Tuesday, April 14

Byzantine · d. 655

Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome

Pope who suffered exile defending two wills in Christ

Martin became Pope of Rome in 649 and immediately convened the Lateran Council, which condemned Monothelitism, the heresy claiming Christ had only one will, and rejected the imperial decrees that sought to impose it. Enraged, Emperor Constans II had the pope arrested in Rome in 653 and brought by ship to Constantinople. Sick and exhausted, Martin was publicly humiliated, tried on fabricated charges of treason, and condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to exile through the intercession of the dying Patriarch Paul. He was banished to Cherson in the Crimea, where he suffered hunger and neglect, and reposed in 655. His firmness helped preserve the Orthodox confession that Christ possesses both a divine and a human will, later vindicated at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and he is venerated as a confessor in both East and West.

Also Commemorated Today