See A. Dupuy, Geschichte des heiligen Martins (Schaffhausen, 1855); J. G. Cazenove in Dict. chr. biog. iii. 838.
MARTIN (Martinus), the name of several popes.
Martin I. succeeded Theodore I. in June or July 649. He had previously acted as papal apocrisiarius at Constantinople, and was held in high repute for learning and virtue. Almost his first official act was to summon a synod (the first Lateran) for dealing with the Monothelite heresy. It met in the Lateran church, was attended by one hundred and five bishops (chiefly from Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, a few being from Africa and other quarters), held five sessions or “secretarii” from the 5th to the 31st of October 649, and in twenty canons condemned the Monothelite heresy, its authors, and the writings by which it had been promulgated. In this condemnation were included, not only the Ecthesis or exposition of faith of the patriarch Sergius for which the emperor Heraclius had stood sponsor, but also the Typus of Paul, the successor of Sergius, which had the support of the reigning emperor (Constans II.). Martin published the decrees of his Lateran synod in an encyclical, and Constans replied by enjoining his exarch to seize the pope and send him prisoner to Constantinople. Martin was arrested in the Lateran (June 15, 653), hurried out of Rome, and conveyed first to Naxos and subsequently to Constantinople (Sept. 17, 654). He was ultimately banished to Cherson, where he arrived on the 26th of March 655, and died on the 16th of September following. His successor was Eugenius I.
(L. D.*)
A full account of the events of his pontificate will be found in Hefele’s Conciliengeschichte, vol. iii. (1877).
Martin II., the name commonly given in error to Marinus I. (q.v.).
Martin III., see Marinus II.
Martin IV. (Simon Mompitié de Brion), pope from the 22nd of February 1281 to the 28th of March 1285, should have been named Martin II. He was born about 1210 in Touraine. He became a priest at Rouen and canon of St Martin’s at Tours, and was made chancellor of France by Louis IX. in 1260 and cardinal-priest of Sta Cecilia by Urban IV. in 1261. As papal legate in France he held several synods for the reformation of the clergy and conducted the negotiations for the assumption of the crown of Sicily by Charles of Anjou. It was through the latter’s influence that he succeeded Nicholas III., after a six-months’ struggle between the French and Italian cardinals. The Romans at first declined to receive him, and he was consecrated at Orvieto on the 23rd of March 1281. Peaceful and unassuming, he relied completely on Charles of Anjou, and showed little ability as pope. His excommunication of the emperor Michael Palaeologus (Nov. 1281), who stood in the way of the French projects against Greece, weakened the union with the Eastern Christians, dating from the Lyons Council of 1274. He unduly favoured his own countrymen, and for three years after the Sicilian Vespers (Mar. 31, 1282) he employed all the spiritual and material resources at his command on behalf of his patron against Peter of Aragon. He was driven from Rome by a popular uprising and died at Perugia. His successor was Honorius IV.
(C. H. Ha.)