Pope Vitalian

Pope Vitalian (Latin: Vitalianus) was Bishop of Rome from 657 until his death in 672. Surviving sources place his origin at Segni (ancient Signia) in the Campagna of Rome in Latium, and name his father Anastasius. No reliable source records the year of his birth, and almost nothing can be verified about his life before he succeeded Pope Eugene I. He was consecrated on 30 July 657. His pontificate belonged to a period in which the Roman see still lay within the political orbit of the Byzantine Empire, while the unresolved controversy over Monothelitism continued to trouble relations between Rome and Constantinople. The principal early narrative of his reign is the Liber Pontificalis, which can be supplemented on particular points by imperial and English evidence.

A central episode of the pontificate was the visit of Emperor Constans II to Rome in 663, the first such imperial appearance in the city for many generations. Vitalian received the emperor with public honor, and Constans attended liturgy at St. Peter's. The same visit was marked by the removal of valuables from Roman churches and monuments, including gilded bronze from the roof of the Pantheon, already long in Christian use as a church. Constans then based himself in Sicily and was assassinated at Syracuse in 668. Vitalian recognized Constantine IV as legitimate emperor and opposed the short-lived usurpation of Mezezius in Sicily. In Italian church politics, imperial favor toward Ravenna produced a grant of autocephaly to that archbishopric in the mid-660s, loosening its dependence on Rome and leaving a dispute that outlasted Vitalian. On doctrine he tried to keep communion with Constantinople from breaking entirely, even while Monothelite policy remained influential at court; fuller conciliar settlement of that question came only after his death, at the Third Council of Constantinople.

Vitalian also shaped the church in England. After Wighard, sent from Britain to be consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, died in Rome, the pope chose Theodore of Tarsus, a learned Greek monk then living in the city, and associated with him the African abbot Hadrian. Theodore was consecrated in 668 and reached England the following year. Under that Roman commission he worked to unify practice after the Synod of Whitby, to organize dioceses, and to foster learning, thereby binding the Anglo-Saxon church more closely to Roman custom. Bede is the chief witness for this mission.

Vitalian died in Rome on 27 January 672 and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica. He is entered as a saint in the Roman Martyrology, with feast on that date; there was no later formal process of canonization of the modern type, and no well-documented list of special patronages attaches to him. Evidence for his inner life, any earlier clerical career, and family circumstances beyond his father's name is extremely thin. Claims sometimes made about musical innovations in his time are not securely grounded in contemporary record and should be treated with caution.