GIOVANNI VII, POPE. - Elected on 1 March 705; died 18 Oct. 707. A Greek, son of an imperial official, he was in 687 rector of a “pontifical patrimony” on the Via Appia. Giustiniano II sent him the acts of the Quinisext Council, which the preceding popes had refused to approve, inviting him to convene a council empowered to approve or reject them. G. returned them without having amended or formally approved them, and the Liber Pontificalis accuses him of having been humana fragilitate timidus. He obtained from Ariperto II, king of the Lombards, the restoration of the Church’s patrimony in the Cottian Alps. He enjoyed a reputation as eruditissimus et facundus eloquentia and, considering the times, showed himself a patron of the arts.
Important works are remembered in connection with him. Among these were the restoration of the abbey of Subiaco, abandoned after its destruction by the Lombards; in Rome, an oratory in S. Pietro opere pulcerrimo, of whose mosaics fragments remain in the Vatican Grottoes and elsewhere; part of the painted decoration and an ambo in S. Maria Antiqua; and, near this Basilica, an episcopal residence, where he himself lived.