c. 610 - 11 April 678
Bishop of Rome in the years before the Sixth Ecumenical Council, who restored the churches of the city and received the submission of the see of Ravenna to Rome.
Our Father among the Saints Donus, Bishop of Rome
Donus was Bishop of Rome from 2 November 676 until his death on 11 April 678, in the years before the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Born in Rome around 610 to a Roman named Mauricius, he was already elderly at his election, succeeding Adeodatus II and preceding Agatho (commemorated in this database as St. Agathon of Rome, OS-0700).
His short pontificate of roughly one year, five months, and ten days was marked by the physical restoration of the city's churches, the enlargement of the Roman clergy, and the return of the see of Ravenna to the obedience of Rome after a period of attempted independence.
Emperor Constantine IV addressed him as 'the most holy and blessed archbishop of our ancient Rome and the universal pope,' a mark of the cordial relations between Rome and Constantinople on the eve of the council that would condemn Monothelitism.
Donus devoted much of his brief tenure to the physical care of Rome's churches. He had the atrium before Old St. Peter's Basilica paved with white marble blocks, restored the Church of St. Euphemia on the Appian Way, and repaired the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
He also enlarged the clergy of the city, appointing twelve new priests and five deacons and consecrating six bishops for various dioceses.
During Donus's pontificate, Archbishop Reparatus of Ravenna returned to the obedience of the Holy See, ending the schism initiated by his predecessor Maurus, who had sought to make Ravenna autocephalous and independent of Rome.
Donus restored the name of Pope Vitalianus to the diptychs of communion, a step that created tension with Patriarch Theodore I of Constantinople and with Monothelite opponents, in the period leading up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
He discovered a colony of Nestorian monks at the Monasterium Boetianum in Rome and dispersed them among the other religious houses of the city, redistributing the monastery to Roman monks to reinforce Chalcedonian orthodoxy.
Donus was buried in Old St. Peter's Basilica on the day of his death. A mosaic portrait of him was once displayed in the church of St. Martina in the Roman Forum.
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