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Biography

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Pope John II, born Mercurius, was Bishop of Rome from January 533 until his death in May 535. He is remembered as the first pope to take a new name on election, because Mercurius was the name of a pagan Roman god and was judged unfit for a Christian pontiff. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as a Roman, the son of Projectus. Before his elevation he was a priest of the basilica of Saint Clement on the Caelian Hill in Rome, a church with which he remained closely identified. His date of birth is not recorded in surviving sources, and nothing reliable is known of his early life beyond his Roman origin and priesthood.

His election followed a vacancy after the death of Pope Boniface II in October 532. The interval was troubled by accusations of simony in the making of popes. The Roman Senate issued a decree forbidding the purchase of ecclesiastical office; the Ostrogothic king Athalaric confirmed the measure and ordered it inscribed on marble in the atrium of St. Peter's. John II was elected on 2 January 533. His brief pontificate fell under Ostrogothic rule in Italy, first under Athalaric and, after that king's death in 534, under Theodahad, while the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I was consolidating power in Constantinople and preparing the reconquest of the West.

A principal act of the reign was correspondence with Justinian on Christology. Seeking to bind remaining dissenters to the Council of Chalcedon after the healing of the Acacian schism, the emperor promoted the so-called Theopaschite formula, that “one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.” In 533–534 Justinian sent a profession of faith to Rome, together with gifts of gold and silver vessels. After consulting the Roman clergy, John II accepted the formula as orthodox and consistent with the teaching of the Roman see, and he wrote accordingly to the clergy of Constantinople. The exchange tightened the alignment of papacy and imperial court on the eve of the Gothic War.

John II also exercised disciplinary authority in Gaul. Contumeliosus, bishop of Riez in Provence, was accused of grave misconduct; a synod at Marseilles condemned him, and the pope confirmed the sentence, directing that the bishop be confined to a monastery and that the see be administered in the meantime. The letters on this case are evidence of sixth-century Roman claims to appellate jurisdiction in the Western churches. John II died in Rome on 8 May 535 and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. He was succeeded by Pope Agapetus I. Because of the shortness of his pontificate and the thinness of the sources, many personal details—including whether he had ever been married—remain unknown, and he was not enrolled among the canonized popes of the early Roman calendar.

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