Maximus of Alexandria

Saint Maximus was the fifteenth pope and patriarch of Alexandria, shepherding the Church of Egypt from about 264-265 until 282. The Church remembers him as a bishop who went through persecution and exile beside his great predecessor Dionysius, and who kept the faith of Alexandria united in a century of trials.

According to the Coptic-⁠Arabic Synaxarion he was born in Alexandria to devout Christian parents. He was ordained deacon by Patriarch Heraclas and priest by Dionysius, and he was close to Dionysius long before becoming bishop. His name is among the presbyters who stayed in the city during the persecution of Decius and secretly visited the Christians held in prison.

When the emperor Valerian renewed the persecution around 257, Maximus was arrested together with Dionysius and brought before Aemilianus, the prefect of Egypt. Both were sent into exile, with the deacons Faustus, Eusebius and Chaeremon and the layman Marcellus, to the village of Kephro on the edge of the Libyan desert. Their preaching among the pagans there gave birth to a large Christian community. Later the exiles were moved to Colluthion, nearer to Alexandria, and in 261 Maximus returned to the city with Dionysius.

After the repose of Dionysius he was chosen as his successor in 264 or 265 (the Coptic tradition gives 9 November 264 as the day of his enthronement), and he governed the Church of Alexandria for eighteen years. In 268 a council at Antioch condemned the heresy of Paul of Samosata, and the name of Maximus stands second, after Dionysius of Rome, among those to whom the synodal letter was addressed. At the Council of Ephesus in 431 a letter of Pope Felix I to Maximus was read aloud.

He fell asleep in the Lord on the 14th of the Coptic month of Baramudah (9 April), and Theonas succeeded him. The Coptic Synaxarion commemorates him on 22 April; the Roman calendar keeps him on 9 April, and the ninth-⁠century Martyrology of Usuard placed him on 27 December. Early Byzantine calendars do not know him, but the Church honours him as one of the faithful bishops of Alexandria.