Maxima

Holy Martyr Maxima was the wife of the priest Montanus of Singidunum (modern Belgrade), a Daco-⁠Roman woman who suffered for Christ together with her husband on 26 March 304, in the persecution of Diocletian. The two were thrown into the river Sava with a stone around their necks.

The fourth edict of persecution, of January-⁠February 304, extracted from Diocletian by Maximian Galerius, was applied with great strictness in the eastern parts and the Danubian provinces, among them Singidunum, then inhabited by our Daco-⁠Roman ancestors. Seeing that the head of the city was beginning the persecution of Christ's servants, the priest Montanus remembered the Lord's words: "When they persecute you in this city, flee to the next" (Matthew 10:23) and left for Sirmium, where he was seized and brought before Probus, governor of Lower Pannonia. Asked who he was, he answered boldly that he was a Christian and a priest. Probus urged him to sacrifice to the gods, and he replied: "He who honours the gods and not God will be uprooted." Threatened with tortures, he said: "I rejoice if you do this, that I too may share in the Passion of my Lord Jesus Christ." While he was being tortured, he said: "By these torments I offer myself in sacrifice to my God, to whom I have always sacrificed."

Probus summoned Maxima, his wife, thinking that, weaker by nature, she would urge him to sacrifice. But Maxima asked to be taken to the tortures too, to share in the Passion of the Saviour. Amazed, the governor said: "You Christians are mad, you do not value life." Montanus answered with the Apostle Paul's words that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. Seeing their patience, Probus ordered them thrown into the river Sava. The executioners tied a stone around each one's neck, and Montanus asked to pray a little: he raised his hands to heaven and asked the Lord to receive their souls and protect His people. The Christians took their relics from the banks of the Sava and buried them with honour. The saints are commemorated on 26 March.