GREGORY III.

731-741

 

Emperor. Leo III. 716-741.

King. Liutprand, 712-744.             

Exarch. Eutychius, 727-752; apparently the last of the exarchs.

 

Gregory, the son of the very distinctive ‘John’, a Syrian, and known to the Romans as Gregory the Younger the Second, was elected Pope (February 11, 731) by popular acclamation. He was following in the funeral procession of his saintly predecessor, when, “moved by divine inspiration”, the whole body of the people uprose, carried him off, and elected him Pope. For some cause he was not consecrated till March 18. For Anastasius, in the life of Gregory II, says that after his (Gregory II’s) death the see was vacant for thirty-five days.

As the bitterness of Leo against the upholders of ‘image worship’ was steadily increasing, the first thing that the Pope did was to address him letters of remonstrance, as Gregory II had done. These letters were entrusted to a priest named George, whose name appears in connection with the Roman Council of 721. But being a man rather wanting in courage, he returned to Rome without having dared to present them to the emperor. Great was the indignation of the Pope when George returned to him the undelivered letters, and he would have degraded him from his sacred office.

However, at the intercession of the nobility and of the fathers of a council which the Pope had called to consider this matter, George was simply subjected to a suitable penance and again sent with the letters to Constantinople. But he was not allowed to get there. He was seized by the emperor’s orders in Sicily and sent into banishment.

Hereupon Gregory took stronger measures. He summoned a council to meet in Rome on November 731. Ninety-three bishops took part in the synod held at the tomb or confession of St. Peter. The whole of the Roman clergy were also present at the synod, as also the ‘noble consuls’ and the people. It was decreed, in accordance with the decrees of previous popes and the belief of antiquity, that “if anyone, for the future, shall take away, destroy, or dishonor the images of Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of His Mother, the immaculate and glorious Virgin Mary, or of the Saints, he shall be excluded from the body and blood of Our Lord and the unity of the Church”. Another letter was sent to Leo by the Defensor Constantine; and deputies from different parts of Italy were also dispatched with letters to the emperor praying for the restoration of holy images. All these messengers shared the same fate. They were all detained in Sicily, then robbed of their letters and sent back loaded with injuries. The Pope even made a fourth attempt to get letters to the emperors (for Constantine Copronymus was now a partner in the imperial throne with his father) and to the ‘intruder’ in the patriarchal throne, Anastasius.

To these appeals on the part of the Pope to moral force, Leo had recourse to the tyrant’s assistant, brute force. He determined to punish the Pope and his refractory subjects (?) in Italy directly and indirectly. About the year 732, a fleet was dispatched to Italy to enforce the imperial will. It was shipwrecked in the Adriatic. The taxes of the people of Calabria and Sicily, over whom the emperor still had power, were considerably increased; the ‘patrimonies’ of the See of Rome in those parts, which yielded 3.5 talents of gold were confiscated to the imperial exchequer; and the churches of those countries as well as those of the great prefecture of Illyricum he transferred to the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. This prefecture comprised the Old and New Epirus, Illyricum, Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, Dacia, Ripensis and Mediterranea, Moesia, Dardania and Praevalis, with its metropolis Scodra. By this last measure of Leo the patriarchate of Constantinople became coterminous with the limits of the Eastern Empire, and the foundations of the coming schism between the Eastern and Western Churches were deepened. For the orthodox patriarchs were afterwards unwilling to give up their jurisdiction over the provinces of Illyricum, even though acquired in such a scandalous manner. Professor Bury supposes, not without reason, that these changes were the more easily effected by Leo inasmuch as South Italy had become largely Greek by the number of the orthodox who had fled thither from his persecuting arm. The number of orthodox Greeks, he says, priests, monks and laymen, who escaped from the East to South Italy in the reigns of Leo and Constantine has been set at 50,000. And, of course, Leo did not attempt to enforce his Iconoclastic edicts there.

Leo’s attempts to cut off the Pope’s supplies were not so successful in the Duchy of Naples. There Duke Theodore, the successor of Exhilaratus, was known to be well disposed towards the Pope. Accordingly, the emperor sent one of his secretaries, by name Alfanus, to Naples with strict orders to charge Theodore not to render any kind of service to the Pope, but, on the contrary, to hinder the dispatch to Gregory of the revenues due to him from property belonging to the Holy See in the Duchy. But to these tyrannical orders Theodore turned a deaf ear, and the papal patri­monies in Naples remained safe. Unfortunately the authority for this action by Duke Theodore rests, it seems, solely on a work edited by Pratilli; and the work in question was one of those productions which Pratilli invented as well as published.

For a year or two after the events above narrated, Gregory seems to have enjoyed an interval of repose from the vexations of external foes, whether the Lombards or the Iconoclast emperors. He employed the interval in making a practical protest against the conduct of Leo, by showing as much honor to images and relics as the emperor was showing disrespect. The Book of the Popes gives us a long list of churches which Gregory built, repaired or beautified. Among his other works, he built a beautiful oratory in St. Peter’s, in which he placed a large number of the relics of the saints. This oratory (known later as Sancta Maria in Cancellis) stood where now stands, in St. Peter’s, the altar of the Transfiguration. Renewed in 1149 by Eugenius III, it was finally demolished in 1507, when the ground was cleared for the present stupendous pile of St. Peter’s on the Vatican. This oratory is more interesting to us now from the liturgical history connected with it.

In a third synod at Rome, held by the Pope, it was decreed that the monks of the three monasteries, whose duty it was to sing the divine office in St. Peter’s, should recite part of the office in this oratory. Proper prayers were also prescribed for the Mass to be said in this oratory, and Gregory even added a few, words to the canon of the Mass, only, however, to be used in the Mass said in this oratory because the canon of the Mass had never been touched from the time of St, Gregory I, and it was thought to be against apostolical tradition to tamper with it.

The acts of this synod, the newly prescribed prayers, etc., were by Gregory’s order engraved on marble tablets, and placed in the oratory itself. These tablets were transcribed by the celebrated collector of epigraphs, Pietro Sabino, a Roman antiquary of the fifteenth century, on the occasion of their discovery, when, by order of Cardinal Cibo, nephew of Innocent VIII, there was being built in this oratory a shrine for the ‘Holy Lance’. Many fragments of these tablets are still in existence in the crypt of the Vatican. That prince of archaeologists, De Rossi, with their aid, and that of the transcripts of Sabino, has perfectly restored the reading of this profoundly interesting memorial of an otherwise unknown synod of Gregory III.

Still further to decorate St. Peter’s, Gregory made use of a present sent him by the exarch, who, since his reconciliation with Gregory II, remained true to the Holy See. The gift consisted of six beautiful spiral columns of onyx marble, and as Bartolini, whom we are here closely following, observes, Gregory determined so to place them that the very sight of them would serve as a protest against the Iconoclasm of the Greek emperors. In the Greek churches, the ‘Holy Place’, or Sanctuary, is separated from the rest of the church by a screen that stretches right across, made of pilasters that support a cornice, on which are placed the candelabra. The spaces between the little pillars are taken up with images of the saints. Hence this partition is known as the ‘iconostasis’, or place of the images. Gregory made a similar use of the exarch’s present. In front of the already existing columns round the ‘confession’ of St. Peter, the Pope erected the six onyx marble pillars, and between them placed images of Our Lord, Our Lady, and the saints. A beam, covered with plates of pure silver, rested on the columns, and on it was placed some open ornamental work, in the midst of which appeared lamps of pure silver. From these lamps this architrave was known as the ‘lamp-beam’. There does not seem any further call to enumerate the ‘church work’ of Pope Gregory. Suffice it to add that he founded monasteries (in one of which—St. Chrysogonus— the future Pope Stephen (III) IV was brought up), and rebuilt the hospice of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, near St. Peter’s, and endowed it for the support of the poor for ever; and that he decreed that the wine, candles, etc., to be used at the Mass to be said at the cemeteries on the feast days of their various patron saints were to be taken from the Lateran palace by the ‘oblationarius’, viz., the subdeacon or deacon whose business it was to take the ‘oblata’ (the wine, etc.) for the officiating priest and offer or present them to the archdeacon.

Besides building and decorating churches, various affairs of importance occupied Gregory’s attention during this interval of rest which the Greeks and the Lombards allowed him. At the exhortation, as we have seen, of Gregory II, the bishops and people of Venetia and Istria had elected Antoninus, as successor of Donatus, to the patriarchate of Grado. Gregory III (?) sent him the pallium, and at the Roman synod of November 731 it was decided that the bishop of Grado should be primate of the whole of Venetia and Istria, and that Serenus of Aquileia must be content with Cormones, where he was then residing. But later on we find Calistus, the successor of Serenus, standing in need of the same rebuke for trespassing on the jurisdiction of the See of Grado that Gregory II had had to address to Serenus. Callistus had to be, called to order for trying to obtain possession of certain property in the island of Barbiana that belonged to the See of Grado.

Gregory was also busy with the affairs of the English Church. By the decree of his great namesake, Gregory I, there were to have been two archbishoprics in England, one at York and one at Canterbury; but after St. Paulinus had had to abandon York, there had only been one archbishop in England. Now, however, Egbert, Bishop of York, backed by Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria, a relative of his, claimed metropolitical rights for York. Being a man of considerable energy and determination, as well as learning, and “realizing that while it is a mark of pride to seek what is not one’s due, it is a sign of listlessness not to look after one’s rights”, he never rested till he obtained the pallium from the Pope. This, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he received in the year 735.

To two archbishops of Canterbury is it recorded that Gregory III gave the pallium. Tatwine, elected arch­bishop in 731, went to Rome to ask for the pall. The Pope, as we learn from his own letter to the bishops of England, pleased with the character of the man, still took good care to look up the rights of the See of Canterbury before conferring the pall. Finding that Tatwine was only asking for his dues, the Pope gave him the pall and all the privileges that St. Gregory I had given to St. Augustine, subjecting to him all the bishops of Britain, and making him his vicar. On the death of Tatwine,  “this year (736) archbishop Nothelm received his pall from the bishop of the Romans”.

Transition from the affairs of England to Boniface, the greatest Englishman of his age, is easy. We left him in receipt of the solution of various difficulties about which he had consulted St. Gregory II. With the most marked success he continued his labors in Hesse and Thuringia. Thousands were baptized. And again, about the year 732, messengers from Boniface appeared in Rome to inform the Pope of the progress of the Church in Germany. After telling Gregory of the kindly relations that existed between his predecessor and their master, they proceeded, in accordance with their instructions, to declare that Boniface wished to profess his humble sub­jection to the Holy See for the time to come, and to beg that he might be allowed to remain on the same intimate terms with Gregory HI. as he had with his namesake. To these requests the Pope returned a most gracious consent both by word of mouth and by letter; and sent his messengers back to St. Boniface with the archi-episcopal pallium and with various presents and relics.

Cheered by the Pope’s encouraging words, ‘the German exile’, Boniface, continued his glorious work, again laboring in Bavaria. Once more to enjoy ‘the life-giving conversation’ of the apostolic Father, and as he felt old age creeping on, to commend himself to the prayers of the saints, Boniface, with a numerous company of his disciples, went (c. 737) to Rome for the third time. He was not only most kindly received by the Pope, but during a stay at Rome of over a year, not only the Romans flocked to hear him, but pilgrims of various nations, Anglo-Saxons, Bavarians, etc. What, among other things, helped to keep him so long at Rome was his having to wait for a synod which the Pope was about to hold, as Boniface himself informs us. Whether the said synod was ever held we know not, for it could not have been the third synod of which we have just spoken. However that may be, Boniface returned to his work, loaded as before with presents and relics. This time he made straight (739) for Bavaria, bearing with him various commendatory letters. One commends Boniface to all the bishops and principal ecclesiastics of Germany, urging them to give him what helpers they could. A second was addressed by the Pope to the nobles and peoples of all Germany, to the Thuringians, Hessians, Borthari (a people on the Bordaa or Wohra), Nistresi (a people on the Nister, a branch of the Sieg), Wedrecii (a people on the Wetter), etc., and was an exhortation to them to obey Boniface, to eschew all manner of sorcery and witchcraft, and to serve God. Finally the bishops in Alemannia and Bavaria were reminded that for the good of the people they ought to receive and listen to Boniface, as his (the Pope’s) vicar, renounce all paganism and heresy, and assemble in council twice a year—by the Danube, at Augsburg, or wherever Boniface may appoint the required synods to be held. With the cooperation of Odilo, the reigning duke, Boniface set vigorously to work to consolidate Christianity in Bavaria. False bishops and priests had to be disposed of —as well those who had been invalidly ordained as those who were untrue to their sacred character—and a new hierarchy established. To this end he (739) divided  Bavaria into four provinces, placing a bishop over each. In a letter dated October 29, 739, Boniface received a letter from the Pope congratulating him on the thousands of men that, with the help of Charles Martel (whom Gregory calls ‘Prince of the Franks’), he had brought into the fold of Christ; approves of what he has arranged in Bavaria; exhorts him to go on teaching them “the holy Catholic and Apostolic tradition of the Roman Church”, orders the reordination of those doubtfully ordained, bids him hold in his (the Pope’s) stead a synod by the banks of the Danube, and rather go about from place to place than remain in one spot. For the present we will leave Boniface toiling for his heavenly Master in Bavaria, which he did not leave to return to Hesse and Thuringia till the end of the year 740.

We must now turn again to the ‘eternal Lombard question’ which troubled the last years of Gregory’s life.

Conscious that the ambition of Liutprand was not dead but sleeping, Gregory completed, at his own cost, the restoration of the walls of Rome, taken in hand by his predecessors. He also renewed in a very strong manner the fortifications of Centumcellae (Civita Vecchia). For a price, Gregory recovered from Transamund (or Trasimund), Duke of Spoleto, Gallese, a strong place on the Flaminian Way, which the Lombards had seized, and which the Romans had never ceased trying to retake, for it commanded their road of communication with Ravenna. “It is clear that he (the Pope) behaved as ruler in the Roman duchy”.

Returned, flushed with victory, into Italy from Provence, whither, at the urgent call of Charles Martel, he had gone (737) to help that prince against the Saracens, Liutprand again took up his ambitious views for the subjugation of the whole of Italy. Incursions were at once (Spring 739) made into whatever remnant of the exarchate still remained in the power of the exarch; and the dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum were called upon to ravage the Duchy of Rome. This they refused to do, giving as their reason “that they had a treaty with the Roman people and had received their faith from the Roman Church”. This action on the part of the dukes gave occasion to Paul the Deacon to write that Transamund of Spoleto rebelled against Liutprand, and has given, we may presume, what ground they have to certain moderns of accusing Gregory of unfair intrigues with the Lombard dukes. But if the spoken of above were a league—even offensive and defensive—between Gregory and the dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum, the Pope is not to be blamed. He had a perfect right to try and strengthen himself against the ambitious Liutprand. No doubt the Lombard dukes had other motives for their action than those which they put forth. Likely enough they threw in their lot with the Pope to get support against Liutprand, whom they were as little anxious to have too powerful as the Pope himself. But we may be sure that Gregory’s version of the affair is the true one, viz., that Liutprand did not take up arms to quell a rebellion of insurgent dukes aided by the Pope, but that the dukes were attacked because they refused to carry out the instructions of their king. The resistance of the dukes was passive, not active. Had not this been the truth of the matter, Gregory would not with such confidence have declared that the stories told to Charles against the dukes were untrue, and have begged him to send an incorruptible missus to enquire into the whole case. However all this may be, Liutprand was soon on the march for Spoleto. Transamund fled to Rome, and was kindly received by the Pope.

Nothing could stop the march of the warlike Liutprand. By June 739 Spoleto was in his hands, and one of his followers was named duke in place of Transamund. His troops were soon in the territory of the Romans. Not knowing which way to turn for help in this emergency, Gregory followed the example of his predecessor and appealed to Charles Martel for help. The embassy, which he dispatched to the powerful Frankish Majordomo, and of which the chief members were Anastasius, a bishop, and Sergius, a priest, to avoid falling into the hands of the Lombards, went by sea. They were the bearers of a letter, which has perished, many presents, and the keys of the ‘confession’ of St. Peter. Acting in concert with the Pope were the Roman nobility, whose resolutions, to the effect that they wished to place themselves under the protection of Charles, and give up all dependence on the emperor, were also taken by the ambassadors along with the Pope’s letter. The embassy was received with all honor by Charles, and sent back to Rome, we are told, with great presents, but without any promise of assistance. Continued success meanwhile was attending the arms of Liutprand. Four of the border towns of the Roman duchy fell into his hands—Ameria (Amelia), Ortas (Orte), Polimartium (Bomarzo), and Blera (Bieda)—and his tents and standards were to be seen from the walls of Rome dotted over the Neronian plain. Once more was the unhappy Campagna laid waste, and, as a mark of their dependence, many Roman nobles were forced to wear their hair and dress in the Lombard fashion. In despair the Pope sent again for help to Charles. For Transamund, neither he nor the Romans would give up, and Liutprand was resolved to get him into his hands. “Our affliction”, he writes to the subregulus, as he called Charles, “moves us to write to you once again, trusting that you are a loving son of St. Peter and of us, and that, from respect for him, you will come and defend the Church of God and His “peculiar people”, who are now unable to endure the persecution and oppression of the Lombards. They have seized the very means set aside to furnish funds for the lights ever kept burning at St. Peter’s tomb, and they have carried off offerings that have been made by you and by those who have gone before you. And because, after God, we have turned to you, the Lombards deride and oppress us. Hence the Church of St. Peter has been stripped and reduced to the last straits. We have put into the mouth of the bearer of this letter, your faithful servant, all our woes, which he will be able to unfold to you”. In conclusion Gregory begs Charles to come at once, to show his love towards St. Peter, and ‘us, his own people’.

It was perhaps this letter which caused Charles Martel to dispatch an embassy to Rome. Certain it is, at any rate, that he sent one. Grimo, abbot of Corbie, and Sigebert, a monk of St. Denis, brought a letter and presents for the Pope. Whether through fear of the Roman fever, or, as there is reason to believe, influenced by the arrival of this deputation, and perhaps by some remonstrance on the part of Charles Martel, who was doubtless to that extent moved by the letters of Gregory, Liutprand withdrew to Pavia in the August of 739. But he was not prepared to forego the goal of his ambition without an effort. He, too, sent an embassy to Charles. The great ‘Mayor of the Palace’ was reminded that Liutprand had adopted or taken under his special protection Charles’ young son Pippin, and that Liutprand was his brother-in-law. On the other hand, every effort was made to impress upon the Frankish Prince that Liutprand simply wanted to punish rebellious subjects. Whether or not Charles was convinced, the envoys of the Lombard returned rejoicing. The Mayor of the Palace was ill, they said, and would not fight. Again, then (740), did Liutprand take the field; and again was Gregory compelled to write to Charles. “We were overwhelmed with grief when we saw the little that was left from last year for the support of the poor of Christ and the upkeep of the church lamps in the Ravennese district, laid waste with fire and sword by the kings of the Lombards. Moreover, to these parts also have they dispatched troops. They have destroyed the farms of St. Peter, and the cattle which still remained to us they have carried off. Not only have we not received any help from you, but, as you have not checked the warlike action of the kings, it is clear that you have paid more attention to their version of the affair than you have to ours, true though it be. The result is that you yourself are even derided by them : ‘Let Charles and his Franks come and save you from us if they can’. By the power given him by God, St. Peter could defend his own; but he would try his faithful children”. Charles must not believe what the Lombard kings urge against the dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. “Their only offence is that last year (738) they refused to make an inroad on us ... For the dukes were, and are, ready to render them that obedience which ancient custom requires ... Still, that you may know the truth for yourself, send a faithful agent, who cannot be bribed, and let him see what we have to suffer, and then report everything to you ... Prefer not the friendship of these kings to that of the Prince of the Apostles. Make haste to help us”. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the withdrawal (739) of the Lombard king, Transamund came to an understanding with the Romans, collected a large army and entered the Duchy of Spoleto in two directions. He was completely victorious, and entered Spoleto, December 739 (or 740 ?). But no sooner was Transamund once more firmly established in his position than he proved unfaithful to his benefactors. In vain Gregory wrote to him “to recover the four cities which had been lost for his sake”. Transamund would not move; probably he felt it would take him all his time to prepare to resist Liutprand. Gregory then tried to move Liutprand himself to restore the cities. He sent to him the priest Anastasius and the regionary subdeacon Adeodatus. This we know from a letter which the Pope wrote to the bishops of Lombard Tuscany (October 15, 740), reminding them of their consecration oath, by which they had undertaken to do all they could for the Church of St. Peter when it was in danger, and exhorting them to help and cooperate with his ambassadors, so that the four cities might be restored. “Weak as I am from illness”, concludes the brave Pope, “if, as I will not believe, you should refrain from giving your help and going with my ambassadors, I will undertake the journey myself and save you from the responsibility of being unfaithful to your obligations”.

It was all in vain; Liutprand would not listen, but continued his warlike operations against the exarchate and the Roman duchy. The shock of battle was not to be much longer felt by Gregory; but he died whilst its din was ringing in his ears. Gregory was buried in St. Peter’s, December 10 (November 29, Jaffé), 741. It is very unfortunate that, for the pontificates of the two Gregorys, while events of paramount importance were taking place, there should be such chronological uncertainty. Those who are of opinion that the capture of Ravenna effected by Liutprand did not take place under Gregory II, believe that it occurred at the close of the reign of his successor. If the conjecture of these writers is correct, and if it be further the fact that Transamund recovered possession of Spoleto in December 739, we have perhaps an explanation of how it was that Liutprand had not attacked him again in force before the death of Gregory, at the close of 741. Liutprand would have been too busy with his designs on Ravenna to attend to his enemies further south. But, of course, even without supposing that he seized the imperial capital in Italy at this time, he may have had to devote such attention to the exarch that he had not proper time to devote to punishing the Spoletans. But obviously there is nothing but conjecture in all this.

After what we have seen of the life of Gregory III, we can have little difficulty in endorsing his character as we find it in the pages of the Book of the Popes, and that even though it is almost a word for word repetition of the character of Leo II. “He was a man of the greatest meekness and one truly wise. He was well acquainted with the sacred Scriptures, knowing all the Psalms by heart, and thoroughly imbued with their meaning. Skilled both in Latin and Greek, he was a polished and successful preacher, and a stout upholder of the Catholic faith. He was a lover both of poverty and the poor, a protector of the widow and the orphan, and a friend of monks and nuns.

A few months before the death of Gregory, first the emperor Leo III (June 18) and then Charles Martel Martel (October 21) had also terminated their turbulent careers. The one was to be followed by a son, Constantine Copronymus, who was to be a fiercer enemy of the Church than his father; the other by a son, Pippin, who was to be to it a greater benefactor.

ST. ZACHARY. AD. 741-752.