Zacharias (Pope)

Zacharias, depiction in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls

Zacharias ( Middle Greek Ζαχαρίας του Πολυχρόνιου , Zacharias tou Polychroniou ; † March 752 in Rome ) was Pope of the Catholic Church from 741 to 752.

Life

The Vita in the Liber Pontificalis mentions the name of his father, Polychronios, and his membership of the Greek population group. The place and time of his birth are unknown; if the family did not belong to the Greek population of Rome, an origin from the Greek settlement areas of southern Italy would also come into question.

Probably on December 10, 741 he was succeeded Gregory III. consecrated to which he was closely related. He was the last Greek on Petri's chair . His knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages enabled him to translate the Dialogi of Gregory the Great into Greek. He donated his private collection of liturgical books to St. Peter's Church.

The region owed a relatively peaceful time to his diplomatic skills with the Lombard kings . In 751 he legitimized the deposition of the last Merovingian king Childerich III. by the Carolingian Pippin III.

Under his pontificate put in 745 a council found that only the biblical testified Archangel Raphael , Michael and Gabriel as Archangel should be worshiped, but not the only apocryphal testified Uriel . In the year 751 Pope Zacharias had the consumption of rabbit meat forbidden. At that time, the brown hare was seen as a symbol of fertility because of its extremely lively mating instinct and its multiple offspring , and the church leaders therefore regarded the consumption of hares as a moral and moral hazard.

The improvement of the economic foundations of the Roman church enabled him to undertake various construction work on Roman palaces and churches. In the Lateran Palace , the seat of the papal administration, he had a ceremonial hall and a tower with bronze doors built. The Diakoniekirche Santa Maria Antiqua , which had already been adorned with frescoes by one of his predecessors, John VII , also from Greece , was further embellished: there is also a contemporary fresco with his portrait.

His feast day is celebrated in the Catholic Church on March 15th, the day of his death.

literature

Hubert Mordek : Zacharias, Pope (St.) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 9, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89659-909-7 , Sp. 435 f. without specifying a year of birth.
Paolo Delogu : Zaccaria. In: Massimo Bray (ed.): Enciclopedia dei Papi. Volume 1: Pietro, santo. Anastasio bibliotecario, antipapa. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2000 ( treccani.it ) without specifying the year of birth, possibly originating from a Greek family in Rome.
Giorgio S. Marcou: Zaccaria (679-752): l'ultimo papa greco nella storia di Roma altomedievale. In: Studi in onore di Pietro Agostino d'Avack. Vol. 2, Rome 1976, pp. 1017-1045.
Ottorino Bertolini : I rapporti di Zaccaria con Costantino V e con Artavasdo. In: Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria. (ASRSP) No. 78, 1955, pp. 1-21.

Web links

Commons : Zacharias - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

↑ Delogu is inclined to an urban Roman origin, Mordek writes "from southern Italy?"
↑ Delogu mentions December 3rd, Mordek does not commit himself, Erich Caspar speaks out in favor of December 10th.
↑ In the 18th century his translation was revised in the modern Greek, cf. Dimitrios Z. Nikitas: Gregorius Dialogus neograecus: the modern Greek further processing of the Zacharias translation by Constantine Dapontes (1780) . In: Dorothea Walz (Ed.): Scripturus vitam. Latin biography from ancient times to the present. Festival ceremony for Walter Berschin on his 65th birthday . Heidelberg 2002, pp. 1173-1184. In the Orthodox churches, Pope Gregory I is known as Gregorios ho Dialogos .
↑ Schott, S .: Art. 'Hase'. In: Heinrich Beck u. a. (Ed.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Vol. 14, Berlin and New York 1999, pp. 28–32, here: p. 31. ( Article available via google books ). Birgit Gehrisch: "Lepusculus Domini, Erotic Hare, Meister Lampe" - On the role of the rabbit in cultural history . Dissertation 2005, p. 105 ( PDF ; 39.8 MB)

predecessor	Office	successor
Gregory III.	Pope 741-752	Stephan (II.)

personal data
SURNAME	Zacharias
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Πάπας Ζαχαρίας; Ζαχαρίας του Πολυχρόνιου (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Pope (741-752)
DATE OF BIRTH	7th century
DATE OF DEATH	March 15, 752
Place of death	Rome

[1] Delogu is inclined to an urban Roman origin, Mordek writes "from southern Italy?"

[2] Delogu mentions December 3rd, Mordek does not commit himself, Erich Caspar speaks out in favor of December 10th.

[3] In the 18th century his translation was revised in the modern Greek, cf. Dimitrios Z. Nikitas: Gregorius Dialogus neograecus: the modern Greek further processing of the Zacharias translation by Constantine Dapontes (1780) . In: Dorothea Walz (Ed.): Scripturus vitam. Latin biography from ancient times to the present. Festival ceremony for Walter Berschin on his 65th birthday . Heidelberg 2002, pp. 1173-1184. In the Orthodox churches, Pope Gregory I is known as Gregorios ho Dialogos .

[4] Schott, S .: Art. 'Hase'. In: Heinrich Beck u. a. (Ed.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Vol. 14, Berlin and New York 1999, pp. 28–32, here: p. 31. ( Article available via google books ). Birgit Gehrisch: "Lepusculus Domini, Erotic Hare, Meister Lampe" - On the role of the rabbit in cultural history . Dissertation 2005, p. 105 ( PDF ; 39.8 MB)