Pope Martin I

He had served as Pope Theodore I's ambassador to Constantinople, and was elected to succeed him as Pope. He was the only pope when Constantinople controlled the papacy whose election had not awaited imperial mandate. 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. He is the last pope recognised as a martyr.

Pope Saint Martin I
Bishop of Rome
Statue of Martin I in Santa Maria della Consolazione church, Todi, Italy
Church	Catholic Church
Papacy began	21 July 649 CE
Papacy ended	16 September 655
Predecessor	Theodore I
Successor	Eugene I
Personal details
Born	590–600 Near Tdoi, Umbria, Eastern Roman Empire
Died	16 September 655 (aged 57) Cherson, Eastern Roman Empire
Other popes named Martin

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. 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, referenced above, 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 empire in 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 erstwhile 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. To bring teaching prevalent in Constantinople into line with that elsewhere, and hastening to heal fissures appearing within the Catholic Church, decisiveness distinguished Martin from the start. 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 heretical Monothelite thesis, which watered down the Catholic faith by claiming that Christ had not in fact had a human will. To silence this, and the confusion it caused, Pope Martin convened, within his first three months, the Lateran Council of 649, to which all the bishops of the West were invited. The Council met in the basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. 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, and the writings via which Monothelitism had spread and caused rifts within the Catholic Church. This condemnation embraced not only the latest emperor's Typos but also the Ecthesis (the exposition of faith of Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople, for which Emperor Heraclius had stood sponsor)..

Imperial interference in matters theological had been soundly rejected. Condemnation of all Monothelite writings provoked an angry reaction from the Byzantine court. Martin, unabashed, 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. Martin was also accused by Constans 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. 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.

 

A selection of documents recording the trial and exile of Pope Martin I was translated into Latin in Rome in the ninth century by Anastasius Bibliothecarius.

Since the 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar, the memorial of Saint Martin I, which earlier versions of the calendar place on 12 November, is on 13 April, celebrated as the formal anniversary of his death. In the Byzantine-rite Churches, his feast day is 14 April (27 April New Style).

 

Pope Pius VII made an honourable reference to Martin in his 1800 encyclical Diu satis:

Indeed, the famous Martin who long ago won great praise for this See, commends faithfulness and fortitude to Us by his strengthening and defense of the truth and by the endurance of labors and pains. He was driven from his See and from the City, stripped of his rule, his rank, and his entire fortune. As soon as he arrived in any peaceful place, he was forced to move. Despite his advanced age and an illness which prevented his walking, he was banished to a remote land and repeatedly threatened with an even more painful exile. Without the assistance offered by the pious generosity of individuals, he would not have had food for himself and his few attendants. Although he was tempted daily in his weakened and lonely state, he never surrendered his integrity. No deceit could trick, no fear perturb, no promises conquer, no difficulties or dangers break him. His enemies could extract from him no sign which would not prove to all that Peter "until this time and forever lives in his successors and exercises judgment as is particularly clear in every age" as an excellent writer at the Council of Ephesus says.

The breviary of the Byzantine Churches states: "Glorious definer of the Orthodox Faith ... sacred chief of divine dogmas, unstained by error ... true reprover of heresy ... foundation of bishops, pillar of the Orthodox faith, teacher of religion. ... Thou didst adorn the divine see of Peter, and since from this divine Rock, thou didst immovably defend the Church, so now thou art glorified with him.”