Gregory II

Pope Gregory II (669–731), Bishop of Rome from 19 May 715 to his death on 11 February 731, shaped two of the defining struggles of the eighth-century Church: the defense of sacred images against Byzantine iconoclasm and the organized expansion of Christian mission into northern Europe. Before becoming pope, Gregory had spent his entire career in the papal court — serving as subdeacon, sacellarius (a financial officer), deacon in charge of the Vatican Library, and papal secretary. In 711 he personally conducted the delicate negotiations with Emperor Justinian II in Constantinople over the contested canons of the Quinisext Council, securing the right for Rome to disregard whichever decisions it found objectionable. This experience gave him both the theological precision and the diplomatic nerve he would need as pope. Almost immediately after his consecration, Gregory began repairing Rome's Aurelian Walls at the Porta Tiburtina — a practical act that also signaled his intention to assert Roman self-sufficiency. He also directed the organization of the Bavarian church following a visit from Duke Theodo in 716, eventually compelling the reluctant Corbinian to serve as bishop of Freising in 726. Gregory's most consequential missionary decision came in 719, when he commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Winfrid — giving him the name Boniface — to evangelize the Germanic peoples east of the Rhine. When rumors about Boniface's orthodoxy reached Rome, Gregory summoned him back in 722, examined his written profession of faith, and satisfied himself before consecrating Boniface a bishop and sending him back to Germany. That mission laid the institutional foundations of the medieval German Church and deepened the bond between the papacy and the Frankish world. When Emperor Leo III the Isaurian issued his iconoclast decree in 726, Gregory condemned it, arguing that the veneration of holy images was a matter of Church tradition and doctrine, not imperial legislation. He stopped short of a formal rupture with Constantinople, but his resistance made clear that the bishop of Rome would not subordinate theological questions to imperial command. This defiance prepared the way for a long series of revolts and realignments that eventually established the temporal independence of the papacy.