Boniface IV, Pope, Saint

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), which were very sad on account of 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 the emperor Phocas obtained the ancient Pantheon of Agrippa, a temple of Cybele until 399, to turn it into a church dedicated to the Virgin and to all the martyrs. It is the oldest known example in the West of a pagan temple transformed into a church, and thereby saved from ruin. The fact is rightly recalled in B.'s tomb inscription.

The young Church of England was the object of B.'s solicitude: he received Mellitus, bishop of London, who came to Rome in 610 to confer with him, and charged him to carry letters to Laurence, archbishop of Canterbury, to the clergy, to king Ethelbert and to the English people. St. Columban, the ardent Irish monk, wrote to B., pointing out to him with holy boldness, and not without some intemperance of language, the evils that threatened the unity of the Church because of his conciliatory conduct in dogmatic controversies. During his pontificate the Persians invaded the Byzantine empire, reached as far as the Bosphorus, devastated Syria, occupied Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem (614), from where they 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.

Pietro Goggi