GREGORY IV, Pope. - A Roman nobleman, priest of the title of St. Mark, elected pontiff without the intervention of the Emperor Louis the Pious, but consecrated only after the arrival of an imperial legate who examined the election according to the Constitutum of 824; he reigned from 827 to 844. In the revolts of the sons of Louis the Pious against their father, G. IV unfortunately supported Lothair, the eldest son. Before crossing the Alps, he sent to Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, a letter in which he prescribed prayers and fasts to bring down the divine blessing upon the enterprise he was contemplating. In a formal invitation to the bishops to come and meet him, G. protested his peaceful intentions, namely to re-establish concord between the father and his sons. While Agobard supported the Pope, condemning the attempts to divide the Empire of 817, the imperialist bishops protested, with a very strong collective letter, against G.'s conduct in the aforementioned question. G. IV's polemical reply did not increase his authority, already compromised by the inglorious adventure. In vain Paschasius Radbertus and Wala, having hastened to the Pontiff, sought to suggest arguments to him to justify his step.
Having returned from the "field of lies," he found in Italy a new danger: the Arabs of North Africa, who had landed in Sicily in 827 and had been masters of Palermo since 831. The Moors of Spain too grew so bold as to land on the Tyrrhenian coasts of Italy. To defend the mouth of the Tiber, G. IV had the fortifications of Ostia rebuilt (840-41), which from his name he called Gregoriopoli. Moreover, G. IV had shown himself in Rome too to be a diligent restorer of religious and civil buildings.
In 831-32 G. IV confirmed Ansgar "apostle of the north" as Archbishop of Hamburg and constituted him pontifical legate for the Danes, Swedes and northern Slavs. In the question of Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims, G. IV was in no hurry at all to sanction the sentence of deposition pronounced at Thionville in 835. G. IV died in January 844 after a pontificate of seventeen years.
Bibliography4 works
Lucchesis Spätling