chapter 2._

"Of the immense energy shown by St. Gregory in the exercise of his Principate, of the immense influence wielded by him both in the East and in the West, of the acknowledgment of his Principate by the answers which emperor and patriarch made to his demands and rebukes, we possess an imperishable record in the fourteen books of his letters which have been preserved to us. They are somewhat more than 850 in number. They range over every subject, and are addressed to every sort of person. If he rebukes the ambition of a patriarch, and complains of an emperor's unjust law, he cares also that the tenants on the vast estates of the Church which his officers superintend at a distance should not be in any way harshly treated. … The range of his letters is so great, their detail so minute, that they illuminate his time and enable us to form a mental picture, and follow faithfully that pontificate of fourteen years, incessantly interrupted by cares and anxieties for the preservation of his city, yet watching the beginnings and strengthening the polity of the western nations, and counterworking the advances of the eastern despotism. The divine order of greatness is, we know, to do and to teach. Few, indeed, have carried it out on so great a scale as St. Gregory. The mass of his writing preserved to us exceeds the mass preserved to us from all his predecessors together, even including St. Leo, who with him shares the name of Great, and whose sphere of action the mind compares with his. If he became to all succeeding times an image of the great sacerdotal life in his own person, so all ages studied in his words the pastoral care, joining him with St. Gregory of Nazianzum and St. Chrysostom. The man who closed his life at sixty-four, worn out, not with age, but with labour and bodily pains, stands, beside the learning of St. Jerome, the perfect episcopal life and statesmanship of St. Ambrose, the overpowering genius of St. Augustine, as the fourth doctor of the western Church, while he surpasses them all in that his doctorship was seated on St. Peter's throne. If he closes the line of Fathers, he begins the period when the Church, failing to preserve a rotten empire in political existence, creates new nations; nay, his own hand has laid for them their foundation-stones."

_T. W. Allies, The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I. to St. Gregory I., pages 309-335._

See, also, ROME: A. D. 590-640.

PAPACY: A. D. 604-731.

The succession of Popes. Sabinian, A. D. 604-606; Boniface III., 607; Boniface IV., 608-615; Deusdedit, 615-618; Boniface V., 619-625; Honorius I., 625-638; Severinus, 640; John IV., 640-642; Theodore I., 642-649; Martin I., 649-655; Eugenius I., 655-657; Vitalian, 657-672; Adeodatus II., 672-676; Donus I., 676-678; Agatho, 678-682; Leo II., 682-683; Benedict II., 684-685; John V., 685-686; Canon, 686-687; Sergius I.,687-701; John VI., 701-705; John VII., 705-707; Sisinnius, 708; Constantine, 708-715; Gregory II., 715-731.

PAPACY: A. D. 728-774. Rise of the Papal Sovereignty at Rome.

The extinguishment of the authority of the Eastern emperors at Rome and in Italy began with the revolt provoked by the attempts of the iconoclastic Leo, the Isaurian, to abolish image-worship in the Christian churches (see ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY). The Pope, Gregory II., remonstrated vehemently, but in vain. At his signal all central Italy rose in revolt. "The exarch was compelled to shut himself up in Ravenna; for the cities of Italy, instead of obeying the imperial officers, elected magistrates of their own, on whom they conferred, in some cases, the title of duke. Assemblies were held, and the project of electing an emperor of the West was adopted." But another danger showed itself at this juncture which alarmed Rome and Italy more than the iconoclastic persecutions of the Byzantine emperor. The king of the Lombards took advantage of the insurrection to extend his own domains. He invaded the exarchate and got actual possession of Ravenna; whereat Pope Gregory turned his influence to the Byzantine side, with such effect that the Lombards were beaten back and Ravenna recovered. {2424} In 731 Gregory II. died and was succeeded by Pope Gregory III. "The election of Gregory III. to the papal chair was confirmed by the Emperor Leo in the usual form; nor was that pope consecrated until the mandate from Constantinople reached Rome. This was the last time the emperors of the East were solicited to confirm the election of a pope." Leo continued to press his severe measures against image-worship, and the pope boldly convened at Rome a synod of ninety-three bishops which excommunicated the whole body of the Iconoclasts, emperor and all. The latter now dispatched a strong expedition to Italy to suppress the threatening papal power; but it came to naught, and the Byzantine authority was practically at an end, already, within the range of papal leadership. "From this time, A. D. 733, the city of Rome enjoyed political independence under the guidance and protection of the popes; but the officers of the Byzantine emperors were allowed to reside in the city, justice was publicly administered by Byzantine judges, and the supremacy of the Eastern Empire was still recognised. So completely, however, had Gregory III. thrown off his allegiance, that he entered into negotiations with Charles Martel, in order to induce that powerful prince to take an active part in the affairs of Italy. The pope was now a much more powerful personage than the Exarch of Ravenna, for the cities of central Italy, which had assumed the control of their local government, intrusted the conduct of their external political relations to the care of Gregory, who thus held the balance of power between the Eastern emperor and the Lombard king. In the year 742, while Constantine V., the son of Leo, was engaged with a civil war, the Lombards were on the eve of conquering Ravenna, but Pope Zacharias threw the whole of the Latin influence into the Byzantine scale, and enabled the exarch to maintain his position until the year 751, when Astolph, king of the Lombards, captured Ravenna. The exarch retired to Naples, and the authority of the Byzantine emperors in central Italy ended."

_G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine Empire, book 1, chapter 1, section 2._

The Lombards, having obtained Ravenna and overturned the throne of the Byzantine exarchs, were now bent on extending their sovereignty over Rome. But the popes found an ally beyond the Alps whose interests coincided with their own. Pepin, the first Carolingian king of the Franks, went twice to their rescue and broke the Lombard power; his son Charlemagne finished the work, and by the acts of both these kings the bishops of Rome were established in a temporal no less than a spiritual principality.

See LOMBARDS: A. D. 754-774.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,