Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

16 INTRODUCTION
abandoned the hope of being restored to the Patriarchal throne by
Gregory and the anti-Monothelites. He was excommunicated by Pope
Theodore, who signed the decree with a pen that had been dipped into
a eucharistic chalice. The next year Constans II sought to close the
whole debate by issuing an imperial decree, known as the Typos,
which forbade ‘any discussion of one will or one energy, two wills or
two energies’.
Pope Theodore died before receiving the Typos. His successor,
Martin I, instigated outright rebellion against the heretical imperial
court. He sought confirmation of his election neither from the
Emperor nor from his exarch in Ravenna. In October 649 he convened
a council in the Lateran basilica to affirm orthodoxy against imperial
heresy. One hundred and five bishops attended, mostly from Italy and
Africa, though Stephen of Dora, a Palestinian bishop was there, who
had earlier been sent to Rome as Sophronius’ envoy. Maximus was
also there, contributing his theological learning to the deliberations of
the bishops. The council reaffirmed the doctrine of Chalcedon, and
made explicit the doctrine of two energies and two wills in Christ, as
the necessary entailment of the doctrine of the two natures. There was
no personal condemnation of the Emperors Heraclius or Constans, but
both the Ecthesis and the Typos were formally condemned, and a
series of heretics anathematized: Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of
Alexandria, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Sergius, Pyrrhus
and Paul. In reaction the Emperor ordered the arrest of the Pope.
Olympius the exarch went to Rome, where faced with popular
opposition to his mission, he abandoned it, and—as we have seen—
began to contemplate rebellion himself, until he died in Sicily in 652.
The following year the new exarch, Theodore Kalliopas, arrested the
sick Pope Martin. He was taken to Constantinople, where he was
charged with treasonable complicity with Olympius. He was deposed,
defrocked and illtreated, and exiled to Cherson in the Crimea, where
he died on 16 September, 655, a confessor to Orthodoxy. Martin’s
immediate successors—Eugenius I and Vitalian—seem to have
compromised: although neither of them formally accepted the Typos,
both of them were in communion with the Monothelite Patriarch
Peter, who had presided at the trial of Martin.
Resistance to Monothelitism was now virtually reduced to one man,
the monk Maximus. He was arrested in Rome with two of his disciples
and sent to Constantinople. At his first trial in 655, Maximus was
first of all accused, like Martin, of treason, including support for the
abortive rebellion by the exarch Gregory. Accusations then turned to
theological matters, in which Maximus denied that any Emperor had
the right to encroach on the rights of priesthood and define dogma.
Maximus was exiled to Bizya in Thrace (modern Vize on the Turkish-