Maximinus of Aix

Saint Maximinus of Aix is honoured as the first bishop of Aix-⁠en-⁠Provence in Provence, in the first century. The part of the legend that makes him the first bishop took shape only in the eleventh century, in the view of the historian Louis Duchesne. Maximinus was the object of a very old local cult.

According to the legend, he was the steward of the family at Bethany and one of the seventy-⁠two disciples of the Lord. Around the year 42 or 43, Jews hostile to the Christians are said to have put him on a ship without rudder or sails together with Lazarus, Martha and Mary; other versions mention "the three Marys". Carried by the waves, they reached Provence. Maximinus established his seat in the Roman colony of Aquae Sextiae, today Aix-⁠en-⁠Provence, and began the preaching in the region together with Mary Magdalene. He is traditionally named as the builder of the first chapel on the site of the present cathedral. Mary Magdalene withdrew to a cave at Sainte-⁠Baume, and on the day she knew she would die she came down to the plain so that Maximinus could give her communion and arrange her burial. Her sarcophagus is in the basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene at Saint-⁠Maximin-⁠la-⁠Sainte-⁠Baume, beside those of Maximinus, Marcella and Susanna. Maximinus died on 8 June, and Sidonius succeeded him as bishop.

Father Duchesne points out that the link with Mary Magdalene was devised around the middle of the eleventh century by the monks of Vézelay, and that Maximinus may have been a bishop of Aix in the fourth or fifth century, though his name does not appear in the list of bishops. His cult was confirmed on 24 November 1900. In icons he is shown as a bishop giving Mary Magdalene her last communion or, in a boat, with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He should not be confused with Saint Maximinus of Trier. The Orthodox calendar commemorates him on 8 June, as a saint of the West before the Great Schism (a saint of the undivided Church), by the New Calendar.