But, in his person, one of the State-made patriarchs of Constantine’s city is able to make the solitary boast that he once deceived one Roman Pontiff. Sergius, who sat in that See, from 610 to 638, and who seems to have obtained as great a mastery over the mind of the emperor Heraclius as his predecessor, Acacius, had over the emperor Zeno, constructed a doctrinal exposition called the Ecthesis, which he induced the emperor to father and promulgate. He was desirous, above all things, to obtain the Pope’s approval of the doctrine which he afterwards set forth in this document. He wrote to the Pope letters, the purpose of which the successor of St. Peter, instead of seeing through, appears to have misconceived. After the death of Honorius, the Monothelite emperors and patriarchs claimed to have received the support of that Pope. His not having detected, and actively condemned the deceit of Sergius, brought upon the memory of Honorius the heavy rebuke that Pope St. Leo. II. assented so far to the sentence of the Sixth General Council in 682, as to have written to the Spanish bishops:—“Those who had been traitors to the purity of the Apostolic tradition were punished with eternal condemnation: they are Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus of Constantinople, together with Honorius, who, instead of extinguishing, when it began to arise, the flame of heretical doctrine, fostered it by his neglect”.(13) Much light would appear to be thrown upon the belief of Pope Honorius by the history of the forty years succeeding his death. He sat within a few days of thirteen years. He was buried, says Anastasius, on the 12th October, 638, in St. Peter’s, and the See remained vacant one year seven months and seventeen days. Why did it so remain vacant? The era and the question are both most important to note. The following narrative(14) will explain why the Papal See was kept vacant nineteen months after the election of a successor to Pope Honorius. In the year 638, Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, composed in the name of the emperor Heraclius an edict which he called Ecthesis or exposition, as if it were merely an exposition of the Catholic faith respecting the dispute about the One or the Two Operations in our Lord. He then brought about that the emperor subscribed and published it. Perhaps Sergius wished to take advantage of the vacancy in the Papal See to make the Monothelite error a law of the State, and to compel the future Pope to subscribe it, for which he wished to get the imperial subscription making it a law.