JOHN VII, pope. — Elected on 1 March 705, died on 18 October 707. A Greek, son of an imperial official, in 687 he was rector of a “papal patrimony” on the Via Appia. Justinian II sent him the acts of the Sixth Council, which the previous popes had refused to approve, inviting him to convene a council with authority to approve or annul them. JOHN sent them back without having amended them or formally approved them, and the *Liber Pontificalis* accused him of having been *humana fragilitate timidus*. He obtained from the Lombard king Aripert II the restitution of the Church’s patrimony in the Cottian Alps. He was renowned as *eruditissimus et facundus eloquentia* and, taking account of the times, gave proof of patronage.
Important works are remembered of him. Among these, the restoration of the abbey of Subiaco, deserted after the destruction wrought by the Lombards; in Rome, an oratory in St Peter’s, a most beautiful work, of which musical fragments remain in the Vatican grottoes and elsewhere, part of the painted decoration, and an ambo in St Mary Antiqua, and, near this basilica, an episcopal residence where he himself lived.