For his strong opposition to Monothelitism, Pope Martin I was arrested by Emperor Constans II, carried off to Constantinople, and ultimately banished to Cherson.

[1] By 641, he was an abbot, and Pope John IV sent him to Dalmatia and Istria with large sums of money to alleviate the distress of the inhabitants, and redeem captives seized during the invasion of the Sclaveni (those parts mainly settled by Croats).

[4] As Mackie suggests in her article, referenced above, the St Venantius Chapel remains an important early example of a martyrium: a shrine specifically commissioned to venerate relics brought from afar.

[9] It sat amidst the eastern domains, where the most influential Church leader was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople who was also guardian of Christendom's holiest relics, such as the Crown of thorns and the True Cross.

[10] To bring teaching prevalent in Constantinople into line with that elsewhere, and hastening to heal fissures appearing within the Catholic Church, decisiveness distinguished Martin from the start.

To silence this, and the confusion it caused, Pope Martin convened, within his first three months, the Lateran Council of 649,[12] to which all the bishops of the West were invited.

Martin was also accused by Constans of unauthorised contact and collaboration with the Muslims of the Rashidun Caliphate—allegations which he remained unable to convince the infuriated imperial authorities to drop.

He was saved from execution by the pleas of Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople, who was himself gravely ill.[17] Martin hoped that a new pope would not be elected while he lived but the imperial Byzantine government forced the Romans to find a successor.

[17] A selection of documents recording the trial and exile of Pope Martin I was translated into Latin in Rome in the ninth century by Anastasius Bibliothecarius.

Despite his advanced age and an illness which prevented his walking, he was banished to a remote land and repeatedly threatened with an even more painful exile.

His enemies could extract from him no sign which would not prove to all that Peter "until this time and forever lives in his successors and exercises judgment as is particularly clear in every age" as an excellent writer at the Council of Ephesus says.