¹ Today Tebessa in Algeria. We do not know anything about Maximilian's ethnic origins. He may have been a Berber speaking Libyan (Old Berber) at home or he may have been of Roman extraction. The first alternative is the more probable, especially if he came – as seems likely – from a village near Theveste rather than from the town itself.

² In his path-breaking study, Militia Christi: die christliche Religion undder Soldatenstand in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Tübingen 1905, 84Google Scholar, Adolf von Harnack states that Maximilian's father was both a Christian and a soldier. Probably correct on the first point, Harnack was certainly wrong on the second. This, of course, makes more comprehensible Fabius Victor's sympathetic attitude towards his son's refusal to serve which would have been very strange if he himself had been in the Roman army. The office of temonarius was certainly closely connected with the military but it did not involve actually bearing arms, still less shedding human blood. Cf. Monceaux, Paul, Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu'à l'invasion arabe, Paris 1905, iii. 115Google Scholar, who claims Fabius Victor was a veteran.

³ The harshness of the sentence has been emphasised by several scholars, and various explanations provided: Leclerq, Henri, ‘Militarisme’ in the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, xi/i, Paris 1933, col. 1134Google Scholar; Delehaye, Hippolyte, Les passions des martyrs et les genres littiraires, second edn, Brussels 1966, 79–80Google Scholar. The proconsul justified the death penalty as a warning to others. It was a time when military operations were being conducted on the neighbouring frontier; a wave of similar refusals could have proved a serious danger to military preparedness.

⁴ This is printed, with an English translation, in The acts of the Christian martyrs, ed. Musurillo, H., Oxford 1972, 224–9Google Scholar. See also the carefully annotated text in Gli acta S. Maximiliani Martyris, ed. Di Lorenzo, E., Naples 1975Google Scholar; La nonviolenza nel crislianesimo dei primi secoli: antologia di prosatori Latini, ed. Butturini, E., Turin 1977, 24–35Google Scholar; and I cristiani e il servizio militare: testimonialize dei primi tre secoli, ed. Pucciarelli, E., Florence 1987, 284–99Google Scholar. Most authorities date its composition to the period before 313. First published at Oxford in 1680, the Acta (or Passio) Maximiliani has been reprinted a number of times since then. Most texts follow Thierry Ruinart's 1689 edition. It is divided into two sections: the greater part of the document records the court proceedings and was presumably excerpted from the archives of Proconsular Africa, in which territory Theveste at that time lay, while the final lines were evidently added by the Christian community to which Maximilian had belonged.

₅ Delehaye, Hippolyte, Mélanges d'hagiographie grecque et latine, Brussels 1966, 380, 383Google Scholar.

⁶ See Brock, Peter, The military question in the early Church: a selected bibliography of a century's scholarship 1888–1987, Toronto 1988Google Scholar, and Studies in peace history, York 1991, 94–99Google Scholar.

⁷ For example, Döger, F.J., ‘Sacramentum militiae: das Kennmal der Soldaten, Waffenschmiede und Wasserwächter nach Texten frühchristlicher Literatur’, in his Antike und Christentum: Kullur- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien, ii, Münster 1930, 269, 270, 274Google Scholar; Seston, W., ‘Á propos de la Passio Marcelli centurionis: remarques sur les origines de la persécution de Dioclétien’, in Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne: méanges offerts à M. Maurice Coguel, Neuchâtel–Paris 1950, 241, 242, 244Google Scholar; Colombo, A., La problematica della guerra nel pensiero politico cristiano (dal I al V secolo), Milan 1970, 89, 90Google Scholar; Helgeland, J., ‘Christians and the Roman army AD 173–337’, Church History xliii (1974), 58Google Scholar, and his ‘Christians and the Roman army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine,’ in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin-New York 1975, II. 23.1, 777–9Google Scholar; Munier, C., L'élise dans l'empire romain, Paris 1979, 194Google Scholar.

⁸ Campenhausen, H. von, Tradition and life in the Early Church: essays and lectures in church history, trans. Littledale, A. V., London 1968, 167Google Scholar.

⁹ Batiffol, P., ‘Les premiers chrétiens et la guerre,’ Revue du clergé français lxvii (1911), 234Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See in particular, Delehaye, , Méanges, 268, 375–83Google Scholar. The learned Bollandist, writing in the 1930s, was particularly anxious to ward off the possibility of Maximilian becoming a patron saint of conscientious objection to military service. We may note the claim of the Italian scholar, Crescenti, Giovanni, in his Obiettori di coscienza e marliri militari nei primi cinque secoli del cristianesimo, Palermo 1966, 88, 221Google Scholar, that Maximilian was possibly a Montanist. But he does not adduce convincing evidence for this; nor do I believe any such evidence is in fact forthcoming.

¹¹ Cadoux, C. J., The early Christian attitude to war: a contribution to the history of Christian ethics, London 1919, 15 n. 1Google Scholar.

¹² A good example of this viewpoint is to be found in Schöpf, B., Das Tötungsrecht bei den frühchristlichen Schriftstellern bis zur zeit Konstantins, Regensburg 1958, 235–6Google Scholar. Schöpf reproves Cadoux for what he considers ‘his aggressive pacifism’ in describing Maximilian as a conscientious objector in the modern sense of that term.

¹³ Swift, L. J., ‘War and the Christian conscience, I: the early years’ in Aufstieg, II. 23.1, 863Google Scholar. I should point out, however, that four years later, in his valuable collection of texts and commentaries entitled The Early Fathers on war and military service, Wilmington, Del. 1983, 74Google Scholar, Swift gives us a rather less tentative judgement: ‘the young man took exception to the whole character of military life and…it was this fact which made it impossible for him to serve’.

¹⁴ ‘Massimiliano: un obietlore di coscienza del tardo impero: studi sulla Passio S. Maximiliani’, Turin 1974Google Scholar. See also his essay ‘ Bibbia e letteratura cristiana d'Africa nella“ PassioS. Maximiliani”,’ in Forma Futuri: studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino, Turin 1975, esp. pp. 606, 609, 611, 612Google Scholar, and Cacitti, R., ‘Massimiliano – un obiettore di coscienza del tardo impero’,Humanitas (Brescia) xxxvi (1980), 828–41Google Scholar. In what follows I am more indebted to Siniscalco's book than my footnotes indicate.

¹⁵ Several earlier writers had hinted at Siniscalco's thesis, e.g. Fritz, G., ‘Service militaire’, Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, xiv/2, Paris 1941, col. 1976Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Seston, , ‘Ápropos de la Passio Marcelli’, 242Google Scholar, mistakenly assigns Maximilian's refusal of service solely to his rejection of the signaculum as a symbol of idolatry. In fact this rejection came comparatively late in the hearings after the young man had already made clear his general repugnance to soldiering. Cf. Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 93Google Scholar.

¹⁷ I do not think that in his review of Siniscalco Fontaine is correct in interpreting Maximilian's words ‘Ipsi sciunt, quod ipsis expediat’ as an expression of the martyr's belief in liberty of conscience: Latomus xxxviii (1979), 267–8Google Scholar. After all, there does not seem to be a necessary connection between martyrdom and tolerance.

¹⁸ Idem, Massimiliano, 80.

¹⁹ Cadoux, C. J., The Early Church and the world: a history of the Christian altitude to pagan society and the state down to the time of Constantine, Edinburgh 1925, 586Google Scholar.

²⁰ Bauer, W., ‘Das Gebot der Feindesliebe und die alten Christen’, zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche xxvii (1917): Festgabefiir Wilhelm Herrmann zu seinem 70. Geburtstage, 50Google Scholar; Osborn, E., ‘The love command in second-century Christian writing’, Second Century i (1981), esp. pp. 226–41Google Scholar.

²¹ Schöpf, Das Tötungsrecht, passim. Among the other forms of bloodshed singled out for condemnation by the Early Church we find gladiatorial shows, capital punishment, self-defence, suicide, euthanasia and abortion. A horror sanguinis persisted among Christians in one or another form for many centuries after the conversion of Constantine.

²² We may note, however, the existence of the Apochryphal Gospels with their scarcely veiled violence. They circulated as a kind of Christian counter-culture while being repudiated by the Church's official representatives. See Helgeland, ‘Christians and the Roman army’, 762–4Google Scholar.

²³ The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, ed. and trans. Easton, B. S., Cambridge 1934, 42, 87Google Scholar; Dix, G. and Chadwick, H. (eds), The treatise on the apostolic tradition of St Hippolytus of Rome: bishop and martyr, London 1968, 28Google Scholar; Hippolyte de Rome: la tradition apostolique d'apres les anciennes versions, ed. Botte, B., 2nd edn, Paris 1968, 72, 73Google Scholar; Butturini, , La nonviolenza, 181–7Google Scholar. The Canons were composed in Greek; because little of the original document has survived, scholars have had to reconstruct the text from later versions in other languages. For this and other related materials deriving from the early centuries of Christianity, see Hornus, J.-M., ‘L'excommunication des militaires dans la discipline chretienne’, Communio Viatorum iii (1960), 41–60Google Scholar.

²⁴ Frend, W. H. C., The Donatist Church: a movement of protest in Roman North Africa, Oxford 1952, 87, 106–8, 121Google Scholar.

²⁵ See Jerome, , Liber de viribus inlustribus, in Richardson, E. C. (ed.), Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, xiv, Leipzig, pt 1, 31Google Scholar. The bishop of Carthage, however, could not openly acknowledge his intellectual debt to Tertullian and proclaim as his master a man who had broken with the Great Church and then gone his own way.

²⁶ Siniscalco, Massimiliano, passim.

²⁷ True, this does not add up to very much. But that fact does not appear to me to be an argument for not taking seriously what Tertullian wrote on the subject.

₂₈ Isichei, E. A., Political thinking and social experience: some Christian interpretations of the Roman Empire from Tertullian to Salvian, Christchurch, NZ 1964, 27Google Scholar. Both treatises were written early in the third century but in the view of most authorities, the De idololatria appears to have been composed before the De corona.

²⁹ For Origen's antimilitarism, see especially Caspary, G. E., Politics and exegesis: Origen and the two swords, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1979, 18–23, 89–101, 126–35Google Scholar. The main passages in this connection are to be found in Origen's mid third-century Contra Celsum ii. 30Google Scholar; iii. 7–8; v. 33; vii. 25–6; viii. 69, 70, 73–5. I have consulted this work in Henry Chadwick's 1953 translation from the Greek. For Lactantius’ rejection of war and military service, see especially Spannuet, M., Tertullien et les premiers moralisles africains, Paris 1969, 176, 177Google Scholar; Butturini, , La nonviolenza, 143–72Google Scholar. The main passages in this connection are to found in Lactantius' treatise Divinae institutions (composed c. 304–11), vi. 6, 18, 20.

³⁰ ‘Navigamus et nos vobiscum et vobiscum militamus et rusticamus et mercamur’ (my italics): Apologeticum 42.3, in Tertulliani Opera i. 157, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (cited hereinafter as CCSL), i.

³¹ De idololatria 19, CCSL ii. 1120; De corona ii, ibid. ii. 1056–8. I have profited by the critical text and English translation of, and commentary on, De idololatria by Waszink, J. H. and Winden, J. C. M. van, Leiden 1987Google Scholar, as well as the learned footnotes by Fontaine, j. to his edition of De corona: Tertullien: sur la couronne, Paris 1966Google Scholar. From a fairly extensive literature I have found two items particularly helpful: Rordorf, W., ‘Tertullians Beurteilung des Soldatenstandes’, Vigiliae Christianae xxiii (1969), 105–41Google Scholar, a balanced, thorough, though somewhat diffuse, study, and Gero, S., ‘Miles Gloriosus: the Christian and military service according to Tertullian’, Church History xxxix (1970), esp. pp. 291–8Google Scholar.

³² Matt. xxvi. 51, 52.

³³ ‘Omnem postea militem dominus in Petro exarmando discinxit.’ Swift, , in his study ‘Search the Scriptures: patristic exegesis and the IusBelli,’ in Reid, C. J. Jr, (ed.),Peace in a nuclear age: the bishop's pastoral letter in perspective, Washington, DC 1986, 50Google Scholar, writes: ‘The terms exarmando and discinxit in this passage may, of course, refer to the removing of military insignia as signs of public office and the idolatrous worship associated with public functions. In the context of the whole passage, however, …it is far more likely that these terms refer to weapons as symbols of bloodletting.’ Cf. Klein, Richard, Tertullian und das römische Reich, Heidelberg 1968, 110Google Scholar.

³⁴ Joshua, Tertullian readily admitted, had led an army with God's approval. But this was under the old dispensation. For an able summary of ‘the ethical problem raised by the Old Testament wars’, see Bainton, R. H., ‘The Early Church and war’ Harvard Theological Review xxxix (1946), 212Google Scholar. See also Rordorf, , ‘Tertullians Beurteilung’, 129Google Scholar. As late as 1802 an American Quaker named Hannah Barnard was ‘disowned’ by her Monthly Meetinginter alia for denying that a loving God could ever have approved warfare in Old Testament times. Thus, contrary to the opinion of some eminent patristic scholars, belief in divine approval of Old Testament war-making need not ipso facto exclude faithin Christian pacifism. Indeed, for adherents of the non-resistant tradition war was permissible (under certain circumstances) for those who, whether ‘pagans’ or claiming to be Christians, did not stand ‘within the perfection of Christ’. As the Anabaptist Swiss Brethren declared in their Schleitheim Confession of 1527: ‘The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ.’ Similarly, while Church Fathers like Tertullian or Origen argued that war could be ‘just’ for unbelievers, that conviction did not exclude them from rejecting homicide if carried out by a believer. But cf. Helgeland, , ‘Christians and the Roman Army’, 153 (on Origen), 156Google Scholar.

³⁵ CCSL ii. 1056.

³⁶ At the end of section 11 Tertullian explains that had he not included this saving clause, then his whole essay – on the soldier's crown – would have lost its point; for the soldier would have had no other option than to abandon the army before he received the order to wear the crown, the refusal of which had in fact brought about his martyrdom. For the sake of the argument, writes Tertullian, let us then permit Christians to serve in the army (‘Puta denique licere militiam usque ad causam coronae’).

³⁷ In his edition of De corona Fontaine comments (p. 140) on the phrase ‘a multis’: ‘sans doute effet oratoire à fins de propagande plutôt que constatation; rien ne permet de controler effectivement la réalité de cette affirmation vague’. To be on the safe side, therefore, in my paraphrase I have used the word ‘some’ rather than the more accurate ‘many’.

³⁸ See Fontaine's apt remarks on this point: p. 141.

³⁹ ‘Apud hunc [sc. Iesum] miles est paganus fidelis’: De corona 11. 5. Rordorf, (‘Tertullians Beurteiling’, 130)Google Scholar translates this as ‘bei Jesus gilt (auch) der glaubige Nichtsoldat als ein Soldat’. See also Fontaine's, comment in his edition of De corona, 152Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Cf. Klein, , Tertullian, 121Google Scholar. Arguing against the view that Tertullian was an absolute pacifist, Klein points in proof inter alia to ‘the many military images and metaphors (Bilder und Formeln) which he applies to the life of the Christians’. This kind of argument seems to me to be groundless.

⁴¹ Frend, W. H. C., Martyrdom and persecution in the Early Church: a study of a conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus, Oxford 1965, 372Google Scholar. Cf. Young, F., ‘The Early Church: military service, war and peace’, Theology xcii (1989), 499Google Scholar. Young writes of Tertullian's use of ‘apparently“pacifist” arguments’, a qualification I cannot accept.

⁴² Cadoux, , Early Church, 581Google Scholar.

⁴³ ‘Et homicidium cum admittunt singuli, crimen est: virtus vocatur, cum publice geritur’: Ad Donatum 6, in Sancti Cypriani opera ii. 6Google Scholar, CCSL iiiA. The reference earlier in the same sentence to wars and the bloodshed resulting from them shows that Cyprian intended to include warfare as well as capital punishment in this condemnation of homicide on the part of the state.

⁴⁴ We find the staunchly pacifist Faustus Socinus, over thirteen centuries later, adopting this position; see his De bello, printed in Szczucki, Lech and Tazbir, Janusz (eds), Epitome colloquii Racoviae habiti anno 1601, Warsaw 1966, 83–5Google Scholar. Socinus of course was a conciliator by temperament and not a rigorist.

⁴⁵ See Casamitjana, J. Capman y, ‘Miles Christi’ en la espiritualidad de San Cipriano, Barcelona 1956, 128Google Scholar. Capmany notes here both the influence exercised by Tertullian on Cyprian's thinking and the latter's impact on North African Christianity.

⁴⁶ Ibid. 383. See also 8–9.

⁴⁷ Ibid. 21–3, 187–8, 385.

⁴⁸ Ibid. 47ff, 62–7.

⁴⁹ Ibid. 233, 316. Of Cyprian's De bono patientiae, José Capmany writes that ‘Esta obra es la que mas acusa la influencia de Tertulliano’: ‘Miles Christi’, 313–14.

⁵⁰ Ibid. 228–9; Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 94–6Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Capmany, , ‘Miles Christi’, 125Google Scholar.

⁵² Ibid. 89.

⁵³ Ibid. 257–8.

⁵⁴ Brock, , Studies in peace history, 1–7Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 141Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Frend, , Martyrdom, 464Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ See also Fontaine, , review in Latomus xxxviii (1979), 266–7Google Scholar.

₅₈ Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 72, 133–8Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Spanneut, , ‘La non-violence chez les peres africains avant Constantin’, in Granfield, P. and Jungmann, J. A. (eds), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, i, Münster 1970. 36–8Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Martin (reports his biographer Sulpicius Severus), having hitherto served Caesar in his army and wishing henceforward to serve God by adopting the monastic way of life, had declared on the eve of battle ‘Christus ego miles sum; pugnare mihi non licet’: Vita Sancti Martini 4. 3, in Sulpice Severe: vie de Saint Martin, ed. Fontaine, J., i, Paris 1967, 260Google Scholar. The vocational element, which figures prominently in Martin's refusal to fight, is entirely absent in Maximilian's earlier draft resistance.

⁶¹ Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 134–8Google Scholar. During his trial the young conscript had adopted ‘military terminology, no longer applied to service in the army but for the sake of underlining [his] Christian discipleship’: Toschi, M. (ed.), Pace e vangelio: la tradizione cristiana difronte alia guerra, Brescia 1980, 21Google Scholar.

⁶² Siniscalco, , Massimiliano, 121Google Scholar. See also Lorenzo, Di, Gli acta, 37–9Google Scholar.