(A.D. 604.)
[Roman and all other Western Martyrologies; by the Greeks on March
11th. Authorities:--A life by Paulus Diaconus, another by Joannes
Diaconus, 9th cent., the writings of S. Gregory, &c. The following is
in part condensed from the elegant life of S. Gregory by the Count de
Montalembert, in his Monks of the West.]
S. Gregory the Great will be an everlasting honour to the Benedictine
Order and to the Papacy. By his genius, but especially by the charm
and ascendancy of his virtue, he was destined to organise the
temporal power of the popes, to develop and regulate their spiritual
sovereignty, to found their paternal supremacy over the new-born crowns
and races which were to become the great nations of the future, and to
be called France, Spain, and England. It was he indeed, who inaugurated
the middle ages, modern society, and Christian civilisation.
[Illustration: S. GREGORY THE GREAT. After Cahier.
March 12.]
Issued from one of the most illustrious races of ancient Rome, the son
of a rich senator, and descendant of Pope Felix III., of the Anician
family, Gregory was early called to fill a dignified place, which, in
the midst of the Rome of that day, the vassal of Byzantium, and subject
to the ceaseless insults of the Barbarians, retained some shadow
of ancient Roman grandeur. He was prætor of Rome during the first
invasion of the Lombards. In the exercise of this office he gained the
hearts of the Romans, while habituating himself to the management of
public business, and while acquiring a taste for luxury and display
of earthly grandeur, in which he still believed he might serve God
without reproach. But God required him elsewhere. Gregory hesitated
long, inspired by the divine breath to seek religion, but was retained,
led back and fascinated to the world, by the attractions and habits of
secular life. At last he yielded to the influence of his intimate and
close relations with the disciples of S. Benedict in Monte Cassino,
and obeying the grace that enlightened him, he abruptly broke every
tie, devoted his wealth to the endowment of six new monasteries in
Sicily, and established in his own palace in Rome, upon the Cœlian
hill, a seventh, dedicated to S. Andrew, into which he introduced the
Benedictine rule, and where he himself became a monk. He sold all
that remained of his patrimony, to distribute it to the poor; and
Rome, which had seen the young and wealthy patrician traverse its
streets in robes of silk covered with jewels, saw him now, in 575,
with admiration, clothed like a beggar, serving, in his own person the
beggars lodged in the hospital which he had built at the gate of his
paternal house, now changed into a monastery.
Once a monk, he would be nothing less than a model of monks, and
practised with the utmost rigour all the austerities sanctioned by
the rule, applying himself specially at the same time to the study
of the Holy Scriptures. He ate only pulse, which his mother, who had
become a nun since her widowhood, sent him, already soaked, in a
silver porringer. This porringer was the only remnant of his ancient
splendour, and did not long remain in his hands, for one day a
shipwrecked sailor came several times to beg from him while he was
writing in his cell, and finding no money in his purse, the Saint gave
him that relic of his former wealth.
Continually engaged in prayer, reading, writing, or dictation, he
persisted in pushing the severity of his fasts to such an extent,
that his health succumbed. He fell so often into fainting fits, that
more than once he would have sunk under them had not his brethren
supported him with more substantial food. In consequence of having
attempted to do more than others, he was soon obliged to relinquish
the most ordinary fasts, which everybody observed. He was in despair
at not being able to fast even on Easter eve, a day on which even the
little children abstain, says his biographer. He remained weak and
sickly all his life, and when he left his monastery, it was with health
irreparably ruined.
Pope Benedict I. drew him first from the cloister in 577, to raise
him to the dignity of one of the seven cardinal deacons, who presided
over the seven principal divisions of Rome. Pelagius II., successor
to Benedict I., chose S. Gregory to head an embassy to Constantinople
to congratulate the Emperor Tiberius on his accession in A.D. 578.
During his stay at the imperial court, S. Gregory refused to have
any intercourse with the patriarch Eutychius, who had published an
heretical treatise on the nature of the resurrection body. On his
death-bed, however, Eutychius acknowledged his former errors. After six
years of this honourable and laborious exile, he returned to Rome, and
regained the shelter of his monastery of S. Andrea, the monks of which
elected him abbot soon after his return. He enjoyed there for some time
longer the delights of the life he had chosen. Tenderly cherished by
his brethren, he took a paternal share in their trials and spiritual
crosses, provided for their temporary and spiritual necessities, and
specially rejoiced in the holy deaths of several among them. He has
related the details of these in his "Dialogues," and seems to breathe
in them the perfume of heaven.
The tender solicitude he bore to souls was on the point of separating
him from his dear monastery and from Rome. Seeing one day exhibited
in the market some poor pagan children, of extraordinary beauty and
fairness, who were said to be of the country of the Angles, "Not
Angles," said he, "but Angels." Then hastening to the pope, he begged
him to send missionaries into that great island of Britain, where
the pagans sold such slaves; failing others, he offered himself for
this work, surprised the pontiff into consent, and prepared instantly
for his departure. But when the Romans understood his intention, the
love with which they had formerly regarded him was re-awakened. They
surrounded the pope as he went to S. Peter's, and intreated him to
recall Gregory. The astonished pope yielded to the popular voice. He
sent messengers after Gregory, who overtook him at three days' journey
from Rome; and led him back forcibly to his monastery. It was not as a
missionary, but as a pope, that he was to win England to the Church.
In 590, Pelagius II. died of the plague, which then depopulated Rome.
Gregory was immediately elected pope by the unanimous voice of the
senate, the people, and the clergy. It was in vain that he refused, and
appealed to the emperor Maurice not to confirm his election. The Romans
intercepted his letter; the imperial confirmation arrived. Then he
disguised himself, and fleeing from Rome to seek some unknown retreat,
wandered three days in the woods. He was followed, discovered, and a
second time led back to Rome, but this time to reign there. He bowed
his head, weeping, under the yoke imposed upon him by the Divine will
and the unanimity of his fellow-citizens.
It was during the interval between his election and the imperial
confirmation that, filled with a paternal anxiety for the safety of the
people, he organized a great procession, with solemn litanies, to seek
to avert the wrath of Almighty God. It proceeded from seven stations in
the city, in as many divisions, to the Church of S. Maria-Maggiore. The
first company consisted of the secular clergy, the second of the abbots
and their monks, the third of the abbesses and their nuns, the fourth
of children, the fifth of laymen, the sixth of widows, and the seventh
of matrons: each band was led by the priests of the quarter of the
city from which it came. While the procession lasted, eighty persons
in it died of the plague; yet S. Gregory persevered, and the prayers
of the city were heard. This was the origin of the "Greater Litanies,"
which were afterwards held on S. Mark's Day, and which acquired the
popular name of "_The Black Crosses_," from the penitential hue of the
vestments and banners used therein. While the procession defiled before
Gregory, he saw an angel appear upon the summit of the Mole of Hadrian,
putting back his sword into its sheath, the image of which, standing
upon the colossal mausoleum, has given its name to the castle of S.
Angelo, and perpetuated to our day the recollection of S. Gregory's
vision.
The supreme pontificate, perhaps, never fell upon a soul more disturbed
and afflicted than that of this monk, who saw himself thus condemned to
exchange the peace of the cloister for the cares of the government of
the Church, and the special defence of the interests of Italy. Not only
then, but during all his life, he did not cease to lament his fate. "I
have lost," he wrote to the sister of the emperor, "the profound joys
of repose. I seem to have been elevated in external things, but in
spiritual I have fallen." To the patrician Narses: "I am so overcome
with melancholy, that I can scarcely speak. I cannot cease considering
the height of tranquillity from which I have fallen, and the height of
embarrassment I have ascended." To his friend Leander: "I am so beaten
by the waves of this world, that I despair of being able to guide to
port this rotten old vessel with which God has charged me. I weep when
I recall the peaceful shore which I have left, and sigh in perceiving
afar what I now cannot attain."
The poor monk who showed so much despair when he was thrown into the
political whirlpool by the unanimous voice of the Romans, could yet
perceive with a bold and clear glance the dangers of the situation, and
adopt a line of conduct most suitable to the emergency of the times.
First of all he concerned himself with the Lombards. After nine years'
exertion, in overcoming Byzantine repugnance to acknowledge any right
whatever on the side of the Lombards, he concluded a peace between
the two powers, which made Italy, exhausted by thirty years of war
and brigandage, thrill with joy. It was of short duration; but when
hostilities recommenced, he entered into direct negociations with king
Agilulf, and obtained from that prince a special truce for Rome and its
surrounding territory. He had besides found a powerful advocate with
the Lombard king in the person of the illustrious queen Theodelinda.
This princess, a Bavarian and Catholic by birth, had gained the hearts
of the Lombards. The queen was always the faithful friend of the pope;
she served as a medium of communication between him and her husband.
Gregory, from the very beginning of his pontificate, had exhorted the
Italian bishops to make special exertions for the conversion of these
formidable heretics.
His constancy and courage were called forth in contest with the Greeks,
with that Eastern Empire which was represented by functionaries whose
odious exactions had quite as great a share in the despair of the
people as the ravages of the Barbarians, and whose malice was more
dreadful than the swords of the Lombards. His entire life was a
struggle with the patriarch of Constantinople, who aimed at supplanting
the Roman pontiff, as well as with the emperor, who would have
dominated Italy without defending her, and ruled the Church as if she
were a department of the State. Among so many conflicts, we shall dwell
only on that one which arose between him and John the Faster, patriarch
of Constantinople. Relying on the support of most of the Eastern
bishops, this patriarch took to himself the title of Universal Bishop.
Gregory stood up with vigour against this pretension. He did not draw
back before the emperor, who openly sided with the patriarch of his
capital, nor before the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, who sided
with the Byzantine patriarch. "What!" wrote Gregory to the emperor, "S.
Peter, who received the keys of heaven and earth, the power of binding
and loosing, the charge and primacy of the whole Church, was never
called the Universal Apostle; and yet my pious brother John would name
himself Universal Bishop!" For himself he says, "I desire to increase
in virtue and not in words. I do not consider myself honoured in that
which dishonours my brethren. It is the honour of the universal Church
that is my honour. Away with these words which inflate vanity and wound
charity. The holy council of Chalcedon and other fathers have offered
this title to my predecessors, but none of them have ever used it, that
they might guard their own honour in the sight of God, by seeking here
below the honour of all the priesthood." This weighty difference, the
prohibition addressed by the emperor to soldiers against their becoming
monks, and the contest which arose between the pope and the emperor
touching the irregular election to the metropolitan see of Salona,
contributed to render almost permanent the misunderstanding between
them. These perpetual contests with the Byzantine court may explain,
without excusing, the conduct of Gregory at the death of the Emperor
Maurice. This prince, infected, like all his predecessors, with a mania
for interfering in ecclesiastical affairs, was very superior to most of
them. Gregory himself has more than once done justice to his faith and
piety, to his zeal for the Church, and respect for her canons. After
twenty years of an undistinguished reign, a military revolt broke out,
which placed Phocas upon the throne. This wretch not only murdered
the emperor Maurice, gouty, and incapable of defending himself, but
also his six sons, whom he caused to be put to death under the eyes
of their father, without even sparing the youngest, who was still at
the breast, and whom his nurse would have saved by putting her own
child in his place; but Maurice, who was too noble to allow of such a
sacrifice, disclosed the pious deception to the murderers. He died like
a Christian hero, repeating the words of the psalm, "Thou, O Lord, art
just, and all Thy judgments are right." This massacre did not satisfy
Phocas, who sacrificed the empress and her three daughters, the brother
of Maurice, and a multitude of others in his train. The monster then
sent his own image and that of his wife to Rome, where the senate and
people received them with rejoicings. Gregory unfortunately joined in
these mean acclamations. He carried these images of his new masters,
bathed in innocent blood, into the oratory of the Lateran palace.
Afterwards, he addressed extraordinary congratulations to Phocas, not
in the surprise of the first moment, but seven months after the crime.
This is the only stain upon the life of Gregory. We do not attempt
either to conceal or to excuse it. It can scarcely be explained by
recalling all the vexations he had suffered from Maurice, annoyances
of which he always complained energetically, though he did not fail
to do justice to the undeniable piety of the old emperor. Perhaps
Gregory adopted this means to secure the help of Phocas against the
new incursions of the Lombards, or to mollify beforehand the already
threatening intentions of the tyrant. It must also be remembered that
these flatteries were in some sort the official language of these
times; they resulted from the general debasement of public manners,
and from the tone of the language invariably used then at each change
of reign. His motives were undoubtedly pure. Notwithstanding, a stain
remains upon his memory, and a shadow upon the history of the Church,
which is so consoling and full of light in this age of storm and
darkness. But among the greatest and holiest of mortals, virtue, like
human wisdom, always falls short in some respect.
Long crushed between the Lombards and Byzantines, between the
unsoftened ferocity of the barbarians and the vexatious decrepitude of
despotism, Gregory, with that instinctive perception of future events
which God sometimes grants to pure souls, sought elsewhere a support
for the Roman Church. His eyes were directed to the new races, who
were scarcely less ferocious than the Lombards, but who did not, like
them, weigh upon Italy and Rome, and who already exhibited elements
of strength and continuance. It is impossible to do more here than
touch on these noble enterprises. He entered into correspondence with
Childebert, the Gallo-Frank king, and with the French bishops, to
obtain the rectification of abuses and the purification of the Gallican
church from simony, and the nomination of laymen to the episcopal
office, two vices which consumed the vitals of Christianity in France.
Spain had become Arian under the Visigoths, but the Catholic faith had
triumphed with the accession of Recared, in 587. S. Leander, bishop of
Seville, was the principal author of the conversion of the Visigoths.
Gregory wrote to him and to other bishops of Spain. They consulted him,
and he gave them his advice. He wrote, and gave councils full of wisdom
to the king Recared, himself. He brought back to the unity of the
Church the schismatical bishops of Istria, and wholly suppressed the
Donatist schism in Africa. But one of the most striking points in the
life of S. Gregory is his zeal for the conversion of England.
Amid the labours of his exalted position, S. Gregory never remitted
his anxiety for the evangelization of that distant isle. In July, A.D.
596, he dispatched S. Augustine (May 26th), with forty companions, on
that mission to which we owe so much, that, with every feeling of love
and veneration for the remnant of Celtic Christianity which had then
escaped the sword of Pagan Saxondom, we may yet say, with the Venerable
Bede, "If Gregory be not to others an apostle, he is one to us, for the
seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord."
The services which he rendered to the Liturgy are well known.
Completing and putting in order the work of his predecessors, he gave
its definite form to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, in that celebrated
Sacramentary which remains the most august monument of Liturgical
science. It may be said also that he created, and, by anticipation,
saved, Christian art, by fixing, long before the persecution of the
Iconoclasts, the true doctrine respecting the veneration of images,
in that fine letter to the bishop of Marseilles, in which he reproves
him for having, in the excess of his zeal against idolatry, broken
the statues of the saints, and reminds him that through all antiquity
the history of the saints has been pictorically represented, and that
painting is to the ignorant what letters are to those who can read.
But his name is specially associated, in the history of Catholic
worship, with that branch of religious art which is identified with
worship itself, and which is of the utmost moment to the piety as to
the innocent joy of the Christian people. The name of _Gregorian Chant_
reminds us of his solicitude for collecting the ancient melodies of the
Church, in order to subject them to rules of harmony, and to arrange
them according to the requirements of divine worship. He had the glory
of giving to Ecclesiastical music that sweet and solemn character which
has descended through ages, and to which we must always return after
the most prolonged aberrations of frivolity and innovation. He made out
himself, in his Antiphonary, the collection of ancient and new chants;
he composed the text and melodies of several hymns, which are still
used in the Church; he established at Rome the celebrated school of
sacred music, to which Gaul, Germany, and England came in turns, trying
with more or less success to assimilate their voices to the purity of
Italian modulations. And when Gregory was too ill to leave his little
chamber and his couch, he gathered about him the boys of the choir, and
continued their instructions.
The gout made the last years of his life a kind of martyrdom. The cry
of pain rings in many of his letters. "For nearly two years," he wrote
to the patriarch of Alexandria, "I have been imprisoned to my bed by
such pangs of gout, that I can scarcely rise for two or three hours on
great holidays to celebrate solemn mass. And the intensity of the pain
compels me immediately to lie down again, that I may be able to endure
my torture, by giving free course to my groans. My illness will neither
leave me nor kill me. I entreat your holiness to pray for me, that I
may be soon delivered, and receive that freedom which you know, and
which is the glory of the children of God."
Up to his last moments he continued with unwearied activity to dictate
his correspondence, and to concern himself with the interests of the
Church. He died on the 12th March, 604, aged nearly fifty-five, in the
thirteenth year of his pontificate. He was buried in S. Peter's; and
in the epitaph engraved on his tomb, it is said that, "after having
conformed all his actions to his doctrine, the consul of God went to
enjoy eternal triumph."
S. Hildefonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, in the seventh century, writes
thus of him--"He surpassed Antony in holiness, Cyprian in eloquence,
and Augustine in wisdom." Yet so great was his humility, that he
subscribed himself, "Servant of the servants of God"--a style which his
successors in the chair of S. Peter have retained till this day. He was
buried in the basilica of S. Peter. His pallium, reliquary, and girdle
were preserved as precious memorials.
He had, like so many other great hearts, to struggle with ingratitude,
not only during his life, but after his death. Rome was afflicted
with a great famine under his successor, Sabinian, who put an end
to the charities which Gregory had granted to the poor, on the plea
that there was nothing remaining in the treasury of the Church. The
enemies of the deceased pope then excited the people against him,
calling him prodigal and a waster of the Roman patrimony; and that
ungrateful people, whom he had loved and helped so much, began to burn
his writings, as if to annihilate or dishonour his memory. But one of
the monks, who had followed him from the monastery to the palace, his
friend the deacon Peter, interposed. He represented to the incendiaries
that these writings were already spread through the entire world, and
that it was, besides, sacrilege to burn the work of a holy doctor, upon
whom he swore he had himself seen the heavenly dove fluttering. And as
if to confirm his oath, after having ended his address, he breathed
forth his last sigh, a valiant witness of truth and friendship, and is
commemorated by the Church on the same day with S. Gregory.
In the year 826, the body of this holy pontiff was brought into France,
and placed in the celebrated monastery of S. Medard, in Soissons. The
head was given to archbishop Agesil, and deposited in the abbey of S.
Pierre-le-Vif, at Sens, and a bone was given to Rome at the request of
pope Urban VIII., in 1628.
In art, S. Gregory is represented as a pope, with a dove hovering over
him, or at his ear, and with music in his hand: a frequent subject with
Mediæval sculptors and painters was his Mass. According to the legend,
as he was about to communicate a woman, and said, "The Body of our Lord
Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto Eternal Life," he saw her
smile, wherefore he refused to give her the host, and questioning her,
found that she doubted how what her senses told her was bread could
be the flesh of Christ. Then S. Gregory prayed that her eyes might be
opened, and instantly the Host was visibly changed into Christ enduring
His passion.