Maximilian of Ephesus

Saint Maximilian of Ephesus is the first of the seven youths of Ephesus: Maximilian, Iamblichus, Martinian, John, Dionysius, Exacustodian (Constantine) and Antoninus, friends from childhood, sons of notable citizens and soldiers in the time of the emperor Decius (249-251). Maximilian was the son of the city's governor.

The cave

When Decius ordered at Ephesus that all should sacrifice to the gods, the seven confessed Christ. The emperor took away their military belts but let them go. They hid in a cave on Mount Ochlon, and Iamblichus went into the city like a beggar to buy bread. Learning that the emperor had returned and was looking for them, Maximilian urged them to appear willingly, but Decius ordered the cave entrance walled with stones. Two officials who were secret Christians placed among the stones a casket with two tin tablets bearing the names of the seven and their story.

The sleep and the awakening

The Lord gave them a sleep of almost two centuries. In the time of Theodosius the Younger (408-450), when some heretics denied the resurrection of the dead, a landowner opened the cave by building around it, and the youths woke as from an ordinary sleep. Iamblichus went to buy bread and was amazed to see the cross on the gates; paying with a coin bearing Decius' image, he was stopped as one who had found a treasure. The bishop of Ephesus, seeing his bewilderment, went to the cave, found the casket with the tablets and read the names of the seven. All understood that the Lord was showing the truth of the resurrection through their awakening. The emperor came and spoke with the youths, and they fell asleep again, until the general resurrection; they then appeared to the emperor in a dream, asking to remain in the cave, on the ground, not in a shrine. The Russian abbot Daniel saw their relics in the twelfth century.

The memory of Maximilian is kept on 17 August (4 August in the old style) and on 4 November (22 October in the old style), in the new style. According to the tradition of the Russian Prologue the youths fell asleep a second time on 22 October, while the Greek Menaion of 1870 says they first fell asleep on 4 August.