From The Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Accession of Gregory VII. Written Originally in Latin by B. Platina, Native of Cremona, and translated into English (from an anonymous translation, first printed in 1685 by Sir Paul Rycaut), Edited by William Benham, Volume I, London: Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, [1888, undated in text]; pp. 173-175.
The Lives of the Popes,
BY
B. Platina
Volume I.
JOHN VII.
A.D. 705-707.
JOHN the Seventh, a Grecian, son of Plato, entered upon the pontificate at the time when Justinian, being returned to Constantinople, caused Tiberius and Leontius, by whom he had been deposed, to be publicly put to death. Many 174 of his enemies he cut off by sundry kinds of death, and many he imprisoned; some one or other of which he would every day order to be killed, when the wiping of his nose put him in mind of the injury that had been done him. Moreover, having caused the eyes of Callinicus, the patriarch of Constantinople, to be put out, he banished him to Rome, and made Cyrus an abbot, who had maintained him in Pontus, patriarch in his stead. Being acted by the same foolish humour as he had been before his loss of the Empire in the time of Pope Sergius, he sends to Rome two metropolitans, to persuade Pope John to hold a synod, wherein they of the Western Church might confirm the truth of what those of the East believed concerning the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, sending to him the articles to which he would have him subscribe. The Pope sends the men back to the emperor without doing anything in the matter; but yet he did not by his censures and interdicts correct the erroneous opinions concerning God, as it was fit he should, and as it would have become a steady and resolute Pope to have done. Some write, though without good authority, that Arithpertus, King of the Lombards, from a religious principle, gave the Cottian Alps, and all the tract that reaches from Piedmont to the coast of Genoa, to the Church of Rome. Others say that this donation was only confirmed by Arithpertus. But since there is no certainty concerning the donation itself, and the lawyers call it the chaff, because it yields no corn, and it appears in no respect to have been the gift of Constantine, how can there by any evidence of its confirmation? I return to Pope John, a person who spake and lived very well, and who built an oratory in the church of St Peter, in honour to the Blessed Virgin, upon the walls of which, on each hand, were wrought in mosaic work the effigies of several of the holy fathers. Moreover, he repaired the church of St Eugenia, which had long before been decayed through age. He adorned also the cemeteries of the martyrs, Marcellinus and Marcus, and Pope Damasus. Finally, he beautified divers other churches with the pictures and statues of the saints, wherein the painters and statuaries had so well imitated the gravity and majesty of his own aspect, that whosoever looked upon them thought he saw the Pope himself. Having been in the chair two years, seven months, seventeen days, he died, and was buried October the 18th, in the 175 church of St Peter, before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, which himself had built. The see was then vacant three months.
Previous Pope: 87. John VII. 88. John VII. Next Pope: 89. Sisinnius.