The Historians' History of the World 08

The Roman pontiff was by this proceeding brought into immediate collision with the emperor; and the power of the greatest potentate of the church was thus measured with that of the highest in the state. In this respect the issue of the controversy deserves particular note. Martin was a zealous and active churchman, learned and conscientious, strongly impressed with a sense of the importance of unity, and disposed to exercise the authority he possessed to the utmost in its favour. No sooner had the council given its decision, than he despatched letters to all orders of the clergy, acquainting them with the event and with the acts it had passed. But the information which the emperor Constans received of these proceedings filled him with the most violent indignation; and he at once resolved to punish the contempt with which his edict, and that of his predecessor, had been treated. He communicated his wishes to Calliopas, exarch of Italy, who soon after made the pontiff a prisoner and conveyed him to the island of Naxos. For three months he was kept nearly continually on board a ship, and carried from one place to the other, without being allowed even the commonest necessaries of life. At Naxos he remained twelve months in captivity; and was then taken to Constantinople, being exposed, during his passage thither, to a treatment which would have been cruel to a condemned malefactor. On his arrival, fresh indignities and barbarities awaited him. He was cast into a miserable prison, in which he lay apparently forgotten for more than three months, and when carried before the tribunal of justice was examined like a common criminal. The part he had taken in the late events, so far as they strictly pertained to religion, was not considered even by his fiercest opponents as involving a guilt sufficient to justify their severities. He was, therefore, arraigned as an enemy of the state. Twenty witnesses, of whom the greater part were soldiers, and who are said to have been bribed for the occasion, appeared as his accusers.

[649-682 A.D.]

This mockery of a trial being concluded, the pontiff was carried to an open terrace, where, exposed at once to the gaze of the emperor and the populace, the base servants of the court insulted him in so gross a manner that even the multitude pitied his fate. His outward mantle having been torn off, the officers took him, and stripping off the best of his habits, left only his tunic remaining, which they next rent down on each side, from top to bottom. An iron collar was then fastened round his neck, and he was led from the palace through the midst of the city, chained to one of the keepers of the prison, and preceded by another bearing the sword with which he was to be executed. As they dragged him along, his lacerated feet stained the pavement with blood; and he presented an appearance of humiliation and misery which might well humble the spirits of the haughtiest churchmen of either Rome or Constantinople. But his sufferings did not terminate here. Instead of being executed he was sent into the Chersonesus where he lingered through four months of the severest hardship, then expired. He was succeeded as pope by Eugenius, indebted for his elevation to the influence of the imperial court and his too ready tolerance of its reigning errors. He was consequently regarded at Rome with equal suspicion and dislike. Vitalian, the successor of Eugenius, had the merit of being a strict disciplinarian, and of sending Theodore to England as archbishop of Canterbury. At his death, Adeodatus (Deodatus II) was elected. It was in the pontificate of his successor Domnus that the church of Ravenna became permanently incorporated with that of Rome.