Gregory II was a Roman who succeeded Constantine I in 715 and reigned through one of the great crises of the medieval papacy. He commissioned the Anglo-Saxon missionary Wynfrith (Boniface) to evangelize Germany in 719, conferring on him the new name Boniface and consecrating him bishop of all the German lands in 722. Through this mission he is one of the founders of medieval German Christianity.
He vigorously opposed the iconoclast policy of the Emperor Leo III. His two letters to Leo — the first preserved in Greek — are among the great patristic defenses of sacred images. He led the resistance of Italy to the imperial taxation imposed to fund iconoclasm and refused to enforce the imperial edicts.
He died in Rome on February 11, 731 — the only pope between Vitalian (672) and Leo IX (1054) explicitly named in the Eastern Churches' calendar with his Roman feast preserved.