι‎ ὑπάρξεως‎), or christocentric ways-of-being-in-the-world, that he envisioned for all Christians, indeed for all created beings in heaven and on earth. The reconcilability, if any, between the “cosmic Christologies” of Heraclius and Maximus, emperor and monk, also remains for investigation further on.