Maximilian of Tebessa

Saint Maximilian of Tebessa, anciently Theveste, was a young Christian of Numidia, now Algeria, who refused military service and received the crown of martyrdom by beheading on 12 March 295. He is regarded as the earliest recorded conscientious objector, though other Christians of that time are believed to have refused the army and been put to death. The Church remembers him on 12 March.

He was born in 274 at Theveste, a town in eastern Numidia, annexed by Rome four centuries earlier. His father, the Christian Fabius Victor, had been a soldier in the Roman army, and Maximilian was obliged to enlist at twenty-⁠one. The account of his martyrdom, the Acta Maximiliani, was probably written before 313. On 12 March 295, at Theveste, he was brought before the proconsul Cassius Dio to take the soldier's oath and receive the military mark. The commission recruiting soldiers consisted of the proconsul and officials of the treasury.

Maximilian refused, saying that as a Christian he could not serve in the army. According to the account he said: "I cannot be a soldier in this world; I am a soldier of my God." The proconsul told him to take the mark, but he answered that he would not accept the sign of a passing power, for he already bore the saving sign of the Lord Jesus Christ. His martyrdom shows that he was put to death because he held military service incompatible with the Christian command to love enemies. The proconsul sentenced him to the sword for stubbornly refusing the oath, and he replied: "Thanks be to my Lord." He was beheaded the same day. His body was carried to Carthage by a lady named Pompeiana, and buried beside the holy martyr Cyprian.

Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire was named for him. In the 1970s a group of American clergy opposed to the Vietnam War took the name Order of Maximilian after him, and in London his name is read each year on 15 May on International Conscientious Objectors' Day.