Martin I

d. 655. Pope from 649. A native of Tuscany, he was elected successor to Pope Theodore I, but before his election had been confirmed by the emperor Constans II, he had condemned Monothelitism* at the Lateran Synod (649). In 648 Constans had issued the “Typos,” a mandate forbidding further discussion of the matter. The Lateran Synod condemned the “Typos” and the earlier “Ecthesis,”* and affirmed its adherance to the doctrine of two wills and two energies corresponding to the two natures of Christ. Constans tried vainly to induce Olympius, the exarch of Ravenna, who was friendly to Martin, to arrest the pope. However, the next exarch, Theodore Calliopas, did seize him. After a year's captivity at Naxos, Martin was brought to Constantinople in December 654. He was charged with treason, publicly stripped of his episcopal robes, and banished to the Chersonesus (Crimea). He was treated with great cruelty and seems to have died en route. He was the last of the popes to be venerated as a martyr.