MARTINO I, POPE, saint. — Born at Todi in Umbria and died at Cherson in Crimea on 16 Sept. 655.
For some time he was apocrisarius at the court of Constantinople, and upon the death of Pope Theodore (14 May 649) he was elected to succeed him. He was consecrated on 5 July 649, before the consent of the emperor Constans II. By one of his decrees (τόπος), the latter had imposed silence concerning the Monothelite controversies, placing error and truth on an equal footing; M. convoked a council at the Lateran, attended by 105 bishops, which, in five sessions held between 5 and 31 Oct. 649, condemned, together with the heretical doctrines, both the τόπος and the ἔσθετος, previously published by the emperor Heraclius, and defined the two wills and operations in Christ.
The decisions of the Council provoked the anger of Constans II, who charged the exarch Olympius with seizing the Pontiff. Olympius, however, attempted to reach an agreement with the Pope in order to rebel against Constans and seize Italy; after Olympius’s death (652), the Emperor sent his successor, Theodore Calliopas, to Rome with orders to bring M. to Constantinople. The Pope, who was ill, was arrested in June 653 and, after a long and painful journey, arrived in the capital on 17 Sept. 653. On 20 Dec. 653 he was subjected to a semblance of a trial on the accusation of having supported Olympius’s rebellion and was condemned to death. After a long martyrdom and many humiliations, he was dragged to Crimea, where he ended his days.
The Church venerates him as a martyr on 12 Nov. Some letters of M. remain, of interest for the history of the Lateran Council and of his imprisonment (ed. in MGH, Script. rer. Merov., V, pp. 452–56; Amando ep. Traiectensi: PL 87, 106–212; in Jaffé-Wattenbach, 2059–2064; 2071 ff.; 2078–81).