GREGORIO III, POPE, saint. — A Syrian, learned and active, he reigned from 731 to 741; he continued the struggle against the iconoclasts, whom he excommunicated at the Roman Synod of November 731. In retaliation, Emperor Leo III confiscated the papal patrimonies in southern Italy and Sicily and severed the dioceses of those regions and of Illyricum from the Western Roman patriarchate, placing them under the patriarch of Constantinople.
He was also threatened by Liutprand, king of the Lombards, and in this critical moment he sought help from Charles Martel, mayor of the palace of the Franks, sending him a legation bearing the keys of the tomb of St. Peter and relics of his chains. But since Charles Martel was allied with Liutprand, he refused military intervention. Like his predecessor, Gregory III was an intelligent promoter of the missionary work of St. Boniface, whom in 732 he appointed archbishop and entrusted, as apostolic legate, with organizing the Church in Bavaria, Thuringia, and Hesse.