Gregory III

Pope Gregory III (d. 28 November 741) served as Bishop of Rome from 11 February 731 until his death — the last pope of Syrian origin and the last born outside Europe until Francis in 2013. His eleven-year pontificate was dominated by two interlocking crises: the Byzantine iconoclasm controversy and the military threat posed by the Lombard kingdom. Upon his accession Gregory immediately wrote to Emperor Leo III urging restraint over iconoclasm. When his envoy was arrested by imperial order, Gregory convened a synod in November 731 that condemned iconoclasm outright and excommunicated any who destroyed sacred images. Leo's response was swift: he dispatched a fleet to discipline the pope (it was wrecked in the Adriatic), confiscated papal estates in Sicily and Calabria, and transferred the ecclesiastical jurisdictions of Illyricum, Sicily, and Calabria from Rome to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory answered the iconoclasm dispute not only with condemnation but with construction. He repaired and decorated numerous Roman churches with icons and images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. In St. Peter's Basilica he erected an iconostasis between columns of onyx and marble, built a new oratory to house saints' relics, and established the monastery of St. Chrysogonus — making his veneration of images a visible, architectural argument. Unable to rely on Byzantine protection against the Lombards, Gregory made a decisive diplomatic break: he sent two embassies to Charles Martel, the Frankish mayor of the palace, seeking military intervention. Charles did not act on the appeals, but the precedent Gregory set proved fateful. His successors Zachary and Stephen II cultivated the Frankish alliance that Pepin the Short and later Charlemagne would fulfill, permanently reorienting the papacy away from Byzantium and toward the Latin West.