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Pope Saint Martin I
Feastday: April 13
Martin I lay too sick to fight on a couch in front
of the altar when the soldiers burst into the Lateran basilica.
He had come to the church when he heard the soldiers had landed.
But the thought of kidnapping a sick pope from the house of God
didn't stop the soldiers from grabbing him and hustling him down
to their ship.
Elected pope in 649, Martin I had gotten in trouble
for refusing to condone silence in the face of wrong. At that time
there existed a popular heresy that held that Christ didn't have
a human will, only a divine will. The emperor had issued an edict
that didn't support Monothelism (as it was known) directly, but
simply commanded that no one could discuss Jesus' will at all.
Monothelism was condemned at a council convened by
Martin I. The council affirmed, once again, that since Jesus had
two natures, human and divine, he had two wills, human and divine.
The council then went further and condemned Constans edict to avoid
discussion stating, "The Lord commanded us to shun evil and do good,
but not to reject the good with the evil."
In his anger at this slap in the face, the emperor
sent his soldiers to Rome to bring the pope to him. When Martin
I arrived in Constantinople after a long voyage he was immediately
put into prison. There he spent three months in a filthy, freezing
cell while he suffered from dysentery. He was not allowed to wash
and given the most disgusting food. After he was condemned for treason
without being allowed to speak in his defense he was imprisoned
for another three months.
From there he was exiled to the Crimea where he suffered
from the famine of the land as well as the roughness of the land
and its people. But hardest to take was the fact that the pope found
himself friendless. His letters tell how his own church had deserted
him and his friends had forgotten him. They wouldn't even send him
oil or corn to live off of.
He died two years later in exile in the year 656,
a martyr who stood up for the right of the Church to establish doctrine
even in the face of imperial power.
©1996 Terry Matz. All Rights Reserved.
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