the last martyr-Pope.[1] There was schism between Constantinople and Rome, while seven Byzantine Patriarchs held Monotheletism. Abbot Maximus was horribly tortured, and died in 662. Then, Constans II being dead, under his successor Constantine III (Pogonatos, 668-685), by arrangement with Pope Agatho (678-681), in 680 the sixth general council (Constantinople III) was held. The council confirmed the decree of the Lateran Synod of 649, condemned the Monothelete heresy, and anathematized a number of Monotheletes, counting Pope Honorius among them. It is well known that the fathers themselves distinguished the Pope in various sessions from the actual originators of the heresy, that Pope Leo II (682-683), who confirmed their decrees, admitted a condemnation of Honorius, not as a heretic, but as one who "did not cleanse this Apostolic Church by the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by a profane betrayal allowed the immaculate faith to be overturned,"[2] which exactly expresses the extent of his guilt.[3]
Monotheletism then disappeared,[4] except that it continued among the simple folk of the Lebanon, where it formed the Maronite Church. And with Monotheletism ends this long story of Monophysite disturbances. By the 8th century the controversy of nearly three centuries was over. The Monophysites were by no means extinct, any more than were the Nestorians. But they now had established their own organized Churches, whose story we have still to tell. In the Church of the empire, not yet divided by the schism of Photius, the faith of Chalcedon reigns supreme. Its next trouble is Iconoclasm, which is quite another matter. And as soon as Iconoclasm was over came the beginning of the most disastrous of all schisms, which cut away the "Orthodox"
- ↑ We keep the feast of St. Martin I, Pope and martyr, on November 12; the Byzantine Calendar has his feast on April 13, September 15, and September 20. For an Orthodox acknowledgement of Papal rights, see their Synaxarion in his honour, quoted in Nilles: Kalendarium manuale, i. 137-138.
- ↑ Hefele-Leclercq: op. cit. iii. (1), p. 519.
- ↑ See Chapman: op. cit.
- ↑ The story of this heresy will be found at length in Hefele-Leclercq, iii. (1) 317-471; that of the sixth General Council, 472-512; the condemnation of Honorius, 515-538.
