John IV of Rome (640–642) Born in Dalmatia, John IV was a convinced
dyothelite who “gave money for ransoming captives in Dalmatia through the very
holy and most faithful abbot Martin,” most likely the later pope Martin I. John
IV wrote one surviving letter to Pyrrhus, the then-monothelite patriarch of
Constantinople, and an apologia for Pope Honorius in spring 641. In his apologia
to Emperor Constantine III, he attempted to play down Honorius’s originality,
saying: “[Sergius wrote to Honorius] that certain men were speaking of two opposing
wills in our redeemer and Lord Jesus Christ. When the aforementioned pope found
that out, he wrote back to him that, just as our Savior was one monad, in such
a way also he was conceived and born miraculously above the whole human race.” The
addition of the critical word “opposing” justifies Honorius’s objection, but
unfortunately was not part of Sergius’s account of the objection of Sophronius.
John IV was the recipient of a
letter from Heraclius, informing him that he had written an inscription for an
icon of the crucifixion in the patriarchate of Constantinople. The inscription
contained a formulation of two natures and “one independent will” of Jesus
Christ. (Bronwen Neil and Pauline
Allen, Conflict and Negotiation in the Early Church: Letters from Late Antiquity,
Translated from the Greek, Latin, and Syriac [Washington, D. C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 172)
