perfect humanity, and the Copts were right in saying that by this new formula Chalcedon had come to them. Sergius of Constantinople wrote to Pope Honorius I (625-638) telling him how by this formula, "one will and one energy in Christ," many Monotheletes had been converted; and Honorius made his dire mistake, little thinking how dear his name would become, long centuries later, to Protestants and Old Catholics. We cannot now go into the Honorius question. He approved the formula as an easy way of stopping the controversy; he insisted on Christ's two natures, he admitted "one will" clearly enough in the sense of complete concord, and desired the expressions "one" or "two energies" to be avoided equally. He said nothing heretical, and no later Pope would ever admit that he had. He made a deplorable blunder in tolerating an ambiguous expression, and had no idea how large the question would loom, how futile it was to try to hush it all up. Then he died, leaving his name to become a stock reproach to the Papacy in the mouths of thousands of people who do not know what he really wrote, who do not understand what an ex cathedra definition means, who know nothing of the whole story beyond a cloudy impression that Pope Honorius once did something awful which fearfully compromised the Catholic theory.[1]
Except for this one feeble act on Honorius's part, Rome and all the West were solidly opposed to Monotheletism. Heraclius tried to force it on the Church by a decree, the Ekthesis,[2] in 638. The Popes John IV (640-642) and Theodore I (642-649) condemned this. At Constantinople Abbot Maximus also became a firm opponent of Monotheletism. The Emperor Constans II (641-668) renewed the law of the Ekthesis in a fresh decree, Typos (648). Pope Martin I (649-655), in a Lateran synod (649), condemned both decrees. He was seized by the Imperial Exarch, brought to Constantinople, ill-treated and banished to the Chersonesus, where he died of his treatment, lacking even food, on September 16, 655,
2 (
Greek characters).
