Pope Martin I

Elected bishop of Rome on 21 July 649 without waiting for Constantinople's approval — the sole pope of that era to bypass imperial mandate — Martin had previously served as Pope Theodore I's ambassador to the eastern capital. His defiance centered on Monothelitism, a doctrine he opposed so fiercely that Emperor Constans II had him seized, dragged to Constantinople, then banished to Cherson on the Black Sea. He died there on 16 September 655, somewhere between his mid-fifties and mid-sixties. Both the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy count him as a saint, and he remains the last pope the C…