St. Martin

Pope St. Martin I was born at Todi in central Italy, probably near the end of the sixth century. A learned and experienced churchman, he served as papal representative (apocrisiarius) at the imperial court in Constantinople before being elected Bishop of Rome in 649. Boldly, he had himself consecrated without waiting for the customary confirmation of the Byzantine emperor — a sign of the independence that would mark, and cost, his pontificate. The great controversy of his day was Monothelitism, the teaching that Christ had only one will. The emperor Constans II had forbidden all discussion of the question, but Martin, convinced that the fullness of Christ's humanity was at stake, convoked the Lateran Council of 649, which condemned both the heresy and the imperial decree that shielded it. It was an act of extraordinary courage: in 653 the emperor had the ailing pope arrested in the Lateran Basilica by the exarch of Ravenna and carried off to Constantinople. There Martin was tried on trumped-up charges of treason, publicly degraded and humiliated, and held in harsh imprisonment. His death sentence was commuted to exile, and in 655 he was banished to Cherson in the Crimea, where — abandoned, as his own letters sorrowfully record, even by the church of Rome, which had already chosen a successor — he died on September 16, 655, worn out by hunger, illness, and ill-treatment. Because his sufferings for the faith caused his death, the Church has always venerated him as a martyr: he is the last pope to be so honored. Martin was venerated as a saint in both East and West from early times, and a later tradition holds that relics of the saint were brought back to Rome, where the ancient church of San Martino ai Monti preserves his memory. The General Roman Calendar keeps his optional memorial on April 13, honoring a pope who chose fidelity to the truth about Christ over his freedom and his life.