Confessor Saint Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome

Saint Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome (d. September 16, 655), was born in Todi, Umbria, Italy. He served as apocrisiarius (papal legate) in Constantinople under Pope Theodore I. On Theodore's death he was unanimously elected pope in 649.

Without waiting for imperial confirmation, Martin convened the Lateran Council of 649 in Rome, condemning Monothelitism — the teaching that Christ possessed only a single, divine will — and the Typos, Emperor Constans II's edict forbidding discussion of the number of wills in Christ. In reprisal he was seized by imperial agents, transported in secret to Constantinople, subjected to a humiliating trial, stripped of rank, and condemned to death; the sentence was commuted to exile in Chersonesus, Crimea.

Worn down by illness, hunger, and privation, he died there on September 16, 655. He is the last pope of Rome venerated by both the Eastern and Western Churches, honored in the East chiefly under the title "the Confessor."