In 451, the Council of Chalcedon had defined that one must confess one and the same Christ "in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation"^[8]. The formula held both ends: against Nestorius, who divided Christ into two subjects, it affirmed unity of person; against Eutyches, who confused the natures, it affirmed their permanence^[9]. But a considerable part of the East - Egypt, Syria, Armenia - refused Chalcedon and formed separate Churches, faithful to Cyril of Alexandria read without the council: this is the world that the article Monophysitism describes in detail^[10].

Two centuries later, the problem is no longer only theological: it is strategic. These separated provinces are also the richest of the empire and the most exposed to invasion. Reuniting them with the imperial Church means consolidating the empire itself. The whole religious policy of Heraclius starts from there: to find a formula that the anti-Chalcedonians could sign without Rome crying treason^[11]. Monothelitism was born of this calculation - a doctrine invented to make peace, which made war in the Church for fifty years.

The first watchword does not yet speak of will but of energy, that is, activity, operation: Christ would indeed have two natures, but a single energy, called "theandric" (divine-human) - an expression borrowed from a letter of Pseudo-Dionysius^[12]. The idea comes from Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Arabia, and it is Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople (610-638) who makes it his own and proposes it to the emperor^[13].

In 633, Cyrus, Patriarch of Alexandria - to whom Heraclius has also entrusted the administration of Egypt - seals with the Theodosians separatists a Pact of Union in nine anathemas, the seventh of which confesses "a single theandric energy" of Christ^[14]. On paper, it is a triumph: thousands of separated Christians return to communion. In reality, the formula sidesteps the question: if Christ's activity is unique, what remains of humanity as an acting principle? A monk of Palestine, Sophronius, understands this at once and protests publicly in Alexandria^[15].

Elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, Sophronius addresses to all the Churches his synodal letter, which insists on the contrary on the two energies of Christ^[16]. The objection is unanswerable on the ground chosen by Sergius: if Christ acts humanly - he walks, he weeps, he suffers - it is because there is in him a human principle of operation. Rather than answering on the energies, the imperial camp shifts the question to the will: there will no longer be talk of one or two energies; "a single will" will be confessed^[17]. The move is skillful: the will sounds more personal, more unifying - one single Christ, hence, one might say, one single willing. But it is the same sleight of hand, one notch deeper: for a nature without its own will is no longer a complete nature, and a Christ without human willing has humanity only in appearance^[18].

From then on, "monoenergism" and "Monothelitism" designate two stages of one and the same undertaking: first the unique operation (633-634), then the unique will (634-638), finally imposed by imperial law^[19]. The article Monophysitism shows how each generation of error replays the same drama: protecting the unity of Christ by amputating his humanity.

First misunderstanding: Monothelitism does not deny the divinity of Christ, as Arianism did - it over-affirms it, to the point of smothering humanity beneath it^[20]. Second misunderstanding: nor does it deny that Christ had a human soul, as Apollinarianism did - it admits the soul, but refuses it its own willing^[21]. Third misunderstanding: it does not make Christ a fleshless phantom, like Docetism - it confesses a real flesh, born of Mary, but a flesh whose willing would be entirely absorbed by the divine willing^[22]. In short: the Monothelite says "true God and true man", then empties the second term of its concrete content - a will that wills, that hesitates, that obeys.

When Heraclius takes power in 610, the empire is dying: the Persians have ravaged the East, carried off the True Cross from Jerusalem, occupied Egypt; the Avars threaten the capital itself^[23]. Through an extraordinary counter-offensive, Heraclius reverses the situation, crushes Persia and restores the Cross to Jerusalem^[24]. But the military victory does not heal the religious fracture: the reconquered Syria and Egypt are populated by Christians who, for nearly two centuries, have lived separated from the imperial Church since Chalcedon^[25]. And just as Sergius and Heraclius are negotiating union, a new peril surges from the desert: the armies of nascent Islam seize Syria, Palestine and then Egypt within a few years^[26]. Time is short, the empire is bleeding: the separated must be rallied, quickly, at any cost — even at the cost of a formula.

It is in this urgency that Cyrus acts. Armed with his double authority — patriarch and imperial administrator — he negotiates with the Theodosians of Egypt a text of reconciliation: the Pact of Union (Henosis), accompanied by nine anathemas against the condemned errors^[27]. The seventh proclaims the one theandric energy. Crowds of the separated accept and return to imperial communion: politically, the success is spectacular^[28].

Theologically, it is a disguised capitulation. For the Theodosians sign without giving up their reading of Cyril, and the Chalcedonians sign without seeing that they are being made to endorse the absorption of the humanity: each reads into the ambiguity what he wants to read there^[29]. It is the law of the genre of doctrinal compromises: people unite on words while remaining divided on things, and the real division, repressed, will resurface more violently. The article The Monophysite Crisis recounts how the Henotikon of Zeno, a century and a half earlier, had already attempted — and missed — exactly the same operation.

Sophronius is not a party man: he is a monk of Palestine, disciple of John Moschos, formed in the school of the desert and of the Fathers^[30]. Present at Alexandria in 633, he hears the Pact read and begs Cyrus, weeping, not to promulgate it: the faith of Christ is not to be bargained away for an administrative reconciliation^[31]. Having become patriarch of Jerusalem the following year, he gives his protest its most solemn form: his synodal letter professes the two energies of Christ and adjures the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope to decide^[32]. It is he, and not the staff officers, who sees clearly first — as often in the history of the Church, vigilance comes from a monk before it comes from the offices^[33].

Besieged in his city by the Arabs, Sophronius will himself negotiate the surrender of Jerusalem and die shortly after, around 638, without having seen the end of the crisis he had denounced^[34].

Challenged by the letter of Sophronius, Sergius writes to Pope Honorius I (625-638) to present the affair to him in his own way: Sophronius would be disturbing with his novelties a peace in the process of being born; silence should be imposed on the expressions of "one" or "two energies", which are found neither in Scripture, nor in the councils, nor in the Fathers^[35]. The presentation is biased — it passes off the aggressor as the victim — but it touches a sensitive chord in Rome: the dread of Byzantine quarrels, those endless Greek disputes that scandalize the West^[36]. Honorius, who governs a Rome still marked by the Lombard invasions and little versed in Eastern subtleties, takes the bait.

Honorius replies in 634 with two letters to Sergius in which, to cut matters short, he orders abandoning the vocabulary of "one or two energies" — and, wanting to explain why unity is not threatened, he lets slip the fateful sentence: one must confess in Christ "one single will" (unam voluntatem fatemur)^[37]. The pope's intention is not to define a dogma: he wants to calm things down, simplify, send back to back Greeks who are quarrelling over words^[38]. But the effect is the opposite of the intention: his formula, signed by the successor of Peter, becomes the Roman guarantee of nascent Monothelitism. Sergius invokes it at once: the Ecthesis of 638 will claim the teaching of the Apostolic See^[39].

Honesty requires nuance, and it is here that the reader should turn to the complete article: Pope Honorius I (625-638). Honorius never promulgated a dogmatic definition, never spoke ex cathedra, never imposed his formula on the universal Church: his letters are private correspondence of government, cautious on the energies, clumsy on the will^[40]. He asks for silence on new words — wise counsel from a pastor — but himself supplies a new word, "one single will" — imprudence of a theologian^[41]. It is this negligence, and not a formal and obstinate heresy, that Constantinople III will condemn in 681: having favoured error instead of extinguishing it, having "not illumined" the Church with apostolic doctrine^[42].

The lesson goes beyond the personal case: an authority can bring misfortune on the Church without being heretical, through simple carelessness of the pen. The successors of Honorius — Severinus, John IV, Theodore — will moreover reject the Ecthesis and refuse to subscribe to the formulas of Sergius, proof that Rome, once informed, did not follow^[43].

Honorius dies on 12 October 638; Sergius, for his part, has a great synod celebrated in December at Constantinople which acclaims the Ecthesis (Ekthesis, "Exposition of the Faith"), a text he himself composed and which the emperor promulgates before the end of the year^[44]. The mechanism is clear: prohibition on speaking of "one" or "two energies", because of the disturbance caused to minds, and obligation to confess "one single will" in Christ^[45]. The text invokes the letter of Honorius: the Apostolic See itself is said to have taught the single will — a decisive guarantee, and false as to its meaning, since Honorius had defined nothing^[46].

Sergius dies on 9 December 638, a few days after his triumph^[47]. His successor Pyrrhus (638-641) inherits the system. But Rome does not follow: elected in 638, Pope Severinus — consecrated only in 640 — refuses to subscribe to the Ecthesis, and John IV (640-642) condemns it in a Roman synod^[48]. The imperial union reveals itself for what it is: a Byzantine peace without Rome, hence without the Church.

Heraclius having died in 641, it is his grandson Constans II (641-668) who takes up the affair. Faced with the deadlock — Rome condemns, the monks resist, Monothelite patriarchs succeed one another (Paul II, then Peter) — the emperor changes method: since no formula commands unanimity, formulas will be forbidden. The Typos (Type, 648), in reality drafted by Patriarch Paul II of Constantinople, declares it illegal to discuss whether Christ possesses one or two wills, one or two energies — and even to acknowledge that such a debate is possible^[49].

It is the zero degree of state theology: no longer imposing error, but forbidding the truth to speak itself. Pope Theodore I (642-649) rejects the Typos, excommunicates Pyrrhus, and prepares with the monk Maximus the Roman counter-attack^[50]. For while Constantinople legislates silence, a theologian has demonstrated, piece by piece, that the single will is impossible — and that it ruins salvation.

Maximus was born in Constantinople at the end of the 6th century, served as secretary to the emperor Heraclius, then abandoned honors for the monastery of Chrysopolis, on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus^[51]. When the Persians invaded in 626, he fled to North Africa and settled in Carthage: from that exile, for nearly twenty years, he stood up to the entire imperial East — a simple monk against an emperor, four patriarchs and the backing of a deceased pope^[52].

His demonstration rests on a line of reasoning that any Christian can follow. The will belongs to nature, not to the person: it is not the subject who wills as subject; each nature wills according to what it is — in Christ, his human nature wills humanly and his divine nature wills divinely^[53]. If Christ therefore has only one will, he has only one acting nature — and we fall back, by a roundabout route, into the error of Eutyches already condemned at Chalcedon^[54]. Conversely, two complete natures require two natural willings: to take Christ's human will away from him is to take away a part of our humanity — and, according to the principle of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, "what is not assumed is not healed"^[55].

"What has not been assumed has not been healed; but what has been united to God is also saved." — Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101 to Cledonius^[56]

Written against Apollinaris, who cut Christ off from his rational soul, the maxim strikes at every amputation, including this one: a Christ without a human willing can neither assume nor heal our wounded willing — and salvation collapses^[57].

In 645, the former patriarch Pyrrhus, deposed and exiled, passed through Africa and accepted a public disputation with Maximus at Carthage, before the governor, bishops and a large audience^[58]. Pyrrhus put forward the strongest objection of the Monothelite camp: two wills would imply two willing subjects, hence two persons — Nestorianism^[59]. Maximus answered by distinguishing: other is he who wills, other that by which he wills — one single subject, the Word, willing through two natures, hence through two natural wills without division^[60]. Defeated, Pyrrhus admitted his error and accompanied Maximus to Rome^[61]. He would retract later, once back in Constantinople under Constans II — a fickleness that speaks volumes about the convictions of the imperial party^[62].

Elected in 649 without waiting for imperial confirmation — an unprecedented gesture of independence — Pope Martin I convened at the Lateran, with Maximus at his side, a council of more than a hundred bishops^[63]. In five sessions, from 5 to 31 October, the assembly promulgated twenty canons defining the faith of the two wills and condemning by name the Ecthesis, the Typos and their authors: Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paul of Constantinople and Theodore of Pharan^[64]. The decrees, signed by the pope and the bishops, were sent to the whole Church with an encyclical of Martin: Rome had spoken, solemnly, collegially — and without the emperor^[65].

In Constantinople, the fury was total: to hold a council against imperial edicts was high treason^[66]. The exarch Olympius, sent to arrest Martin, failed; his successor would take charge of it.

In 653, Martin, already gravely ill, was arrested in the Lateran, dragged to Constantinople, tried for treason, condemned, then deported to Chersonesus, in Crimea, where he died in exile in 655, abandoned and starving^[67]. The Church honors him as the last martyr pope: he did not die for a Roman privilege, but for the two wills of Christ^[68]. The full account of his life is set out in Pope Saint Martin I (649–655).

Maximus suffered the same fate, worse still. Arrested in 653 with his two disciples, dragged from trial to exile, he refused to the very end to subscribe to the Typos^[69]. In 662, at over eighty years old, his tongue was cut out, so that he could no longer speak, and his right hand, so that he could no longer write — then he was deported to the Caucasus, where he died on 13 August 662^[70]. The East honors him on 21 January, the West on 13 August^[71]. The executioner thought he was silencing an opinion: he had made a Confessor, the title the Church gives to those who suffered for the faith without shedding their blood unto death — and Maximus is its greatest example after the ancient persecutions^[72]. His life and doctrine are set out in Saint Maximus the Confessor (579–662).

"Tested in all things, as we are, apart from sin." — Epistle to the Hebrews, 4:15^[73]

This verse, which Maximus loved, says everything about the case: a Christ who had not willed humanly would not have been tested "as we are" — and would not have saved us^[74].

Constans II was assassinated at Syracuse in 668; his son Constantine IV, called Pogonatus (668–685), inherited an empire exhausted by war against the Arabs and a Church cut in two^[75]. In 678, he wrote to Pope Donus then Agatho (678–681) to restore harmony between East and West: let an ecumenical council finally settle the question of the wills^[76]. Agatho had the case prepared by a Roman synod, then addressed to the council a dogmatic letter setting out the faith of the two natural wills — a letter read solemnly before the assembled bishops^[77]. The old pope died in January 681, before the closing: he would not see the triumph of the cause to which he had given everything^[78].

The full narrative — the hall of the Trullus, the eighteen sessions from 7 November 680 to 16 September 681, the Roman legates, the last defender Macarius of Antioch, the reception in East and West — is set out in Council of Constantinople III (680–681), to which the present article refers for all the detail.

The definition, in keeping with the letter of Agatho, proclaims in Christ two natural wills and two natural operations — without division, without change, without partition, without confusion — and specifies that the two willings are not contrary to one another: the human will follows the divine will, without resistance or opposition, and is subject to it^[79]. The text targets Monoenergism and Monothelitism together, condemned both alike as heretical^[80]. It is the reference taken up by Denzinger (nn. 553–559) and by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which confesses at n. 475 that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, cooperating in the salvation of the human race^[81].

"We likewise proclaim in him two natural wills and two natural operations, without division, without change, without partition, without confusion, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. And these two natural wills are not contrary to one another — far from us this impiety — but his human will follows his divine will, without resistance or opposition, and is rather subject to it." — Third Council of Constantinople, definition of faith (Ignispedia translation)^[82]

At the thirteenth session, on 28 March 681, the council rejected the letters of Sergius and Honorius as alien to the apostolic dogmas and pronounced anathema against the authors of the heresy: Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter of Constantinople, Theodore of Pharan — and Honorius, "who was pope of ancient Rome", for what he had written to Sergius^[83]. Pope Saint Leo II (682–683) confirmed the council and took up the anathema in his dogmatic letter to the emperor: Honorius is condemned not for having defined the error, but for having let the error spread instead of extinguishing it^[84]. The full account of this unique case — a pope anathematized by name by an ecumenical council — and of what it does, or does not, imply for papal infallibility, is set out in Pope Honorius I (625–638).

The whole refutation rests on the principle of Gregory of Nazianzus quoted above: the Son saved only what he took on. If he did not take on a human willing, our willing remains outside salvation — yet it is precisely our willing, wounded by original sin, that most needed to be assumed, set straight, and divinized^[85]. Monothelitism makes Christ a Saviour who saves everything in man except the very centre of the person: the act by which she gives herself or refuses herself^[86]. That is why the Church held firm to the point of the martyrdom of two saints rather than yield on this point: what was at stake was not a scholastic subtlety, but the reality of redemption^[87].

The Gospel itself imposes the two wills. On the Mount of Olives, Jesus prays:

"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done!" — Gospel according to Saint Luke, 22:42^[88]

A single verse, and everything is there: a human will that shrinks back before the cup ("remove from me") and a divine will to which it submits ("but yours") ^[89]. If Christ had only one will, this prayer would be a sham — a God pretending to hesitate before himself. Maximus the Confessor relied precisely on Gethsemane: the agony proves the human willing, the obedience proves its agreement with the divine willing^[90]. The Catechism takes up the same reading: it is in the agony that the human will of Christ follows his divine will without opposition^[91].

Two centuries before the crisis, Pope Saint Leo the Great had already supplied the decisive weapon. In his Tome to Flavian (449), he teaches that each nature accomplishes, in communion with the other, what is proper to it: the Word what belongs to the Word, the flesh what belongs to the flesh^[92]. Yet willing is an act: if there is in Christ only one willing, there is only one nature acting — and the Tome collapses. Constantinople III merely drew the consequence: two acting natures require two wills and two operations^[93]. The reader will find the full exposition of the Tome in Eutychianism.

Monothelitism died in 681 and left neither Churches nor posterity: no present-day community claims it^[94]. But its method survives in every generation: manufacturing an ambiguous formula to buy peace, passing off the surgery of truth as pastoral charity, forbidding debate when the formula fails to catch on^[95]. From the Henotikon of Zeno to the Typos of Constans II, history shows that such peaces never hold: they buy a few years of silence at the price of decades of schism, and it is always the same ones who pay — the monks, the confessors, the faithful popes^[96].

Monothelitism remains in memory above all for its paradox: an ecumenical council confirmed by the popes anathematized a pope by name^[97]. Far from embarrassing the Catholic faith, the case clarifies it: the Church can judge that a pontiff failed in his charge of teaching without the promise made to Peter being contradicted — for that promise does not cover every private letter, but the solemn definition of the faith, which Honorius never claimed to give^[98]. See Pope Honorius I (625-638) for the complete dossier, with the documents in hand.

• Council of Constantinople III (680-681) — the council that decides: sessions, Agatho's letter, detailed definition, reception.
• Pope Honorius I (625-638) — the letters to Sergius, the anathema of 681 and the question of infallibility.
• Pope Saint Martin I (649-655) — the Lateran council, the arrest, the exile, the last martyr pope.
• Saint Maximus the Confessor (579-662) — the life and doctrine of the doctor of the two wills.
• Pope Saint Agatho (678-681) — the dogmatic letter read at the council.
• Pope Saint Leo II (682-683) — the confirmation of the council.
• Monophysitism — the doctrine of "one single nature": formulas, four faces, Eastern Churches, modern dialogue.
• The Monophysite crisis — the full account: Ephesus II, Chalcedon, Henotikon, Acacian schism, Constantinople II.
• Eutychianism — Eutyches, his exact formulas, Saint Leo's Tome, Chalcedon.
• Nestorianism — the opposite error: dividing Christ into two subjects.
• The Nestorian crisis — the account of the crisis that precedes and sheds light on this one.
• Apollinarianism — the Christ amputated of his rational soul, refuted by Gregory of Nazianzus.
• Docetism — the ghost Christ, without true flesh.
• Arianism — the great earlier crisis, over the divinity of the Son.
• Saint Leo the Great (390-461) — the author of the Tome, doctor of the unity of Christ in two natures.
• Saint Cyril of Alexandria (376-444) — the authority invoked by all parties, and the true meaning of his formula.
• The heresies of the early centuries — the overall panorama of ancient errors.