Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr Confessor Martin I, Pope of Rome
папа 649 — †16 сентября 655
Hieromartyr Martin I the Confessor, Pope of Rome (649-655) — convened the Lateran Council of 649, which condemned Monothelitism without imperial sanction, for which he was seized by order of Emperor Constans II, subjected to a humiliating trial and imprisonment in Constantinople, and exiled to Cherson in Crimea, where he died from privation; the last Pope of Rome venerated as a martyr by the Eastern Church.
Hieromartyr Martin was born in the town of Todi (Umbria, Italy); he received an excellent education, served in the Roman clergy, and was papal apocrisiarius (representative) in Constantinople. He was elected Pope of Rome in 649, after the death of Pope Theodore I.
He refused to accept the imperial edict "Typos" of Emperor Constans II, which forbade all discussion of the question of the number of wills in Christ (an attempt to silence the Monothelite controversy without resolving it substantively). In October 649 he convened the Lateran Council in Rome (about 105 bishops, including St. Maximus the Confessor), which formally condemned Monothelitism and anathematized the Typos itself — an act carried out without imperial sanction and a direct challenge to the emperor's authority.
The exarch Olympius, sent to deal with the hierarch, did not dare direct violence (according to tradition, the man who attempted his life was struck blind) and later fled to Sicily. In 653 a new exarch, Theodore Calliopas, arrested Pope Martin in Rome on fabricated charges of treason and correspondence with the Saracens. Gravely ill with gout, the hierarch was seized, held under guard for about 93 days, then exiled to the island of Naxos (about a year), and in September 654 brought to Constantinople.
In Constantinople he was subjected to a humiliating public trial: exhausted, he was brought before the Senate, false witnesses testified against him; he was sentenced, publicly stripped and put in chains, and, half-naked, led through the streets to prison, where he was held together with common criminals. The dying Patriarch Paul II interceded for his pardon — the death sentence was commuted to exile.
In the spring of 655 he was exiled to Cherson in Taurica (Crimea), where in his letters he described extreme deprivation — a lack of bread, abandonment even by fellow believers. He reposed on September 16, 655, exhausted by illness, poverty, and hunger.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680) formally condemned Monothelitism, confirming the hierarch Martin's rightness. His relics were later translated to Constantinople, then to Rome.
His feast is kept on April 14/27; also September 16/29 — the day of his repose in Cherson.