Honorius I | Pope of Rome, Defender of Orthodoxy (2024)

Honorius I (born, Roman Campania [Italy]—died October 12, 638) was a pope from 625 to 638 whose posthumous condemnation as a heretic subsequently caused extensive controversy on the question of papal infallibility.

Nothing is known of his life before he became pope. He was elected to succeed Pope Boniface V on October 27, 625. Modeling his pontificate after Pope St. Gregory I the Great, he worked for the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons, bestowing the pallium (i.e., the symbol of metropolitan jurisdiction) on Archbishop St. Honorius of Canterbury and Bishop St. Paulinus of York, inducing the Christian Celts to accept the Roman liturgy and date of Easter and dispatching St. Birinus (later bishop of Dorchester) to mission in the ancient English kingdom of Wessex.

Influential in Italy, Honorius helped rescue Roman structures from ruin and sponsored a restoration program of important Christian edifices, including Santa Agnese Fuori le Mura. He ended the schism caused when Istria was among certain provinces refusing to accept the condemnation by the second Council of Constantinople (553) of the Three Chapters, a massive theological controversy between West and East over the Nestorian church. In cooperation with several church councils, Honorius reorganized the church in Spain’s recently converted Visigothic kingdom.

The crux of Honorius’s pontificate was his role in the Byzantine church’s controversy concerning monophysitism, a heresy teaching that Christ has only one nature rather than two (i.e., human and divine), and monothelitism, a related heresy maintaining that Christ has only one will. When in 634 Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople called for an end to the controversy and proposed that both East and West support the doctrine of “one will” in Christ, Honorius replied by referring to the Council of Chalcedon’s confession of faith (451), which held that Christ’s natures were indivisible and which he interpreted as meaning a single will in Christ. He then forbade further discussion on the subject.

In 680 the third Council of Constantinople was summoned by the Byzantine emperor Constantine IV to settle the controversy, which still raged. Because the council decreed that Christ had two wills, Honorius’s doctrine was condemned as being pro-monothelitic. Pope St. Leo II confirmed the condemnation in 682, saying that Honorius “allowed the immaculate faith to be stained” by teaching not “in accord with apostolic tradition.” Refusing to accept Honorius’s doctrine, his successors condemned monothelitism, thus straining relations between Rome and Constantinople. Further, his questionable orthodoxy was revived and used by opponents of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council (1869–70). Honorius’s defenders denied that his statements were official, maintaining that his teaching was imprudent rather than heretical, and many scholars believe that it is debatable whether he was a heretic. They hold that he seems to have misunderstood the point at issue, noting that his language is partially vague.