Constas, Maximos. 2025. “The Body as Ritual Space: St. Maximos the Confessor’s Mystagogy and the Architecture of Deification.” In “Emotion in Performance,” ed. Niki Tsironi, special issue, Classics@ 24. https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HLNC.ESSAY:104135600.
The body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system
Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1992:203
Introduction
Maximos the Confessor’s Mystagogy is the second oldest commentary on the Byzantine liturgy after Dionysius the Areopagite’s On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. [1] Departing significantly from the views of Dionysios, Maximos developed a new theological vision of the church. [2] The literary genre of “mystagogy” itself promises a deeper initiation into the mysteries of Christian worship, and Maximos accordingly restaged the liturgy as a cosmic drama of deification unfolding against the background of his multi-layered contemplations of hermeneutics, cosmology, and anthropology. [3]
The following study focuses on a key feature of the Mystagogy’s restaging of the liturgy, namely, the way in which the ritual space of the church and the interior space of the human body are mapped onto each other in a reciprocal exchange of architecture and the body. The reciprocity of these two orders—the body with the structure of the church building, and the church building with the structure of the body—reflects Maximos’s belief that the liturgy celebrated in the sacred space of the church is the visible manifestation of an invisible liturgy that takes place in the sacred interiority of the soul.
The basis for this complex analogy is found in nascent form in the New Testament, where the body of Christ is identified with the Temple of Jerusalem (John 2:19–21), [4] and the human body in general is said to be a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19; cf. 2 Cor 5:1; Eph 2:20–21; and 1 Pet 2:4–8). Early Christian writers took note of these comparisons, but it was not until Maximos’s Mystagogy that the relationship between the body and ritual space was given expansive theological elaboration. In the Mystagogy, the liturgical forms and structures of the church, which for Dionysios the Areopagite were objective, external hierarchies, are radically interiorized and presented not as subjective psychological experiences but as existential and ontological states of being.
My study begins with some brief remarks about the relationship of the body and architecture in the European intellectual tradition, after which I turn to the Mystagogy, placing it within the context of Maximos’s larger hermeneutical project. I argue that the Mystagogy is the third book in a trilogy, the first two books of which are the Ambigua to John and the Responses to Thalassios. I then turn to the main theme of the paper, which is a study of the Confessor’s reciprocal mapping of the church building and the human body, along with a consideration of his primary sources of influence. As will be seen, the Confessor redrew the liturgical map of the ritualized body by joining it to the three stages of spiritual progress presented as a dynamic movement of liturgical deification. The study concludes with a discussion of Maximos’s brilliant synthesis of liturgy and asceticism, which is a key theme of the Mystagogy.
The body and architecture
The relation of the body to architecture has had a long and privileged position within the Christian tradition and in the history of European culture more generally. [5] Human bodies have been directly associated with buildings from the ancient Porch of the Caryatids, through the Renaissance Vitruvian Man, to the modern Corpus Museum in the Netherlands, which projects the giant form of a seated human body from the side of its 35-meter glass structure. [6] The body and its parts are powerful metaphors for architectural composition: a body is complete, well ordered, and provides a lifelike image of what it represents. The Vitruvian Man, for example, is not simply a map of the body’s proportions but a representation of their principles for the purpose of extending them to other areas of artistic endeavor. [7]
In Plato’s Timaeus 44e, the body is not something that exists in isolation but is part of a process introducing order into the domain of necessity, providing structure within a larger cosmos. With the Stoics, even spiritual reality was thought to be a kind of body, which allowed the notion of the material body to be extended to the human soul. As a result, it became possible to transpose the features of the incorporeal soul into the physical form of the body. From this perspective, body and soul are on a continuum located within the animated structure of reality as a whole. Hence, the classic notion of the microcosm, which dominated Western thinking through the early modern period. [8]
The connection between the body and architecture is not simply a theoretical abstraction. In the words of Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, the human experience of architecture is always “multi-sensory, as qualities of space, matter, and scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton, and muscle. Architecture strengthens the existential experience, one’s sense of being in the world.” [9] The impact of architecture makes the faithful aware of the physically tactile quality of spatial presence and their position within it. At the same time, site-specific liturgical performance ensures that sacred space truly becomes a tangible, physical place reinforcing and placing in relief the worshippers’ consciousness of their own bodies. [10]
The Mystagogy
To understand the larger project of Maximos the Confessor’s Mystagogy, it is important to see this work as the culminating volume in a trilogy, the other two volumes being Maximos’s Ambigua to John and the Responses to Thalassios. [11] The trilogy consists of a series of richly imbricated contemplations, with each volume focused on a particular object or field of contemplation.
In the Ambigua to John, the focus of contemplation is the natural world, which is understood to be a kind of text, which Maximos calls the “book of nature.” In the Responses to Thalassios, the focus is on an actual book, sacred scripture, which Maximos compares to a human being, having letters as its body and meaning as its soul. [12] In the Mystagogy, the focus is on the structure of the church building and the ritual activity of the liturgy, which is the goal toward which both natural and scriptural contemplation are striving. [13]
Despite their different foci, the three works are united by a common hermeneutic, namely, a movement: (1) from the surface appearance of creation to its metaphysical ground in God; (2) from the letter of scripture to its inner spirit; and (3) from the outward performance of liturgical rituals to their inner meaning and purpose. [14] Through this threefold mystagogy, Maximos initiates his readers into one and the same mystery of Christ, since what is revealed in the logoi of creation is also revealed in the words of scripture as well as in the symbolic forms of the liturgy. In both scripture and creation, Maximos sees the presence of the Logos as a form of “embodiment” (Amb. 33.2), just as he sees the historical incarnation as the embodiment of the Logos in the church, his mystical body (Amb. 7.36).
Though these three contemplations have different points of departure, their paths merge and become progressively unified as they approach their common goal, which is God, who is at once the creator of the world, the author of sacred scripture, and the head of the Church (Amb. 10.30). That they can be unified is due to Maximos’s emphasis on the continuity of divine revelation in creation, scripture, and the church; it is also based on his non-dualistic understanding of the sensible and the intelligible, each of which is interior to the other. [15] The trilogy, then, is not a series of isolated initiations into nature, scripture or liturgy as such, but all three work together to offer a unified initiation into the mystery of Christ, the incarnate Logos.
When seen in light of the incarnation, the structures of the church are unified with those of creation and human nature, ceasing to be separate and independent of each other. However, their unity in Christ must be appropriated and actualized by the community of believers, who, through their liturgical movement toward God, bestow upon these structures the character of the church as actualized. And this brings us back to Maximos’s notion of the body as ritual space.
The temple of the body
In the Mystagogy, Maximos places the church at the center of a series of interlocking relationships in which the paired elements exist in an iconic condition of mutual reciprocity. For example, the church is said to be an image of the created universe, which Maximos sees reflected in the architectural layout of the church building, so that the distinction in the universe between what is visible and invisible corresponds respectively to the exteriority of the nave and the interiority of the sanctuary. [16] Maximos similarly argues that the church is an image of a human being, based on the threefold isomorphism of nave, sanctuary, and altar with body, soul, and mind. Maximos further identifies this same threefold structure with the three stages of spiritual progress or ascent. The result is a detailed architectural map marking the path to deification. The relevant passage is both lengthy and dense, but merits quotation in full:
The church of God is like a human being, having the sanctuary as its soul, the divine altar as its mind, and the nave as its body. Thus, the church is the image and likeness of a human being who is made “according to the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:27). Through the body of its nave, the church sets forth moral philosophy; through the soul of its sanctuary, the church spiritually explains natural contemplation; and through the mind of its divine altar, it enters upon mystical theology. [17] Conversely, the human being is a mystical church: through the nave of his body, he cleanses by the virtues the practical part of the soul by actively keeping the commandments according to moral philosophy; through the sanctuary of his soul, he brings as an oblation [18] to God though his reason the principles (logoi) of creation separated from matter according to natural contemplation; and through the altar of his mind, he invokes by means of another silence, sonorous and effusive, the silence—richly hymned in the innermost sanctuaries—of the unseen and unknowable resounding voice of the divinity; [19] and, as far as is possible for human beings, he becomes conversant with that voice according to mystical theology and becomes like one rendered worthy of God’s manifestation and marked by his shining glory. [20]
In this passage, the church has the form of a human being, and the human being has the form of a church. In this reciprocal exchange, the three performance areas of the church—the nave, sanctuary, and altar—correspond respectively to the human body, soul, and mind. Each of these areas is the locus of a particular practice or activity, which are identified as moral teaching, the contemplation of nature, and mystical theology. Moreover, these outward activities correspond to activities conducted inwardly within the space of embodied human consciousness, which has, as it were, its own nave, sanctuary, and altar, a threefold distinction which Maximos identifies with the three stages of spiritual progress or ascent. Thus, the nave of the body encompasses both the activity of the body and the activity of human reason (logos) engaged in the practice of moral philosophy. In the sanctuary of the soul, there is a shift toward a more purely cognitive level, as one is engaged in the activity of natural contemplation. Finally, through the altar of the mind or intellect (nous), the human spirit enters the realm of mystical theology which is unmediated union with God.
Maximos provides us with more detail about these three stages, and it will be helpful to elaborate on them further. [21] The first stage, which Maximos here calls “moral philosophy” (but elsewhere “ascetic practice” or “practical philosophy”) consists in keeping the commandments, purifying the passions, and acquiring the virtues. These initial practices are conducted in the nave of the body, marking one’s entry into the sacred space of divine life. The aim of this stage is not the suppression of the body or bodily sensations but rather the purification and restoration of their proper activities, raising the human person from a state contrary to nature to one according to nature. From this stage, one advances to the second stage, called “natural contemplation,” which is the vision of the divine principles (logoi) embedded within creation. That these principles are “separated from matter” means that the purified mind now sees and understands them free of the distortions formerly imposed on them by its own disordered desires and passions.
In the sanctuary of the soul, human thought is further sanctified and raised to a higher level. At this stage, the divine Logos no longer works merely inwardly or invisibly through the virtues but reveals himself through the increasing transparency of the natural world. The vision of the divine in creation is not something arrived at through a process of deductive reasoning, but is rather a simple, direct insight, representing a new elevation of the mind from the level of discursive reasoning (characteristic of the first stage) to simple, intuitive insight and true understanding.
Finally, in the third and highest stage of spiritual progress, the horizon of human reason opens to the infinity of God. At the innermost place of the interior altar, the mind is raised beyond its proper limits—beyond all sensory, cognitive, and rational abilities—being filled with uncreated divine energy and becoming God by grace. Maximos elsewhere distinguishes this stage into two moments, “theology” and “mystical theology” (or “theological mystagogy”). [22] Both are forms of knowing God: the former through analogies and concepts, the latter more directly and without the mediation of created beings, that is, through a purely apophatic encounter with the divine silence that is beyond all speech and affirmation, in an “unknowing” superior to understanding. [23]
To conclude this section, it will be worth noting that Maximos elsewhere maps the same three stages of the spiritual life onto the three orders of the church’s hierarchy:
The one who anoints his mind for sacred contests and drives out from it impassioned thoughts, possesses the character of a deacon. The one who illumines his mind with the knowledge of created beings and destroys false knowledge possesses the character of a presbyter. And the one who perfects his mind with the holy myrrh of knowledge of the venerable and Holy Trinity possesses the character of a bishop. [24]
As this passage makes clear, it is not only the threefold structure of the church and the body that Maximos aligned with the three stages of spiritual progress, but also the three ministerial orders of the church: deacon, priest, and bishop. In this alignment, Maximos has effectively merged monastic experience with ecclesiology, giving asceticism a liturgical foundation and deepening the experience of liturgy beyond mere external rites and rituals. This is a subject to which we shall return below.
Maximos’s sources
What sources did Maximos use for his interpretation of the church as a human being and the human being as a church? We have already noted the New Testament’s identification of the human body as a temple for the indwelling divinity. This symbolic correspondence was taken up by subsequent patristic commentators, and one can readily trace the tradition of an “inner church” or “inner liturgy” as far back as Clement and especially Origen, as well as Evagrius and Gregory of Nyssa, writers with whom Maximos was familiar. [25] However, the principal source to which Maximos was indebted was almost certainly a homily from the corpus of writings attributed to Makarios of Egypt, but most probably written in Syria during the late fourth century. Maximos was familiar with the corpus and drew on its ideas extensively. [26]
The notion of the body as an invisible or mystical church is found scattered throughout the Macarian corpus. [27] The most sustained treatment of this theme is found in Homily 52, the first paragraph of which reads as follows:
The entire visible dispensation of the church of God came about for the sake of the living and spiritual substance of the rational soul which was created “according to the image of God” (Gen 1:27), and which is the living and true church of God. Thus, irrational, lifeless, and corporeal things have been honored with names similar to rational, living, and celestial realities, so that the immature soul, [28] making its way through shadows, would arrive at the truth. This is because the church of Christ, the temple of God, the true altar of sacrifice, and the true sacrifice, is the man of God, through whom even corporeal things, once they have been sanctified, receive the names of heavenly things. For just as the worship and way of life of the law was a shadow of the church of Christ which we now see (cf. Heb 10:1), so too is the present, visible church a shadow of the true, rational, and inner man. Consider how the entire visible dispensation and the service of the mysteries of the church will pass away in the final consummation, while the rational and spiritual substance of the interior man will endure. It is for his sake that the entire service of the heavenly mysteries of the church of God must be performed in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that through the living activity of the Spirit, the soul might truly become a holy temple of God and the church of Christ, and thus inherit eternal life. [29]
The homily goes on to say that there are some who are “unaware of and even reject the idea of an invisible church” and who “in their ignorance are satisfied with a superficial Christianity of external rituals and forms.” Nevertheless, the visible liturgy, Makarios insists, is but the “figure and shadow of a hidden liturgy,” and the “visible church is but the symbol of the church of the heart, in which Christ the true priest presides.” And just as “the Eucharist cannot be celebrated without the preparatory readings and psalmody,” so too “those who do not prepare themselves—by fasting, keeping vigil, practicing psalmody, and struggling to acquire the virtues through asceticism—cannot receive by grace the mystical activity of the Holy Spirit on the altar of their hearts.”
Another source known to Maximos was a treatise on baptism by the fifth-century writer Mark the Monk, who also seems to have been influenced by Homily 52 and the Macarian corpus more generally. [30] Mark’s detailed description of the body as a house of worship was inspired by Romans 7, where Paul argues that the Jewish law must be understood spiritually, encouraging Mark to relocate the liturgical activity of the temple to the interior space of the human soul:
The temple of the human body and soul is a holy house built by God. Its altar table is the foundation of hope. Upon it, the mind offers its first-born thoughts, like a first-born animal sacrificed for the forgiveness of the one offering it, provided it is offered without blemish. [31] This temple also has a “curtained inner area, where Jesus has entered” (Heb 6:19–20) to dwell within us, according to Paul, who said: “Do you now know that Christ dwells in us?” (2 Cor 13:5). This inner area is the innermost, hidden, and pure room of the heart where the heavenly high priest receives the first-born thoughts of the mind and consumes them in divine fire, about which he said: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49). [32]
Liturgy and asceticism
As these passages suggest, the space of the ritualized body is neither static nor inert. For Maximos the Confessor, space is always qualified by time and thus by movement. [33] We have then, not simply a poetics of space but a poetics of time, or rather both together, unfolding as the ritualized body advances across the longitudinal expanse of a visible and invisible church.
However, in the Mystagogy, this is not strictly a liturgical movement. As we have seen, Maximos identifies the threefold movement through the church with the three stages of spiritual progress, which is the distinctive framework of the ascetic life. In other words, the performance envisioned by the Mystagogy is not simply a liturgical performance but a monastic and ascetic one as well.
The Mystagogy, then, enacts a remarkable synthesis of liturgy and asceticism. This was first recognized by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who noted that, with the Mystagogy, the “monastic theology of Evagrius was transplanted into ecclesiology and revitalized by its new context.” [34] René Bornert similarly noted that Maximos brought about a “synthesis of Evagrian hesychasm with Dionysian sacramentalism.” Bornert underlines the Confessor’s concern that “Evagrios without liturgy would devolve into spiritualism, and Dionysios without prayer and asceticism would be empty ritual. It was the genius of Maximos to recognize the danger of this disassociation and integrate the gnostic-cognitive experience with the liturgy.” [35]
The identification of liturgy and asceticism does not eliminate or diminish their respective features or elements. To the contrary, liturgy is deepened through the experience of ascetic prayer and contemplation, while the cognitive and gnostic features of asceticism are revealed in their depth to be sacraments. Combining the experience of liturgy with the three stages of contemplation also means that human beings have both a priestly and an ascetic vocation. They become, as it were, the priests of nature. Through the ascetic purification of consciousness, they discover the spiritual principles (logoi) of creation, in light of which they cultivate the gifts of creation and return them as a gift to God through the performance of the liturgy.
Through asceticism, believers are gradually freed from impassioned attachments to the material dimension of created things, which they had previously mistaken for ultimate reality. Freed from the tyranny of surface appearances, the mind sees God as the intelligible ground of creation, revealing the unseen dimension of human and non-human nature and the deeper significance of the church and its liturgy. The purpose of the priestly and ascetic life is to transfigure the sensible aspect of creation, revealing God as the one in whom everyone and all things are united. This life aims to actualize the potentials of nature in harmony with their inner being and the purpose for which they were created.
The paradigmatic expression of this process can be seen in the “gifts” brought to the altar in the Divine Liturgy. Wheat and grapes alone are not offered, but bread and wine, that is, the gifts of the creator wondrously transformed by human technology and returned to the creator, who responds by transforming them into the body and blood of Christ. This liturgical process is not an isolated activity but a paradigm for all human activity. Such a model affirms human progress in science on the basis of wisdom and reason; it encourages the organization of the social world with greater justice and compassion; and it inspires human art to unearth the spiritual potentials of matter and express them in monumental art and architecture. Through their labor, the architect and the iconographer, the stone cutter and the wood carver, discern the mystical heart of creation, and with their artistic skill and insight empower it to join the magnificent chant of the cosmic liturgy.
This can be clearly seen in the aesthetics of Byzantine art, which avoids three-dimensional sculpture in favor of two-dimensional painting and mosaics. In can likewise be seen in Byzantine architecture, which uses non-load-bearing curtain walls to conceal massive building supports. Reinforcing the structural design, the interior surfaces are lush and reflective. Ceilings are covered with acres of gold mosaic; walls and floors are covered with polychrome marble and inlays, so that the structural supports lose their appearance of weight and solidity and vanish behind the reflective and patterned surfaces. So too the deeply carved marble capitals of the columns, which look like the lightest of lace baskets impossibly supporting tons of solid stone. [36]
This harmony of technology and design is perhaps most effectively seen in the use of light as a fundamental ingredient of the architecture in Hagia Sophia. [37] The apparent weightlessness of the dome is an effect created by a ring of windows that pierce the base of the vault at the very place where it begins to rise and curve over the nave, forming a luminous corona that lifts the dome from the rest of the structure. The overall affect is the spiritualization of matter, so that the entire structure is an icon of the material world alive and pulsating with divine energy.
Through the performance of the liturgy, and in the very edifice of the church building, the gifts of creation are transformed and given back to the creator in a spirit of gratitude, following the paradigm of the Eucharist and the words of offering: “Thine own gifts from thine own gifts; these we offer to you.” To God’s gift of love, humanity responds with its own gift, which God receives both in the hidden space of the sanctuary and in the hidden place of the heart.
Conclusion
Maximos the Confessor’s Mystagogy is a dense and complex work encompassing the Divine Liturgy, the architectural space in which it takes place, and the transformative liturgical experience of the faithful in their progress toward deification. Intended primarily for readers in ascetic and monastic circles, the Mystagogy effectively joins liturgical theology with ascetic theology, monastic consciousness with ecclesial consciousness, showing the profound relevance and indeed necessity of the one for the other. The Mystagogy is not a simple catechism or introduction to the sacraments, and while it is not exactly the inscription of a monastic rule into the structure of the liturgy, the emphasis on spiritual progress and deification largely governs the interpretation both of the liturgy and of the body’s symbolic movement across the liturgical space of the church.
In the Mystagogy, the structure of the body is associated with the church and the structure of the church with the body, and thus the liturgy celebrated in the sacred space of the church is paralleled in the sacred interiority of the purified ascetic. Through this reciprocal fusion of symbolic forms, the physical building and the ascetic body are brought together and produce a new understanding of both the church and the human person. As we have seen, the visible church building is an outward, materialized representation of the invisible church of the heart. The church is thus the visible manifestation of an existential structure that exists in the soul, and which is the soul. Without the former, one might never know the latter, but without the inner experience, one would have no experiential knowledge of the truth of the church’s nature, structure, and purpose.
In her seminal work on ritual theory, Catherine Bell argues that the implicit dynamic and aim of ritualization is the production of what she calls “ritualized bodies.” However, like many ritual theorists, she understands this chiefly as practical mastery of external behaviors, enacted through the interaction of the body with a structured and structuring environment, going so far as to speak of a “structural apprenticeship” so that the body is “appropriated” by external structures and sources of power which are “impressed upon the bodies of participants” and expressed through physical movements, so that required kneeling, for example, produces a subordinated kneeler. [38]
But as this study of the Mystagogy has shown, the deep reciprocal relationship of the space of the church and the interior space of the body is not reducible to a mere psychological process or social construction of power. Instead, it bodies forth the deep existential content of the human being transformed by grace. This perichoretic exchange, in which the structures of the human person are projected into the church, and the structures and sacraments of the church into the person, constitutes an ontological refashioning of human interiority—an ecclesialization of the inner human being—through a free ascetic and liturgical reception of the Spirit, in such a way that it becomes the content of a person’s thinking and acting, the content of his or her body and soul. [39]
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Świtkiewicz-Blandzi, A. 2000. “Notes about Denys the Areopagite’s The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and its Influence on Maximus the Confessor’s Mystagogy.” Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur 6:1–22.
Taft, R. F. 2011. “Is the Liturgy Described in the Mystagogia of Maximus Confessor Byzantine, Palestinian, or Neither?” Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grotta ferrata 8:223–270.
Vesely, D.. 2002. “The Architectonics of Embodiment.” Ιn Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, ed. G. Dodds and R. Tavernor, 28–43. Cambridge, MA.
Vivian, T. 2009. Mark the Monk, Counsels on the Spiritual Life. Crestwood, NY.
Whelan, R. 2018. Being Christian in Vandal Africa. The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West. Oakland.
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. For an introduction to the Mystagogy, see Blowers 2016:166–195; Dalmais 1972; and Riou 1973. The Greek text has been edited by Boudignon 2011. To date there are three English translations, two of which (Stead 1982; Berthold 1985) are based on the text published in PG 91:657–718; the recent translation by Armstrong 2019 is based on Boudignon’s edition. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
[ back ] 2. For comparisons of the two works, see Constas 2022; Rossum 2017; Loudovikos 2016:21–60; Świtkiewicz-Blandzi 2000; and Bornert 1966:83–124.
[ back ] 4. On which, see Kerr 2002; Hoskins 2007; Aitken 2016; and Greene 2018.
[ back ] 5. For non-western examples, see Reinders 1997.
[ back ] 6. Vesely 2002:28.
[ back ] 7. Oskanish 2019:94–118; McEwen 2003:155–239; and Johnson 1990.
[ back ] 8. Vesely 2002:31–32.
[ back ] 9. Pallasmaa, 2005:45.
[ back ] 10. Sanchez 2021:2, citing Machon 2013:57.
[ back ] 11. The Life of Maximos the Confessor groups these three works together as parts of a collective hermeneutical project, in which the Confessor provided “a more anagogical solution of difficult texts and problems,” and in the “more mystical work of the Mystagogy, clarified obscurities in Dionysios”; for the text and translation, see Neil and Allen 2003:72–75.
[ back ] 12. On the book of nature and scripture, see Constas 2018:29–32. See also Blowers 2016:181: “In its ecclesial and liturgical context, contemplation differs little from its function in the reverential gaze on created nature or in the interpretation of Scripture. It is a deep, intuitive insight into the visible object or symbol, a seeing through to its logos (and so also to the Logos-Christ as author).”
[ back ] 13. Bornert 1966:90, calls the Mystagogy a “theoria liturgique”; cf. Mueller-Jourdan 2006.
[ back ] 14. Annala 2015:280, argues for a slightly different pattern, namely, “from the outer space to the inner, and from the inner space towards a space that lies beyond the physical space,” but this cannot be applied too rigidly, partly because Maximos believes that the “outer space” of the church is already an externalization of the “inner space” of the soul (Myst. 5; CCSG 69:504–506).
[ back ] 15. Myst. 2 (CCSG 69:245–255): “The whole intelligible world is visibly imprinted in the whole sensible world in a mystical manner in symbolic forms … and the whole sensible world exists in the whole intelligible world simplified in its inner principles (logoi).”
[ back ] 17. “Enters upon” translates ἐμβαίνουσαν, a word which Annala 2015:282 claims is a “terminus technicus that has a definite meaning in spiritual theological literature.” This is incorrect, as is Annala’s identification of the word with diabasis, on which see Blowers 1991:97.
[ back ] 18. I.e. προσκομίζοντα, a liturgical term for the offering of the Eucharistic gifts; cf. QThal. 51.4: “Through the mediation of the mind, creation brings to God, like oblations, the spiritual principles of knowledge” (Constas 2018:306).
[ back ] 19. This is likely a reference to the prayer of consecration (epiclesis) and to audible and inaudible prayers.
[ back ] 20. Myst. 4 (CCSG 69:264–284). For a study of the North African churches that Maximos may have had in mind when writing the Mystagogy, see Lander 2017; and Whelan 2018. For the liturgy that Maximos is describing, see Taft 2011.
[ back ] 21. For a fuller account, see Constas 2018:27–29.
[ back ] 22. Maximos, Amb. 20.7 (Constas 2014:1.149), states that “the aim of theological mystagogy is to establish a person by grace in a state of being like God and equal to God, as much as this is possible”; cf. id., QThal. 40.3 (Constas 2018:232). Maximos also speaks of “contemplative” and “spiritual” mystagogy, which likewise signify a movement from corporeal realities to noetic vision; QThal. 3.2; and QThal. 65.28 (Constas 2018:100; and 543).
[ back ] 23. Given the liturgical context, the “divine silence” is paradoxically signaled by a musical flourish. This is perhaps a gesture to Dionysios, who, in On the Divine Names III.2, associates mystical experience with the chanting of a hymn, and for whom “theology” in general is not spoken but sung. Maximos may also have in mind the Pauline paradox of “unutterable words” perceived during a moment of spiritual ecstasy (2 Cor 12:4), in which human silence, though bearing the accumulated weight of experience, speech, and concepts, is able to receive the divine silence, which not only has the transcendent quality of music but is also infinitely rich in its measureless resonances and connotations.
[ back ] 24. Maximos, Chapters on Love II.21 (ed. Ceresa-Gastaldo 1963:100); cf. id., Letter 31: “The true priesthood, being a visible representation of the blessed Godhead to those on earth, draws to itself every devout and divine habit and imparts its own knowledge, peace, and love, so that, having borne each faculty of the soul to the final limit of its proper activity, it may present to God as wholly deified those sacramentally initiated (μυσταγωγουμένους) by it” (PG 91:625A).
[ back ] 25. For references, see Bornert 1966:100; and McVey 2010:42–45.
[ back ] 26. For an introduction to the Macarian corpus, see Plested 2004. For the influence of the corpus on Maximos, see Plested 2004:213–254, especially 251–253 (“The Soul as Church”). See also Boudignon 2015, whose efforts to reduce the Mystagogy to a mere commentary on this homily are not entirely convincing.
[ back ] 27. For references, see Plested 2004:38–42.
[ back ] 28. “The immature soul” translates the phrase, ἡ νηπία ψυχή; cf. Maximos, Myst. 24 (CCSG 69:895): “Grace leads each one to that which is signified in the mysteries performed during the holy synaxis, even if he does not perceive it with his senses because he is still an ‘infant in Christ’ (ἔτι Χριστὸν νηπίων ἐστὶ) (1 Cor 3:1).”
[ back ] 29. Ps.-Makarios, Homily 52, ed. Berthold 1973:138, lines 1–17.
[ back ] 30. For the influence of Makarios on Mark the Monk, see Plested 2004:75–-132, especially 107–111. For an example of Mark’s influence on Maximos, see QThal. 6 (Constas 2018:108–110).
[ back ] 31. The offering of thoughts “without blemish” may be compared to the Mystagogy’s offering of the logoi of beings “separated from matter,” which, as noted above, means that they are seen apart from the mind’s former impassioned attachment to them; cf. Maximos, Chapters on Love III.43 (Ceresa-Gastaldo 1963:162): “An impassioned conceptual image is a thought compounded of passion and a conceptual image. Let us separate the passion from the conceptual image, so that there remains only the mere thought; andwe can make such a separation by means of spiritual love and self-control, if we have the will to do so.”
[ back ] 32. Mark the Monk, On Baptism 4 (SC 445:320–322), trans. Vivian, 2009:299; cf. Plested 2004:108. See also Schroeder 2007:90–125 (“The Church Building as a Symbol of Ascetic Renunciation”), who studies the contemporary Egyptian monastic leader, Shenoute of Atripe, who supervised the construction of a monastic church and authored several texts commenting on the structure’s theological significance.
[ back ] 33. Cf. Maximos, Amb. 10.58; 10.91 (Constas 2014:1.242; and 1.292); id., QThal. 55.3; 64.13; and 65.23 (Constas 2018:358; 498; and 537), where Maximos describes “space and time” as the “necessary conditions” (τῶν ὧν οὐκ ἄνευ) of beings, a phrase which is the equivalent of the Latin sine qua non, indicating necessary actions or conditions without which other things cannot exist. See also the detailed study of Mueller-Jourdan 2005.
[ back ] 34. Balthasar 2003:315–328, at 321.
[ back ] 36. Cf. Ćurčić 2010.
[ back ] 37. A church which Maximos had undoubtedly seen and likely worshipped in. See Balthasar 2003:316–317: “Maximos had spent his youth in early seventh-century Byzantium, gazing at the great basilicas and at a liturgy that was already sharply stylized in a hieratic direction. The visible structure, of which Ps.-Dionysius takes no account at all, stands powerfully in Maximus’ imagination.”
[ back ] 38. Bell 1992:98–99.
[ back ] 39. Loudovikos 2016:34.