An important, if underappreciated, figure in the history of the papacy is Pope St. Martin I, who served as pontiff from 649 until he was deposed in 653, although he was to live two years longer in exile, suffering tremendous mistreatment and persecution.
A Basilian monk, Martin, like many popes of the period, had served as apocrisiary, or papal legate, to the Emperor in Constantinople. When he was elected pope, he immediately sent reverberations throughout Europe by celebrating his consecration without seeking the imperial mandate from the Emperor that was customary at the time.
Tensions between East and West had increased in over what was called the monothelitist (“one-will”) controversy. Some theologians, among them the Patriarch of Constantinople, Sergius, and a former pope named Honorius I, had endorsed a position that Christ, while having two natures, had only one will. They asserted that this single divine will had dictated Christ’s activities in his earthly life.
It was a conciliatory attempt at a compromise position surrounding the difficult arguments over Christ’s nature and mission which had raged since Chalcedon. However, monothelitism left many philosophical questions unanswerable.”What sort of human being could Christ be if he lacked a human will, and therefore could not make truly human decisions, take truly human risks? How could human beings be enabled to practice virtue, how could they be purified from a crooked and sinful will, if the Savior who was their medicine and their model himself lacked a human will?” (Saints and Sinners, 75). It became apparent in the West, that in seeking an end to division and banning discussion of Christ’s human and divine wills for the sake of a tenuous peace, Pope Honorius had compromised the orthodoxy of Chalcedon’s pronouncements.
Martin sought to rectify the situation and called a synod, since referred to as the Lateran Council of 649. In this meeting of over 100 bishops, Martin and the famed theologian Maximus the Confessor decried the heretical nature of monothelitism, and through it the church’s growing subservience to the Emperor in the East.
Needless to say, the court at Constantinople was not pleased. Emperor Constans II ordered Olympius and Theodore Kalliopis to travel to Italy to reinforce the moratorium on debate about Christ’s dual wills, and failing that, to arrest (and possibly attempt to assassinate) Martin. The pope, by this time chronically ill, was taken prisoner and brought to Constantinople. Martin went peacefully, even knowing that in all likelihood he would never return and that the church would be pressured to nominate a successor more amenable to the Emperor’s will.
Martin suffered both physical and spiritual torments while in Constantinople. The pontiff, sick with dysentery, was confined in prison with little food, drink, warmth or bathing for months at a time. He was stripped of his vestments, dragged in chains throughout the city to the jest of the multitudes, and publicly flogged. He never renounced his position that Christ had a human and a divine will, and therefore could make real decisions like those facing men and women of every time and place. Never being officially condemned to execution by the Emperor, Martin was sent to Crimea and died in present-day Ukraine as a result of his torments.
Martin’s remains were later transferred to Rome and are today in the Basilica of San Martino ai Monti. Many miracles have been attributed to prayers at the tomb of this last pope to be given the title of martyr for the faith. As a prayer to St. Martin says, “Merciful God, Our Father, neither hardship, pain, nor the threat of death could weaken the faith of Pope St. Martin. Through our faith, give us courage to endure whatever sufferings the world may inflict upon us.”
Martin serves as a powerful exemplar to remain steadfast to the church’s teachings and message of freedom in Christ, even when elements of secular society would find them lacking or explicitly attack them. Certainly, Christians of today can look to Martin for inspiration in refusing to cower before the sinful trends and hateful mentality of certain aspects of the world, which continue to challenge us and in these difficult times.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at Fordham.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”