GREGORY II, Pope, Saint. - He reigned from 715 to 731. Born in 669 in Rome, he accompanied Pope Constantine I (709-11) to Constantinople and took an active part in the negotiations over the approval of the canons of the Trullan Council (692). He is the first Roman raised to the see of St. Peter, after a long series of foreign pontiffs, in the 7th century.
In 716 he received in Rome Duke Theodo of Bavaria, the first pilgrim of that stock, to whom he gave a written instruction of 13 chapters concerning the organization of the Church of Bavaria.
From him Winfrid Boniface received on 15 May 719 the mandate to go to Germany to convert the infidels and baptize them according to the Roman rite. Informed of the first apostolic successes of Winfrid Boniface, the same Pontiff consecrated him bishop on 30 Nov. 722, binding him to the Roman See by means of the oath of the bishops of the metropolitan province of Rome. The Benedictine Order, to which St. Boniface belonged, was the object of particular care on the part of the Pope. Five years of his pontificate, from 726 onward, were occupied by the struggle with the iconoclast emperor Leo III the Isaurian. At his command to impose the census in the Roman duchy, G. II resisted openly. With this act he took part in the Italian national revolution against the despotic Byzantine government. If G. II, accused of crimen laesae maiestatis, did not suffer the fate of Pope Martin I, he owed it not only to the Roman militia, but also to the neighboring Lombard dukes, with whom he cultivated good relations.
This conflict, at first only political, soon became religious as well because of the dispute concerning the veneration of the sacred images, in which G. II with full right opposed Eastern caesaropapism. Pope G. II sent two letters to the Emperor whose authenticity was proved by E. Caspar. In courageous language the Pope writes among other things: «The whole West has great confidence in us and in him whose image you intend to destroy, in St. Peter, whom all the Kingdoms of the West venerate as a god. We shall take the road to the most distant regions of the West toward those who ask for holy Baptism». He could not, however, undertake this journey because he was forestalled by death in Feb. 731. But the fact that he formulated and expressed such a design, a sign of the far-sightedness with which he glimpsed the mission of the Church in that historical moment, shows us in G. II the greatest Roman pontiff of the 8th century. His feast is celebrated on 13 Feb.
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