THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT
[Sidenote: Gregory the Great.]
About 540 was born in Rome, of a noble family, the great Pope Gregory,
whose work was to place the papacy at the head of Italian politics, and
to lay the lines on which papal action for many centuries was to be
based. When he was a child it might well have seemed that Italy under
a strong Gothic rule would submit to the Arian teaching which the State
supported. Theodoric endeavoured to make an united Italy; but the
Church knew that there could be no compromise on the doctrine of the
perfect Godhead of the Lord Jesus, and her attitude preserved Italy
both for Catholicism and for the Empire. Gregory was taught as a
Catholic, but he was taught also in classical grammar, composition,
rhetoric, and the writings of the great Romans--pre-Christian, as well
as of later days. He began his life's work as a Roman official, and by
the year 573 he is found as prefect of the city. A year later, it
would seem, he became a monk, giving up all his property, all his signs
of rank and wealth, all his power and place. Soon, if not at once, he
came to serve under the rule of S. Benedict, whose life he afterwards
wrote, in the monastery dedicated to S. Andrew on the Caelian hill.
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[Sidenote: The Lombard invasion, 568.]
It was the time when Italy was again at the feet of the barbarians.
The Lombards, the last of the Teutonic nations to settle in the West,
established at Pavia a kingdom which lasted for two centuries
(568-774), and which again rent away much of the fair Italian lands
from the unity of the Empire, leaving the Exarchate at Ravenna in a
state half isolated and wholly perilous.
[Sidenote: The effect on Italy.]
Gradually the onward sweep of the new barbarians, who called themselves
Arians, but were not strongly bound by any creed, swept away all power
save their own and the pope's. The destruction of Monte Cassino was
typical of one side of their work--the turning aside from Rome at
Gregory's intercession of another. The Empire struggled to retain its
hold on Italy and to govern the Western world from Ravenna, with
instructions from the New Rome; but it failed. The papacy studied to
be quiet. And the close of the sixth century showed that power would
return in the end to the city which had founded the Empire, and to the
Church which was now claiming to teach and to unite the nations.
A period of papal insignificance was gradually ended by the progress of
new ideals for the papacy. This came about in three ways.
[Sidenote: The popes and the exarchate.]
1. It was the aim of each pope to set up his power against that of the
imperial exarchate, by which Italy was ruled after its reconquest by
Belisarius and Narses. Gradually, step by step, the popes claimed
cognisance of secular matters, intervened in politics, and stood forth
as a leaders in Italian affairs. The imperial administration saw the
danger, and, from time to time, made definite {62} opposition to the
papal pretensions. It endeavoured to restore the unity of the Church,
to secure the universal condemnation of the Three Chapters, but under
sanction of Ravenna rather than of Rome. Thus the exarch Smaragdus, in
587, led Severus, patriarch of Aquileia, before the Ravennate prelates
to make submission;[1] and later the emperor Maurice interfered to
present the pope compelling the patriarch to submission. But these
endeavours were futile; and the great Gregory, statesman and
administrator of the first order, made the papacy the most important
political power in the western provinces of the Empire. In 599 this
was apparent in Gregory's negotiation with the Lombard king, Agilulf.
[Sidenote: The Benedictines in South Italy.]
2. The papal influence was increased, and the Greek power diminished,
by the direct replacement of Eastern monks by Benedictines.[2] The
monasteries founded by Greeks during the imperial restoration, no
longer replenished from Constantinople, fell into the hands of the
great papal force founded by the greatest saint, and marshalled by the
greatest administrator of the century.
[Sidenote: Missions from Rome.]
3. And, lastly, the power of the papacy was at once evidenced and
increased by the revival of its missionary energy. What Pelagius II.
had stayed, Gregory the Great accomplished--conversion of England by
the mission of Augustine. Spain, too, was won from Arianism by a
personal friend of Gregory's, though without Roman intervention;[3] and
within Italy itself the {63} pope began the great work of the
conversion of the Lombards to the Catholic faith, with the full
teaching both of the Tome of Leo and of the Fifth General Council.
Gregory sent the Acts of the Council to be taught to the little child
Adalwald, the Lombard king.
Thus in each of these three directions the progress of papal power is
connected with the influence of Gregory the Great. It is of his papacy
therefore that we must speak as the critical point in the upward
movement. Between 574 and 590 Gregory gained experience in many ways.
To a strict monastic training he added, in 579, the employment of papal
apocrisiarius (or envoy) at the imperial court at Constantinople. Here
he became intimate with the chief ecclesiastics, with Anastasius, who
had been deposed from the patriarchal see of Antioch, and who came to
regard him as "the very mouth and lantern of the Lord," with Leander of
Seville, who had come to lay the needs of the Catholic cause in Spain
before the emperors,[4] and with the imperial family. [Sidenote:
Gregory as abbat.] About 586 he returned to Rome, and became abbat of
the monastery in which he had formerly served. It was there that he
completed his commentary, or _moralia_, on the book of Job, which he
had delivered as lectures at Constantinople, an epitome of Christian
theology and morals. It was then that he saw the bright lads from
Deira, who first turned his thoughts to the conversion of England.[5]
The controversy of the Three Chapters was still lingering on in Italy,
and it was Gregory who was given the task of inducing the Istrian {64}
bishops to accept the decisions of the Fifth General Council.
[Sidenote: Gregory elected Pope, 590.] So skilful did he prove himself
as a controversialist, as an administrator, and as an adviser of
Pelagius, that he was elected with enthusiasm to succeed that pope in
590.
[Sidenote: The pastoral rule.]
His ideal of the pastoral office is set forth in that golden book, the
_Liber regulae pastoralis_, in which he describes the life of a true
shepherd of the Christian people. A life of absolute purity and
devotion as therein sketched was that which made Gregory's pontificate
notable for its wisdom, its discretion, and its wise governance. The
pastoral office to him was one even more of the cure of souls than of
government, and that idea is shown in all his letters. He wrote to
kings, abbats, individual Christians, with the spirit of direct
encouragement and admonition, as a wise teacher dispensing instruction.
In the Lateran he lived, as he had lived on the Caelian hill, a life of
strict ascetic rule, wearing still his monastic dress, and living in
common with his clerks and monks. [Sidenote: Gregory's life.] John the
Deacon, who wrote his biography nearly two centuries after his death,
says that "the Roman Church in Gregory's time was like that Church as
it was under the rule of the apostles, or the Church of Alexandria when
S. Mark was its bishop." Charity was by him developed into a great
scheme of benevolence organised with the minutest care and recorded in
detail in books that were a model to later times. The political and
ecclesiastical cares of the papacy never prevented Gregory from what he
considered the chiefest duty of his office, that of preaching. His
sermons, which were as famous as those of Chrysostom in Constantinople,
were {65} direct in their appeal, vivid in their illustration, terse
and epigrammatic in their expression. Paul the Deacon sums up his work
by saying that he was entirely engrossed in gaining souls.
[Sidenote: His statesmanship.]
At the same time he was a statesman as well as a bishop. He governed
the "patrimony of S. Peter," lands scattered over Italy and even Gaul,
with a careful supervision, entering into minute matters as well as
general policy, freeing slaves, caring for the cultivation of land; and
the intimate knowledge which he thus acquired is shown in his
_Dialogues_, which throw a flood of light on the life, secular as well
as ecclesiastical, of his age. Outside these districts, in purely
spiritual matters, he showed a constant vigilance. Everywhere what was
needed seemed to be known to the pope, and everywhere he was planning
to remedy evils, to build up the Church, to reform abuses, to convert
heretics, to supply new bishops, to encourage the growth of
monasticism. This activity extended not only to what were called the
suburbicarian provinces but to distant lands, such as Spain, Illyricum,
Gaul, Africa, as well as to Northern Italy. Something has been said of
his relations in Gaul, and remains to be said of his intervention in
Africa. His relations with Constantinople may be most significantly
illustrated by the dispute as to the title of the patriarch of New Rome.
[Sidenote: The title "Universal Bishop."]
In 588 the acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius
II. to be invalid be-cause the patriarch used the title _oikoumenikos_
or _universalis_. Just as at the Council of Chalcedon the Alexandrine
representatives styled the pope "oecumenical archbishop and {66}
patriarch of the Great Rome," so the patriarch of Constantinople used
the style and dignity of "oecumenical patriarch." It was one that had
been employed at least since 518, and it seems to have been commonly
used. From the use of this title came grave controversy. In 588 the
acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius II. to be
invalid because the patriarch used the title _oikoumenikos_ or
_universalis_: and in 595 Gregory the Great strongly condemned the use
of such a phrase, at the same time repudiating its use for his own see.
"The Council of Chalcedon," he wrote, "offered the title of universal
to the Roman pontiff, but he refused to accept it, lest he should seem
thereby to derogate from the honour of his brother bishops." [6] And
to the emperor Maurice he said still more distinctly, "I confidently
affirm that whosoever calls himself _sacerdos universalis_, or desires
to be so called by others, is in his pride a forerunner of Antichrist."
But the patriarchs continued to use the title, and before a century had
elapsed, the popes followed their example.
[Sidenote: The province of Illyricum.]
The relation of Gregory with the Church of Illyricum gives opportunity
for mention of that anomalous patriarchate. Somewhat apart from the
general Church history of the early Middle Age stands the province of
Illyricum. Its ecclesiastical status was even more ambiguous than its
political. On its borders, or within its limits, the patriarchate of
Rome touched that of {67} Constantinople, and the claims of the two,
sometimes at least conflicting, were complicated by the privileges
given by Justinian to his birthplace. In the tenth century it was
undoubtedly under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, in the seventh it
appears to have been under that of Rome. In the Councils at
Constantinople in 681 and 692, the Illyrian bishops appeared as
attached exclusively to Rome; and so, it has been noticed, did those of
Crete, Thessalonica, and Corinth. In the sixth century there are
instances, though not numerous ones, of papal interference, in the
nature of the exercise of judicial power, in the province of Illyricum;
and at the end of the century Gregory the Great was especially active
in his correspondence with the bishops. It would seem from one of his
letters that he counted even Justiniana Prima as under his authority,
though the intention of the emperor was certainly not to make it so.
This edict--for so it practically is--is interesting also because it
appears to deal with all the ecclesiastical provinces of the empire
which depended immediately on the Roman patriarchate. It omits Africa,
and the fact that the popes did not send the pallium to the Bishop of
Carthage (the North African Metropolitan) shows that the popes did not
claim to confer jurisdiction, but merely to recognise a special
relationship, by this act.[7] On the other hand, it is to be observed
that the code of Justinian contains a law of Theodosius II. which
places the Illyrian bishopric under the jurisdiction of the patriarch
of Constantinople. But this law is beset with many difficulties, and
it has been {68} argued that it was merely the expression of a
temporary rupture between the Empire and the papacy, which in the
schism of 484-519 was gravely accentuated; and there are grounds for
thinking that the bishops of Thessalonica exercised authority in
Illyricum as delegates of Rome--yet rather from their political than
their ecclesiastical associations. However this may be, there can be
no doubt that the position given by Justinian to the city of his birth
was intended to be practically patriarchal, and that the Bishop of
Thessalonica, whether vicar or not of the pope, was practically
ignored. The whole question is indeed a notable example of the
difficulties consequent on the close connection between religion and
politics in the sixth century.
[Sidenote: Gregory's claim to jurisdiction.]
Gregory's action was that of a wise but masterful ruler, and it seems
to have been based on the view that all the bishops of the West were
directly under his jurisdiction. Similar cases of interference are to
be found in regard to the churches of Istria, and to the great sees of
Ravenna and Milan. In connection may be seen the claim to grant the
_pallium_, a mark of honour which seems to have been gradually passing
into a sign of jurisdiction.[8] Gregory claimed for the successors of
S. Peter something like an apostolic authority, and he at least
suggested a theory of the papal office which was capable of almost
indefinite extension. Politic and religion here met together. When
Airulf in 592 appeared before Rome the pope made a separate treaty with
him: he stepped into the {69} place of ruler of imperial Italy when he
disregarded the exarch and even the emperor, and entered into
negotiations on his own account; and up to the time of his death he was
practically responsible for the rearrangement of Italy. His letter to
the great Lombard queen, Theodelind, of whom memorials survive to-day
at Monza, show how the two sides of his position mingled; how he was
statesman and diplomatist as well as priest and missionary.
[Sidenote: His missions.]
In his missionary interests he passed far outside Italy. The most
conspicuous example is the conversion of the English, which he had in
earlier years been most anxious himself to undertake, and which was
begun in 597 under his direction by Augustine; but it is not the only
one. In Northern Italy, in Africa and Gaul, Gregory was active in
seeking the conversion of pagans and heretics, and in endeavouring by
gentle measures to lead the Jews to Christ.
[Sidenote: His relations on monasticism.]
More important still in the history of the papacy was Gregory's work in
spreading, organising, and systematising monasticism. He insisted on
the strict observance of the rule of S. Benedict. Not only did he
reform, but he very greatly strengthened, the monasticism of Italy.
Conspicuously did his _privilegia_, granting or recognising a
considerable freedom from episcopal control, start the monks on a new
advance. While not exempting them from the rule of bishops, he made it
possible for future popes to win support for themselves by granting
such exemptions.
But Gregory's fame does not lie wholly in any of these spheres of
activity. Great as a ruler and an {70} organiser, he was known also to
later ages, as to his own, for his theological writings. He was not
only a practical ruler and practical minister of Christ; he was also a
leader in Christian learning--the last, as men have come to call him,
of the four great Latin doctors.
[Sidenote: His relations to learning.]
The work of Gregory the Great was here as elsewhere far-reaching, but
rather an organising than a formative one. Classical studies, in which
he had been trained, he put aside; and when he did his utmost to spread
monasteries over the length and breadth of Italy, it was not at all of
learning in a secular sense, but wholly of religion that he thought.
Thus his own theology is primarily a biblical theology. The Bible was
to him the word of God. Like the author of the _Imitatio Christi_ in
later days, he did not care to argue as to the authorship of the
different books but to profit by what was in them. He was a great
expositor, a great preacher, and that always with a practical aim. As
he said, "We hear the doctrine words of God if we act on them."
[Sidenote: His doctrine of the church.] In his more general theological
writings he sums up, with the precision of a master, not any new
doctrines or advances in speculation, but the theology of the Church of
his age. And he is able thus to emphasise the crying need of unity in
words which state the claim of the Church for the conversion of the
pagans and heretics of his day: "Sancta autem universalis ecclesia
praedicat Deum veraciter nisi intra se coli non posse, asserens quod
omnes qui extra ipsam sunt minime salvabuntur." Outside this there was
no hope of spiritual health. And this doctrine he based {71} on the
unity of Christ's life with that of the Church: "Our Redeemer showed
that He is one person with the Church, which He took to be His own";
and thus it was that "The Churches of the true faith set in all parts
of the world make one Catholic Church, in which all the faithful who
are right minded toward God live in concord." Thus he was, in theology
as in ecclesiastical politics, a concentrating and clarifying force;
and when, on March 12th, 604, he passed to his rest, he had laid firm
the foundations of the medieval papacy, and in hardly less degree those
of the theological system of the medieval Church.
[1] _Paulus Diaconus_, iii, 26, ed. Waitz, pp. 105-7.
[2] Diehl, _op. cit._, gives a list, p. 256.
[3] Joannes Biclarensis, _Chronicon_ (Migne, _Patr. Lat._, lxxii. 868).
[4] See below, p. 76.
[5] The _Vita Antiquissima_ (S. Gall. MS.), by a monk of Whitby, does
not represent them as slaves (pp. 13, 14), ed. Gasquet.
[6] S. Greg., _Epp._, v. 18. The term _sacerdos_ is commonly used for
bishop at this date. Thus Gregory of Tours calls a bishop _sacerdos_
during this life, _antistes_ after his death. S. Gregory must not,
however, be understood as disclaiming a papal supremacy.
[7] The letter is Epp. Greg. (Jaffé), 1497; cf. letter to Syagrius,
Bishop of Autun.
[8] It does not seem, from Bede i. 39, that, as has been asserted, it
was always necessary to apply for it.
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