The Anti-Iconclast comes to power
Also: St. Celestine V, the last man before Benedict XVI to voluntarily resign the papacy, dies.
715 A.D.
Today in Papal History marks the ascendance of the 89th Bishop of Rome – a saint in a time when papal holiness was on the decline, and a man who fought one of the most sinister heresies ever to face Christendom.
St. Gregory II was born to Roman parents, Marcellus and Honesta, in the year 669. As a member of a noble family, he was close to the inner-workings of the Catholic Church from a young age, and it wasn’t long after coming of age that he gained an interest in serving at the papal court.
Pope St. Sergius I was the first of several popes to notice Gregory’s talents, ordaining him a subdeacon and assigning him the task of distributing alms to the poor and needy around Rome at just 18 years old.
He would serve in that role for over a decade, ostensibly until Sergius’ death in 701, after which he was made a deacon and put in charge of the Vatican’s library.
In 708, Pope Constantine ascended to the throne – see Episode 24 of The Popecast entitled “The Brothers Pope” for more on Constantine and Sisinnius, his brother and papal predecessor – and it should go without saying, this isn’t THE Constantine. That one lived 400 years prior.
At any rate, Constantine-the-pope elevated Gregory even further, making him his papal secretary and bringing him along on a trip to Constantinople to smoother over the controversy that arose out of the Quinisext Council years earlier– which Sergius I had refused to sign due to it being more or less a doctrinal and disciplinary power grab by the emperor, Justinian II. At the meeting, The Catholic Encyclopedia notes,
The pope’s trust was not misplaced. The deacon Gregory ‘by his admirable answers’ solved every difficulty raised by the emperor.
Constantine died on April 9, 715, and Gregory II would be elected little more than a month later, beginning his 16-year pontificate on May 19 as the 88th Successor of St. Peter.
Gregory had to hit the ground running, but he was more than up to the task. The first order of business was starting repairs on the crumbling 500-year-old Aurelian Walls, which ended up taking several years, not least of which was due to the Tiber River flooding Rome just a couple of months later.
Adding insult to injury, also in Gregory’s first year, a letter arrived from the Patriarch of Constantinople, John VI, trying to justify his stance on Monothelitism – the heresy that Christ had a divine and human nature but just one will.
Monothelitism’s condemnation was still relatively fresh, having been quashed in 681 at the Third Council of Constantiople (Christ had both a divine AND human will, of course), but a churchman will always be tempted to pander to his secular ruler, and John wanted sympathy from the pope on that front. I’m sure Gregory was having none of that.
Next on the docket was the growing mission to Germany – which until that point in history was largely pagan territory. Gregory started by assigning an archbishop to Bavaria, but more famously, in 718, he would send the great St. Boniface into the breach after being approached by the Anglo-Saxon missionary in 718. He made Boniface a bishop 4 years later in 722, after the latter had returned to Rome for an update, and the pair continued to correspond regularly – at least by 8th century standards – for the better part of the next decade.
In fact, letters still exist between the two men, including the letter commissioning Boniface on his new adventure, in which Gregory began:
Your holy purpose, as it has been explained to us, and your well-tried faith lead us to make use of your services in spreading the Gospel, which by the grace of God has been committed to our care.
Note here that, in the early 8th Century, still 800 years before the Reformation, we have the head of the Roman Catholic Church asserting guardianship over the deposit of faith, by virtue of his office as pope.
On the Rome front, Gregory was always busy with various items – restoring monasteries and churches, holding a synod to deal with illegitimate marriages, and playing referee with patriarchs fighting with each other, particularly those who were in the pocket of the Lombard king Liutprand, who ruled over much of Italy in those days. In particular, he turned his parents’ estate into a monastery after the death of his mother, and in another case he oversaw the building of the famous Abbey of Monte Cassino.
In addition, Gregory instituted new disciplines when it came to various feast days – including adding fasting during Thursdays in Lent. Apparently, up until that point the faithful were to fast on all other days of the week, but not Thursday, lest they be confused with the pagans, who fasted on Thursdays as part of their worship of the Roman god Jupiter.
Iconoclasm
It was around the halfway point of Gregory’s papacy that things began to get really interesting. The Byzantine emperor, Leo III, had been battling invading Muslim armies for some time and was slowly watching his empire shrink all around him.
West and East had already historically been like passing ships in the night, but Leo’s actions over the next several years would very nearly sever the relationship entirely.
It started with Leo trying to impose heavy taxes on papal lands in Italy, which made it tough for Gregory to locally source food for Rome. This not only enraged the always-mob-ready Romans, but also led Gregory to encourage the booting of Rome’s governor – the emperor’s ambassador – from the city altogether.
This led to a plot to murder the pope in 725 by other agents of the emperor, but once the conspiracy was uncovered, the four men responsible were put to death. Some even say the emperor put out the hit himself.
The next year, however, was the icing on the cake. In 726 – perhaps to pander to the Muslim invaders, and in some sense because he believed his misfortune to be due to God’s anger at Catholics becoming idolaters – Leo III banned religious images altogether.
No more Jesus, Mary, and the saints.
All images were to be destroyed.
I suppose his fear is understandable, and historian Eamon Duffy notes that he more or less bowed to social pressure after a massive volcanic eruption put a nice symbolic flourish on the whole “God’s punishing us” idea.
Duffy writes:
Leo’s edict was the product of profound social panic, several generations of theological reflection by bishops and theologians, and the cumulative impact of controversy about the person and natures of Christ.
He went on:
Whatever its causes, however, the emperor’s attack on images, and the resulting wave of image-breaking or ‘iconoclasm’, fell like a thunderbolt in the West.
Though technically the emperor didn’t try to demand the destruction of images so much in the West, Gregory still acted quickly in resoundingly condemning his actions
When Leo III sent down his edict from on high, Gregory didn’t hold back in his response – here’s an excerpt from one letter in particular:
“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…
Even the little children mock at you. Go into one of their schools, say that you are the enemy of images, and straightway they will throw their little tablets at your head, and what you have failed to learn from the wise you may pick up from the foolish...
Of course, uprisings ensued on both sides – the Romans apparently lynched the Exarch of Ravenna, the emperor’s regional lord, for trying to enforce the edict, and Gregory was again the target of a murder plot that (thankfully) again was snuffed out.
At any rate, this crisis would outlive Gregory, despite his best efforts. As is the case with many large crises the Catholic Church has faced over the centuries, things don’t often spring up and resolve themselves even in a couple of decades – let alone a couple of years. So it would be up to Pope St. Gregory III, the next pope, to take up the mantle and officially condemn iconoclasm once and for all.
Pope Gregory II died on February 11, 731, at the age of 61.
Gregory was venerated as a saint not long afterward, and his feast day is still celebrated on the date of his death, February 11.
He was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, but his relics have since been lost to history.
As for Gregory II’s legacy, it’s certainly hard to choose. Germany, in large part, became a Catholic nation because of Gregory’s priorities, and it was equally the case for the strengthening of Britain and Ireland’s Catholic roots.
He also echoed predecessors like St. Leo the Great in asserting the primacy of the papacy, and showing its strength by always emphasizing and honoring his role as keeper of the very same keys given to St. Peter by Jesus Christ.
But most specifically, Gregory II’s witness to the truth of images glorifying God and enriching the spiritual life of Christians is his greatest and most unique legacy.
Pope St. Gregory II, pray for us!
1296 A.D.
If you haven’t had enough papal trivia for the day, today also marks the death anniversary of Pope St. Celestine V, famously the last pontiff to willingly resign his office before Pope Benedict XVI abdicated in 2013.
Celestine was an intriguing figure for many reasons, but in particular for his advanced age when he was elected to the Chair of St. Peter. Having been chosen by the cardinals after sending a salty letter to the cardinals who had been bickering for OVER TWO YEARS without selecting a new pope, he quickly realized he was ill-equipped for the office.
As a result, he ensured that it was legal to resign the papacy, and then did just that, retiring after only five months. He would live just 18 more months before going to his eternal reward.
A quick note on Pope Benedict XVI: The great pontiff made a seemingly random visit to Celestine V’s tomb in L’Aquila in 2009, when the cathedral there was undergoing major renovations after a devastating earthquake.
It was a quiet visit that puzzled commentators at the time, in particular because Benedict took off his pallium – one of the symbols of his status as Bishop of Rome – placed it on Celestine’s tomb, and left shortly thereafter.
Considering the gauntlet that is the papal travel schedule, the visit was soon forgotten.
But it was brought into stark relief just three years later, when Benedict XVI himself, incidentally being the exact same age as Celestine V, himself resigned the papacy.
Pope St. Celestine V, pray for us!