Gregory II, Pope

Gregory II, Pope was a Roman by birth, and of a patrician family. He was early set apart for the clerical life, and educated under the eye of Sergius I, in whose time he was librarian to the Roman see. Afterwards he went with Constantine as deacon to Constantinople, and succeeded to the pontificate on Constantine's death, A.D., 715. He was a strenuous supporter of the powers of the papal see, and did much to establish its supremacy. Himself a Benedictine, he restored the monastery at Monte Cassino, under the severest rule of St. Benedict, as an example to other monasteries. In the year 727 began the famous contest between the emperor Leo Isauricus with the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, on one side, and Gregory II, with the Iconoduli, or Image-worshippers, on the other: the pope anathematized the emperor, and condemned the council he had held (to abolish the worship of images), abused his name, vilified his actions, and summoned the French to attack his authority is Italy. He died A.D. 731. His writings are of no great-account fifteen Letters, a Memorial, and a Liturgy aren preserved in the Biblioth. Patrum, volume 9. See Mosheim, Ch. Hist. cent. 8, part 2, chapter 2; Cave,. Hist. Lit. 1:620; Gieseler, Church Hist. per. 3, div. 1, chapter 2, § 4; Dupin, Eccles. Writers, cent. 8.