I

ST. GREGORY

 

St. Gregory the Great (540-604) admirably represents the Western Christianity which in the sixth century was clearly conscious of its own distinctive life. Legend threw its halo round the Pope, whose missionary zeal was kindled when he saw the angel-faced Angle boys exposed for sale by a Jew in the Roman market-place. It was said that he invented the solemn and pathetic 'Roman chant', and in the later Middle Ages artists delighted to paint the 'Mass of St. Gregory' at which our Lord appears in visible flesh at the altar. He remains a great man and a real saint without any need of these and other fables.

Born of a very wealthy and ancient family, he became about 573 prefect of the city of Rome, the highest layman in the city. Very soon afterwards he exchanged his glittering silken robes for the rough dress of a monk, and turned into a monastery his palace on the Caelian Hill. After three or four years as a happy monk he was ordained 'seventh deacon' of the Roman Church, and in 579 he was sent by Pope Pelagius II as apocrisiarius or nuncio to Constantinople. While there he learned no Greek, but he learned that the Eastern Empire, in spite of Justinian's great ambitions, was unable or unwilling to protect Italy from her invaders. He consoled himself by composing lectures on the Book of Job, lectures which blossomed into his Moralia, a work which remained for centuries a standard textbook of theology.

Gregory, on his return to Rome in 586, became abbot of his monastery, and in 590 was elected Pope, greatly to his own sorrow. His high ideal of a bishop's duty is shown to us in his famous treatise the Book of Pastoral Rule, which gained a position not inferior to that of the writings of St. Augustine. It is remarkable for the great emphasis which it lays upon preaching, and the necessity of appealing in different ways to different classes of hearers. Like St. Basil, he was a man of very feeble health, his digestion having been impaired by his excessive fasting and a vegetarian diet. But very few men have been able to bear so heavy a load of responsibility on their shoulders. In dealing with the Lombards, most of whom were still Arian, it was Gregory, and not the civil exarch, who represented Rome and its power of resistance.

Patriot and peace­maker, he had, as he lay on his death-bed, the satisfaction of trusting that he had saved the Eternal City from becoming the residence of a barbarous Lombard duke, and he knew that peace had not been won at the cost of honor. He was a first-rate landlord of the vast papal estates, building up the temporal as well as the spiritual power of the Papacy, and was as lavish in his charities as he was austere in his own manner of life. A monk among monks, he enforced a strict observance of wholesome discipline in the monasteries under his authority, and he forbade priests to cohabit with their wives, a prohibition which the Council of Nicaea had refused to make.

Near the close of 593 he published his Dialogues, a collection of edifying and even entertaining stories, showing that God is on the side of His Catholic worshippers. The miracles which are recorded show that Gregory in all good faith was ready to believe a good deal that was neither probable nor proved. But the stories form a very valuable series of illustrations of the social and religious life of the period. His letters, of which eight hundred and eighty still remain, testify to his immense activity and influence. He possessed all the skill of a Roman diplomat, and his praises of the bloodstained tyrant Phocas, and his flattering correspondence with Brunhild, the great Frankish queen who abjured Arianism, are difficult to excuse unless they were written in ignorance. Adulation was one of the faults of the intellectual people of his age.

But Gregory rose above his age when he protested against the persecution of the Jews and wrote “conversions wrought by force are never sincere”. As Pope he engaged in two notable controversies. The first was with the Emperor Maurice, who in an edict of 593 forbade any functionary or soldier to enter the clerical or the monastic order. Gregory was indignant; but, after a discussion which lasted for quite four years, it was agreed that no official should be received into a monastery until he was released from all obligations to the State, and no soldier without inquiry into his previous life and a novitiate of three years’ duration.

Gregory's second controversy was with the ascetic and ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople, John the Faster. The patriarch used to describe himself by the title of Ecumenical or Universal Patriarch, a title which, if it meant anything at all, might mean that all the Empire was under his spiritual authority, or that he was the first bishop in it. Orientals appear to have regarded the title as a mere flower of speech, but Gregory scented danger, and protested with eloquence and vigor. Like St. Augustine and St. Leo, he used to describe himself as “servus servorum Dei”, a title which in the ninth century became used exclusively by popes. The sincerity of his protest is proved by the fact that when the Patriarch of Alexandria addressed him as 'Universal Pope' and alluded to his 'commands', Gregory absolutely repudiated the title and said, “In position you are my brother, in character my father. I gave, therefore, no commands, but only endeavored to point out what I thought was desirable”.

The Roman patriarchate included the suburbicarian provinces, that is, roughly, all Italy south of Ancona, and with it the Italian islands. The bishops of these regions were ordained at Rome, though elected at home: in other sees the Pope had nothing to do with the election of new bishops, except at Ravenna, where the metropolitan was regarded as his suffragan. In the sixth century the great sees of Milan and Aquileia were for years outside the communion of the Church of Rome. But Gregory kept his eyes upon the whole Church. He regarded the 'Apostolic See', the See of Rome, as possessing an authority which extended over the whole of Christendom, an authority which left to every bishop his own jurisdiction while ensuring that he did not exceed it. He claimed a real primacy, but it was very far from that claimed by modern popes, who maintain that every Christian is under their immediate jurisdiction.

St. Gregory’s theological teaching was based partly upon a careful study of St. Augustine, and partly upon conceptions of angelology, demonology, and purgatory which hitherto had been popular but undefined. He was not an original thinker; but he was a great teacher, who consolidated the Western Catholicism of his time, shaping it by his own earnest and straightforward spirit.

His missionary zeal was as fruitful as his doctrine. He made strenuous efforts to uproot paganism in all directions, to banish Arianism from Spain, Donatism from Africa, and Manichaeism from Sicily. He wrote to Domitian, Bishop of Melitene and Metropolitan of Lesser Armenia, who had vainly endeavored to convert the Persian king, Chosroes. He tried to console that able prelate by suggesting that, in spite of his failure, he would gain a reward, for “the Ethiopian comes out of the bath as black as he went in, yet the bathman gets his pay”.

It had been Gregory’s desire before he became Pope to undertake in person the conversion of Britain. This was in some degree facilitated by his friendly relations with the Franks and the fact that Ethelbert, King of Kent, had married a Christian princess. But Gregory’s elevation to the papal chair made it impossible to carry out his original plan, and so he chose for the great task his friend, the prior of his own monastery on the Caelian Hill, Augustine. The slave boys whom he had bought in the market-place were not yet sufficiently trained to go back to England. But a group of monks was ready to accompany Augustine in the spring of 596, and together they left Rome by the Ostian Gate and started for the island, which the Saxon invaders had reduced to a wilderness. Arrived in Provence, the monks were terrified at the tales of Saxon ferocity which were poured into their ears, and they made Augustine return to Rome in order to procure their recall. Gregory, as might have been expected, sent Augustine back with a letter of affectionate encouragement to the wavering missionaries, and a batch of epistles directed to the royal and ecclesiastical personages who might be expected to help the travelers on their way through Gaul to Britain.

The beginning of the conversion of the English must be reckoned as one of the great achievements of St. Gregory. And to the English people it should be a source of perennial satisfaction that he was a real leader, teacher, and shepherd of souls.