Pope Gregory II
[1] His defiance of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian as a result of the iconoclastic controversy in the Eastern Empire prepared the way for a long series of revolts, schisms, and civil wars that eventually led to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes.
[3] Gregory II was an alleged collateral ancestor to the Roman Savelli family,[4] according to a 15th-century chronicler, but this is unattested in contemporary documents and very likely unreliable.
[5] During Constantine's pontificate, Gregory was made a papal secretary, and accompanied the pope to Constantinople in 711 to deal with the issues raised by Rome’s rejection of the canons of the Quinisext Council.
[6] The actual negotiations on the contentious articles were handled by Gregory, with the result that Emperor Justinian II agreed that the papacy could disregard whichever of the council’s decisions it wished to.
[5] Work on this task was delayed in October 716 when the river Tiber burst its banks and flooded Rome, causing immense damage and only receding after eight days.
[5] Gregory ordered a number of litanies to be said to stem the floods, which spread over the Campus Martius and the so-called Plains of Nero, reaching the foot of the Capitoline Hill.
[8] The first year of his pontificate also saw a letter arrive from Patriarch John VI of Constantinople, who attempted to justify his support of Monothelitism, while at the same time seeking sympathy from the pope over the position he was in, with respect to the emperor.
[9] Then in 716, Gregory received an official visit from Duke Theodo of Bavaria to discuss the continuing conversion of his lands to Christianity.
As a result of this meeting, Gregory gave specific instructions to his delegates who were to travel to Bavaria, coordinate with the duke, and establish a local church hierarchy, overseen by an archbishop.
In 726 Gregory was visited by Ine, the former King of Wessex, who had abdicated the throne in order to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome and end his life there.
He turned his family mansion in Rome into a monastery, St. Agatha in Suburra, endowing it with expensive and precious vessels for use at the altar,[17] and also established a new church, dedicated to Sant'Eustachio.
[18] In 718 he restored Monte Cassino, which had not recovered from an attack by the Lombards in 584, and he intervened in a dispute at the Monastery of St. Vincent on the Volturno over the deposition of the abbot.
In April 716 he managed to get Liutprand to agree not to retake the Cottian Alps, which had been granted to the Roman Church in the reign of Aripert II.
[26] However, the semi-independent Lombard Duchy of Benevento, under the expansionist duke Romuald II, resumed hostilities by capturing Cumae in 717, cutting Rome off from Naples.
[27] Neither threats of divine retribution nor outright bribery made an impression on Romuald, and so Gregory appealed to Duke John I of Naples, funding his campaign to successfully retake Cumae.
33) prohibits a man from marrying the widow of his cousin on either mother's or father's side, and specifically states that the "Pope in the city of Rome" [papa urbis romae] had sent him a letter exhorting him to issue this legislation,[31] indicating a degree of cordial communication between them.
Then in 727, with the Exarchate of Ravenna in chaos over the Byzantine Emperor’s iconoclast decrees (see below), the Lombards captured and destroyed Classis and overran the Pentapolis.
The armies of Ravenna and the Duchy of the Pentapolis mutinied, denouncing both Exarch Paul and Leo III, and overthrew those officers who remained loyal.
He wrote: "You say: ‘We worship stones and walls and boards.’ But it is not so, O Emperor; but they serve us for remembrance and encouragement, lifting our slow spirits upwards, by those whose names the pictures bear and whose representations they are.
In virtue of the power which has come down to us from St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, we might inflict punishment upon you, but since you have invoked one on yourself, have that, you and the counselors you have chosen... though you have so excellent a high priest, our brother Germanus, whom you ought to have taken into your counsels as father and teacher.
[46] Eutychius sent an emissary to Rome, with instructions to kill Gregory and the chief nobility in the city, but the plot was uncovered and foiled.
