Pope Boniface IV

Pope Boniface IV (Latin: Bonifatius IV) was Bishop of Rome from 608 until his death in 615. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as a Marsian by origin, from the civitas of Valeria in central Italy, a district corresponding to parts of the later Abruzzo, and names his father as a physician called John. No contemporary source records a verified year of birth. He entered the service of the Roman Church under Pope Gregory I, who ordained him deacon. Later tradition, already reflected in Bede, presents him as a monk formed according to the Rule of Saint Benedict; he later turned his own house in Rome into a monastery. After the death of Pope Boniface III in November 607 the Roman see remained vacant for many months. Boniface IV was consecrated on 25 August 608, in the reign of the Byzantine emperor Phocas.

The act for which his pontificate is best remembered is the conversion of the Pantheon. With the emperor’s permission, the great Hadrianic temple dedicated to all the gods was given over to Christian use and consecrated, according to the usual dating, on 13 May 609 as Sancta Maria ad Martyres (Saint Mary and All the Martyrs). Relics of martyrs were brought from the catacombs and placed beneath the altar. This was the first major pagan temple in Rome to be transformed into a church, and it marked a decisive stage in the Christian appropriation of the city’s ancient monuments. Relations with Constantinople in these years were comparatively cordial: the same Phocas who granted the Pantheon was also honoured in the Roman Forum by the column that still bears his name, dedicated in 608.

Boniface maintained the English mission begun by Gregory the Great. In 610 Mellitus, bishop of London, came to Rome. The pope held a synod of Italian bishops that treated monastic discipline and other ecclesiastical questions; Mellitus took part and afterwards returned to England with papal letters for Archbishop Laurence of Canterbury, King Æthelberht of Kent, and the English clergy, confirming Gregory’s arrangements. Bede, writing in the following century, is the principal witness for this episode and for Boniface’s conversion of his house into a monastery. Surviving documentation of the pontificate is otherwise sparse. Italy remained divided between the imperial exarchate and the Lombard kingdoms, but the years 608–615 appear, in the sources that remain, relatively free of the acute crises that marked some neighbouring pontificates.

Boniface IV died in Rome on 8 May 615 and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, originally in the portico; his remains were translated within the basilica in later centuries as the building was rebuilt. He was succeeded by Adeodatus I (Deusdedit). He has been venerated as a saint from an early date, by popular cultus rather than by a later formal process of canonization. His feast is kept on 8 May in the Roman Martyrology. No specific patronages of places, professions, or causes are securely attached to him in the historical record.