Yesterday was the 1,343rd anniversary of the opening of the Third Council of Constantinople. So today marks the same anniversary of the first full day. (For those who don’t want to do the math, that’s 680.)

Go read about this council here. It condemned monothelitism (one will in Christ – Divine) and monoenergism (one “energy” or “operation” in Christ, very similar).

The Council was convoked during the reign of Pope St. Agatho, who allegedly became pope after the age of 100. He worked a lot of miracles, we are told, and was very likeable. His first notable task as pope was dealing with the unjust deposition of St. Wilfred, Archbishop of York by Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. Guess what, he convened a synod in the Lateran, and he restored him to his diocese!

Being 103 or so, he sent his legate to Constantinople for the Sixth Ecumenical Council, along with a very long letter on the orthodox position on the question at hand… Maximus the Confessor’s name whispered in the background, the intrigue of Emperor Constantine Pogonatus’s court in Constantinople, the murmurings of George, the local Patriarch, who was anathematized – ALONG WITH THE DEAD POPE HONORIUS I, which is particularly significant and famously controversial… How can you not be mesmerized by this stuff that is so important to understanding our Faith and the history of our Church?

My favorite incident, recounted by Joseph Kelly in his book on the Councils, is of a Monothelite priest standing up in front of the Council Fathers to declare that he could prove his doctrine to be true. How? He could raise the dead. Well, guess what, they procured a cadaver and let him try.

He failed.

They swung hard in those days.