The present volume, which was originally published in 1941 and thoroughly revised in 1962, marked the beginning of the twentieth-century renewal of scholarly interest in the figure of Maximus the Confessor (580-662). As Balthasar writes elsewhere, “in Maximus all the streams of the Greek patristic tradition flow together in synthesis. At the same time, with real originality, there is much from within that tradition that he takes to a higher level. But the course of this saint’s life impressed me even more than his teaching. Once again, like Athanasius, one man was able to defend orthodox Christology against a whole empire. A Byzantine joins forces with Pope St. Martin I in Rome and finally suffers martyrdom for the true faith. This is the summit of that unity of doctrine and life which marks the whole patristic age; speculation and mysticism of the greatest subtlety are wedded to a soberly and consciously grasped martyrdom. In St. Maximus we can see in the Catholica what Kierkegaard found within the individual” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Our Task, 1984).