Saint Gregory the Great (540-604)

A senatorial and holy family

Gregory was born in Rome around 540, into a patrician family belonging, according to tradition, to the gens Anicia, one of the most illustrious senatorial lineages of the City^[7]. His father, Gordian, was a wealthy landowner who held an office in the ecclesiastical administration; his mother, Silvia, and two of his paternal aunts, Tarsilla and Emiliana, would be honoured as saints^[8]. One of his ancestors is said to have been Pope Felix III^[9]. Gregory thus grew up in a household where Roman nobility and Christian piety were inseparable.

He received the best education possible in a Rome already half ruined by Justinian's Gothic wars: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, with solid foundations in law^[10]. This formation as a Roman aristocrat explains the extraordinary sureness with which he would later govern immense estates, dictate hundreds of letters and organize the defence of a city abandoned by the Empire.

The prefect of Rome turned monk

Around 573, while still very young, Gregory was appointed prefect of Rome (praefectus urbi), the highest civil office in the city^[11]. He was then at the summit of what the world can offer. But the collapse of the Roman order, the precariousness of everything, worked on him inwardly. On his father's death, he made a radical decision: he gave up his career, turned his family residence on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew, and founded six other monasteries on his Sicilian estates^[12][13].

“When pastoral care brings me back to the world, I remember what I lost in leaving the cloister; and the more I consider what I abandoned, the heavier the burden I bear becomes.” — after Saint Gregory, preface to the Dialogues^[14]

Around 574–575, he himself became a monk in this monastery of Saint Andrew^[15]. He would keep its nostalgia all his life: those few years of monastic life, of study of Scripture and of fasting — to the point of ruining his health — remained for him the memory of a lost happiness, the “harbour” from which pastoral office tore him away^[16].

The apocrisiarius in Constantinople

Pope Pelagius II did not leave Gregory in his cloister for long. He ordained him deacon of Rome (one of the seven regional deacons) and then sent him, around 579, as apocrisiarius — that is, nuncio, permanent ambassador of the Holy See — to the imperial court at Constantinople^[17]. His mission: to obtain from the emperor military relief against the Lombards ravaging Italy. On that point, the failure was almost complete: Byzantium, occupied with its own frontiers, would not send the hoped-for army^[18].

But those five or six years in the capital of the Empire formed the churchman. There Gregory learned Byzantine diplomacy, measured the limits of imperial power, and — a remarkable fact for a Latin pope — never really learned Greek there^[19]. It was also at Constantinople that he undertook, at the request of the brother monks who had come with him, the great commentary on the Book of Job, the future Moralia^[20][21]. There he publicly opposed Patriarch Eutychius, who maintained that risen bodies would be “subtler than air” and impalpable; Gregory defended, against this spiritualization, the resurrection of the real flesh, palpable, after the image of the risen Christ whom the apostles touched^[22].

The episode of the young Angles

Back in Rome around 585–586, Gregory became abbot of Saint Andrew again and counsellor to the pope. Tradition attaches to this period the famous episode of the slave market. Seeing boys with fair complexions and blond hair exposed for sale, Gregory asked where they came from. He was told they were Angles (Angli), pagans, come from Britain. Bede the Venerable records his answer, which became proverbial:

“Non Angli, sed angeli” — “Not Angles, but angels, for they have the faces of angels, and such men must become fellow heirs of the angels in heaven.”^[23]

The account, handed down by Bede the Venerable in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, adds that Gregory is said to have wanted to leave to evangelize England himself, but that the Roman people, refusing to let him go far away, obtained his recall from the pope^[24]. Whatever the share of golden legend, this missionary desire would become reality when Gregory, now pope, sent his own monks to accomplish what he himself had been unable to do.

A pope in spite of himself

In 590, an epidemic of plague ravaged Rome and carried off Pope Pelagius II. Clergy, senate and Roman people, with one voice, elected Gregory to succeed him^[25]. He refused with all his strength: he even wrote to Emperor Maurice begging him not to ratify the election, and tried, tradition says, to flee the city in disguise. Nothing worked: he was consecrated pope on 3 September 590^[26][27].

This resistance was no coquetry. Gregory was sincerely convinced that he was being torn from the only state in which he could save his soul. His whole Pastoral Rule, written shortly afterwards, was born of this heartbreak: in it he explains why he so dreaded the office, and why no one should covet it^[28][29].

The great litany and the end of the plague

Barely elected pope, in a city still decimated by contagion, Gregory organized an immense penitential procession — the litania septiformis, “litany in seven columns” — which crossed Rome entreating God to stop the scourge^[30]. Roman tradition, gathered later by James of Voragine in the Golden Legend, adds the most famous detail: atop the ancient mausoleum of Hadrian, Gregory is said to have seen the archangel Saint Michael sheathing his sword, a sign that divine wrath was appeased and the plague over. From this vision the monument takes its present name of Castel Sant'Angelo^[31].

Beyond the legend, the episode tells something true: from the very first day, Gregory behaved as the pastor of a terrified people, taking upon himself the public prayer, the penance and the hope of a city on the brink of annihilation.

Servus servorum Dei: a title as a programme

The title Gregory chose to designate himself has remained attached to the papacy: servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God”^[32]. As Benedict XVI stressed, in his case it is not “a pious formula”, but the exact expression of his way of living and governing, in imitation of Christ's abasement^[33]. The pope is not a lord above the other bishops: he is the last of the servants, accountable before God for every soul.

“The government of souls is the art of arts.” — Saint Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, I, 1^[34]

The patrimony of Saint Peter and the care of the poor

With the Empire failing, it was the Roman Church that had to feed, defend and administer the city. Gregory reorganized from top to bottom the patrimony of Saint Peter (patrimonium Petri) — the vast estates of the Church in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Gaul, as far as Africa — with the rigour of a former prefect^[35]. He made it an instrument in the service of the poor: distribution of wheat, ransoming of captives carried off by the Lombards, relief for refugees, care of the sick.

He kept a precise register of Rome's destitute and demanded that the poor be served before his own table. Tradition reports that one day, having learned that a beggar had died of hunger in a street of Rome, he deprived himself by way of penance of celebrating for several days, holding himself responsible for that death^[36]. This charity was not a supplement to his government: it was its heart.

Facing the Lombards: Agilulf and Queen Theodelinda

The great political peril of the pontificate remained the Lombards, a Germanic people partly Arian and pagan, threatening Rome itself. Where the Byzantine Empire showed itself incapable of defending Italy, Gregory took it upon himself to negotiate directly with the Lombard king Agilulf, going so far as to conclude a truce that spared the City — at the risk of displeasing the exarch of Ravenna and the emperor^[37].

He relied above all on Queen Theodelinda, Agilulf's Catholic wife, to whom he wrote and whom he encouraged to bring her people back to the Catholic faith against Arianism. It was notably to her that he dedicated his Dialogues^[38]. Through this patient diplomacy, Gregory laid the foundations of the conversion of the Lombards to Catholicism, which would be completed in the following century.

The quarrel over the title “ecumenical patriarch”

On the ecclesial front, Gregory waged a fight that remained famous against the Patriarch of Constantinople John IV the Faster (Ioannes Nesteutes), who arrogated to himself the title of “ecumenical patriarch” (oecumenicus patriarcha), that is, universal^[39]. Gregory saw in it a proud pretension, dangerous for the unity of the Church: no bishop, even the bishop of the imperial capital, can call himself “universal bishop” as if absorbing all the others.

It was precisely in reaction to this pretension that he set against it, for himself, the humble servus servorum Dei^[40]. He affirmed moreover with force the primacy of the Apostolic See, “which is the head of all the Churches”, inherited from Saint Peter^[41] — showing that this Roman primacy is the very opposite of vanity over a title: it is a service, not a domination.

Augustine's mission to England (596–597)

The most lasting gesture of the pontificate is undoubtedly the sending of a mission to England. In 596, Gregory chose from his own monastery of Saint Andrew some forty monks, led by the prior Augustine — the future Saint Augustine of Canterbury — and sent them to evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdoms^[42]. Frightened by rumours of the savagery of the Angles, the monks hesitated on the way; Gregory spurred them on by letter, ordering them to go through to the end^[43].

In 597, Augustine landed in Kent, where Æthelberht reigned, whose wife Bertha was already Christian. The king was converted, thousands of Angles received baptism, and Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury^[44]. This was the birth certificate of the Church of England, which would remain deeply attached to Rome and to the memory of Gregory, venerated among the Anglo-Saxons as their “apostle”^[45].

The pastoral method: the letter to Mellitus

Gregory's missionary pedagogy was remarkably subtle. In a famous letter addressed to Abbot Mellitus (reported by Bede), he recommended not destroying the pagan temples of the Angles, but purifying them with holy water, placing altars and relics in them, so that the people, “seeing their temples not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts and, recognizing and adoring the true God, may gather with greater familiarity in the places to which they are accustomed”^[46]. Likewise, he advised turning sacrificial feasts into Christian feasts around church dedications.

“One must climb to the heights by steps and stairs, not in a single leap.” — Saint Gregory the Great, letter to Mellitus, reported by Bede^[47]

This method — converting without breaking everything, raising a people's culture rather than razing it — is one of the most fruitful pastoral intuitions in the history of evangelization.

Despite ruined health and the crushing weight of government, Gregory left a considerable work, almost entirely pastoral: he did not write to speculate, but to form pastors, nourish souls and comment on Scripture. As Benedict XVI noted, Gregory “never sought to elaborate an original personal doctrine”, but to “echo the traditional teaching of the Church”^[48].

The Pastoral Rule

The Regula pastoralis (c. 591), sometimes called The Pastoral or Book of Pastoral Rule, is his masterpiece. It is a true treatise on the charge of souls: who may accede to the guidance of the faithful, how the pastor must live, how he must adapt his preaching to each type of hearer — rich and poor, joyful and sad, impatient and patient^[49]. In it Gregory defines spiritual government as the “art of arts” (ars artium)^[50], and ends with a chapter on humility: the more the pastor succeeds, the more he must guard against pride^[51].

The work would enjoy immense diffusion: translated into Greek in Gregory's own lifetime, then into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred the Great, it became throughout the Middle Ages the reference manual of the Latin episcopate^[52].

The Moralia in Iob

The Moralia in Iob (or Magna Moralia) are a monumental commentary on the Book of Job in 35 books, begun at Constantinople and completed in Rome^[53][54]. In it Gregory deploys his famous threefold reading of Scripture — historical (literal), allegorical (faith, Christ and the Church) and moral (moralis, the life of the soul) — the moral aspect being so developed that the work gave its name to medieval spiritual “morality”^[55]. Job, the tried just man, becomes in it the figure of the suffering Christ and of every soul purified by trial.

“The preacher must dip his pen in the blood of his heart; thus he will also reach his neighbour's ear.” — Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel, quoted by Benedict XVI^[56]

The Dialogues and the life of Saint Benedict

The four books of the Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum (c. 593) recount the life and miracles of the saints of Italy, in a dialogue between Gregory and his deacon Peter^[57]. The second book is devoted entirely to Saint Benedict of Nursia: it is our only ancient source on the life of the patriarch of Western monks^[58]. Without Gregory's Dialogues, we would know almost nothing of Benedict.

The fourth book deals with the immortality of the soul, purgatory and life after death. In it Gregory defends, against the sceptics of his time, the reality of the supernatural world, of the souls in purgatory and of the efficacy of the Mass offered for the dead — the tradition of the “thirty Gregorian Masses” goes back to an account in this book^[59].

Homilies, letters and the Register

Gregory also left forty homilies on the Gospels, Homilies on Ezekiel preached while Rome was besieged by the Lombards, and above all a Register (Registrum epistularum) of more than 850 letters^[60]. This register, one of the richest of all late Antiquity, shows us the pope at work day after day: in it he settles matters of discipline, defends the oppressed, consoles bishops, instructs missionaries, scolds officials — an incomparable portrait of a man of government and of prayer.

Liturgical reform and the Schola cantorum

Gregory's name has remained attached to the great tradition of Roman liturgical chant: Gregorian chant^[61]. Tradition credits him with a reform of the chant of the Roman Church, the organization of the Schola cantorum (the pope's school of chanters) and the ordering of the repertory of Masses (the antiphoner) according to the liturgical year^[62]. He did indeed reorganize Rome's stational liturgy and its chant.

Legend and history

Medieval iconography popularized a legend born in the 9th century, with the biographer John the Deacon: the dove of the Holy Spirit, perched on Gregory's shoulder, is said to have dictated into his ear the sacred melodies he transcribed^[63]. From this comes the pope depicted writing under the inspiration of the dove.

History is more nuanced, without taking anything away from the saint's greatness. Gregory's contemporaries, and his first biographer himself, do not speak of this supernatural dictation; the mature “Gregorian” repertory as we know it largely took shape after him, over the 7th–9th centuries, notably through the fusion of Roman and Gallican chant willed by the Frankish kings Pepin and Charlemagne. Gregory's genius was quite real — of a liturgical and organizational order rather than melodic composition in the modern sense — and the West was right to place under his name the treasure of sacred chant, as under a founding father^[64]. Recognizing the history of transmission in no way obliges us to dismiss the share of spiritual truth in the tradition: the Church saw in this chant a gift of the Spirit, and she was right to attach it to the one who laid its Roman foundations.

Contemplation and action

Gregory's whole inner life plays out in a tension he himself described better than anyone: between the contemplation he loved in the monastery and the action his office imposed on him. He compares the pastor to Jacob, who possesses Leah (the active life, fruitful but bleary-eyed) only by labouring to obtain Rachel (the contemplative life, beautiful but seemingly barren)^[65]. For Gregory, the true pastor does not choose one against the other: he comes back down unceasingly from contemplation to the service of his neighbour, as Christ came down from heaven to men^[66].

Humility and compunction

At the centre of his spirituality stands compunction (compunctio), that sorrow of the heart born of the remembrance of one's sins and the desire for God. Gregory never presents himself as an established master: he calls himself a sinner, weary, unworthy, crushed. This humility is no pose; it commands his refusal of the “ecumenical” title, his servus servorum Dei, and his constant insistence: the higher one rises in office, the lower one must descend into humility of heart^[67].

The pastor, “art of arts”

“Let him who presides not rise above the others through swelling of thought, but consider himself their equal, and fear power all the more the more of them he exercises it over.” — after Saint Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, II, 6^[68]

Gregory's synthesis of the pastor — close to the people through compassion, raised up through contemplation, humble in awareness of his weakness — formed generations of bishops and priests. It remains one of the summits of Catholic pastoral theology.

“Consul of God”

Worn out by fasts, gout and cares, Gregory died on 12 March 604^[69]. He was buried in Saint Peter's basilica. His epitaph proclaimed him Consul Dei, “consul of God” — a Roman who had exchanged the honours of the earthly city for the service of the City of God^[70]. Canonized by popular acclamation, he was very early venerated as a saint throughout the West and particularly in England, which he had won for Christ.

One of the four great Latin doctors

The Latin Church proclaims him doctor of the Church and ranks him among its four great doctors of the West^[71]:

With Gregory, the last of the four, Christian Antiquity ends and the Middle Ages begin. Many historians see in him the first medieval pope: no longer a bishop of the Roman Empire, but the pastor of a Western Christendom that must henceforth stand on its own. His Pastoral Rule, his Dialogues and his chant would cross a thousand years without losing any of their authority.

“For my part, I was prepared rather to die than to let the Church of the blessed Apostle Peter degenerate in my days.” — Saint Gregory the Great, Register, IV, 47, to the deacon Sabinianus^[72]

• Saint Benedict of Nursia — the father of Western monasticism, whose Book II of Gregory's Dialogues is the only ancient life.
• Saint Augustine of Canterbury — the monk of Saint Andrew sent by Gregory to evangelize England, first Archbishop of Canterbury.
• Saint Columban — the contemporary Irish monk who wrote to Pope Gregory, and in whom the word “Europe” appears for the first time.
• Saint Leo the Great — the other pope “the Great”, a towering figure of Roman primacy in the previous century.
• Saint Bede the Venerable — the English historian to whom we owe the account of the young Angles and of the Gregorian mission.
• Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Ambrose and Saint Jerome — the three other great Latin doctors alongside whom Gregory completes the founding college.