This is probably not a question that occurs to very many people.  It apparently does not occur to scholars of the late Roman/Byzantine empire.  I have (finally) received my copy of Stephen Mitchell’s A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641, which appears to be fairly thorough and very well done from what I can tell so far.  It will likely make a first-rate textbook.  But given my own preoccupations with the seventh century I went looking to see what, if anything, the book had to say about my monotheletes.  Surprisingly, even though the book ends in 641, they receive no mention whatever–not even a passing, “oh, yes, and as the empire was falling apart there were new doctrinal developments that would convulse the empire for the rest of the century…”  I didn’t expect a long discussion of the doctrine or imperial religious policy (they come on the scene only in the 630s, but then again the Muslims only appear on the scene in the 620s and merit extensive treatment), but a brief mention might have been merited.  I understand that there is only so much space in any one book and choices have to be made, which requires omitting some details, but does it make sense to cut the doctrine out of the history of early seventh century Byzantium all together? 

I have been thinking about this in connection with my dissertation quite a lot.  Monotheletism often gets short shrift from scholars for one reason or another.  Even when it is noticed, it is usually dismissed as just so much of a “political” heresy.  No other doctrine has been subjected to this kind of dismissive redunctionism for so long.  What is surprising is that the controversy over it lasted roughly as long, at least inside the empire, as the controversy over Arianism. 

Monotheletism (638-681, 711-713) was the official or quasi-official doctrine of the empire for approximately as long as some form of Arianism was in the fourth century (some form of Arianism was the religion of the Eastern emperor from 337-361 and 363-378); in exact numbers, I think you will find that it was in power slightly longer than Arianism or semi-Arianism.  At most, Arianism had existed perhaps twenty years longer by the time that other forms of it were condemned by the second ecumenical council.  Yet you cannot find a volume dedicated to monotheletism itself, nor are there terribly lengthy treatments of it in books relating to the seventh century, while studies of “the Arian controversy” and studies of fourth century patristics are overflowing with attention to the various doctrines included under the label of Arianism.  Monotheletism has gotten a raw deal, as far as being a neglected subject of history.  It is the stepchild of ancient heresies, the Cinderella of medieval religion.  What did the monotheletes ever do to us to deserve such dismissive attitudes?  I am willing to guess that there is no other heresy that has been less studied or less well understood than monotheletism, and it does tend to baffle me.