Pope Gregory I

Gregory was born around 540[lower-alpha 2] in Rome, then recently reconquered by the Eastern Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths. His parents named him Gregorius, which according to Ælfric of Eynsham in An Homily on the Birth-Day of S. Gregory, "... is a Greek Name, which signifies in the Latin Tongue, Vigilantius, that is in English, Watchful..."[11] The medieval writer who provided this etymology[lower-alpha 3] did not hesitate to apply it to the life of Gregory. Ælfric states, "He was very diligent in God's Commandments."[lower-alpha 4]

Gregory was born into a wealthy noble Roman family with close connections to the church. His father, Gordianus, a patrician[1] who served as a senator and for a time was the Prefect of the City of Rome,[12] also held the position of Regionarius in the church, though nothing further is known about that position. Gregory's mother, Silvia, was well-born, and had a married sister, Pateria, in Sicily. His mother and two paternal aunts are honored by Catholic and Orthodox churches as saints.[12][4] Gregory's great-great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III,[lower-alpha 5] the nominee of the Gothic king, Theodoric.[13] Gregory's election to the throne of St. Peter made his family the most distinguished clerical dynasty of the period.[14]

The family owned and resided in a villa suburbana on the Caelian Hill, fronting the same street (now the Via di San Gregorio) as the former palaces of the Roman emperors on the Palatine Hill opposite. The north of the street runs into the Colosseum; the south, the Circus Maximus. In Gregory's day the ancient buildings were in ruins and were privately owned.[15] Villas covered the area. Gregory's family also owned working estates in Sicily[16] and around Rome.[17] Gregory later had portraits done in fresco in their former home on the Caelian and these were described 300 years later by John the Deacon. Gordianus was tall with a long face and light eyes. He wore a beard. Silvia was tall, had a round face, blue eyes and a cheerful look. They had another son whose name and fate are unknown.[18]

Gregory was born into a period of upheaval in Italy. From 542 the so-called Plague of Justinian swept through the provinces of the empire, including Italy. The plague caused famine, panic, and sometimes rioting. In some parts of the country, over a third of the population was wiped out or destroyed, with heavy spiritual and emotional effects on the people of the empire.[19] Politically, although the Western Roman Empire had long since vanished in favor of the Gothic kings of Italy, during the 540s Italy was gradually retaken from the Goths by Justinian I, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire ruling from Constantinople. As the fighting was mainly in the north, the young Gregory probably saw little of it. Totila sacked and vacated Rome in 546, destroying most of its population, but in 549 he invited those who were still alive to return to the empty and ruined streets. It has been hypothesized that young Gregory and his parents retired during that intermission to their Sicilian estates, to return in 549.[20] The war was over in Rome by 552, and a subsequent invasion of the Franks was defeated in 554. After that, there was peace in Italy, and the appearance of restoration, except that the central government now resided in Constantinople.

Like most young men of his position in Roman society, Gregory was well educated, learning grammar, rhetoric, the sciences, literature, and law; he excelled in all these fields.[12] Gregory of Tours reported that "in grammar, dialectic and rhetoric ... he was second to none...."[21] He wrote correct Latin but did not read or write Greek. He knew Latin authors, natural science, history, mathematics and music and had such a "fluency with imperial law" that he may have trained in it "as a preparation for a career in public life".[21] Indeed, he became a government official, advancing quickly in rank to become, like his father, Prefect of Rome, the highest civil office in the city, when only thirty-three years old.[12]

The monks of the Monastery of St. Andrew, established by Gregory at the ancestral home on the Caelian, had a portrait of him made after his death, which John the Deacon also saw in the 9th century. He reports the picture of a man who was "rather bald" and had a "tawny" beard like his father's and a face that was intermediate in shape between his mother's and father's. The hair that he had on the sides was long and carefully curled. His nose was "thin and straight" and "slightly aquiline". "His forehead was high." He had thick, "subdivided" lips and a chin "of a comely prominence" and "beautiful hands".[22]

In the modern era, Gregory is often depicted as a man at the border, poised between the Roman and Germanic worlds, between East and West, and above all, perhaps, between the ancient and medieval epochs.[23]

On his father's death, Gregory converted his family villa into a monastery dedicated to Andrew the Apostle (after his death it was rededicated as San Gregorio Magno al Celio). In his life of contemplation, Gregory concluded that "in that silence of the heart, while we keep watch within through contemplation, we are as if asleep to all things that are without."[24]

Gregory had a deep respect for the monastic life and particularly the vow of poverty. Thus, when it came to light that a monk lying on his death bed had stolen three gold pieces, Gregory, as a remedial punishment, forced the monk to die alone, then threw his body and coins on a manure heap to rot with a condemnation, "Take your money with you to perdition." Gregory believed that punishment of sins can begin, even in this life before death.[25] However, in time, after the monk's death, Gregory had 30 Masses offered for the man to assist his soul before the final judgment. He viewed being a monk as the "ardent quest for the vision of our Creator."[26] His three paternal aunts were nuns renowned for their sanctity. However, after the eldest two, Trasilla and Emiliana, died after seeing a vision of their ancestor Pope Felix III, the youngest soon abandoned the religious life and married the steward of her estate. Gregory's response to this family scandal was that "many are called but few are chosen."[21] Gregory's mother, Silvia, is herself a saint.

Eventually, Pope Pelagius II ordained Gregory a deacon and solicited his help in trying to heal the schism of the Three Chapters in northern Italy. However, this schism was not healed until well after Gregory was gone.[27]

Illumination in a 12th-century manuscript of a letter of Gregory's to Leander, bishop of Seville (Bibl. Municipale, MS 2, Dijon)

In 579, Pelagius II chose Gregory as his apocrisiarius (ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople), a post Gregory would hold until 586.[28] Gregory was part of the Roman delegation (both lay and clerical) that arrived in Constantinople in 578 to ask the emperor for military aid against the Lombards.[29] With the Byzantine military focused on the East, these entreaties proved unsuccessful; in 584, Pelagius II wrote to Gregory as apocrisiarius, detailing the hardships that Rome was experiencing under the Lombards and asking him to ask Emperor Maurice to send a relief force.[29] Maurice, however, had long ago determined to limit his efforts against the Lombards to intrigue and diplomacy, pitting the Franks against them.[29] It soon became obvious to Gregory that the Byzantine emperors were unlikely to send such a force, given their more immediate difficulties with the Persians in the East and the Avars and Slavs to the North.[30]

According to Ekonomou, "if Gregory's principal task was to plead Rome's cause before the emperor, there seems to have been little left for him to do once imperial policy toward Italy became evident. Papal representatives who pressed their claims with excessive vigor could quickly become a nuisance and find themselves excluded from the imperial presence altogether".[30] Gregory had already drawn an imperial rebuke for his lengthy canonical writings on the subject of the legitimacy of John III Scholasticus, who had occupied the Patriarchate of Constantinople for twelve years prior to the return of Eutychius (who had been driven out by Justinian).[30] Gregory turned to cultivating connections with the Byzantine elite of the city, where he became extremely popular with the city's upper class, "especially aristocratic women".[30] Ekonomou surmises that "while Gregory may have become spiritual father to a large and important segment of Constantinople's aristocracy, this relationship did not significantly advance the interests of Rome before the emperor".[30] Although the writings of John the Deacon claim that Gregory "labored diligently for the relief of Italy", there is no evidence that his tenure accomplished much towards any of the objectives of Pelagius II.[31]

Gregory's theological disputes with Patriarch Eutychius would leave a "bitter taste for the theological speculation of the East" with Gregory that continued to influence him well into his own papacy.[32] According to Western sources, Gregory's very public debate with Eutychius culminated in an exchange before Tiberius II where Gregory cited a biblical passage[lower-alpha 6] in support of the view that Christ was corporeal and palpable after his Resurrection; allegedly as a result of this exchange, Tiberius II ordered Eutychius's writings burned.[32] Ekonomou views this argument, though exaggerated in Western sources, as Gregory's "one achievement of an otherwise fruitless apokrisiariat".[33] In reality, Gregory was forced to rely on Scripture because he could not read the untranslated Greek authoritative works.[33]

Gregory left Constantinople for Rome in 585, returning to his monastery on the Caelian Hill.[34] Gregory was elected by acclamation to succeed Pelagius II in 590, when the latter died of the plague spreading through the city.[34] Gregory was approved by an Imperial iussio from Constantinople the following September (as was the norm during the Byzantine Papacy).[34]

Augustine of Canterbury on his mission to Anglo-Saxon England

Gregory was more inclined to remain retired into the monastic lifestyle of contemplation.[37] In texts of all genres, especially those produced in his first year as pope, Gregory bemoaned the burden of office and mourned the loss of the undisturbed life of prayer he had once enjoyed as a monk.[38] When he became pope in 590, among his first acts was writing a series of letters disavowing any ambition to the throne of Peter and praising the contemplative life of the monks. At that time, for various reasons, the Holy See had not exerted effective leadership in the West since the pontificate of Gelasius I. The episcopacy in Gaul was drawn from the great territorial families, and identified with them: the parochial horizon of Gregory's contemporary, Gregory of Tours, may be considered typical; in Visigothic Spain the bishops had little contact with Rome; in Italy the territories which had de facto fallen under the administration of the papacy were beset by the violent Lombard dukes and the rivalry of the Byzantines in the Exarchate of Ravenna and in the south.

Pope Gregory had strong convictions on missions: "Almighty God places good men in authority that He may impart through them the gifts of His mercy to their subjects. And this we find to be the case with the British over whom you have been appointed to rule, that through the blessings bestowed on you the blessings of heaven might be bestowed on your people also."[39] He is credited with re-energizing the Church's missionary work among the non-Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is most famous for sending a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, under Augustine of Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew's, where he had perhaps succeeded Gregory, to evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England. It seems that the pope had never forgotten the English slaves whom he had once seen in the Roman Forum.[40] The mission was successful, and it was from England that missionaries later set out for the Netherlands and Germany. The preaching of non-heretical Christian faith and the elimination of all deviations from it was a key element in Gregory's worldview, and it constituted one of the major continuing policies of his pontificate.[41] Pope Gregory the Great urged his followers on the value of bathing as a bodily need.[42]

It is said he was declared a saint immediately after his death by "popular acclamation".[1]

In his official documents, Gregory was the first to make extensive use of the term "Servant of the Servants of God" (servus servorum Dei) as a papal title, thus initiating a practice that was to be followed by most subsequent popes.[43]

Alms

The Church had a practice from early times of passing on a large portion of the donations it received from its members as alms. As pope, Gregory did his utmost to encourage that high standard among church personnel. Gregory is known for his extensive administrative system of charitable relief of the poor at Rome. The poor were predominantly refugees from the incursions of the Lombards. The philosophy under which he devised this system is that the wealth belonged to the poor and the church was only its steward. He received lavish donations from the wealthy families of Rome, who, following his own example, were eager, by doing so, to expiate their sins. He gave alms equally as lavishly both individually and en masse. He wrote in letters:[44] "I have frequently charged you ... to act as my representative ... to relieve the poor in their distress ...." and "... I hold the office of steward to the property of the poor ...."

In Gregory's time, the Church in Rome received donations of many different kinds: consumables such as food and clothing; investment property: real estate and works of art; and capital goods, or revenue-generating property, such as the Sicilian latifundia, or agricultural estates. The Church already had a system for circulating the consumables to the poor: associated with each of the main city churches was a diaconium or office of the deacon. He was given a building from which the poor could apply for assistance at any time.[lower-alpha 8][45]

The circumstances in which Gregory became pope in 590 were of ruination. The Lombards held the greater part of Italy. Their depredations had brought the economy to a standstill. They camped nearly at the gates of Rome. The city itself was crowded with refugees from all walks of life, who lived in the streets and had few of the necessities of life. The seat of government was far from Rome in Constantinople and appeared unable to undertake the relief of Italy. The pope had sent emissaries, including Gregory, asking for assistance, to no avail.

Mass of St. Gregory, c. 1490, attributed to Diego de la Cruz, oil and gold on panel (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

In 590, Gregory could wait for Constantinople no longer. He organized the resources of the church into an administration for general relief. In doing so he evidenced a talent for and intuitive understanding of the principles of accounting, which was not to be invented for centuries. The church already had basic accounting documents: every expense was recorded in journals called regesta, "lists" of amounts, recipients and circumstances. Revenue was recorded in polyptici, "books". Many of these polyptici were ledgers recording the operating expenses of the church and the assets, the patrimonia. A central papal administration, the notarii, under a chief, the primicerius notariorum, kept the ledgers and issued brevia patrimonii, or lists of property for which each rector was responsible.[46]

Gregory began by aggressively requiring his churchmen to seek out and relieve needy persons and reprimanded them if they did not. In a letter to a subordinate in Sicily he wrote: "I asked you most of all to take care of the poor. And if you knew of people in poverty, you should have pointed them out ... I desire that you give the woman, Pateria, forty solidi for the children's shoes and forty bushels of grain ...."[47] Soon he was replacing administrators who would not cooperate with those who would and at the same time adding more in a build-up to a great plan that he had in mind. He understood that expenses must be matched by income. To pay for his increased expenses he liquidated the investment property and paid the expenses in cash according to a budget recorded in the polyptici. The churchmen were paid four times a year and also personally given a golden coin for their trouble.[48]

Money, however, was no substitute for food in a city that was on the brink of famine. Even the wealthy were going hungry in their villas. The church now owned between 1,300 and 1,800 square miles (3,400 and 4,700 km²) of revenue-generating farmland divided into large sections called patrimonia. It produced goods of all kinds, which were sold, but Gregory intervened and had the goods shipped to Rome for distribution in the diaconia. He gave orders to step up production, set quotas and put an administrative structure in place to carry it out. At the bottom was the rusticus who produced the goods. Some rustici were or owned slaves. He turned over part of his produce to a conductor from whom he leased the land. The latter reported to an actionarius, the latter to a defensor and the latter to a rector. Grain, wine, cheese, meat, fish and oil began to arrive at Rome in large quantities, where it was given away for nothing as alms.[49]

Distributions to qualified persons were monthly. However, a certain proportion of the population lived in the streets or were too ill or infirm to pick up their monthly food supply. To them Gregory sent out a small army of charitable persons, mainly monks, every morning with prepared food. It is said that he would not dine until the indigent were fed. When he did dine he shared the family table, which he had saved (and which still exists), with 12 indigent guests. To the needy living in wealthy homes he sent meals he had cooked with his own hands as gifts to spare them the indignity of receiving charity. Hearing of the death of an indigent in a back room he was depressed for days, entertaining for a time the conceit that he had failed in his duty and was a murderer.[48]

These and other good deeds and charitable frame of mind completely won the hearts and minds of the Roman people. They now looked to the papacy for government, ignoring the state at Constantinople. The office of urban prefect went without candidates. From the time of Gregory the Great to the rise of Italian nationalism the papacy was the most influential presence in Italy.

Saint Gregory the Great by José de Ribera

In art Gregory is usually shown in full pontifical robes with the tiara and double cross, despite his actual habit of dress. Earlier depictions are more likely to show a monastic tonsure and plainer dress. Orthodox icons traditionally show St. Gregory vested as a bishop holding a Gospel Book and blessing with his right hand. It is recorded that he permitted his depiction with a square halo, then used for the living.[68] A dove is his attribute, from the well-known story attributed to his friend Peter the Deacon,[lower-alpha 10] who tells that when the pope was dictating his homilies on Ezechiel a curtain was drawn between his secretary and himself. As, however, the pope remained silent for long periods at a time, the servant made a hole in the curtain and, looking through, beheld a dove seated upon Gregory's head with its beak between his lips. When the dove withdrew its beak the pope spoke and the secretary took down his words; but when he became silent the servant again applied his eye to the hole and saw the dove had replaced its beak between his lips.[1]

Ribera's oil painting of Saint Gregory the Great (c. 1614) is from the Giustiniani collection. The painting is conserved in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. The face of Gregory is a caricature of the features described by John the Deacon: total baldness, outthrust chin, beak-like nose, whereas John had described partial baldness, a mildly protruding chin, slightly aquiline nose and strikingly good looks. In this picture also Gregory has his monastic back on the world, which the real Gregory, despite his reclusive intent, was seldom allowed to have.

This scene is shown as a version of the traditional Evangelist portrait (where the Evangelists' symbols are also sometimes shown dictating) from the tenth century onwards. An early example is the dedication miniature from an eleventh-century manuscript of Gregory's Moralia in Job.[69] The miniature shows the scribe, Bebo of Seeon Abbey, presenting the manuscript to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry II. In the upper left the author is seen writing the text under divine inspiration. Usually the dove is shown whispering in Gregory's ear for a clearer composition.

The Mass of St. Gregory, by Robert Campin, 15th century

The late medieval subject of the Mass of St. Gregory shows a version of a 7th-century story that was elaborated in later hagiography. Gregory is shown saying Mass when Christ as the Man of Sorrows appears on the altar. The subject was most common in the 15th and 16th centuries, and reflected growing emphasis on the Real Presence, and after the Protestant Reformation was an assertion of the doctrine against Protestant theology.[70]

19th-century mosaic in Westminster Cathedral, Non Angli sed Angeli

• Non Angli, sed angeli, si forent Christiani.– "They are not Angles, but angels, if they were Christian".[71] Aphorism, summarizing words reported to have been spoken by Gregory when he first encountered pale-skinned English boys at a slave market, sparking his dispatch of St. Augustine of Canterbury to England to convert the English, according to Bede.[72] He said: "Well named, for they have angelic faces and ought to be co-heirs with the angels in heaven."[73] Discovering that their province was Deira, he went on to add that they would be rescued de ira, "from the wrath", and that their king was named Aella, Alleluia, he said.[lower-alpha 11]
• Locusta, literally, "locust". However, the word sounds very much like "loco sta", meaning, "Stay in place!" Gregory himself wanted to go to England as a missionary and started out for there. On the fourth day of the journey, as they stopped for lunch, a locust landed on the edge of the Bible which Gregory was reading. He exclaimed, locusta! (locust). Reflecting on it, he understood it as a sign from Heaven whereby God wanted him to loco sta, that is, remain in his own place. Within the hour an emissary of the pope[lower-alpha 12] arrived to recall him.[73]
• "I beg that you will not take the present amiss. For anything, however trifling, which is offered from the prosperity of St. Peter should be regarded as a great blessing, seeing that he will have power both to bestow on you greater things, and to hold out to you eternal benefits with Almighty God."
• Pro cuius amore in eius eloquio nec mihi parco – "For the love of whom (God) I do not spare myself from His Word."[74][75] The sense is that since the creator of the human race and redeemer of him unworthy gave him the power of the tongue so that he could witness, what kind of a witness would he be if he did not use it but preferred to speak infirmly?
• "For the place of heretics is very pride itself...for the place of the wicked is pride just as conversely humility is the place of the good."[41]
• "Whoever calls himself universal bishop, or desires this title, is, by his pride, the precursor to the Antichrist."[76]
• Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt – "Things are not to be loved for the sake of a place, but places are to be loved for the sake of their good things." When Augustine asked whether to use Roman or Gallican customs in the Mass in England, Gregory said, in paraphrase, that it was not the place that imparted goodness but good things that graced the place, and it was more important to be pleasing to the Almighty. They should pick out what was "pia", "religiosa" and "recta" from any church whatever and set that down before the English minds as practice.[77]
• "For the rule of justice and reason suggests that one who desires his own orders to be observed by his successors should undoubtedly keep the will and ordinances of his predecessor."[78] In his letters, Gregory often emphasized the importance of giving proper deference to last wills and testaments, and of respecting property rights.
• "Compassion should be shown first to the faithful and afterwards to the enemies of the church."[79]
• "At length being anxious to avoid all these inconveniences, I sought the haven of the monastery... For as the vessel that is negligently moored, is very often (when the storm waxes violent) tossed by the water out of its shelter on the safest shore, so under the cloak of the Ecclesiastical office, I found myself plunged on a sudden in a sea of secular matters, and because I had not held fast the tranquillity of the monastery when in possession, I learnt by losing it, how closely it should have been held."[80] In Moralia, sive Expositio in Job ("Commentary on Job," also known as Magna Moralia), Gregory describes to the Bishop Leander the circumstances under which he became a monk.
• "Illiterate men can contemplate in the lines of a picture what they cannot learn by means of the written word."[81]
• Age quod agis (Do what you are doing).[82] Through the centuries, this would become a repeated maxim of Catholic mystics and spiritual directors encouraging one to keep focus on what one is doing in trying to serve the Lord.
• "Repentance is weeping for what one has done and not doing what one weeps for."[83]

• Category:Documents of Pope Gregory I
• Libellus responsionum
• List of Catholic saints
• List of popes
• Pope Saint Gregory I, patron saint archive

• Works by Pope Gregory I at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gregorius I Magnus.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Pope Gregory I.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Gregory I

• "Documenta Catholica Omnia: Gregorius I Magnus" (in Latin). Cooperatorum Veritatis Societas. 2006. Retrieved 10 August 2008. Index of 70 downloadable .pdf files containing the texts of Gregory I.
• "Complete English translation of Gregory's Moralia in Job". Found on the website: Lectionary Central.
• "Moralia in Iob (book 1–35) (Msc.Bibl.41)" (in Latin). Digitized by the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg.
• Gregory the Great (2007). "Homiliae in Ezechielem I-XXII". Codices Electronici Sangallenses: Codex 211 (in Latin). Stiftsbibliothek St.Gallen. Retrieved 10 August 2008. Photographic images of a manuscript copied about 850–875 AD.
• "St Gregory Dialogus, the Pope of Rome". Orthodox Church in America. Retrieved 10 August 2008. Orthodox icon and synaxarion.
• Noch ein Höhlengleichnis. Zu einem metaphorischen Argument bei Gregor dem Großen by Meinolf Schumacher (in German).
• Women's Biography: Barbara and Antonina, contains two of his letters.
• St. Gregory engraved by Anton Wierix from the De Verda Collection
• Saint Gregory the Great at the Christian Iconography website
• Of St. Gregory the Pope from Caxon's translation of the Golden Legend
• MS 484/21 Dialogorum ... libri quatuor de miraculis at OPenn
• The Holy Sinner a German novel written by Thomas Mann.