Maximus the Confessor (580-662) was a monk and theologian whose combustive historical era, committed doctrinal reflection, and loud and influential voice took him on a turbulent career of traveling and writing around the Mediterranean. Maximus was a spiritual teacher, an ascetic, a man in love with Scripture and with Christ, the Word at Scripture's heart. He was also a polemicist, a crafter of dogma, an embattled christologian, a premeditating rhetorician...