GREGORY OF DECAPOLIS, St. — A monk, promoter of monastic life, wonderworker, defender of the cult of sacred images; b. at Irenopolis in Isauria c. 780; d. at Constantinople 20 Nov. 842. During his many travels he also came to the West: Reggio, Naples, Rome, Syracuse, Otranto.
Having fled from his father’s house, where a bride had already been chosen for him, he entered monastic life and suffered much at the hands of iconoclast monks in the mountains of his homeland. He then withdrew to his uncle Simeon, hegumen of another monastery in the Isaurian Decapolis, where he remained for fourteen years.
G. also stayed in other eastern monasteries, especially at Thessalonica and Constantinople. Among his disciples was St. JOHN the Monk; St. JOSEPH the Hymnographer likewise came under his moral influence. During the iconoclast controversy G. sent St. JOSEPH himself to Rome to seek the Pope’s support against the heresy promoted by the emperors and patriarchs. But the latter was captured by Saracens on his journey to Rome and could return to Constantinople only later, after G. had died. In their honour, together with St. BARTHOLOMEW, he built a monastery and church where the relics of G. and his disciple John were placed beside those of St. Bartholomew.
A discourse on the conversion of a Muslim is attributed to G. (PG 100, 1200 A–1212 D), but the authenticity of this pamphlet is disputed. A Life of G. written by the deacon IGNATIUS, author also of the Lives of the holy patriarchs Nicephorus and Tarasius, supplies interesting contributions to certain ninth-century Byzantine historical questions, especially regarding the Balkan Slavs and the spread of iconoclasm. A new critical edition of the Greek Life of G., with introduction, has been produced by the scholar DVORNIK, an expert in these matters; he did not, however, notice the Messina manuscript already signalled in 1884 by D. G. Lancia di Brolo in his *Storia della Chiesa in Sicilia* (II, Palermo 1884, p. 295). The same author also records the valuable information that St. JOSEPH the Hymnographer composed a poem (c. 290) in honour of G., published in the *Menaia* (II, Rome 1889, pp. 203 ff.). A *kontakion*, likewise by St. JOSEPH in honour of G., was edited by E. Mioni, *I kontakia inediti di s. Giuseppe innografo*, in *Bollettino della badia greca di Grottaferrata*, new series, 2 (1948), pp. 181–82.