Pope Gregory III

Gregory III became bishop of Rome on 11 February 731, a Syrian in the chair at a time when Byzantine iconoclasm was tearing the church apart and Lombard armies were closing in on papal territory. His predecessor had faced the same twin crises; Gregory inherited them both. When neither diplomacy nor appeals to Byzantium could halt the Lombards, he invoked Charles Martel, the Frankish strongman — a pivot toward the west that would reshape the papacy's alliances for centuries, though in Gregory's own time it came to nothing. He died on 28 November 741, the last pope to wait for the Byzantine exar…