Saint Martin I, Pope and Martyr

Martin, a priest from Todi in Umbria, had served as papal envoy in Constantinople and was elected pope in 649. That same year he held a synod in the Lateran that condemned the teaching of one will in Christ, Monothelitism, and also the emperor’s decree, the Typos, which forbade all discussion of the question.

The emperor Constans II had him arrested in Rome in 653. Ill, he was taken by sea to Constantinople, kept in prison, tried for treason, publicly humiliated and condemned. He was exiled to Chersonesus in the Crimea, where he wrote in his letters of hunger and of being forgotten by his friends in Rome. He died there on 16 September 655. He is venerated as a saint in both East and West.