La committenza di Papa Giovanni VII a Roma. Interventi, messaggi, ideologie

Abstract

Pope John VII reigned from 705-707 CE. During these two years, he commissioned a series of monuments and decorative
cycles which are noteworthy both for their thematic coherence, and sheer number in an age when such initiatives were
sparse. This article explores the contrast between this impressive series of works and the description of him by the
author of the Liber pontificalis as a man ‘shy because of his own fragilities’ in thrall to the Byzantine emperor. It is
actually possible to identify a sophisticated political programme behind the Pope’s initiatives. On the one hand, they
display his formal respect for the emperor in a blatant manner. On the other hand, they reaffirm the pope’s autonomy
through their artistic language, firstly creating a link to the popes of the past who opposed Byzantine interference and
strongly supported papal primacy, secondly, adopting iconography with imperial connotations, and finally, investing
his own image with a sacred aura backed up by his special relationship with the Virgin Mary. It is clear that John VII
sought to place himself on an equal footing with Constantinople, in order to consolidate his own position and to work
on building a more autonomous role for the papacy. This was a wide-ranging political project, built on compromises,
which could not be completed in John’s brief pontificate, but whose traces can be seen in his extraordinary decorative
cycles.