ADEODATUS.

AD. 672-676.

 

EMPEROR. CONSTANTINE IV (or V) (POGONATUS), 668-685.         

KING. PERCTARIT (second time), 672-688

EXARCH. GREGORY, 664-677.

 

Popes Adeodatus and his successor Donus, it may be said in a word that we know nothing of them or their acts, save that they were good men, made a few improvements in the fabrics of some of the churches, and, with more or less wisdom, exempted a monastery or two from episcopal control.

Adeodatus was a Roman, and the son of Jovinian. So far resembling St. Gregory I, he was called to be Pope from being a monk in a monastery on the Coelian Hill (viz., that of St. Erasmus). He was consecrated April 11, 672.

Of such a gentle and kind disposition was this Pontiff, that he allowed everyone, great and small, ready access to himself, was most affable to strangers, made everyone feel that they would get from him whatever they wanted and increased the allowance or donative the popes were in the habit of making to the clergy and others.

Apart from additions he made to his monastery on the Coelian, he restored the Church of St. Peter in the Campus Meruli, on the Via Portuensis, between the ninth and eleventh milestones from the city. The same locality is still known as the Campo di Merlo. His monastery of St. Erasmus was originally established in the house of the Valerii, perhaps the most honored of all Rome’s great patrician families. Adeodatus endowed it with the revenues of many estates, concerning which an inscription, some marble fragments of which were found by De Rossi, still exists.

Wilkins, in his collection of British Councils, and other editors of  Councils, have preserved for us a decree of this Pope (c. 674), forbidding, at the request of Hadrian, the abbot and companion of Archbishop Theodore, the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul at Canterbury to be harassed by anyone, whether cleric or lay, and forbidding anyone to be foisted on the monastery as abbot but the one lawfully elected by the monks themselves.

About the same time the Pope addressed a letter to all the bishops of Gaul, informing them that, though the Holy See was not wont to exempt monasteries from episcopal control, still, as Crotpert, the bishop of Tours, had himself exempted the monastery of St. Martin, he would confirm the exemption of this house from the jurisdiction of the ordinary.

In this connection we may remark that, however advantageous it was, not only for themselves but for civilization at large, that at times the monks should be freed from dependence on the local bishop, there is no doubt that the general acquisition of this privilege was fatal to the best interests of the monks themselves. It is with communities as with individuals. They cannot think too highly of the good they do, nor too lightly of the harm. And it was much easier to hide a diminution of virtue and a growth of worldliness from the distant Bishop of Rome than from the local ‘ordinary’. Hence, when with the lapse of time the degeneration, which overtakes everything of this earth, fell upon the monastic orders, the exemptions they had secured, ensured their ruin.

Adeodatus was buried in St. Peter's, June 16, or 17  according to Duchesne.

 

DONUS,

A.D. 676-678.

 

After an interval of 138 days, during which, we are told, took place the most fearful storms in the memory of man, there was consecrated as bishop of Rome, Donus, himself a Roman, and the son of one Maurice.

During his short reign, of about a year and a half, Donus flagged the atrium or quadrangle in front of St. Peter’s with great pieces of marble, and restored the Church of St. Euphemia on the Appian Way, a church that no longer exists, and the basilica of St. Paul on the Ostian Way, or, according to the very probable conjecture of Duchesne, the little church on the left of the road going to St. Paul’s, outside the walls, where tradition tells that SS. Peter and Paul parted on their way to martyrdom. Discovering in a monastery, which was called after Boethius, that there were a body of Nestorian Syrian monks there, Donus dispersed them through the various monasteries in Rome, to do penance or to prevent them from spreading their tenets in the city, and gave over the monastery to Roman monks.

As we have noted above, Reparatus, Archbishop of Ravenna, just before his death submitted to Pope Donus. But if one great bishop showed himself dutiful to the Pope, it was not the case with Theodore, the patriarch of Constantinople, who, succeeding three successive Catholic prelates, became patriarch in the same year that Donus became Pope. A letter concerning the settlement of the Monothelite question, which Constantine Pogonatus addressed to Donus, but which was delivered to Agatho, as Donus was dead when the letter arrived, informs us that Theodore, the patriarch of Constantinople, did not send a synodical letter to Pope Donus. “He feared”, adds the emperor, “that it would be rejected by the Pope, like those of his predecessors had been”. The patriarch confined himself to sending a letter exhorting to peace. Whether Donus returned any answer to this letter, or whether even he was alive when it reached Rome, is not known.

The very little that his biographer tells us of Donus Death of terminates with the usual, “he was buried at St. Peter's”  (April II, 678). His portrait, with that of Honorius, was once to be seen in a mosaic which he himself erected in the Church of St. Martina, in the Forum. The present Church of St. Martina stands on the site of the mediaeval Church, and that, again, stood on the site of the offices of the Senate House.

 

ST. AGATHO.