one will or two wills, and commanded all parties to be satisfied with the statements of Scripture and the decrees of the five general councils. It then formally repeated the Ecthesis; and it concluded with a scale of penalties for disobedience—degradation for clerics, confiscation of goods for laymen of the upper classes, flogging for those of lower station. The tyranny of this forcible silencing of discussion was quite in harmony with the methods of the empire.
Undoubtedly it was high time that some final step was taken if interference by the State was to be submitted to at all. Theodore the pope of Rome excommunicated Paul the patriarch of Alexandria. Paul retaliated by overthrowing the altar of the papal chapel at Constantinople and insulting the pope's envoys. The next year Theodore died, and Martin, one of these envoys, was elected to succeed him. The new pope summoned a synod at Rome, since known as the "First Lateran Council," which condemned Monotheletism, anathematised the leading supporters of the heresy, and denounced " the most impious Ecthesis," and "the most impious Type." For this Martin was arrested by the emperor's Western representative, the Exarch, carried off to Constantinople, rudely handled, and flung into prison more dead than alive. After suffering six months incarceration, and being subject to repeated trials, the pope was banished to Cherson in the Crimea, where he died (a.d. 655).[1] The next most prominent opponent of Monotheletism was Maximus, a member of a noble family. He and two other champions of the orthodox cause were dragged from Rome to Constantinople, first punished by having their tongues and right hands cut off, and then driven into exile.
At last this disastrous controversy was brought to a close by a decision of the sixth general council—the third council of Constantinople—which the Emperor Constantine Pognatus assembled in the imperial city on the 7th of Novem-
- ↑ There is a graphic account of Martin's cruel sufferings in the letter of an unnamed writer, entitled Commemoratio eorum quæ sæviter, etc.
