Maximus of Mainz

Maximus was bishop of Mainz (Mogontiacum), in the time of the late Roman Empire, in the fourth or fifth century. He is thought to have been the second bishop of the city (another source calls him the nineteenth, but the count does not fit) and possibly the last to hold the see under Roman rule. He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, with commemoration on 18 November. We have no Orthodox act of canonization, so we call him a saint of the undivided Church in the West.

The dates are uncertain. According to one source he held the see from 354 to 378, according to another he was bishop around the middle of the fifth century. The earliest surviving list of the bishops of Mainz, from the Fulda Annals of the Dead, compiled between 919 and 923 under Archbishop Heriger, shows Maximus as the second bishop, successor of Aureus. Aureus was probably killed during the campaign of the Huns against the Burgundians in 436, which also affected Mogontiacum. On this supposition Maximus could have been Aureus's successor from 436. Eugen Ewig considers that Maximus was also the last bishop of Mainz in the Roman period, which ended with the Frankish takeover in 456. His episcopate was possibly followed by a vacancy, then by Sidonius, the first bishop of the Frankish era.

One source says that he was a man of great learning and was put to death by the Arians. Another source does not mention killing by Arians, only by Huns. The two do not agree. Later versions of the list include other bishops of Mainz, among them Theonistus, after Aureus. In the calendar of the Roman Catholic diocese of Mainz he has a joint commemoration with the bishops Crescens, Aureus and Theonistus.