2. Dogmatic and Polemical Writings

The dogmatic-polemical works treat of Christological, Trinitarian, and anthropological questions. (a) The first class are of the most importance for the history of dogma. In them he defends the doctrine of the two natures against the idea set forth by Philoxenus and Severus in the sixth century, of a single fused or combined nature. To this particular division belong the Epistola ad joanr Writings, mm Cubic. de rectis ecclesie deeretis et adversus Severum haeereticum; Oratio brevis see liber adversas dogmatd Semri, written before 634; Epistola dogmatica; De communi et proprio, hoc est de essentia et hypostasi; De duabus Christi naturis; De qualitate, proprio, et differentia; Pro synodo Chalcedonensi ad symbolum additio; Capita de subatantia et natura, de hypostasi et persona; De ecclesiastic' dogmale quod attinet ad dominimm inearnationem; and Ad moniales quo Alexandria; a catholica fide discesserant. Several of these treatises include an attack upon Monothelitism in their opposition to Monophysitism; but a still larger number refer directly to the former, and are among the most valuable documents on the controversy. The most important of these are the following: Acts disputationis cum Pyrrho; Epistola ad pyrrhum presbyterum et hepmenUml IPrloea shortly after

633; Tomes dogmaticus ad Marinum diaconum;

Epastola de duabus in Christ' voluntatibvs; De oper

atwnabus et voluntatibus; Ad Marinum Cypri

?n'esbytemm responsa, a reply to the charges of

Theodore of Byzantium, written after 642; Tomus

dogmaticus ad Marinum presbyterum; Ad Marinum

presbyterum Cypri, written from Carthage appar ently in 645; Defloratio ex epistola scripts ad petr,m

1llustrem, a fragment of a letter written after 641;

Spiritalis tomes et dogmaticus adversus Heraclii

Ecthesin; written from Rome between 645 and 648;

Hegumen's et monachis ac. catholicis populis per

S'ciliam constitutis, written probably in Sicily after 646; De Christi mysterio; De dab. in. Christ' naturis; De duabus unius Christi dei nostri volunto txbus; Non posse dici unam in Christ' voluntatem; De dupliei vo domini ad orthodoxos;Ex

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quiestionibus a Theodoro monacho propositis; Adversus eos qui dieunt, dicendam unam Christi operationem, containing three brief answers to three different assertions of the Monothelites; Ad ildzul: Si possibile est, transeat a me calix; Varace definitiones; Distinctionum et unionum definitiones; Diversa, patrum de duabus operationZus domini Jesu Christi definitiones. On strictly Trinitarian questions Maximus left a letter to the presbyter Maximus of Cyprus on the procession of the Holy Ghost; and a fragment may be his which is contained in Ex opere LXlll dubiorum ad Achradat regem; but the Dialogi V de trinitate attributed to him in the majority of the manuscripts is certainly not his. Anthropological questions are treated in De animm natura et afectionibus, and in two letters, one to John, archbishop of Cyzicus, on the incorporeality of the soul, and one to a presbyter Johannes or Jordanes on its conscious immortality.