A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

or of JERUSALEM, of which city he was bishop, a Greek ecclesiastical writer of the latter part of the second century. Jerome (De Vitris Illust. 100.47) mentions Maximus, an ecclesiastical writer who wrote on the questions of the origin of evil and the creation of matter, as having lived under the emperors Commodus (A. D. 180-193) and Severus (A. D. 193-211), but he does not say what office he held in the church, or whether he held any; nor does he connect him with any locality. Honorius of Autun (De Scriptor. Eccles. 1.47), extracting from Jerome, reads the name Maximinus; and Rufinus, translating from Eusebius, who has a short passage relating to the same writer (H. E. 5.27), gives the name in the same form; but it is probably incorrect. There was a Maximus bishop of Jerusalem in the reign of Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, or the earlier part of that of Commodus, i.e. somewhere between A. D. 156 and A. D. 185, and probably in the early part of that interval: another Maximus occupied the same see from A. D. 185; and the successive episcopates of himself and seven successors occupy about eighty years, the length of each separate episcopate not being known. The date therefore of this latter Maximus of Jerusalem accords sufficiently with the notice in Jerome respecting the writer; but it is remarkable that though both Eusebius and Jerome mention the bishop (Eusebius, Chronic. and Hieron. Euseb. Chron. Interpretatio). they do not either of them identify the writer with him; and it is remarkable that in the list given by Eusebius of the bishops of Jerusalem in his Histor. Ecckes. (5.27), the names of the second Maximus and his successor, Antoninus, do not appear. It must be considered therefore uncertain whether the writer and the bishop are the same person, though it is most likely they were.

[J.C.M]