Gregory II

Gregory II was a native of Rome, born in the later seventh century into a family of Roman origin; the Liber Pontificalis names his father as Marcellus. He entered the clerical service of the Roman Church while still young. Under Pope Sergius I he was ordained subdeacon and subsequently administered the papal treasury as sacellarius and oversaw the Lateran library and archives as bibliothecarius. These offices placed him at the centre of papal administration and diplomacy. In 710 he accompanied Pope Constantine to Constantinople, where the pope met Emperor Justinian II; the mission, which sought to settle remaining disputes arising from the Quinisext Council, gave Gregory firsthand knowledge of the imperial court and of the Eastern Church. After Constantine’s death in 715 the Roman clergy and people elected Gregory as his successor. He was consecrated bishop of Rome on 19 May 715.

The early years of his pontificate were devoted to the restoration of Rome’s churches, walls, and charitable works after decades of neglect and Lombard pressure. He repaired sections of the Aurelian Walls, restored sanctuaries including Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and reorganized the endowment of hospitals and xenodochia. Around 717–718 he encouraged Petronax of Brescia to refound the abbey of Monte Cassino, which had lain in ruins since its destruction by the Lombards in the late sixth century, thereby reviving Benedictine monastic life at its historic centre. In 721 he convened a synod in Rome that issued canons against incestuous and otherwise irregular marriages and against various disciplinary abuses. Throughout he maintained the traditional Roman stational liturgy and the city’s grain supply, acting in effect as the principal civic as well as spiritual authority in Rome.

Gregory’s most enduring pastoral initiative was the organization of the mission to the Germanic peoples. In 718 or 719 the West Saxon monk Wynfrith came to Rome; Gregory gave him the name Boniface, a papal mandate to preach in Germany, and later, in 722, consecrated him bishop. Subsequent correspondence shows Gregory confirming Boniface’s authority, answering canonical questions, and urging cooperation with Frankish rulers. He likewise supported the aging Willibrord in Frisia and took an interest in the organization of the Bavarian church. These acts bound the new churches of the north to the Roman see and form a central chapter in the Christianization of Germany in the eighth century.

From the mid-720s Gregory’s relations with Constantinople deteriorated. Emperor Leo III increased fiscal demands on Italy and, beginning about 726, promulgated iconoclastic measures that forbade the veneration of images. Gregory refused to implement the edicts in the West, defended the traditional cult of images, and became the focal point of Italian opposition to imperial religious policy. Revolts broke out against Byzantine officials in the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Duchy of Rome; the exarch Paul was killed. Gregory sought to restrain the populace from schism and from setting up an anti-emperor, while firmly rejecting iconoclasm as contrary to received tradition. At the same time he had to manage the Lombards. King Liutprand occupied parts of the exarchate yet in 728 ceded the town of Sutri to the papacy—the so-called Donation of Sutri—an early territorial nucleus of what would become the Papal States. Gregory’s combination of resistance to heresy, negotiation with Lombard kings, and de facto autonomy from the emperor marked a decisive stage in the political independence of the Roman see.

Gregory II died in Rome on 11 February 731 and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. He was succeeded by Gregory III, who continued his policies toward images and the northern missions. The Catholic Church venerates Gregory II as a saint; his feast day is 11 February. Later ages remembered him as the pope who upheld the veneration of icons, launched the German mission under Boniface, and steered Rome through the first great crisis of iconoclasm and the waning of Byzantine power in Italy.