BONIFACE IV, POPE, saint. — A native of the Abruzzi, after a vacancy of ten months he succeeded Boniface III and governed the Church for about seven years (608–15), a period marked by famine, plague and the victorious campaigns of the Persians against the Byzantine Empire. A pious and industrious pontiff, B. maintained good relations with the court of Constantinople and from Emperor Phocas obtained the ancient Pantheon of Agrippa, a temple of Cybele until 399, to convert it into a church dedicated to the Virgin and all martyrs. This is the earliest known instance in the West of a pagan temple transformed into a church and thereby preserved from ruin. The fact is justly commemorated in the epitaph of B.
The young Church in England was the object of B.’s care. He received Mellitus, bishop of London, who came to Rome in 610 to confer with him and was commissioned to carry letters to Laurence, archbishop of Canterbury, to the clergy, to King Æthelberht and to the English people. B. was addressed by St Columbanus, the fiery Irish monk, who with saintly boldness—and not without some intemperance of language—warned him of the evils threatening the unity of the Church because of his conciliatory conduct in doctrinal disputes. During his pontificate the Persians invaded the Byzantine Empire, reached the Bosphorus, laid waste Syria, seized Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem (614) and carried off the Holy Cross. B. died on 8 May 615 and was buried in St Peter’s; the Church venerates him as a saint on 25 May.