Pope St. Martin I

Pope St. Martin I was born at Todi in Umbria, Italy, and served in the papal diplomatic corps before being elected pope in 649. His pontificate was consumed by the struggle against the Monothelite heresy, which, seeking to placate the Monophysites of the East, taught that Christ had only one will, and which the Byzantine emperors sought to impose upon the Church for the sake of political unity.

Soon after his election, and in defiance of the emperor's decree of silence on the matter, Martin convened a synod at the Lateran in Rome in 649 that solemnly condemned Monothelitism and affirmed that Christ, being true God and true man, possessed both a divine and a human will. Enraged, the Emperor Constans II had the pope arrested, and Martin was seized, carried off by sea to Constantinople, subjected to a humiliating trial, and, though gravely ill, cruelly treated and condemned; he was then exiled to the Crimea, where he died of his sufferings and privations in 655. Honored as the last pope to be venerated as a martyr, his memory is kept on 13 April.