Pope Honorius: The Pope an Ecumenical Council Condemned

In March 681, at Constantinople, the bishops of the Sixth Ecumenical Council examined the letters of a bishop of Rome, declared his teaching foreign to the faith of the apostles, and pronounced him anathema by name. Papal legates sat in the place of honor and raised no objection. Later the council's acclamations rang out: "To Honorius, the heretic, anathema!"¹ The next pope confirmed the sentence in writing.

Pope Honorius I (625 to 638) has figured in every argument about the papacy since. The First Vatican Council (1870) defined that the pope, when he speaks ex cathedra, enjoys the infallibility promised to the Church, and that his definitions are irreformable "of themselves, and not by the consent of the church."² If that was the faith of the ancient Church, why did an ecumenical council sit in judgment on a pope's doctrinal letters and anathematize him, with Rome's own approval?

In brief

Asked by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople about the formula "one energy" in Christ, Pope Honorius replied, about 634, that we "confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ," and forbade speaking of one or two energies. In 680 to 681 the Sixth Ecumenical Council defined two natural wills and two natural energies in Christ and anathematized the Monothelite leaders, and with them Honorius, "because of what we found written by him to Sergius." Pope Leo II confirmed the council and anathematized Honorius too. Later councils and the profession of faith of new popes repeated the sentence. Catholic theologians reply that Honorius did not speak ex cathedra, or was condemned only for negligence. Those replies save the wording of 1870; they do not explain why the ancient Church tested a pope's teaching by the faith of the whole Church and judged it.

Thesis: The condemnation of Pope Honorius by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, confirmed by his own see, shows that the ancient Church did not hold the papal infallibility defined in 1870; the guardian of the faith was the whole Church gathered in council, as the Orthodox Church still confesses.

What was at stake: one will or two?

The Council of Chalcedon (451) had confessed one Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion and without division. The emperors wanted back the many Christians of Egypt and Syria who rejected Chalcedon. About 622 the Emperor Heraclius spoke of "one operation" (energy) in Christ, and Cyrus, made Patriarch of Alexandria about 631, used the formula to win a large reunion with the Monophysites of Egypt, with the support of Sergius.³

The monk Sophronius, soon Patriarch of Jerusalem, objected to "one operation." The reason is plain: to deny Christ a human energy and will is to make His humanity incomplete, and, as St Gregory the Theologian had written, "that which He has not assumed He has not healed."⁴ Sergius agreed to drop "one energy," asked that "two energies" be dropped as well, and wrote to Rome.³

The faith the Church later defined is this. Christ is one Person, the eternal Son, in two natures, and so He has two natural wills and two natural energies, divine and human. St John of Damascus sums it up: "Since, then, Christ has two natures, we hold that He has also two natural wills and two natural energies." The human will is real, yet it never opposes the divine will. Christ has no sinful will and no wavering, deliberating will of the kind fallen men have; St John writes that "we cannot, if we wish to be accurate, speak of Christ as having judgment (gnome) and preference."⁴ He is sinless and could not sin. In Gethsemane the human will speaks and is perfectly at one with the divine: "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will" (Matthew 26:39).⁵

What Honorius wrote

Honorius answered Sergius about 634. Bishop Karl Joseph Hefele printed a full English translation in his History of the Councils.⁶ Much of it is orthodox: Christ is "perfect God and man," the "one Mediator between God and men in two natures." Then comes the sentence on which the controversy turned: "Whence, also, we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ," which he explained by saying that the Godhead assumed our nature as it was before the Fall, not as corrupted by sin. That is his reasoning, not the Church's.

Whether to speak of one energy or two, Honorius wrote, should not be made a Church dogma, "since neither the Gospels nor the letters of the apostles, nor yet the Synods, have laid this down." He left the question "to the grammarians" and urged Sergius to join him in "fleeing from the new manner of speech of one energy or two."⁶ In a second letter, of which the council read fragments, he again rejected both expressions while saying, more correctly, that each nature works what is proper to it.⁷

Was Honorius a Monothelite at heart? Pope John IV, writing in 641, defended him, and so did St Maximus, who cited Abbot John, the drafter of the letter: Honorius only meant to deny that Christ had a second, contrary will of fallen flesh.⁸ That may be true of his intention, but he used the heretics' words, and the silence he imposed muzzled the orthodox. In 638 Sergius issued the Ekthesis in the emperor's name, ordering all to confess one will in Christ. A synod at Constantinople acclaimed it as "truly agreeing with the Apostolic teaching," words which, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, seem to refer to its foundation on the letter of Honorius.⁹ Honorius died on October 12, 638.

Forty years of struggle

The next popes condemned the Ekthesis. Emperor Constans II replaced it with the Typos, which forbade anyone to speak of one will or two. Pope Martin I held a council at the Lateran in 649 that condemned both edicts; he was taken to Constantinople and died in exile in the Crimea in 655. St Maximus was tried, mutilated and exiled, and died in 662.¹⁰ His confession is told in our article on St Maximus the Confessor.

The Sixth Ecumenical Council condemns a pope

Emperor Constantine IV called the council, which met at Constantinople from November 7, 680, to September 16, 681. All five patriarchates were represented, and Pope Agatho sent legates with a long letter defending two wills.¹¹ In it he said that "this Apostolic Church of his has never turned away from the path of truth in any direction of error."¹²

In the twelfth session the letters of Sergius and of Honorius were produced and read. At the thirteenth, on March 28, 681, the council judged them all: "we find that these documents are quite foreign to the apostolic dogmas, to the declarations of the holy Councils, and to all the accepted Fathers, and that they follow the false teachings of the heretics."¹³ After anathematizing Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter and Theodore of Pharan, it added:

And with these we define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and anathematized Honorius who was some time Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to Sergius, that in all respects he followed his view and confirmed his impious doctrines.¹³

{{very-strong: The council anathematized Honorius by name, for the content of his own doctrinal letters, and ordered those letters burned.}}¹⁴ The definition of faith, signed by the legates and the bishops, names "Honorius who was Pope of the elder Rome" among the instruments the author of evil used to raise "the stumbling-blocks of one will and one operation," and then defines:

we likewise declare that in him are two natural wills and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, inconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. And these two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!) as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will.¹⁵

The council's letter to Pope Agatho says the bishops "slew them with anathema, as lapsed concerning the faith and as sinners," Honorius among them, and the emperor's edict calls him "the confirmer of heresy who contradicted himself."¹⁶

Rome confirms the sentence

Pope Agatho died before the acts reached Rome. His successor, Leo II, consecrated in August 682, confirmed the council in a letter to the emperor. In John Chapman's translation from the Greek (Catholic Encyclopedia):

We anathematize the inventors of the new error, that is, Theodore, Sergius, ...and also Honorius, who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.¹⁷

The Latin copies differ. One reads, in our translation, that Honorius "attempted to subvert the immaculate faith" (immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus est); another, quoted by Hefele, that he "permitted the immaculate faith to be stained" (immaculatam fidem maculari permisit).¹⁸ Every form condemns him. To the bishops of Spain Leo named Honorius as one "who did not, as became the Apostolic authority, extinguish the flame of heretical teaching in its first beginning, but fostered it by his negligence." To King Erwig he wrote that Honorius "allowed the unspotted rule of Apostolic tradition, which he received from his predecessors, to be tarnished."¹⁷ He asked the Spanish bishops to subscribe the council's definition, anathema included.¹⁸

A sentence repeated for centuries

The Council in Trullo (692), in its first canon, says the Sixth Council "condemned by a just sentence those who adulterated the true doctrine," naming "Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter."¹⁹ The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 787), in its decree of faith, affirms "two wills and two operations according to the reality of each nature, as also the Sixth Synod, held at Constantinople, taught, casting out Sergius, Honorius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Macarius, and those who agree with them."²⁰ The council of 869 to 870, which Rome counts as the eighth ecumenical council and the Orthodox do not, repeated the anathema.²¹

Rome kept the memory too. The Liber Diurnus, the formulary of the papal chancery, preserves a profession of faith that, according to Hefele, each new pope made on taking office, in a form probably set under Gregory II in the early eighth century. In it the pope accepts the Sixth Council's anathema on the Monothelite leaders "together with Honorius, who added fuel to their wicked assertions."²² {{strong: For centuries, popes themselves professed that a predecessor had been rightly anathematized by an ecumenical council.}}²³

Why it matters for papal infallibility

Vatican I grounded its definition in a historical claim: the Fathers followed the teaching of the Roman pontiffs "for they knew very well that this see of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error," citing Christ's prayer for Peter in Luke 22:32.² The Second Vatican Council repeated that the pope's definitions "of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable."²⁴ The council of 681 acted otherwise. It did not ask whether Honorius had spoken with special solemnity; it compared what he wrote with the Scriptures, the councils and the Fathers, and judged it. Rome's legates signed, and Rome's next bishop agreed. Our wider treatment is Papal Infallibility: Ancient Doctrine or Later Development?

The Catholic answers, stated fairly

1. Honorius did not speak ex cathedra

This is the main reply, put well by Cardinal John Henry Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875). Newman grants that the condemnation "is certainly a strong primâ facie argument against the Pope's doctrinal infallibility." But Vatican I limits infallibility to solemn definitions binding the whole Church, and Honorius' letters "on their very face are nothing more than portions of a discussion with a view to some final decision." So "his words were not ex cathedrâ, and therefore did not proceed from his infallibility."²⁵ Chapman agrees that the letter "cannot be called a private one, for it is an official reply to a formal consultation," yet since it defines and condemns nothing, "it is of course impossible to regard it as an ex cathedra utterance."²⁶

Answer. Grant that the case does not contradict the narrow wording of 1870. The ancient Church still knew no category of papal teaching exempt from judgment; the council did not sort Honorius' words into solemn and private, it judged their content. Honorius answered the Patriarch of Constantinople, at his formal request, on the doctrine then dividing the Church, and his words were built into an imperial creed. If such teaching can be heretical, the promise of a see "unblemished by any error" means much less than it sounds. Leo II himself, in the Greek of his letter, said that Honorius let the purity of "this Apostolic Church" be polluted.

2. Honorius was condemned only for negligence

Some apologists, such as Pennacchi and Grisar, argued that Leo II replaced the council's charge of heresy with one of negligence. After 1870 Hefele held that Honorius erred in expression, not in thought, and that Leo defined the sense in which the sentence should be understood.²⁶

Answer. Chapman, a Catholic scholar, rejected the first form of this argument: "Nothing, however, could be less explicit." He concluded: "It is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius. He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact."²⁶ Leo anathematizes Honorius in the same sentence as the inventors of the error. And a pope whose duty was to guard the faith, who instead let heresy grow at its birth, is the very failure Vatican I says cannot befall the see of Peter.

3. The same council praised Rome

Catholics rightly point out that the council welcomed Agatho's letter, called Rome "the first see of the Universal Church," and declared in its address to the emperor that "Peter spoke through Agatho."²⁷ Pope Hadrian II later argued that the Easterners could judge Honorius only because Rome's consent had gone first.²¹

Answer. The Orthodox Church denies none of this. Rome held the first place of honor, and Agatho confessed the true faith. But the council praised Agatho because his letter agreed with the apostolic faith, which it examined, and in the same acts condemned Honorius because his letter did not. As Bossuet observed, the bishops "approve Agatho's decrees, condemn those of Honorius."²⁸ Praise followed orthodoxy; orthodoxy did not follow the see. As for Hadrian II, Hefele shows that he was mistaken: Agatho had not condemned Honorius at all, but had claimed that all his predecessors held the true doctrine.²¹ That is the Orthodox understanding of primacy, set out in Did the Early Church Believe in Papal Supremacy?

4. The acts were forged

Cardinal Baronius argued that the name of Honorius was inserted into the acts by forgery. Catholic scholars abandoned this; Chapman says the theory "has frequently been shown to be untenable," and Percival notes that Hefele refuted it as well.²⁹

Honorius at Vatican I

At Vatican I Honorius was everywhere. Hefele, the leading historian of the councils, published Causa Honorii Papae (Naples, 1870) against the definition, voted non placet on July 13, 1870, and went home; he promulgated the decrees in his diocese on April 10, 1871.³⁰ The historian Ignaz von Döllinger attacked the dogma in the "Janus" articles, refused to submit, and was excommunicated on April 18, 1871.³¹ On the council itself, see Vatican I and Ultramontanism.

The Orthodox position

The Orthodox Church honors the Sixth Ecumenical Council as the voice of the whole Church and receives its definition of two wills and two energies as dogma. It receives its sentence on Honorius too, without gloating: he was a respected pastor, and patriarchs of Constantinople were condemned in the same sentence.

The lesson is where the guarantee of the faith lies. Christ promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against His Church, not that any one see would be exempt from error. Rome's honor came from the blood of Peter and Paul and from a long record of confessing the faith (see Was St Peter Ever in Rome?), and the Church loved that see when it confessed rightly. When it did not, the Church judged. {{very-strong: In 681 the test of orthodoxy was agreement with the apostolic faith handed down in Scripture, the councils and the Fathers, not communion with the bishop of Rome.}} That is the faith once for all delivered and kept by the whole body, as St Paul charged Timothy to guard the good deposit.

The papal infallibility defined in 1870 is therefore an error, not the faith of the councils that Catholics and Orthodox both call ecumenical. Roman Catholics are our brothers in Christ and confess the Sixth Council's Christology; we ask them to weigh what that council did as seriously as what it said. Why this matters for finding the Church is set out on our page Why Orthodoxy.

What we can say confidently

• Honorius wrote to Sergius about 634 that "we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ" and forbade speaking of one or two energies.
• The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680 to 681) judged his letters contrary to the apostolic faith and anathematized him by name in its sentence, its acclamations and its definition of faith.
• Pope Leo II confirmed the council and anathematized Honorius in his own letters; the Council in Trullo, the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the Liber Diurnus profession repeated the condemnation.
• The Church's dogma is two natural wills and two natural energies in the one Person of Christ, never opposed, the human will following the divine.

What remains disputed

• What Honorius privately meant. John IV and St Maximus defended his intention; Hefele thought him orthodox in thought but wrong in expression; others read him as a Monothelite.
• The exact wording and date of Leo II's letter to the emperor, whose Greek and Latin forms differ: in one Honorius let the Church's purity be polluted, in another he tried to subvert the faith.
• How widely the Liber Diurnus profession was used.
• Whether Honorius' letters fall under Vatican I's terms for ex cathedra teaching, a dispute within Catholic theology. The Orthodox reject the category itself as foreign to the first millennium.

Conclusion

The Sixth Ecumenical Council confessed that the Son of God took a full human will so that our wills might be healed; in Gethsemane His human will is freely and perfectly at one with the Father's. In defending that truth the council also showed how the Church keeps it: it gathered, examined, confessed and judged, and it judged a pope. Honorius stands in the Church's memory as a warning that no see is beyond error. The faith is kept in the one Church in which the Fathers of 681 confessed it, and that Church, the Orthodox Church, confesses it still.

Notes

1. Third Council of Constantinople (Sixth Ecumenical Council), Session XVI, acclamations, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm; on the seating of the papal legates, Percival's Historical Introduction, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xiii.ii.html, and Chapman, "Monothelitism and Monothelites" (note 3), which calls their seat "the place of honour"; on the legates raising no objection, Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3).
2. First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus (July 18, 1870), chapter 4, trans. in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.
3. John Chapman, "Monothelitism and Monothelites," Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 10 (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10502a.htm; and Chapman, "Pope Honorius I," Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 7 (1910), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07452b.htm.
4. St Gregory the Theologian, Letter 101 (To Cledonius), trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3103a.htm; St John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.14, trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33043.htm.
5. Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), checked at https://www.biblegateway.com/.
6. Honorius, first letter to Sergius, in Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 5, trans. William R. Clark (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896), pp. 28-32, https://archive.org/details/ahistoryofthecou05hefeuoft.
7. Hefele, History of the Councils, vol. 5, pp. 49-52. Hefele judged it inconsistent to say that each nature works what is proper to it and still forbid the orthodox phrase "two energies."
8. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3), section "The ecthesis of Heraclius"; Chapman, "St. Maximus of Constantinople," Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 10 (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10078b.htm; Hefele, vol. 5, pp. 52-53.
9. Chapman, "Monothelitism and Monothelites" (note 3); Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3), on the date of Honorius' death.
10. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I," section "The type of Constans"; Chapman, "St. Maximus of Constantinople" (note 8).
11. Percival, Historical Introduction to the Sixth Council, NPNF2 vol. 14 (note 1).
12. Pope Agatho, Letter to the Emperor, read at the Sixth Council, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm.
13. Third Council of Constantinople, Session XIII, the sentence against the Monothelites, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm; date of the session from Chapman, "Pope Honorius I."
14. Percival, "Excursus on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius," NPNF2 vol. 14, points 1-2, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xiii.xiii.html.
15. Third Council of Constantinople, Definition of Faith (Session XVIII), NPNF2 vol. 14, https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214/npnf214.xiii.x.html.
16. Third Council of Constantinople, Letter to Pope Agatho, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm; the imperial edict as quoted in Percival's Excursus, point 7 (note 14).
17. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3), section "In what sense Honorius was condemned," translating Leo II's letters to Emperor Constantine IV, to the bishops of Spain and to King Erwig.
18. Hefele, History of the Councils, vol. 5, pp. 179-180, 184-186 and 189-190; Latin also in Percival's Excursus, n. 337 (note 14).
19. Council in Trullo (692), Canon 1, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm.
20. Second Council of Nicaea (787), Decree, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3819.htm.
21. Hefele, History of the Councils, vol. 5, pp. 186-187 (the council of 869-870 and the letter of Pope Hadrian II read there).
22. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3), translating Liber Diurnus ii, 9; Hefele, vol. 5, p. 187 (Latin: quia pravis haereticorum assertionibus fomentum impendit; ed. de Rozière, no. 84); Percival's Excursus, point 12 (note 14).
23. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I," section "Modern controversies on the subject" (the condemnation was also kept in the Roman Breviary's lesson for the feast of Leo II until the eighteenth century); Percival's Excursus, point 13.
24. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 25 (1964), https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
25. John Henry Newman, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk (London: Pickering, 1875), section 8, https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html.
26. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I" (note 3), sections "The reply of Honorius," "In what sense Honorius was condemned" and "Modern controversies on the subject."
27. Third Council of Constantinople, Letter to Pope Agatho and Prosphoneticus, NPNF2 vol. 14 (note 16).
28. J.-B. Bossuet, Defensio Declarationis Cleri Gallicani, book 7, ch. 24, as quoted in Percival's introductory note to Agatho's letter, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3813.htm.
29. Chapman, "Pope Honorius I," section "Modern controversies on the subject"; Percival's Excursus (note 14), citing Hefele, vol. 5, p. 190 ff.
30. Johannes Baptist Sägmüller, "Karl Joseph von Hefele," Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 7 (1910), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07191a.htm.
31. Paul Maria Baumgarten, "Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger," Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 5 (1909), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05094a.htm.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Third Council of Constantinople (680-681): acts (extracts), Sentence, Definition of Faith, Prosphoneticus, Letter to Agatho, with Pope Agatho's Letter. Trans. Henry R. Percival. NPNF2 vol. 14.
• Council in Trullo (692), Canon 1; Second Council of Nicaea (787), Decree. NPNF2 vol. 14.
• Honorius I, Letters to Sergius; Leo II, Letters; Liber Diurnus. As printed and translated in Hefele, vol. 5, and Chapman (below).
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• St Gregory the Theologian. Letter 101, To Cledonius. NPNF2 vol. 7.
• St John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan. NPNF2 vol. 9.
• Percival, Henry R., ed. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. NPNF2 vol. 14. 1900. Including the "Excursus on the Condemnation of Pope Honorius."

Sources from the Roman Catholic tradition

• First Vatican Council. Pastor Aeternus. 1870. In Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils.
• Second Vatican Council. Lumen Gentium. 1964.
• Hefele, Charles Joseph. A History of the Councils of the Church. Vol. 5. Trans. William R. Clark. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896.
• Chapman, John. "Pope Honorius I"; "Monothelitism and Monothelites"; "St. Maximus of Constantinople." Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910-1911.
• Sägmüller, Johannes Baptist. "Karl Joseph von Hefele." Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910.
• Baumgarten, Paul Maria. "Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger." Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909.
• Newman, John Henry. A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk. London: Pickering, 1875.
• Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Defensio Declarationis Cleri Gallicani, as quoted in NPNF2 vol. 14.