When Pope Saint Martin I became pope in 649, Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine empire and the patriarch of Constantinople was the most influential Church leader in the eastern Christian world. The struggles that existed within the Church at that time were magnified by the close cooperation of emperor and patriarch.

A teaching, Monothelism, strongly supported in the East, held that Christ had no human will. Twice emperors had officially favored this position, Heraclius by publishing a formula of faith and Constans II by silencing the issue of one or two wills in Christ.

Shortly after assuming the office of the papacy (which he did without first being confirmed by the emperor), Martin held a council at the Lateran in which the imperial documents were censured, and in which the patriarch of Constantinople and two of his predecessors were condemned. Constans II, in response, tried first to turn bishops and people against the pope.

Failing in this and in an attempt to kill the pope, the emperor sent troops to Rome to seize Martin and to bring him back to Constantinople.

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.

He was then submitted to various imprisonments, tortures and hardships. Although condemned to death and with some of the torture imposed already carried out, Martin was saved from execution by the pleas of a repentant Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, who was himself gravely ill.

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.

Martin died shortly thereafter, tortures and cruel treatment having taken their toll. He is the last of the early popes to be venerated as a martyr.

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14 COMMENTS

  1. Corn? Perhaps the better word would be grain, since corn, as we know it here in the US, is maize, which was not known in Europe at the time.

  2. O God, Who didst found Thy Church
    upon the most firm foundation of an apostolic rock
    in order to deliver her from the dreadful powers of hell,
    give her, we beseech Thee,
    that through the intercession of the blessed Martin,
    Thy Martyr and Sovereign Pontiff,
    she may produce at all times in Thy truth
    so as to enjoy always a secure defense.
    Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
    Who liveth and reigneth with God the Father,
    in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God,
    world without end.

    Amen.

  3. Dear Pope St. Martin I, I hadn’t known of the struggles and deprivation you went through, and was horrified to learn of it. May you rest in peace, and please protect us from the coronavirus we are now experiencing worldwide.

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