Pope St. Martin I

Elected pope in 649, Martin convened the Lateran synod that condemned the Monothelite heresy embraced by the Byzantine emperor. For this defiance he was arrested by imperial troops, brought to Constantinople, paraded through the streets in chains, and exiled to Crimea, where he died of starvation. The last pope to die a martyr.

Before his election, Martin had served as papal legate to Constantinople and knew firsthand the political dangers of opposing imperial theology. Nevertheless, he gathered over a hundred bishops at the Lateran and issued canons affirming that Christ possesses both a divine and a human will — a doctrine the emperor had forbidden anyone to discuss.

His letters from exile in Chersonesus are among the most poignant documents of the early Church: starving, ill, and abandoned by Rome, he wrote without bitterness, asking only for bread and prayers. He died in September 655, and his faithfulness was vindicated twenty-six years later at the Third Council of Constantinople, which formally condemned Monothelitism.