Pope Gregory II

Pope Gregory II was a native of Rome, born in the later seventh century to a family of standing; the Liber Pontificalis names his father as Marcellus. From youth he was attached to the service of the Roman Church. Pope Sergius I ordained him subdeacon, and he later held the posts of sacellarius (papal treasurer) and librarian of the Apostolic See, placing him at the centre of papal administration and correspondence. In 710–711 he accompanied Pope Constantine on the latter’s journey to Constantinople to confer with Emperor Justinian II, an experience that gave him firsthand knowledge of the imperial court and of the tensions between Rome and the East.

He was elected bishop of Rome on 19 May 715, succeeding Constantine, and governed the see until his death. The early years of his pontificate were marked by pastoral and administrative work in and around Rome. He repaired churches and monasteries that had fallen into decay, attended to the city’s defences and food supply, and issued disciplinary measures for the clergy. In 719 he received the Anglo-Saxon missionary Wynfrith, later known as Boniface, and gave him a papal mandate to preach in Germany; in 722 Gregory consecrated Boniface bishop, thereby placing the German mission under direct Roman authority. He also encouraged missionary work in Bavaria and among other Germanic peoples and maintained correspondence with churchmen in England and elsewhere in the Latin West. A Roman synod held in 721 issued canons on marriage, especially against unions within prohibited degrees of kinship.

The defining political and theological crisis of his reign was the outbreak of imperial iconoclasm. In the mid-720s Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, after increasing fiscal pressure on Italy, ordered the destruction of religious images and demanded that the pope enforce the policy. Gregory refused. He defended the traditional veneration of icons in letters to the emperor, arguing from Scripture and the practice of the Church, and he declined to implement the imperial edicts. Resistance in Italy was widespread: imperial tax collectors were expelled, the exarchate was shaken by revolt, and Byzantine authority in the peninsula was severely weakened. Gregory stopped short of a formal political rupture; he continued to acknowledge the emperor’s sovereignty in principle while asserting the independence of the Roman Church in matters of faith and, in practice, of Italian governance.

Relations with the Lombards were equally delicate. King Liutprand alternately threatened and negotiated with Rome; at times Lombard forces occupied papal territories, while at others Liutprand made donations to the Roman Church. Gregory worked to preserve the temporal possessions of the see of Peter and to keep the peace of central Italy. He died in Rome on 11 February 731 and was buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica. He was succeeded by Gregory III. Venerated as a saint from an early date, without a later formal process of canonization, his feast is kept on 11 February. His pontificate is remembered as a turning point in which the papacy, while still theoretically within the Byzantine orbit, began to act with greater autonomy in Italy and to deepen its missionary and jurisdictional ties with the Latin West.