Tractates of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection)

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–4.1 · 4.2–4.3 · 5.1

1. 1.1The first of three instructions to the newly baptized, given after the catechumens leave: the anointing of the ears signifies hearing and doing God's word, and the anointing of the nostrils signifies keeping the faith to one's last breath and perceiving the fragrance of Christ.
2. 2.1The second instruction explains the font: the renunciation, the water made effective by the Holy Spirit, the threefold questioning on the creed and the Trinity, the meaning of the Church and the resurrection of the flesh, and the threefold immersion as burial with Christ.
3. 3.1The third instruction explains the chrism after baptism, which confers royal and priestly dignity (1 Pet 2:9), and the washing of the feet of the newly baptized, which teaches humble hospitality; the hearers are urged to keep their baptismal promises.
4. 4.1Opening of a treatise against the pagans: if all things happen by fate, as the pagans and astrologers claim, their own prayers and sacrifices to the gods are pointless.
5. 4.2The pagans' gods can neither harm nor help; all things happen by God's will or permission, not by fate, as the prophets' and apostles' miracles and the power of prayer show; the Church, unlike the 'grandmother' of pagan error, never believed in fate.
6. 4.3The treatise continues against pagan worship of idols, elements and the immoral gods of myth (with quotations from Wisdom, Romans, Virgil and Cyprian), refutes fate and augury by the power of prayer in Scripture, cites the philosophers, the Sibyl's ΙΧΘΥΣ acrostic and Peter's speeches from the Clementine Recognitions, and ends with the one God.
7. 5.1A treatise against the Jews, in many places lacunose: the younger brothers of Genesis figure the Christian people preferred to the Jewish; Christ is the Son and Word through whom God created, foretold in the law, Psalms and prophets, born of a virgin, and seen by the patriarchs; Abraham was justified by faith, not circumcision.