Pope Adeodatus II (672-676)

A discreet pope, placed at a historical junction

Adeodatus II is not a great narrative figure. His importance comes from his position. He receives the Roman Church after Vitalian — who died on January 27, 672, Adeodatus being consecrated on April 11 — and hands it on to Donus, then to Agatho, at the moment when Constantine IV prepares to lead the Empire out of the Monothelite deadlock.^[5][6]

The paradox is striking: the pope who immediately precedes the Sixth Ecumenical Council plays, according to our sources, no directly visible role in the final liquidation of Monothelitism. Britannica even notes that he played no known role in the political events of the time (« no known role »), while defending orthodoxy on the question.^[7]

This withdrawal is not necessarily a weakness. Rome was emerging from a traumatic generation: the Ecthesis, the exposition of faith imposed by Heraclius in 638 which admitted only one will in Christ; the Typos, the edict by which Constans II in 648 forbade all discussion of the wills and operations of Christ; the condemnation of the Ecthesis at the Roman council of the Lateran in 649; then, within an imperial framework that remained oppressive — marked notably by the autocephaly that Emperor Constans II had granted to the Church of Ravenna around 666, removing it from the jurisdiction of Rome until its revocation under Leo II (682-683)^[8] —, the pontificates of Eugene I and Vitalian, whose line Adeodatus followed according to Treccani.^[9][10] In this context, a pontificate that holds the anti-Monothelite line, protects monasteries and repairs shrines belongs to Catholic continuity.

The monk-pope of Saint Erasmus

Adeodatus II is one of the popes explicitly coming from a monastic background. New Advent presents him as a monk of the Roman cloister of Saint Erasmus on the Caelian Hill.^[11] The Liber Pontificalis adds that this monastery is the place where the most holy man seems to have grown up or been formed.^[12]

Treccani nuances this information with precision. The same notice of the Liber Pontificalis then says that Adeodatus instituted an abbot and a congregation in this monastery. It must therefore be understood either that an old community, perhaps Greek, had disappeared and that he restored it; or that Saint Erasmus was raised by him from a simple religious establishment to a true organized monastery with an abbot and a community.^[13]

This nuance matters: it prevents writing an overconfident biography from an obscure sentence. The solid fact is that Saint Erasmus on the Caelian is the center of his personal and pastoral memory.

A pope of monastic protection

The only two pontifical acts known through Treccani are monastic acts: a privilege of confirmation for the monastery of Saint Peter at Canterbury, requested by Abbot Hadrian, and a privilege of exemption for the monastery of Saint Martin of Tours, transmitted in two discordant versions.^[14]

This gives the pontificate its character. Adeodatus does not found a great canonical system; he protects specific religious houses. Canterbury is linked to the English mission that Vitalian had relaunched through Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian. Tours is linked to the memory of Saint Martin, a great monastic and liturgical center of Gaul.^[15][16]

Table of witnesses

The Holy See and the dates

The current file of the Holy See (« Adeodatus II » page) presents him as « 77th Pope of the Catholic Church » — 77th pope of the Catholic Church —, born in Rome (« Birth Rome »), with « Beginning Pontificate 11.IV.672 » and « End Pontificate 16.VI.676 ».^[17] Treccani likewise gives his death on June 16, 676 (« Morì il 16 giugno 676 »).^[18] The reckoning of the Liber supports this date: starting from the consecration of April 11, 672, four years, two months and five days lead exactly to June 16, 676. The Liber Pontificalis gives « sedit ann. IIII mens. II dies V » — four years, two months and five days (LP 79, § 1) — and places the burial « sub die VI kal. Iulias », that is June 26 according to the Roman reckoning, at Saint Peter's; the Byzantine prosopography confirms the burial at Saint Peter's on June 26, 676.^[19][20][21]

New Advent simply summarizes the reign as 672-676.^[22] But Britannica, McClintock-Strong, the Fontistoriche file and the Byzantine prosopography give the death on June 17, 676.^[23][24][25] McClintock-Strong also gives a duration of four years, two months and six days, against five in the Liber.^[26] June 16 nevertheless holds: besides the Holy See and Treccani, it is the date given by the internal reckoning of the Liber itself — four years, two months and five days from April 11, 672 lead exactly to June 16, 676. The Byzantine prosopography illustrates the embarrassment of the secondary sources: it dates the death to June 17 while repeating the five-day duration of the Liber, which leads to the 16th.^[27] For this article, the infobox and the body therefore retain June 16, 676, the current official date of the Holy See, the usual variant of June 17 remaining noted here.

The Liber Pontificalis: the principal narrative source

The notice of the Liber Pontificalis is brief but rich. It presents Adeodatus as a Roman, son of Jovinian (the text reads « de patre Iobiano »), coming from the monks, then dwells on his virtues: gentleness, benevolence, universal welcome, compassion toward pilgrims and strangers, improvement of the roga.^[28]

It then recounts the Sicilian events connected with Mezezius, the Saracen raid against Syracuse, the restoration of the church of Saint Peter on the Via Portuensis, the works at Saint Erasmus on the Caelian, the extraordinary rains and thunder after his death, the daily litanies, then the ordinations: fourteen priests, two deacons and forty-six bishops.^{[29][30][31][32][33]}

"He restored and dedicated, as was fitting, the church of blessed Peter which stands on the Via Portuensis, near the Meruli bridge." « Hic ecclesiam beati Petri qui est via Portuense, iuxta ponte Meruli, ut decuit restauravit atque dedicavit. » — Liber Pontificalis, 79, § 4 (éd. Duchesne, t. I, p. 346-347)^[34]

Treccani: a short but critical biography

The notice by Girolamo Arnaldi in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani is particularly useful because it refuses simplifications. It recalls that Adeodatus was Roman, son of Jovinian, of monastic background, and that his link with Saint Erasmus calls for a careful reading: the pope is said to have grown up there, but also to have instituted an abbot and a congregation there.^[35]

Treccani also confirms his anti-Monothelite firmness. Adeodatus, regulating his conduct like his predecessors, rejects the synodical letter of Patriarch Constantine I of Constantinople, who became patriarch on September 2, 675. In retaliation, his name was not inscribed in the diptychs of the Church of Constantinople.^[36]

Roman, son of Jovinian

The Liber Pontificalis says simply: "Adeodatus, natione Romanus, ex monachis, de patre Iobiano".^[37] This formula gives the three certain elements: Rome, the filiation Jovinian (the « Iobiano » form of the text, normalized as Iovinianus in modern notices), the monastic world.

It does not give his date of birth. The date around 621, often repeated in modern syntheses, comes from secondary reconstructions; it must carry no more weight than the ancient sources give it. The article can therefore affirm his Roman origin, but not reconstruct his youth in detail.

Saint Erasmus on the Caelian Hill

The monastery of Saint Erasmus on the Caelian stood in a Roman quarter laden with Christian and monastic history. The Liber Pontificalis states that Adeodatus had grown up or matured there, then that he built new buildings there, acquired casalia, that is, rural estates (farms and lands), and instituted during his lifetime an abbot and a congregation.^[38]

Treccani notes that an old Greek inscription, now lost but known through transcriptions, attributed rural funds to the monastery. The identification of these funds with the casalia given by Adeodatus is plausible, but not proven with certainty.^[39]

This detail reveals a Rome still deeply Mediterranean. A Roman pope, in a monastery probably marked by Greek presences, governs at the moment when the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, Syracuse, Ravenna, Canterbury and Tours intersect in the same years.

After the death of Vitalian

Vitalian died on January 27, 672.^[40] Adeodatus was consecrated on April 11. The interval of more than two months remains typical of the Byzantine era of the papacy: the Roman election had to reckon with imperial or exarchal confirmation.

Treccani gives both endpoints — Vitalian died on January 27, 672, Adeodatus consecrated on April 11^[41] — an interval of more than two months, an ordinary delay when the Roman election had to reckon with imperial confirmation. The imperial context is complex: Constantine IV had just effectively succeeded Constans II, assassinated at Syracuse in 668, and still had to stabilize the Empire after the Sicilian usurpation of Mezezius.^[42]

A papacy still within the Byzantine framework

Adeodatus was not an independent sovereign. Like his immediate predecessors, he lived in a Rome still inscribed within the Eastern Empire. The exarchate of Ravenna, the troops of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Byzantine Africa and Constantinople still appear in the pontifical notice.^[43]

This political dependence does not contradict Roman spiritual primacy; it shows its historical condition. The pope is the successor of Peter, but he must govern in a city where public order still depends on imperial channels.

The crisis inherited from his predecessors

Monothelitism taught, in various forms, that Christ had only one will. Rome had already refused this reduction because it threatened the integrity of the humanity assumed by the Word. If Christ has no true human will, he does not fully assume our nature; and if that nature is not fully assumed, it is not fully healed.^[44]

Adeodatus receives this crisis after a long chain: Popes Severinus and John IV refuse the Ecthesis, Maximus the Confessor raises opposition in Africa and Italy, Martin I condemns the Ecthesis at the Lateran of 649, and his successors maintain the Roman doctrine down to Vitalian, whose line Adeodatus follows.^[45][46]

The rejection of the synodical letter of Constantine I

Treccani gives the clearest doctrinal fact of the pontificate: Adeodatus rejects the synodical letter of Patriarch Constantine I — the official letter by which a newly elected patriarch sets out his faith and requests communion —, raised to the see of Constantinople on September 2, 675. The consequence is diplomatically grave: in retaliation, the pope's name was not inscribed in the diptychs of Constantinople.^[47]

The diptychs are no decorative detail. To be named in the liturgical diptychs means public communion. Vitalian had obtained this inscription as a sign of détente. Adeodatus, for his part, accepts the symbolic rupture rather than receive an insufficient doctrinal formula.

"He maintained a line of intransigence toward Monothelitism." — Treccani, notice of Adeodatus II^[48]

A fidelity without visible victory

Adeodatus did not live to see the definition of Constantinople III. He died in 676; the council did not meet until 680-681.^[49] But his rejection of the synodical letter prepared the ground by keeping Rome on the same line as Martin, Eugene and soon Agatho.

The spiritual point is simple: not every fidelity receives its victory in its own lifetime. Adeodatus kept the Roman confession in a period when the Empire was still seeking a political way out of a doctrinal crisis. Agatho and Leo II would reap what this continuity had preserved.

The Sicilian usurpation

The Liber Pontificalis (LP 79, § 2) — our only detailed narrative source — reports that in the time of Adeodatus, Mezezius was in Sicily with the Eastern army, usurped power and seized the rule. The army of Italy — one corps embarked in Istria, another in Campania —, joined by troops from Sardinia and Africa, then converged on Syracuse; with God's help, Mezezius was killed, and several of his judges were mutilated and led to Constantinople with his head.^[50]

The episode belongs to the direct aftermath of the assassination of Constans II at Syracuse in 668.^[51] The Byzantine tradition (Theophanes the Confessor) gives a divergent version: Constantine IV himself led an expedition to Sicily and had Mezezius executed, while the Liber attributes the repression to the loyalist troops of Italy and Africa and the sending of the head to Constantinople.^[52] The political meaning remains clear in both cases: the imperial West became, for a few months, a possible center of rupture from Constantinopolitan power.

The Saracens at Syracuse

The pontifical notice (LP 79, § 3) places under Adeodatus the coming of the Saracens to Sicily: they occupied Syracuse, killed many inhabitants who had taken refuge in camps or mountains, then carried off a very great booty and the bronze that had come from Rome, before returning to Alexandria.^[53] But the Catholic Encyclopedia (art. « Sicily ») dates this Saracen attempt to 669, just after the assassination of Constans II at Syracuse — that is, before the pontificate of Adeodatus (672-676).^[54] There is thus a discrepancy: the Liber attaches to the memory of Adeodatus a raid which external dating places three years before his accession.

This passage remains remarkable: it is through it that the first great Arab-Muslim pressure on Byzantine Sicily enters pontifical memory. For Rome, the event also carries a material memory: according to the Liber, part of the bronze that had come from Rome ended up at Syracuse, then in the booty carried off toward Alexandria.^[55]

Saint Peter on the Via Portuensis

The Liber Pontificalis attributes to Adeodatus the restoration and dedication of the church of blessed Peter on the Via Portuensis, near the Meruli bridge.^[56] This shrine lacks the fame of the Vatican basilica, but it shows the ordinary work of the 7th-century popes: repairing, dedicating, maintaining places of worship in a weakened Rome.

This gesture connects with the neighboring articles on Boniface IV, Deusdedit, Boniface V, Honorius I and Vitalian: the popes of this period do not govern only through doctrinal letters. They rebuild churches, maintain basilicas, ensure distributions to the clergy and give the city a liturgical framework.

Saint Erasmus enlarged and organized

The second building site is more personal. Adeodatus added many buildings to the monastery of Saint Erasmus on the Caelian, acquired casalia, then instituted an abbot and a congregation there.^[57] This is the most intimate gesture of his pontificate: the pope returns to the place of his formation or monastic memory to give it lasting stability.

This action helps explain why New Advent speaks of perfecting monastic discipline.^[58] Discipline here is not a moral abstraction. It becomes buildings, an abbot, a community, rural revenues, pontifical protection and insertion into Roman memory.

The roga of the clergy

The notice also says that Adeodatus increased the roga for all.^[59] In the pontifical notices, the roga designates an ecclesiastical distribution or remuneration. This detail matches his portrait as a welcoming pastor and the material situation of the Roman clergy.

A 7th-century pope had to care for priests, deacons, clerics, the poor, pilgrims and monasteries. Institutional charity is not opposed to doctrine; it is one of its concrete forms, especially in a city that had suffered famines, wars, fiscal pressures, earthquakes, diseases and spoliations.

Saint Peter at Canterbury

Treccani states that one of the only two known acts of the pontificate is a privilege of confirmation for the monastery of Saint Peter at Canterbury, requested by Abbot Hadrian.^[60] Hadrian is no unknown figure: chosen with Theodore of Tarsus under Vitalian — Theodore consecrated at Rome in 668, arrived at Canterbury in 669 —, he became abbot of Saint Peter at Canterbury, a great scholarly and monastic figure.^[61][62]

This privilege links Adeodatus to the Roman expansion in England. Vitalian had sent the men; Adeodatus juridically confirms a monastic house where their work bears fruit. The passage from one pope to the next manifests missionary continuity.

Saint Martin of Tours

The second known act is a privilege of exemption for the monastery of Saint Martin of Tours. Treccani specifies that the text is preserved in two discordant versions.^[63] Sobriety is therefore required: the act matters for the history of monastic exemptions, but its textual record demands caution.

New Advent summarizes more broadly that only the letters concerning the abbeys of Saint Peter at Canterbury and Saint Martin of Tours have been preserved.^[64] For a pontificate whose documentation is very poor, these two traces are precious: they show a papacy attentive to monasteries beyond Italy.

Extreme meteorological phenomena

The Liber Pontificalis reports that after the death of Adeodatus, there were rains and thunder of such violence that no human generation retained their memory. Men and beasts perished, struck by lightning.^[65]

The notice adds that the daily litanies obtained the Lord's mercy, allowing men to thresh the grain and bring it into the barns. The rains were so abundant that vegetables grew again and reached maturity, which astonished men.^[66]

Reading these signs as a Roman memory

The article must not turn these phenomena into a modern weather chronicle. The Liber Pontificalis writes from a culture in which natural disasters, litanies and agricultural life are read within a religious grammar. The point is not to ridicule this reading, but to understand how Rome remembers a pontificate: after a gentle and restoring pope, the city prays its way through destructive rains.

"Had the Lord not been appeased by the litanies held each day, men could not have threshed the grain nor stored it in the barns." « Et nisi per letanias quas cotidie fiebant Dominus est propitiatus ut potuissent homines triturare vel in horreis frumenta recondere. » — Liber Pontificalis, 79, § 5 (éd. Duchesne, t. I, p. 346-347)^[67]

Fourteen priests, two deacons, forty-six bishops

The Liber — our only source on this point (LP 79, final §: « presbiteros XIIII, diaconos II, episcopos per diversa loca XLVI ») — attributes to Adeodatus an ordination in the month of December (« per mens. decem. »): fourteen priests, two deacons and forty-six bishops for various places.^[68] These figures are essential in an article on a brief and poorly documented pope.

They show that the pontificate was not motionless. Even without great preserved texts, Adeodatus maintained the apostolic succession, provided for the Churches and organized the Roman clergy.

Burial at Saint Peter's

Adeodatus was buried beside the blessed apostle Peter.^[69] This burial connects him to the strongest Roman continuity: a monk-pope, discreet, poorly documented, ends in the basilica that bears the memory of the first apostle.

After his death, the vacancy lasted four months and fifteen days according to the Liber (« cessavit episcopatus mens. IIII dies XV »).^[70] His successor, Donus, would govern briefly from 676 to 678, just before Agatho.^[71]

Adeodatus II, Deusdedit II or Adeodatus?

The name poses a difficulty of classification. The predecessor of 615-618 is called Deusdedit, but also Adeodatus I in some lists. Adeodatus II may therefore be named simply Adeodatus, Adeodatus II or Deusdedit II according to conventions.^[72][73]

He must be carefully distinguished from Pope Saint Deusdedit, who corresponds to Adeodatus I.

Should he be called a saint?

New Advent titles its notice "Pope St. Adeodatus", and some catalogues place him among the saints.^[74] But Treccani specifies that the Bollandists reject this tradition, and Britannica adds that some hagiographers give him the title of saint and a feast on June 26, while the Bollandists refuse to recognize a proper cult for him.^[75][76]

The most rigorous formulation is therefore: Adeodatus II is called a saint by some catalogues and old notices, but his liturgical cult is disputed by the Bollandists. The article must neither erase the hagiographical tradition, nor give it a solidity it lacks.

Gentleness as government

The nearest source dwells on his gentleness and benevolence. In a period when neighboring popes faced exiles, doctrinal controversies, emperors, exarchs, usurpers, raids and schisms, this emphasis is no weakness. It offers another figure of pontifical authority: receiving every man, from the greatest to the least.

The gentleness of Adeodatus is not softness, since he refuses the Monothelite synodical letter. It is rather a way of governing without hardening the heart. He can be welcoming toward persons and intransigent on the faith.

A monastic fidelity in the service of Peter

His legacy lies in this synthesis: monk of Saint Erasmus, pope of Saint Peter, protector of Canterbury and Tours, restorer of churches, anti-Monothelite guardian, pastor of the Roman clergy. The pontificate lacks the brilliance of a great conciliar victory, but it keeps the Church in the continuity needed for a victory to be possible.

• Pope Saint Vitalian — immediate predecessor, pope of cautious détente with Constantinople and of Theodore of Tarsus.
• Pope Saint Deusdedit — Adeodatus I, to be carefully distinguished from Adeodatus II.
• Pope Donus — successor of Adeodatus II, on the threshold of doctrinal reconciliation with Constantinople.
• Pope Saint Agatho — pope of Constantinople III, where the Monothelite question will be settled.
• Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) — definition of the two wills and two operations of Christ.
• The Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons — context of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus and Hadrian.