a heretical offshoot from the sects of the Apollinarians and Monophysites. They distinguished the will from the operation, and said that a multiplicity of wills must of necessity involve a multiplicity of willers. In order, therefore, to preserve the unity of Christ's person and nature after the Incarnation, they held that in Him there was one will or energy only. This will was not human, for that would inter mix and sin; but they admitted Him to be perfectly sinless, and hence they ascribed to Him a divinely human will, which, from a term used by Dionysius the Areopagite, they called Theandric. As the Eutychians absorbed the human in the Divine nature, so the Monothelites merged the human will in the Divine. Their opponents met them by the denial of their major premis, that the will depends on the person of the willer, and asserted, on the contrary, that it is the result of the nature; and, therefore, that in Christ each nature had its own manner of operation and will, though in Him these wills were in no degree in sinful opposition.

Monothelitism was first heard of in the seventh century, and was in its vigour from the year A.D. 629 to the sixth general council held A.D. 680. Heraclius, the Greek emperor, was the original cause of its formal enunciation. After he had recovered the provinces rent from the empire by the Persians, he was desirous of strengthening his power by the reunion with the dominant church of those Nestorians who had been driven into Persia. The leaders of the Monophysites acceded to his wish, on the condition of its being ruled, that after the union of the two natures in Christ, there was but one mode of operation and will; Sergius, the Monophysite patriarch of Constantinople, agreed; and Honorius, in consequence, published in the year 630 an edict in favour of that doctrine. On this Cyrus, who had been recently converted to Monothelitism by Sergius, and promoted by Honorius to the patriarchate of Alexandria, held a council in that city A.D. 633, and propounded nine articles of faith, which at first met with great success. He was earnestly opposed, however, by Sophronius, a monk of Palestine, then residing at Alexandria, who, on being made patriarch of Jerusalem, assembled a council there and condemned the Monothelites. Sergius thereupon wrote to Pope Honorius, who in reply expressed his approbation of the doctrine of Sergius as opposed to that of Sophronius, and clearly enunciated Monothelite doctrine. "We confess," he said, "one will in Jesus Christ, because the Godhead took not our sin, but our nature as it was created before the corruption of sin."

More than one of the Romish controversialists have made unsuccessful attempts to defend the reputation of Honorius from the accusation of heresy arising out of his letters to Sergius. The error of his Holiness, like that of the Monothelites, lay in the assumption that two wills could not co-exist in our Lord without sinful opposition; and hence he must be ranked with those heretics with whom he was subsequently condemned in the sixth general council.

To put an end to the dispute, Heraclius, in the year 639, issued the edict known by the name of the "Ethesis," or exposition of the faith, in which he laid down the doctrine of one will, but prohibited all controversy on the question of one or two operations. Many eastern bishops, with Pyrrhus, the successor of Sergius, at their head, received the "Ethesis;" but John IV. of Rome immediately assembled a council in that city, in which the "Ethesis" was rejected, and the Monothelites condemned. The most able opponent of Monothelitism at this time was Maximus the monk, who vanquished Pyrrhus, Patriarch of Constantinople, in a public disputation. Theodore of Pharan, in Arabia, was the most prominent of its champions.

In the year 648, Constans the Emperor revoked the "Ethesis," and published in its place a formula known by the name of the "Type," which was formally condemned by Pope Martin I. in the Lateran Council of 649. Constans, enraged at what he supposed an attack on his authority, caused Martin to be seized and carried to the Isle of Naxos, where he was kept prisoner for a year. Thence he was removed to the town of Chersonesus in the Crimea, where he soon afterwards died. Maximus was next arrested and brought, with his disciple Anastasius, to Constantinople. On his refusing to adopt Monothelitism in any guise, he was forcibly conveyed to Byzza in Thrace; thence he was carried back to Constantinople, where he was publicly scourged, had his tongue cut out, and his right hand severed at the wrist. After this he was banished to Lazi in Colchis, where he soon died. The West, overawed by these violences, remained for some time quiet; but in the year 677 the schism between the East and West was complete. To put a final termination to these disputes, the sixth Ecumenical Council was assembled at Constantinople in A.D. 680, at which the Emperor was present in person. The result was to establish the doctrine of two wills and operations; and the Monothelites, with Pope Honorius at their head, were again formally condemned. The doctrine of Monothelitism was henceforth confined to the people inhabiting Mounts Libanus and Antilibanus, who are known in history by the name of Maronites. (See MARONITES.) (For more detailed information respecting the Monothelites, consult Neander's Church History, vol. v.) (g. j. d.)