Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/678

646 M A X M A X who had rebelled against Constantino in 408. After the defeat of Gerontius at Aries, and his subsequent death in 411, Maximus renounced the imperial title and was per mitted by Constantino to retire into private life. About 418 he rebelled again, but, failing in his attempt, was seized, carried into Italy, and put to death at Ravenna in 422. Lastly, Petronius Maximus was a member of the higher Roman nobility, and had held a large number of public offices, including those of pnefectus Romas (420) and of praefectus Italiae (439-441 and 445). He was one of the intimate associates of Valentinian, who received his assistance in the palace intrigues which led to the death of Aetius in 454; but a brutal outrage committed on the wife of Maximus by the emperor turned his friendship into the bitterest hatred. Maximus was proclaimed emperor im mediately after Valentiuian s murder in March 455, but reigned for less than three months, having been murdered by some Burgundian mercenaries as he was flying before the Vandals, who, invited by Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, had landed at the mouth of the Tiber (May or June 455). MAXIMUS, ST, abbot of Chrysopolis, known as " the Confessor " from his orthodox zeal in the Monothelite con troversy, or as " the monk," was born of noble parentage at Constantinople about the year 580. Educated with great care, he early became distinguished by his talents and^acquirements, and some time after the accession of the emperor Heraclius in 610 was made his private secretary. In 630 he abandoned the secular life and entered the monastery of Chrysopolis (Scutari), actuated, it was believed, less by any longing for the life of a recluse than by the dissatisfaction he felt with the Monothelite leanings of his master. The date of his promotion to the abbacy is uncertain. In 633 he was one of the party of Sophronius at the council of Alexandria ; and in 645 he was again in Africa, when he held in presence of the governor and a number of bishops the disputation with Pyrrhus, the deposed and banished patriarch of Constantinople, which resulted in the (temporary) conversion of his interlocutor to the Dyothelite view. In the following year several African synods, held under the influence of Maximus, declared for orthodoxy. In 649, after the accession of Martin L, he went to Rome, and did much to fan the zeal of the new pope, who in October of that year held the (first) Lateran synod, by which not only the Monothelite doctrine but also the moderating ect/iesis of Heraclius and typus of Constans II. were anathematized. About 653 Maximus, for the part he had taken against the latter document especially, was apprehended by order of Constans and carried a prisoner to Constantinople, and in 655, after repeated examinations, in which he maintained his theological opinions with memorable constancy, was banished to Byzia in Thrace, and afterwards to Perberis. In 662 he was again brought to Constantinople and was condemned by a synod there to be scourged, to have his tongue cut out by the root, and to have his right hand chopped off. After this sentence had been carried out he was again banished to Lazica, where he died on August 13, 662. He is venerated as a saint both in the Greek and in the Latin Church, in the former on January and on August 12th and 13th, in the latter on August 13th. A collection of his works, which are of importance for the history of the Monothelite controversy, was undertaken by Combefis, who published two volumes in 1675 (S. Maximi Confessoris, Greecorum Theologi, cximiiquc Philosophi Optra), but did not live to complete his labours. A list of the more important of the writings of Maxi- mns, with bibliographical details, will be found in Smith s Dictionary of Biography and Mythology; an exhaustive "Catalogue raisonne," by Wagenmann, occurs in vol. ix. (1881) of the new edition of Her- zog s R<Ml-Encyklopadie. The details of the disputation with Pyrrhus and of the martyrdom are given very fully and clearly in Hefele s Conc.-gesch,, vol. iii. MAXWELL, JAMES CLEKK (1831-1879), was the last representative of a younger branch of the well-known Scottish family of Clerk of Penicuik. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy (1840-47) and the university of Edinburgh (1847-50). Entering at Cambridge in 1850, he spent a term or two in Peterhouse, but afterwards migrated to Trinity. He took his degree in 1854 as second wrangler, and was declared equal with the senior wrangler of his year in the higher ordeal of the Smith s prize examination. He held the chair of natural philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen, from 1856 till the fusion of the two colleges there in 1860. For eight years subsequently he held the chair of physics and astronomy in King s College, London, but resigned in 1868 and retired to his estate of Glenlair in Kirkcudbrightshire. He was summoned from his seclusion in 1871 to become the first holder of the newly-founded professorship of experimental physics in Cambridge; and it was under hia direction that the plans of the Cavendish laboratory were prepared. He superintended every step of the progress of the building and of the purchase of the very valuable collec tion of apparatus with which it was equipped at the expense of its munificent founder the duke of Devonshire (chancellor of the university, and one of its most distinguished alumni). So far for the outline of Maxwell s career, as regards dates, official work, &c. The rest belongs almost exclusively to mathematical and physical science. For more than half of his brief life he held a prominent position in the very foremost rank of natural philosophers. His contribu tions^ scientific societies began in his fifteenth year, when Professor J. D. Forbes communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a short paper of his on a mechanical method of tracing Cartesian ovals. In his eighteenth year, while still a student in Edinburgh, he contributed two valuable papers to the Transactions of the same society one of which, " On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids," is remark able, not only on account of its intrinsic power and the youth of its author, but also because in it he laid the foundation of one of the most singular discoveries of his later life, the temporary double refraction produced in viscous liquids by shearing stress. Immediately after taking his degree, he read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a very novel memoir On the Transformation of Surfaces by Bending. This is one of the few purely mathematical papers he published, and it exhibited at once to experts the full genius of its author. About the same time appeared his elaborate memoir On Faraday s Lines of Force, in which he gave the first indication of some of those extraordinary electrical investigations which culminated in the greatest work of his life. He obtained in 1859 the Adams prize in Cambridge for a very original and powerful essay On the Stability of Saturn s Rings. From 1855 to 1872 he published at intervals a series of valuable investigations connected with the Perception of Colour and Colour-Blindness. For the earlier of these he received the Rumford medal in 1860. The instru ments which he devised for these investigations were simple and convenient, but could not have been thought of for the purpose except by a man whose knowledge was co-extensive with his ingenuity. One of his greatest investigations bore on the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Originating with D. Bernoulli, this theory" was advanced by the successive labours of Herapath, Joule, and parti cularly of Clausius, to such an extent as to put its general accuracy beyond a doubt. But by far the greatest develop ments it has received are due to Maxwell, part of whose mathematical work has recently been still further extended in some directions by Bolzmann. In this field Maxwell appears as an experimenter (on the laws of gaseous friction)

as well as a mathematician. His two latest papers deal