Pope Eugene I654-657 Eugene I, a Roman, was elected on the 8th of September, 654, with the consent of the still living but imprisoned pope, Saint Martin I. The Roman clergy were forced to this step by fear of seeing the election a Monothelite pontiff. Cardinal Baronius thinks that Eugene, during the life of Martin, was only that pontiff's vicar, and did not become truly a pope until Martin's death. Feller, in the short article that he has devoted to Eugene, says briefly: Eugene was vicar-general of the Church during the captivity of Pope Saint Martin, and succeeded him in the pontificate in 656. Peter, successor of Pyrrhus in the patriarchate of Constantinople, and an ardent abettor of the Monothelites, hoped to baffle the vigilance of Eugene in exercising the functions of pontiff, and sent him, according to ancient custom, the synodical letter. It was full of cunning and treacherous expressions as to the wills and operations of Christ, and was calulated to impose upon any one who read it without serious attention. The Roman clergy, accustomed to distrust Greek faith, and justly indignant against the patriarchs of Byzantium, the authors of the sufferings of Pope Martin, persuaded Eugene to abstain from celebrating Mass until he solemnly promised neither to receive nor to approve the synodical letter. Eugene, who needed not that advice, firmly rejected the letter as suspicious and as secretly heretical; he sent his own synodical to Constantinople, and ended by condemning his own apocrisiaries at the imperial court, who, seduced by the patriarch, had begun to stray from the Catholic faith. This pontiff died on the 2nd of June, 657, and was buried at the Vatican. He governed the Church, reckoning from the year 654, two years, eight months, and twenty-four days. In two ordinations he created twenty-two bishops. *Disclaimer*- This biographical data is from The Lives and Times of the Popes by The Chevalier Artaud De Montor. Published by The Catholic Publication Society of New York in ten volumes in 1911. The pictures, included in the volumes, were reproduced from Effigies Pontificum Romanorum Dominici Basae.