GREGORY III, SAINT

born , Syria died November 741, ; feast day November 28 pope from 731 to 741. A priest when elected pope by acclamation, his pontificate was one of the most critical in papal history. He was immediately confronted with the Iconoclastic Controversy, begun when his predecessor St. Gregory II condemned the Byzantine emperor Leo III's destruction of religious images. Gregory denounced the Iconoclasts at a Roman council in 731. A comparatively peaceful period followed, during which he encouraged the Christianizing of the German tribes and appointed (732) St. Boniface, organizer of the Frankish church, as metropolitan of Germany. When in 739 the Lombards sacked the exarchate of Ravenna and threatened Rome, Gregory appealed to the Franks for aid. This unprecedented act began a relationship between the Franks and the Holy See that secured the papacy when Frankish power rose.