medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Maximus (d. ca. 304, supposedly) is entered under today in the (pseudo-)Hieronymian Martyrology (usually as a martyr of Cuma; in the earliest ms., as a martyr of today's Conza in Campania) and in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples (where he shares the day with St. Marcian of Syracuse). Some later witnesses of the (ps.-)HM and some late medieval hagiographic texts record a Maximus of _Apamia_ (either a corruption of _Campania_ or a reference to the ancient Roman name of today's Pescina [AQ] in Abruzzo; if the latter, then the saint so identified will probably be the Abruzzese Maximus of Aveia). As a result, our Maximus was until fairly recently also known as Maximus of Apamea and was said on the basis of such texts to have suffered at Apamea in Phrygia. Today is his day of commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
Maximus of Cuma has a highly legendary Passio in two rather different versions: BHL 5845, whose earliest witness is of the tenth century, and BHL 5846 and 5846b, whose earliest witness is of the eleventh century. The latter has an expansion (BHL 5847; earliest witness is also of the eleventh century) that according to François Dolbeau has the manner and style of the later ninth-/early tenth-century Neapolitan hagiographer John the Deacon. In these texts Maximus is said legendarily to have suffered martyrdom in the coastal Campanian town of Cumae (now Cuma), to have appeared some fifteen years after his death to the St. Juliana venerated at Cuma (16. February; a.k.a. Juliana of Nicomedia), and to have requested removal from his original burial place to a martyrial basilica that after this translation -- said to have occurred on 30. October -- became the town's cathedral.
Archaeology puts the transformation of the chief temple on the acropolis of Cumae to a Christian church only in the fifth or sixth century. That church, dedicated to Maximus, was Cuma's early medieval cathedral. Excavations there in 1933-1934 brought to light the mutilated funerary inscription of someone who in the early eighth century had fallen in battle against the Lombards and who commended himself to Maximus' patronage. In 1207 the archbishop of Naples conducted a translation to Naples from Cuma of the putative remains of Juliana and of Maximus; those of Maximus were interred under the main altar of Naples' then cathedral.
Perhaps directly from Cuma (some suggest Capua instead) Maximus' cult reached the nearby duchy of Gaeta by the later tenth century, whence St. Nilus of Rossano and his community brought it to their foundation at Grottaferrata in the Alban Hills outside of Rome (Maximus, characterized as a deacon, occurs in an early eleventh-century calendar from that abbey). Maximus is present in all but the first of the Capuan calendars published by Michele Monaco in his _Sanctuarium Capuanum_ of 1630; one version of his Passio occurs in the thirteenth-century _sanctorale_ of the chapter library of Bovino (FG) in Apulia.
Some views of the former temple of Jupiter / cathedral of St. Maximus at Cuma:
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery3/var/albums/cumabacoli/IMG_0271.JPG?m=1302625647
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery3/var/albums/cumabacoli/IMG_0272.JPG?m=1302625648
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9202340.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/huywcm9
http://www.gliscritti.it/gallery3/var/albums/cumabacoli/IMG_0270.JPG?m=1302625645
http://s447.photobucket.com/user/sonia3000/media/CAMPANIA/cuma002.jpg.html
Best,
John Dillon
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