Martin I

For his strong opposition to Monothelitism, Pope Martin I was arrested by Emperor Constans II, carried off to Constantinople, and ultimately banished to Cherson. He is considered a saint by both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the last pope recognised as a martyr.

Martin was born near Todi, Umbria, in the place nowadays named after him: Pian di San Martino, close to Todi. According to his biographer Theodore, Martin was of noble birth, of commanding intelligence, and showed great charity to the poor. Piazza states that Martin belonged to the order of St Basil. By 641, he was an abbot, and Pope John IV sent him to Dalmatia and Istria with large sums of money to alleviate the distress of the inhabitants, and redeem captives seized during the invasion of the Sclaveni (those parts mainly settled by Croats). As the ruined churches could not be rebuilt, the relics of some of the more important Dalmatian saints were brought to Rome. John, himself from Dalmatia, then had them venerated by building the Chapel of St Venantius at the Lateran Baptistery. As Mackie suggests in her article, the St Venantius Chapel remains an important early example of a martyrium: a shrine specifically commissioned to venerate relics brought from afar. With regard to the martyr cult, such structures represented the pinnacle of devotional building. They often became sites of pilgrimage. Martin acted as apocrisiarius or legate ('nuncio') at Constantinople from the earliest years of Theodore I (642–49). He sent him as ambassador to Constantinople, seat of the empirein its eastern half. Albeit where the pope was based, Rome was by now second fiddle – economically, militarily and politically – to Constantinople. However, the eastern half of the Empire was suffering its own turbulence due to Arab expansion, Jerusalem's conquest in 637, and theological disputes having polarised Christians (the major religion of the empire). Being placed, for so much of Theodore's papacy, in charge of diplomacy between the Lateran patriarchate and the Byzantine court speaks of Martin's preeminence. It was as a deacon that he was elected to the papal throne after the pope died (13 May 649).

When Martin I was elected pope, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire was Constantinople. It sat amidst the eastern domains, where the most influential Church leader was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople who was also guardian of Christendom's holiest relics, such as the Crown of thorns and the True Cross. Martin's decisiveness from the start in bringing teaching prevalent in Constantinople into line with that elsewhere and hastening to heal fissures appearing within the Roman State Church brought him a high profile right from the start of his papacy. According to Piero Bargellini, he neither sought nor waited for the Byzantine emperor Constans II's consent to his election. To emphasise the point, it was without the customary imperial ratification that Martin had himself consecrated. In the previous year, the emperor had published the Typos of Constans. This document defended the Monothelite thesis, ultimately decided to be heretical by the catholic church, according to which Christ had not in fact had a human will. To silence this and quell the confusion it caused, Pope Martin invited all the bishops of the West to a council within the first three months of his papacy. The Council met in the basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and so was named the Lateran Council. It was attended by 105 bishops (chiefly from Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia, with some from Africa and other quarters). Over five sessions or secretarii from 5 to 31 October 649, resulting in twenty canons, the Council censured Monothelitism, its authors, the writings via which Monothelitism had spread and caused rifts within the Western Church, Constans' Typos and Patriarch Sergius's Ecthesis (an exposition of faith backed by Emperor Heraclius). Imperial interference in matters theological had been soundly rejected. Condemnation of all Monothelite writings provoked an angry reaction from the Byzantine court. Unperturbed, Martin hastened to publish the Lateran Council decrees in an encyclical. Constans responded by getting his exarch in Italy to arrest the pope should he persist, and to send him as a prisoner to Constantinople. Constans also accused Martin of unauthorised contact and collaboration with the Muslims of the Rashidun Caliphate—allegations which he remained unable to convince the infuriated imperial authorities to drop. The arrest orders could not be carried out for more than three years. On 17 June 653, Martin was arrested in the Lateran, along with Maximus the Confessor. He was hurried out of Rome and conveyed first to Naxos, Greece, and subsequently to Constantinople, where he arrived on 17 September 653. He was saved from execution by the pleas of Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople, who was himself gravely ill. Martin hoped that a new pope would not be elected while he lived but the imperial Byzantine government forced the Romans to find a successor. Eugene I was elected on 10 August 654, and Martin apparently acquiesced. Thus, as his successor is considered a valid pope, Martin's papacy ended at the latest on 10 August 654. After suffering an exhausting imprisonment and reportedly many public indignities, Martin was banished to Cherson, where he arrived on 15 May 655. He died there on 16 September.