Adeodatus II

Adeodatus was a monk of the monastery of Saint Erasmus on the Caelian hill, a Roman and the son of a man named Jovinian, and he was consecrated on 11 April 672 after a vacancy of two and a half months, which for the seventh century was quick. The Liber Pontificalis, which is nearly the only source, says he was generous and kind, that he raised the clergy's stipends, and that he rebuilt and enlarged his old monastery; Rome's monasteries were by then the seedbed of its clergy, and a monk-pope who favored monks was no longer a controversy.

Of the great quarrel he did almost nothing, which was itself a position. The patriarch Constantine of Constantinople sent him the customary synodical letter on taking office in 675, phrased to avoid the question of Christ's wills; Adeodatus did not reply, and the patriarch's successor complained of the silence. He confirmed the privileges of the abbey of Saint Martin at Tours and of Saint Peter's at Canterbury, which the English and Frankish houses valued enough to preserve.

He died on 17 June 676 and was buried in Saint Peter's. His reign fell in the calm between Constans II's death and the council that would settle the Monothelite question, and he seems to have been content to let the calm last.