Maximian

Maximian, also known as Maximianus, was archbishop of Ravenna in the mid-sixth century and is venerated as a saint in the Latin Church. He came from Pola (present-day Pula) in Istria on the Adriatic. The principal narrative source for his life is the Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis of Agnellus of Ravenna, composed in the ninth century, which records that Maximian had been a deacon of the church of Pola and that he was forty-eight years old at the time of his episcopal consecration. That statement is the usual basis for placing his birth near the end of the fifth century; no contemporary birth record is known. In 546, during the Gothic War, Pope Vigilius consecrated him bishop of Ravenna at Patras in Greece. The choice of an Istrian cleric acceptable to the court of Justinian I fitted the political situation after the Byzantine recovery of Ravenna in 540. Maximian took up the see in 546 or 547 and held it until his death.

Ravenna was the chief imperial city of Italy, and Maximian's years as archbishop coincided with a concentrated program of church building and mosaic decoration that expressed Catholic orthodoxy and loyalty to Constantinople. He completed and dedicated the church of San Vitale, begun under earlier bishops; the mosaics of the sanctuary include a labeled portrait of Maximian standing beside the Emperor Justinian in the imperial panel. He also dedicated the basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, the great church associated with Ravenna's first bishop, outside the city walls. He is credited with building or endowing a church of Saint Andrew near the cathedral and with supplying churches with liturgical vessels, books, and relics. The ivory cathedra known as the Throne of Maximian, carved with cycles of the life of Christ and of Joseph and marked with Maximian's monogram, is the best-known movable work linked to his patronage and is generally assigned to his episcopate, whether produced in Constantinople or in Italy under imperial influence.

Agnellus describes Maximian as learned, open-handed toward the poor, and austere in his own manner of life. His government of the see fell during the Three Chapters controversy, the conflict over Justinian's condemnation of certain writings connected with the Christological debates of the previous century. The church of Ravenna, bound to the imperial administration, aligned with the emperor and with Rome rather than with the schism that developed in parts of northern Italy. Maximian obtained relics of apostles, among them Andrew, which he used to enhance the standing of his churches. He died in Ravenna on 22 February 556 and, according to Agnellus, was buried in the church of Saint Andrew that he had founded beside the cathedral.

Veneration of Maximian remained essentially local and is attested in the tradition of the church of Ravenna. His feast is observed on 22 February. He was not the subject of a later medieval papal canonization; like many bishops of late antiquity he was honored as a saint by ancient episcopal cult. The San Vitale portrait is one of the few named contemporary likenesses of a sixth-century Western bishop, and together with the throne and the two great basilicas it has made him a central figure in the history of Justinianic art in Italy. He did not acquire a wide legendary vita or a large list of specialized patronages of the kind attached to earlier martyr saints; the surviving record is that of a well-documented metropolitan of the mid-sixth century.