Saint Gregory II, pope from 715 or 716 to February 11, 731, succeeded Pope Constantine, his election being variously dated May 19, 715, and March 21, 716. Having, it is said, bought off the Lombards for thirty pounds of gold, he used the tranquillity thus obtained for vigorous missionary efforts in Germany, and for strengthening the papal authority in the churches of England and Ireland. By excommunicating the Byzantine emperorLeo III the Isaurian, he prepared the way for a long series of revolts and civil wars, which tended greatly to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes. He died in 731, and subsequently attained the honour of canonization, February 13th being the day consecrated to his memory in the Martyrology
Gregory's father was Gordianus, a wealthy patrician, probably of the famous gens Amicia, who owned large estates in Sicily and a mansion on the Caelian Hill in Rome, the ruins of which, apparently in a wonderful state of preservation, still await excavation beneath the Church of St. Andrew and St. Gregory.
Gregory's mind and memory were both exceptionally receptive, and it is to the effect produced on him by these disasters that we must attribute the tinge of sadness which pervades his writings and especially his clear expectation of a speedy end to the world.
Gregory of Tours tells us that in grammar, rhetoric and dialectic he was so skilful as to be thought second to none in all Rome, and it seems certain also that he must have gone through a course of legal studies.
But throughout all his pontificate, Gregory failed not to scan with anxiety the movements of the Saracens, and he is credited with having sent tokens of encouragement to the Frankish leaders who were stemming their advance in Gaul.
Probably, however, it was done by GregoryII about the year 727; though perhaps it is not quite equally probable that the two famous condemnatory letters which GregoryII is said to have sent to Leo III are genuine.
But when later Greek historians asserted that Gregory "separated Rome and Italy and the whole West from political and ecclesiastical subjection" to the Byzantine Empire, they are simply exaggerating his opposition to the emperor's illegal taxes, and Iconoclastic edicts.
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