Pope Sabinian

Pope Sabinian
Papacy began	13 September 604
Papacy ended	22 February 606
Predecessor	Gregory I
Successor	Boniface III
Personal details
Born	??? Blera, Byzantine Empire
Died	(606-02-22)22 February 606 Rome, Byzantine Empire

Pope Sabinian (died 22 February 606) was pope from 604 to 606. He was born at Blera (Bieda) near Viterbo. Pope during the Byzantine Papacy, he was fourth former apocrisiarius to Constantinople elected pope.

Apokrisiariat (?–597)

Main article: Apocrisiarius

He had been sent by Pope Gregory I as Apostolic nuncio, to Constantinople, but he apparently was not entirely satisfactory in that office. He returned to Rome in 597.

Papacy (604–606)

He was probably consecrated pope on 13 September 604.

He incurred unpopularity by his unseasonable economies, although the Liber Pontificalis states that he distributed grain during a famine at Rome under his pontificate. The erudite Italian Augustinian Onofrio Panvinio (1529–1568), in his Epitome pontificum Romanorum (Venice, 1557), attributes to him the introduction of the custom of ringing bells at the canonical hours and the celebration of the Eucharist. The first attribution was this was in Guillaume Durand's thirteenth-century Rationale Divinorum Officiorum.

During his reign, Sabinian was seen as a counterfoil to his predecessor Pope Gregory I. Whereas Gregory distributed grain to the Roman populace as invasion loomed, Sabinian sold it for high prices (though this may be a later interpolation by Gregory's biographers). The Liber Pontificalis praises him for "filling the church with clergy," in contrast to Gregory, who rose rapidly from simple monk to bishop of Rome.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

• "Pope Sabinian" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
• Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 2001, p. 72–73. ISBN 0-300-09165-6
• Ekonomou, Andrew J. 2007. Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern influences on Rome and the papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590–752. Lexington Books.
• Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy from St. Peter to the Present, Thames & Hudson, 2002, p. 54. ISBN 0-500-01798-0.