Maximin of Trier

Saint Maximin of Trier
Ettringen, St. Maximin and Anna
Died	c. 346 AD
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Canonized	Pre-Congregational Saint
Major shrine	St. Maximin's Abbey, Trier
Feast	29 May
Attributes	depicted receiving Saint Athanasius at Trier; book; model of a church; bear at his side; commanding a bear to carry his things.
Patronage	Trier; invoked as protection against perjury, loss at sea and destructive rains

Saint Maximin (born at Silly near Poitiers; — Poitiers 12 September 346) was the fifth bishop of Trier, according to the list provided by the diocese's website, taking his seat in 341/342. Maximin was an opponent of Arianism, and was supported by the courts of Constantine II and Constans, who harboured as an honored guest Athanasius twice during his exile from Alexandria, in 336-37, before he was bishop, and again in 343. In the Arian controversy he had begun in the party of Paul I of Constantinople; however, he took part in the synod of Sardica convoked by Pope Julius I (ca. 342), and when four Arian bishops consequently came from Antioch to Trier with the purpose of winning Emperor Constans to their side, Maximinus refused to receive them and induced the emperor to reject their proposals.

Maximin was interred in the cemetery outside the northern gate of Trier, where his remains were joined by later bishops in the multi-chambered crypt of a church dedicated to John the Evangelist, later rededicated as St. Maximin's Abbey, Trier. Gregory of Tours already attests to the cult of Maximin in the church of Saint John Evangelist and the cult offered at his grave. The Abbey — destroyed by Normans in 882, and rebuilt, then entirely re-built in the 1680s, secularised in 1802, bombed in World War II and since largely demolished — was one of the oldest in western Europe.

In iconology Maximin was portrayed as a bishop, with book, model of a church, and, borrowing from the legend of Corbinian, a bear carrying the Saint's travelling pack. As a patron, Maximin was invoked as protection against perjury, loss at sea and destructive rains. His cultus was strongest in the region around Trier and in Alsace.