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Pope GregoryⅡ: Loyal Subject or Drastic Revolutionary? Kyung-Koo Lee Pope GregoryⅡ was a typical revolutionary when we define a revolution as a daring attempt to explore ways toward epochal changes. In order to achieve his final object, Gregory extremely made a struggle against Byzantine Emperor LeoⅢ who tried to deprive him of his papal position and then at last to kill him. In this attitude, we can see his appearance as a bold revolutionary. When a serious conflict between the Pope and the Emperor broke owing to the problems of heavy taxes and iconoclasm, Gregory instigated Italians to make a overall resistance to the Byzantine Empire. The Pope was a prominent politician who could transmute the economic problem of taxation and the religious problem of iconoclasm into political issues. He made Italians realize that Italy is not a province of Byzantine Empire but an independent, autonomous community. His political leadership, that is, awoke Italians to their national consciousness. We can also see his attitude as a able revolutionary in that he concentrated on the energy of Italian people and used it to accomplish the ultimate aim of establishment of papal power in Italy. Based on the active support of Italians, GregoryⅡ made the Roman Church independent from the oppression of Byzantine Emperor. He became a true head of the Western Church because the Roman Church got out of the restraint of the Byzantine Church. As a natural consequence it follows that Caesaro-Papism of Byzantine Emperor began to lose its significance in reality. Thus, acting as a defender of the interest of Italians, Gregory gained their enthusiastic support and achieved his aim eventually. On that point, we can see an appearance of a revolutionary from him. GregoryⅡ also took an active hand in the political affair of Italy. He not only excluded the political intervention of Byzantines in Italy but also prevented Lombards from establishing a united kingdom in Italian peninsula. He proved himself an able politician using the papal power at one time and using the negotiation with his rivals at other times. By various means, he prevented one powerful force from grasping whole Italy, and then tried to hold himself the political scene of the peninsula eventually. He layed a firm foundation for turning the world order of the past centered on Byzantine Emperors into the new order centered on the Papacy. In short, he was an drastic revolutionary who opened a new chapter of the church history. (Chonbuk National University / kklee@jbnu.ac.kr)