BENEDICT II, POPE, ST.

Pontificate: June 26, 684 to May 8, 685. He was elected soon after the death of Pope leo ii (July 3, 683), but because of delay in obtaining imperial confirmation, he was not consecrated until June 684. A Roman, he was trained in the urban schola cantorum and ordained to its priesthood. Two letters antedating his consecration designate him electus. Good relations between Emperor constantine iv Pogonatus and Benedict are reflected in the former's sending the pope locks of his son's hair and in his remitting the mandate that papal elections be imperially ratified, though the exarch at ravenna still had to be notified. (The new procedures for installing a pope are recorded in the Roman liber diurnus, form. 82–85). Benedict's directive of 683–684 that wilfrid of york be restored to the See of york, of which he had been deprived in 677, was partially honored in 686. Benedict's support of the acts of the Third Council of constantino ple was manifest in his futile effort to secure the recantation of monotheletism by Macarius, the deposed (since March 681) patriarch of Antioch and in his dispatching the notary, Peter, to Spain to secure its hierarchy's adherence to the acts of the Council. In November 684 the Council of toledo xiv endorsed the anti-Monothelite decrees of Constantinople III, but the pope objected to two expressions in the Apologia forwarded by Abp. ju lian of toledo.

Feast: May 7.

Bibliography: Liber pontificalis, ed. l. duchesne (Paris 1886–1958) 1:363–365; 3:96. p. jaffÉ, Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum 1198 (Graz 1959) 1:241242; 2:699. f. dÖlger, Corpus der griechischen Urkunden des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit (Munich 1924–32) 252. j. d. mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Graz 1960) 11:1086–92; 12:10–12, 1035. h. k. mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages from 590 to 1304 (London 1902–32) 1.2:54–63. f. baix, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912) 8:9–14. o. bertolini, Roma di fronte a Bisanzioe ai Longobardi (Bologna 1941). e. caspar, Geschichte de Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der Weltherrschaft (Tubingen 1930–33) 2:614–619, 673–676, 782–785. j. n. d. kelly, Oxford Dictionary of Popes (New York 1986) 79–80.

[h. g. j. beck]