Maximus of Aveia

Saint Maximus of Aveia, Martyr, was a deacon and martyr, one of the patrons of the city of L'Aquila in Italy, killed around 250. He is remembered on 10 June (and 20 October).

He was born at Aveia (today Fossa, near L'Aquila, in Abruzzo), into a family of pious Christians, where he received a Christian upbringing, and became a deacon at Aveia. In the time of the persecution of the emperor Decius he was seized. The local prefect subjected him to torture, but the saint did not renounce faith in Christ. The prefect promised him his daughter Caesaria as a wife in exchange for renunciation, but was refused. Then he was thrown from a cliff called Circolo e Torre del Tempio, from which he met his death. It is held that this happened between October 249 and November 251. The Serbian source says that he was stoned to death by a furious mob after he opposed the pagan custom of offering sacrifices, in which human beings were offered besides animals.

The veneration of his relics led to the appearance of an episcopal see at Aveia. After the destruction of Aveia by the Lombards in the sixth century the relics of Saint Maximus were moved to Forcona. On 10 June 956 the German emperor Otto I and Pope John XII came there to venerate the saint's relics. Since then 10 June has been the day of his commemoration. By 1256, by order of Frederick II, L'Aquila, destroyed shortly before, was rebuilt, and the relics of Saint Maximus were moved there and placed in the cathedral dedicated to Saints Maximus and George, to which the episcopal see was also moved. Saint Maximus is honoured as patron of L'Aquila and of the local archdiocese, together with Saint Celestine V and Bernardino of Siena, and as patron of the town of Penne. According to the Italian Bishops' Conference (2006), he is among the hundred most venerated saints of Italy.