The ravages of the Lombards have rendered it very difficult to communicate with the emperor at Constantinople, who claims the privilege of confirming the election of the popes.

Hence there has been a vacancy of nearly eleven months between the death of John III and the arrival of the imperial confirmation of the election, on June 2, 575, of Pope Benedict, the son of a man named Boniface, called Bonosus by the Greeks.

One Gregory, born around 540 to a wealthy patrician family in Rome, had chosen to follow a public career.

At the age of 30 he had been named prefect of Rome but, unfulfilled by worldly success, had soon embraced a life of piety and contemplation.

He had become a monk in about 574 in one of the seven monasteries he had constructed with his own money, following the Rule of Saint Benedict, and has spent several years cloistered there until summoned around 578 by Pope Benedict to serve as cardinal deacon in Rome.

Famine had followed the devastation wrought by the Lombards, and from the few words the Liber Pontificalis has about Benedict, it appears that his death on July 30, 579, comes in the midst of his efforts to cope with these difficulties.

His successor, Pope Pelagius II, seemingly a native of Rome, is of Gothic descent, as his father's name was Winigild.

Pelagius makes Gregory permanent ambassador at the court of Emperor Tiberius in Constantinople.