Saint Max Rosé is named after Saint Maximin d'Aix, the legendary first bishop of Aix-en-Provence from the 1st century AD. According to the legend, he was the steward of the family of Mary Magdalene and her brother Lazarus and sister Mary at Bethany. Around the year AD43 he fled the Holy Land with them in a rudderless and sail-less boat. Miraculously they survived to land at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue near Arles.
After landing in the Camargue, Mary Magdalene and Maximin began to convert the local people in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. came to Marseille and converted the local people. Later in life, according to the founding legend, Mary Magdalene retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume mountains until, on her last day she came to Maximin so that he could give her communion and arrange her burial. Her sarcophagus is now at the Basilica of St Mary Magdalene at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, the town named after Maximin.
Today Saint Maximin is the patron saint of the diocese of Aix.
