Maximilla

d. c.179. Ecstatic prophetess. With Montanus and Priscilla, another prophetess, she formed the leadership of the rigorous Montanist* sect in Asia Minor. The three proclaimed the imminent return of Christ to establish a New Jerusalem in Pepuza in Phrygia, where they made their headquarters. Charged like Priscilla with forsaking her husband to follow Montanus, she seems to have survived the others, and claimed that after her there would be no more prophecy, only the end of the world. She complained of persecution: “I am driven away like a wolf from the sheep. I am not a wolf; I am Word and Spirit and Power.” Two bishops, Zoticus of Comane and Julian of Apamea, endeavored unsuccessfully to confute the spirit which prompted Maximilla's utterances, identified by the Montanists as the Holy Spirit. The wars and revolutions she predicted failed to transpire in the period immediately following her death, characterized by contemporaries as thirteen years of peace.