Gregory the Great

Italian pope (590-604)

• Born: c. 540
• Birthplace: Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: March 12, 0604
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

By example and direction, Gregory set the basic patterns for the medieval Church of Central and Western Europe in the areas of pastoral administration, interpretation of the Bible, and liturgical usage. He was directly responsible for sending missionaries to England and the consequent organization of the medieval English church.

Early Life

Gregory was born near the city of Rome, which once had been the center of the political and cultural world of Western civilization. About two centuries before the birth of Gregory, the capital city of the Roman Empire had been moved eastward to Constantinople. Although Rome at first remained an important city, its role continued to diminish as the years went by. During this time, invaders and migrating peoples made their way into Italy and other sections of the old Roman Empire, cutting the western half away from Constantinople and the eastern portions of the Mediterranean world. As a result, it was difficult for many people merchants, political leaders, churchmen, and others to maintain contact and communications with the East. Because the invaders were pagan or Arian Christians (a heretical sect of Christianity), there were unusual tensions in the Church in Gregory’s homeland. These factors tended to separate further the leaders of the eastern and western churches, the pope at Rome and the patriarch at Constantinople. This problem was to become a major concern of Gregory later in his life.

The parents of Gregory were old Roman aristocrats. Hence, the young Gregory received the best education available at that time, especially in the traditional areas of grammar and rhetoric. He later studied law, a discipline that prepared him for his later career in civil and ecclesiastical administration. Gregory also was well founded in the teachings of Christianity: Some of his ancestors had served the Church, and his parents and his mother’s sisters were well-known for their Christian lives and acts of piety.

Just before Gregory’s birth, Rome had been restored to rule under Constantinople. In 565, however, the emperor Justinian I, who had inspired the reconquest, died. Many of his recently conquered territories, including Rome, would soon fall away to new waves of foreign conquerors. Rome was captured by the Lombards, a Germanic tribe that had entered Italy in the north. They were heretical Christians, violent and, by Roman standards, uncultured. It is at this juncture that Gregory first appeared on the scene.

Life’s Work

Gregory, still a layman, was appointed prefect of the city of Rome shortly after 570. This responsibility was somewhat like that of mayor or city manager of a modern city: He presided over the senate, which was mainly a city council. He also saw to the finances, the public order, defense, and food supplies for Rome.

About 575, his father died. Gregory, believing that he had been called to renounce the cares of the secular world for the monastic life, took his inheritance and founded six monasteries in Sicily and one at the site of the family palace in Rome. To this last one he gave the name Saint Andrews, and there he spent his time in study and contemplation. His primary attention was given to the reading and study of the Latin fathers of the church and to the Bible.

In 578, because of his experience and growing reputation, Gregory was named a deacon in the Roman diocese. In the city of Rome, this was an office of honor and responsibility. From 579 to 586, Gregory served as the papal ambassador to Constantinople, where his primary task was to develop and maintain good relations with both emperor and patriarch. This was not a particularly easy job because there were rivalries and distrust between leaders at Rome and those at Constantinople. Gregory, however, won the respect of many in Constantinople. A group of Eastern monks asked him to present a series of lectures on the Book of Job. These discussions served as the basis for Gregory’s most important theological writing, Moralia in Job (595; Morals on the Book of Job, 1844-1850; commonly called Moralia), a commentary on ethics based on Job.

In 586, Gregory returned to the monastery, serving now as abbot. The position called on his administrative expertise, as he successfully maintained strict standards of discipline and study for the monks. He continued as an informal adviser to the pope and maintained an awareness of current events. It was during this time that Gregory noticed the English youths on the slave block in the Roman marketplace and vowed to send missionaries to their land to provide the opportunity for their salvation.

During his years at the monastery, Gregory became aware of two other matters that were of great concern to him. The first was the presence in Italy, and the world in general, of heretical expressions of Christianity. To him, Arianism was the most insidious, in that it closely resembled orthodoxy and consequently drew a large following. Other heretical groups, such as Donatists and Pelagians, also concerned Gregory. He pledged to fight for orthodoxy. Second, Gregory saw his homeland suffering under natural disasters, including floods and plague, which he believed constituted God’s punishment of a wayward and dissolute people. Gregory and his monks provided physical, emotional, and spiritual relief to the people of Rome.

In 590, the people of Rome turned to Gregory (for there were no cardinals in the Church at this time to carry out papal elections) and asked him to become their bishop. As the bishop of Rome, Gregory would also be pope. Gregory at first refused, believing that he was not equal to the task. When he finally accepted the call, however, he did so with an extraordinary sense of pastoral responsibility, calling for spiritual renewal and recommitment from the top down.

Gregory’s first priority was to defend the city against the attacking Lombards. Deserted by his imperial benefactor in Constantinople, Gregory took matters into his own hands, leading his own army against the Lombards, negotiating with them, even offering his personal resources as tribute in an effort to buy peace. Although there was to be no end to the conflict until after 598, Gregory’s method of dealing with the Lombards established a precedent for popes in the years to come.

Because of unsettled political and military conditions, there were many problems with displaced persons in Gregory’s Rome. Food supplies were short and medical attention was frequently needed; adequate housing and living conditions were not always available. Gregory responded by calling on the resources of the Church: Too often, he claimed, the Church had sought to serve its own best interests and had not paid adequate attention to people who were in need. In the same spirit, Gregory was to call on each member of the clergy to ask himself whether he were fulfilling his duty. According to Gregory, in his influential work Liber regulae pastoralis (591; Pastoral Care, 1950), the clergy, like shepherds, must lead the people in God’s ways. Gregory called on the pastor to demonstrate dependence on God and to be tactful, committed to others, compassionate, pure, meek, sensitive, active, disciplined, merciful, and just. Many generations of clergy have used this model for their own guidance.

Gregory sent Augustine of Canterbury to England in 597, which resulted in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity . Gregory also effectively opposed the spread of heresy, by means of missions to Spain. He was a strong proponent of a united Church and successfully asserted his primacy throughout the Western Church, regarding the Papacy as superior to the patriarchy at Constantinople.

Throughout his papacy, Gregory found himself embroiled in politics: with the kings of the Germanic tribes, Visigoths, Franks, and Lombards. Although Gregory’s vision and goals were firmly fixed, he frequently had to negotiate, and this usually involved compromise. Gregory stands out as a man of principle and courage throughout his time as pope. In 602, he allowed himself to be misled into supporting the wily tyrant Phocas, emperor of Byzantium, who had come by his office through the murder of the previous emperor and his family. Phocas, as a result, propagated increasing acts of terror, although he eventually secured peace with the Lombards and thus safety for Italy. Such a peace, coming about despite Gregory’s lack of foresight and at the hands of one of the most despised tyrants in history, constitutes the single outstanding flaw in Gregory’s otherwise unimpeachable career.

During his years as pope, Gregory found time to write. In addition to the two books already mentioned, he wrote a book of sermons meant to prepare believers for the final judgment; a series of homilies on Ezekiel (593), which explain the text of that book of the Bible in terms that the practicing Christian could apply to his own life; fourteen books of letters, interesting for the light they throw on Gregory’s papacy; and four books of “dialogues,” in which Gregory explained the teachings of Saint Augustine.

Gregory also had a deep interest in the liturgy of the Church. He supported the extension of the Roman rite and the search for a uniform style of worship in the Western Church. Many of the liturgical changes that he supported came to be incorporated as a part of the medieval liturgical tradition. These changes had to do with liturgical texts, the use of the Alleluia and the Lord’s Prayer, and the music of the service. Although Gregory did not actually compose music of the type known as the Gregorian chant, he did express sentiments that led to that form. Gregory did contribute some of the hymns of the Church; two of them are “Father, We Praise You” and “O Christ, Our King, Creator, Lord.” Martin Luther considered the latter to be the best of the hymns.

Gregory stepped down from the papacy early in 604. Within a few weeks, in his mid-sixties, he died.

Significance

Soon after his death, Gregory’s contemporaries were calling for his canonization. His writings became well known and widespread within a short time, and some of them including Pastoral Care, which was translated by King Alfred into Anglo-Saxon were published in vernacular languages and made available to a relatively large audience. The fact that Gregory’s name was early and traditionally associated with the liturgical reforms gave authenticity and authority to them. Although never regarded as a scholar or eminent theologian, Gregory was highly regarded by all the great scholars of the Middle Ages, and he was the most quoted of the Latin fathers. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of medieval theologians, cited Gregory more than any other authority; Pope Boniface VIII listed Gregory with the great “doctors” of the Church, placing him in the same category with the best scholars of Western Christendom. As the link between the ancient, classical world and the European Middle Ages, Gregory recast the ideas and teachings of the early church fathers in a new mold, one that shaped not only the medieval Church but European culture and civilization as well.

Bibliography

Anonymous [monk of Whitby]. The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great. Edited by Bertram Colgrave. 1968. Reprint. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Contains a bilingual text with ample notes for understanding a very early biography of Gregory.

Bremmer, Rolf H., Jr., Kees Dekker, and David F. Johnson, eds. Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe. Sterling, Va.: Peeters, 2001. A look at how Gregory the Great was perceived in early Germanic literature. Bibliography and indexes.

Cavadini, John D. Gregory the Great. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996. A biography of Gregory the Great that also examines early church history. Bibliography and index.

Cavadini, John D., ed. Gregory the Great: A Symposium. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. A collection of essays on Gregory the Great and the early Church. Topics include the pope’s holiness, his knowledge of Greek, and his influence on astronomy and early Middle Age doctrines on the artistic image.

Evans, G. R. The Thought of Gregory the Great. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Evans focuses on the philosophy and thought of Gregory the Great. Includes analysis of the pope’s writings. Bibliography and index.

Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. A discussion of Gregory the Great that focuses on his theology and his relations with religious and secular leaders as well as discusses the environment in which he functioned.

Straw, Carole E. Gregory the Great. Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996. A concise introduction to Gregory’s life and work. Bibliography.

Straw, Carole E. Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. This is not a biography in the ordinary sense but rather a discussion of Gregory’s personality and of the major topics of his thought. A well-annotated and informative study.