When Heraclius died in 641, he was covered with defeat, and the chief provinces of his empire were, day by day, falling away. He left a son, Constantine, twenty-eight years old, who had been named emperor from his birth: and, by his second marriage with his niece, Martina, a son, Heracleonas, nineteen years old, who had been named emperor two years before, and two younger sons, David and Marinus, named Cæsars, besides two daughters, who, like their mother, had been named expresses. In his will he directed his two sons, Constantine and Heracleonas, to reign together with equal power, and to acknowledge Martina as empress-mother. Constantine III. was not Monothelite, but orthodox. At his accession he received a letter(76) from Pope John IV., maintaining the true doctrine, and also that his predecessor, Honorius, answering a question put to him by the patriarch Sergius, “taught concerning the mystery of the Incarnation, that there were not in Christ, as in us sinners, opposing wills of the mind and the flesh: and for this, certain persons, trusting to their own meaning, threw out the suspicion that he had taught there to be the only one will of the Godhead and the Manhood, which is altogether contrary to the truth”. This the Pope proceeds to prove at length. And he ends by saying that he finds a certain document, contrary to Pope Leo, of blessed memory, and the Council of Chalcedon, has been issued, to which bishops are compelled to subscribe. This was the Ecthesis of Heraclius. And he entreats the new emperor, as guardian of the Christian faith, to command this document to be torn down, and, as a first sacrifice to God, to scatter from His Church every cloud of novelty. So, if he regard the things of God, may the Lord, whose faith is preserved in purity, preserve his empire from the nations trusting in their ferocity. But the emperor, Constantine III., died 103 days after his father, poisoned, as eastern historians say, by his step-mother, the empress Martina: with which crime they also inculpate the patriarch Pyrrhus. She then reigned with her son, Heracleonas; but not for long. An insurrection deposed her: both she and Heracleonas were maimed and banished, and Constans II., son of Constantine III., and grandson of Heraclius, at twelve years old became emperor, under tutelage of the council. The answer given to the letter of Pope John IV. was that the Ecthesis affixed to the door of churches should be removed.