st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

42 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
years before, by Pope Martin I.
published in 648 his religious
When Constans had
edict known as the
Type, the exarch Olympius had orders to proceed
from Ravenna to Rome, and there enforce the monothelete
principles contained in it. On the death of
Olympius in 653, his successor, Calliopas, went on
with the execution of these orders. Martin I. was
seized by an armed band of the imperial soldiers in
the Lateran church, and conveyed as a criminal to
Constantinople. In March, 655, he was banished to
the Crimea, and there he died, after enduring the
greatest privations, in September of the same year.
It might seem strange to us, did we not recollect
been enacted since,
how often the same scenes have
that such should be the practical outcome of opinions
so purely theoretical as those above described. And
yet it is only ignorance or indifference, that can
dismiss the subject of these controversies is
(as
sometimes done) with only a hasty expression of
contempt. I say advisedly, the subject, as distin
guished from the mode in which the dispute was
carried on, or the practical results to which it led.
"If we looked at this controversy from one side/
writes the late Professor Maurice, 1 "we
might pro
nounce it one of the most important and serious in
which men were ever engaged the gathering up of
all previous disputes respecting freedom and neces
sity, respecting the relation of the Divine will to
the human, respecting the struggle
in the heart of hu
manity itself. All these arguments would seem to be
1
"Mediaeval Philosophy" (18*9), p. 29.