John Maxentius

John Maxentius was a monk and theologian of Scythia Minor, present-⁠day Dobruja, born around the middle of the fifth century and living into the sixth. The Paterikon calls him the most learned of the Scythian monks and counts him a contemporary of Dionysius Exiguus. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

He became a monk and studied theology in his youth at one of the monasteries of the diocese of Tomis. He then travelled to monasteries in the East and sometimes lived near Constantinople. He wrote eight books, called libelli, on Christological questions and on man, against Nestorianism and the monophysitism of Eutyches. The surviving titles are the Libellus fidei, Doctrinal Chapters, Confession of Orthodox Faith, The Union of the Word of God with His Own Body, Reply against the Acephali, Against the Nestorians and Reply to the Letter of Pope Hormisdas.

Together with four other Scythian monks, Peter, John, Leontius and a second John, he composed the Letter of the Scythian Monks to the African bishops. The letter upholds the theological formula called theopaschite, that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh. In 519 the Scythian monks went to Constantinople and to Rome to ask for recognition of this teaching; the Paterikon notes that Metropolitan Paternus had not accepted it as Orthodox.

After a life of study, asceticism and defence of the right faith in an age of divisions, John Maxentius reposed in peace.