Saint Gregory III

Gregory, a Syrian priest, was chosen by acclamation at his predecessor's funeral and consecrated five weeks later, after asking the exarch's leave; he was the last pope to ask. He took up Gregory II's quarrel over images and made it formal. A Roman synod of ninety-three bishops in November 731 excommunicated anyone who destroyed or dishonored images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, and sent the decree east with an envoy the emperor's officers arrested in Sicily. Leo III's answer was material: a fleet, which sank in the Adriatic; higher taxes on Sicily and Calabria; the confiscation of the Roman church's estates there, worth some three hundred and fifty pounds of gold a year; and the transfer of Sicily, southern Italy, and the Balkans to the patriarch of Constantinople's jurisdiction. Rome's income from the East, and its authority there, were gone.

The Lombards forced the reign's last decision. Liutprand attacked the duchy of Rome in 739, seized four towns, and camped in the Campagna. Gregory allied with the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento against their king, then did what no pope had done: he sent two embassies, in 739 and 740, to Charles Martel, the victor of Tours, with the keys of Saint Peter's tomb and a plea to defend "the church of God and its own people" from the Lombards. Charles, allied with Liutprand against the Arabs, sent gifts and declined.

He died on 28 November 741, a month after Charles, and was buried in his oratory in Saint Peter's. The appeal had failed and the precedent was set; Stephen II would make it to a different Frank and succeed.