GREGORY II, Saint, Pope : b. Rome, year-unknown; d. there, 10 Feb. 731. He is said to have been educated in the Lateran palace under Pope Sergius I and a Benedictine monk, After reaching the diaconate, he was chosen by his predecessor, Pope Constantine I, to accompany him to Constantinople, where he displayed his learning and ability by satisfac torily answering certain questions put to him by the emperor, Justinian II. It was not long after Gregory's elevation (19 May 715) before he began to exhibit his great missionary zeal toward Germany. The conversion and subjec tion to the Roman see of the German races by the English missionary, Saint Winf rid, or Boni face, as he was afterward called, may be at tributed in great measure to Gregory's approval and encouragement. It was during Gregory's reign also that the iconoclastic controversy com menced between the pope and the emperor, Leo III, known as the Isaurian or the Icono clast. The popes at this period were still sub jects of the Eastern emperors, coming directly under the emperor's representatives, the exarchs of Ravenna. In 726 Leo published his first iconoclastic edict which forbade the worship of images by genuflexions and the like and ordered them placed high on the walls of the church. A second edict in 730 provided for the absolute destruction of all images and the whitewashing of the walls of the church. A long series of insurrections and plots, some of which were directed against the Pope's life, followed, in volving especially the Lombards under Luit prand, who seems to have played fast and loose with both sides. Despite all provocation, Greg
ory never swerved in his loyalty to the em peror, as is evidenced, for example, by the fact that, when Ravenna fell into the hands of. the Lombards, about 727, it was partly by the Pope's exertions that Ravenna was saved to the Byzantine Empire for a year br two longer. However, Gregory was in duty bound to oppose all efforts to destroy an article of faith. From the two famous letters of condemnation sent by him to Leo it is evident that the independent temporal authority of the popes, which in fact began with Gregory, was consciously felt by him. Gregory is also noted for the restoration of churches ruined by the Lombard ravages and the re-establishment of neglected monasteries, particularly Monte Cassino. His biographers say that he was pure of life and resolute in will. About 15 or 16 of his letters are extant. His feast in the Roman calendar is 13 February.
The earlier writers are Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Paulus Diaconus, Bede and Theophanes; the letters of Saint Boniface are important for that side of Greg ory's life; Mann, Horace K., 'Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages' (London 1902) ; Barmby James, (Gregorius (52) IP (in Smith and Wace, 'A Dictionary of Chris tian Biography,' Vol. II, London 1880) ; Che valier, Ulysse, (Paris 1905).