Gregory III

   Pope (q.v.) from 731-741 who inherited the dispute with Leo III over Iconoclasm (qq.v.). At a synod in Rome (q.v.) in 731, he denounced Iconoclasm and excommunicated the subservient patriarch Anastasios (qq.v.). In response, Leo III sent an armed fleet to Italy (q.v.), but the fleet was wrecked in a storm. Unable to enforce compliance, Leo III then diverted revenues from papal properties in Sicily and Calabria (qq.v.) to the imperial treasury, effectively ending papal jurisdiction over these papal patrimonies. He may have also transferred these ecclesiastical dioceses, as well as that of Illyricum (qq.v.), from papal authority to the patriarch of Constantinople (qq.v.). In effect, this made it impossible for the papacy (q.v.) to gain Byzantine help against the Lombards (q.v.). In 739, and again in 740, Gregory III appealed to Charles Martel, leader of the Franks (q.v.), for help against the Lombards. When Gregory died in 741, the Lombards were at the gates of Rome (q.v.), and the papal-Byzantine tie seemed stretched to the breaking point.