GREGORY THE GREAT, THE FIRST MEDIÆVAL POPE
Seventeen Pontiffs successively ruled in the Lateran Palace during the
hundred and thirty years which separate the death of Leo I. and the
accession of Gregory I. The first seven were not unworthy to succeed
Leo, although one of them, Anastasius (496-498), is unjustly committed
to Dante's hell for his liberality.[77]
During their tenure of office the Arian Ostrogoth Theodoric set up his
promising kingdom in Italy, and the stricken country partly recovered.
But the succeeding Popes were smaller-minded men, looking darkly on the
heresy of Theodoric and longing to see him displaced by the Catholic
Eastern Emperor. Their unfortunate policy was crowned by a betrayal of
Rome to the troops of Justinian; and its fruit was the establishment
on the throne of Peter, by the unscrupulous Theodora, of the sorriest
adventurer that had yet defiled it (Pope Vigilius), the reduction of
Italy to the state of a province of the corrupt and extortionate East,
and a lamentable dependence of the See of Rome on the whim of the
Byzantine autocrat. Seeing its increasing feebleness, a new and fiercer
tribe of the barbarians, the Lombards, poured over Italy; and it was a
city of ruins, a kingdom of desolation, a continent of anarchy, which
Gregory I. was, in the year 590, forced to undertake to control.
At Rome the monuments of what was shudderingly called a pagan age were
falling, year by year, into the soil which would preserve them for a
more appreciative race. In Gregory's day, across the Tiber from the
old quarter, there were to be seen only the mouldering crowns of the
theatres and amphitheatres, the grass-girt ruins on the Capitol and
on the Palatine, and the charred skeletons of thousands of patrician
mansions on the more distant hills. Forty thousand Romans now trembled
where a million had once boasted their eternal empire. And, as one
sees in some fallen forest, a new life was springing up on the ruins.
Beside the decaying Neronian Circus rose the Basilica of St. Peter's,
to which strange types of pilgrims made their way under the modest
colonnade leading from the river. From the heart of the old Laterani
Palace towered the great Basilica of the Saviour (later of St. John)
and the mansion of the new rulers of the world. The temples were
still closed, and tumbling into ruins; for no one yet proposed to
convert into churches those abodes of evil spirits, which one passed
hurriedly at night. But on all sides churches had been built out of
the fallen stones, and monks and nuns trod the dismantled fora, and
new processions filed along the decaying streets. If you mounted
the hills, you would see the once prosperous Campagna a poisonous
marsh, sending death into the city every few years; and you would
learn that such was the condition of much of Italy, where the Lombard
now completed the work of Goth and Greek, and that from the gates of
Constantinople to the forests of Albion this incomprehensible brood of
barbarians was treading under foot what remained of Roman civilization.
The book of what we call ancient history was closed: the Middle Age
was beginning. Gregory was peculiarly adapted to impress the world at
this stage of transition. His father, Gordianus, had been a wealthy
patrician, with large estates in Sicily and a fine mansion on the
Cælian hill. De Rossi would make him a descendant of the great family
of the Anicii, but the deduction is strained. Gregory's mother was a
saint. He inherited vigour and administrative ability, and was reared
in the most pious and most credulous spirit of the time. He was put to
letters, and we are told that he excelled all others in every branch
of culture. Let us say, from his works, that--probably using the
writings of the Latin fathers as models--he learned to write a Latin
which Jerome would almost have pronounced barbarous, but which people
of the sixth century would think excellent, at times elegant. There
was very little culture left in Rome in Gregory's days.[78] About the
time when Gregory came into the world (540), Cassiodorus was quitting
it to found a monastic community on his estate, and he had the happy
idea of rescuing some elements of Roman culture from the deluge;
though to him culture meant Donatus and Martianus Capella rather than
the classics. He succeeded, too, in engaging the industry of the
Benedictine monks, to some extent, in copying manuscripts. Culture was,
happily, not suffered to die. In Rome, however, it sank very low, and,
for centuries, the Latin of the Papal clerks or the Popes is generally
atrocious.
Gregory, in 573, was Prefect of Rome when it was beset by the Lombards.
The desolation which ensued may have finally convinced him that the
end of the world approached: a belief which occurs repeatedly in his
letters and sermons. In the following year, he sold his possessions,
built six monasteries in Sicily, converted his Roman mansion into the
monastery of St. Andrew, and, after giving the rest of his fortune
to the poor, began a life of stern asceticism and meditation on the
Scriptures. One day he saw some Anglo-Saxon slaves in the market, and
he set off to convert these fair, blue-eyed islanders to the faith. But
Pope Benedict recalled him and found an outlet for his great energy in
secretarial duties at the Lateran.
Pelagius, who in 578 succeeded Benedict, sent Gregory to
Constantinople, to ask imperial troops for Italy, and he remained
there, caring for Papal interests, for about eight years. On its
pretentious culture he looked with so much disdain that he never
learned Greek,[79] while the general corruption of clerics and laymen,
and the fierce dogmatic discussions, did not modify his belief in a
coming dissolution. He maintained his monastic life in the Placidia
Palace, and began the writing of that portentous commentary on the
book of Job which is known as his _Magna Moralia_: a monumental
illustration of his piety, his imagination, and his lack of culture,
occupying about two thousand columns of Migne's quarto edition of his
works. He returned to Rome about the year 586, without troops, but
with the immeasurably greater treasure of an arm of St. Andrew and the
head of St. Luke. Amid the plagues and famines of Italy, he returned
to his terrible fasts and dark meditations, and awaited the blast of
the archangel's trumpet. An anecdote, told by himself, depicts his
attitude. One of his monks appropriated a few crowns, violating his vow
of poverty. Gregory refused the dying man the sacraments, and buried
him in a dunghill. He completed his commentary on Job, and collected
endless stories of devils and angels, saints and sinners, visions and
miracles; until one day, in 590, the Romans broke into the austere
monastery with the news that Pelagius was dead and Gregory was to be
his successor. He fled from Rome in horror, but he was the ablest man
in Italy, and all united to make him Pope.
If these things do not suffice to show that Gregory was the first
mediæval Pope, read his _Dialogues_, completed a few years later; no
theologian in the world to-day would accept that phantasmagoria of
devils and angels and miracles. It is a precious monument of Gregory's
world: the early mediæval world. There is the same morbid, brooding
imagination in his commentary on the prophecies of Ezekiel, which he
found congenial; and in many passages of the forty sermons in which,
disdaining flowers of rhetoric and rules of grammar, he tells his
people the deep-felt, awful truths of his creed.
Characteristic also is the incident which occurred during his temporary
guidance of the Church--while he awaited an answer to the letter in
which he had begged the Emperor to release him. A fearful epidemic
raged at Rome. Without a glance at the marshes beyond, from which
it came, Gregory ordered processions of all the faithful, storming
the heavens with hymns and litanies. The figure over the old tomb of
Hadrian (or the Castle of Sant' Angelo) at Rome tells all time how
an angel appeared in the skies on that occasion, and the pestilence
ceased. But the writers who are nearest to the time tell us that eighty
of the processionists fell dead on the streets in an hour, and the
pestilence went its slow course.
Yet when we turn from these other-worldly meditations and other-worldly
plans to the eight hundred and fifty letters of the great Pope, we seem
to find an entirely different man. We seem to go back some centuries,
along that precarious line of the Anicii, and confront one of the
abler of the old patricians. Instead of credulity, we find a business
capacity which, in spite of the appalling means of communication,
organizes and controls, down to minute details, an estate which is
worth millions sterling and is scattered over half a continent.
Instead of self-effacement, we find a man who talks to archbishops
and governors of provinces as if they were acolytes of his Church,
and, at least on one occasion, tells the Eastern autocrat, before whom
courtiers shade their eyes, that he will not obey him. Instead of holy
simplicity, we find a diplomacy which treats with hostile kings in
defiance of the civil government, showers pretty compliments on the
fiery Brunichildis or the brutal Phocas, and spends years in combating
the pretensions of Constantinople. Instead of angelic meekness, we
find a warm resentment of vilification, an occasional flash of temper
which cows his opponent, a sense of dignity which rebukes his steward
for sending him "a sorry nag" or a "good ass" to ride on. We have, in
short, a man whose shrewd light-brown eyes miss no opportunity for
intervention in that disorderly world, from Angle-land to Jerusalem;
who has in every part of it spies and informers in the service of
virtue and religion, and who for fourteen years does the work of three
men. And all the time he is Gregory the monk, ruining his body by
disdainful treatment, writing commentaries on Ezekiel: a medium-sized,
swarthy man, with large bald head and straggling tawny beard, with
thick red lips and Roman nose and chin, racked by indigestion and then
by gout--but a prodigious worker.
To compress his work into a chapter is impossible; one can only give
imperfect summaries and a few significant details. He had secretaries,
of course, and we are apt to forget that the art of shorthand writing,
which was perfectly developed by the Romans, had not yet been lost
in the night of the Middle Ages. Yet every letter has the stamp of
Gregory's personality, and we recognize a mind of wonderful range and
power.
His episcopal work in Rome alone might have contented another man.
Soon after his election he wrote a long letter on the duties and
qualifications of a bishop, which, in the shape of a treatise entitled
_The Book of Pastoral Rule_, inspired for centuries the better bishops
of Europe. His palace was monastic in its severity. He discharged from
his service, in Rome and abroad, the hosts of laymen his predecessors
had employed, and replaced them with monks and clerics: incidentally
turning into monks and clerics many men who did not adorn the holy
state. He said mass daily, and used at times to go on horseback to
some appointed chapel in the city, where the people gathered to hear
his sermons on the gospels or on Ezekiel. Every shade of simony, every
pretext for ordination, except religious zeal, he sternly suppressed.
When he found that men were made deacons for their fine voices, he
forbade deacons to sing any part of the mass except the Gospel, and he
made other changes in the liturgy and encouraged the improvement of
the chant. Modern criticism does not admit the _Sacramentary_ and the
_Antiphonary_ which later ages ascribed to him, but he seems to have
given such impulse to reform that the perfected liturgy and chant of a
later date were attributed to him.[80]
His motive in these reforms was purely religious; those who would
persuade us that Gregory I. had some regard for profane culture, at
least as ancillary to religious, forget his belief is an approaching
dissolution, and overlook the nature of profane culture. It was
indissolubly connected with paganism, and Gregory would willingly have
seen every Latin classic submerged in the Tiber; while his disdain of
Greek confirmed the already prevalent ignorance which shut the Greek
classics out of Europe, to its grave disadvantage, for many centuries.
Happily, many monks and bishops were in this respect less unworldly
than Gregory, and the greater Roman writers were copied and preserved.
Gregory's attitude toward these men is well known. He hears that
Bishop Desiderius of Vienne, a very worthy prelate, is lecturing on
"grammar" (Latin literature), and he writes to tell Desiderius that he
is filled with "mourning and sorrow" that a bishop should be occupied
with so "horrible" (_nefandum_) a pursuit.[81] It has been frivolously
suggested that perhaps Desiderius had been lecturing on the classics in
church, but Gregory is quite plain: the reading of the pagan writers is
an unfit occupation even for "a religious layman."[82] In the preface
to his _Magna Moralia_ he scorns "the rules of Donatus"; and so sore a
memory of his attitude remained among the friends of Latin letters that
Christian tradition charged him with having burned the libraries of the
Capitol and of the Palatine and with having mutilated the statues and
monuments of older Rome.[83]
The work of Gregory in Rome, however, was not confined to liturgy
and discipline. The tradition of parasitism at Rome was not dead,
and, as there was now no _Præfectus Annonæ_ to distribute corn to the
citizens, it fell to the Church to feed them; and the Romans were now
augmented by destitute refugees from all parts. Gregory had to find
food and clothing for masses of people, to make constant grants to
their churches and to the monasteries, to meet a periodical famine,
and to render what miserable aid the ignorance of the time afforded
during the periodical pestilence. Occasionally he had even to control
the movements of troops and the dispatch of supplies; at least, in his
impatience of the apparent helplessness of the imperial government and
his determination to hold Catholic towns against the Lombards, he
undertook these and other secular functions.
The control of the vast Papal income and expenditure might alone have
sufficed to employ a vigorous man. In Sicily, there were immense
estates belonging to the Papacy, and other "patrimonies," as they
were called, were scattered over Italy and the islands, or lay as far
away as Gaul, Dalmatia, Africa, and the East. Clerical agents usually
managed these estates, but we find Gregory talking about their mules
and mares and cornfields, and the wages and grievances of their slaves
and serfs, as familiarly as if he had visited each of them. It has been
estimated, rather precariously, that the Papacy already owned from
1400 to 1800 square miles of land, and drew from it an annual income
of from £300,000 to £400,000. Not a domestic squabble seems to have
happened in this enormous field but Gregory intervened, and his rigid
sense of justice and general shrewdness of decision command respect.
Then, there was the equally heavy task of distributing the income,
for the episcopal establishment cost little, and nothing was hoarded.
In sums of ten, twenty, or fifty gold pieces, in bales of clothing
and galleys of corn, in altar-vessels and the ransom of captives, the
stream percolated yearly throughout the Christian world, as far as the
villages of Syria. Monks and nuns were especially favoured.
Within a few years, there spread over the world so great a repute
of Gregory's charity and equity that petitions rained upon Rome.
Here a guild of soap-boilers asks his intervention in some dispute:
there a woman who, in a fit of temper at the supposed infidelity of
her husband, has rushed to a nunnery and now wants to return home,
asks his indulgence, and receives it. From all sides are cries of
oppression, simony, or other scandal, and Gregory is aroused. Jews
appeal to him frequently against the injustice of their Christian
neighbours, and they invariably get such justice as the law allows. The
Zealots who have seized their synagogues (if of long standing--they
were forbidden by law to build new ones) must restore them, or pay for
them[84]; impatient priests who would coerce them into "believing" are
rebuked. There is only one weakness--a not unamiable weakness--in his
treatment of the Jews. Those who abandon their creed are to have their
rents reduced: to encourage the others, he says cheerfully.[85] For
the pagans, however, he has no mercy, as we shall see. He sanctions
compulsion and persecution with mediæval frankness. It should be noted,
too, that, while he approved the manumission of slaves, he never
condemned the institution as such. Vast regiments of slaves worked
the Papal estates, though the ease, if not advantage, of converting
them into serfs must have been apparent. Still no slave could enter
the clergy--lest, as Leo the Great had declared, his "vileness" should
"pollute" the sacred order--and a special probation was imposed on
slaves if they wished to enter monasteries: a wise regulation this, for
many thought it an easy way to freedom. Still no slave could contract
marriage with a free Christian, as Gregory expressly reaffirms.[86]
These details of his work will, however, be more apparent if we pass
from Rome to the provinces which he controlled, and observe the success
or failure of his intervention. It will at once be understood that his
intervention almost invariably means that there is an abuse to correct,
and, therefore, the world which we find reflected in Gregory's letters
is fearfully corrupt. The restless movements and destructive ways
of the barbarians had almost obliterated the older culture, and no
new system either of education or polity had yet been devised. The
influence of the East had been just as pernicious. The venality and
corruption of its officers had infected the higher clergy, and simony
prevailed from Gaul to Palestine. Over and over again Gregory writes,
in just the same words, to prelates of widely separated countries: "I
hear that no one can obtain orders in your province without paying
for them." The clergy was thus tainted at its source. Ambitious
laymen passed, almost at a bound, to bishoprics, and then maintained
a luxurious or vicious life by extorting illegal fees. The people,
who had been generally literate under the Romans, were now wholly
illiterate and helpless. But Gregory has his informants (generally
the agents in charge of the patrimonies) everywhere, and the better
clergy and the oppressed and the disappointed appeal to him; and a sad
procession of vice and crime passes before our eyes when we read his
letters. This anarchic world needed a supreme court more than ever; the
Papacy throve on its very disorders.
Italy was demoralized by the settlement of the Arian Lombards over
the greater part of the country, and by their murderous raids in all
directions. Parts which remained Catholic were often so isolated from
Rome that a spirit of defiance was encouraged, and Gregory had grave
trouble. Milan, for instance, was in the hands of the Lombards, but
the Catholic clergy had fled to Genoa with their archbishop, and they
retained something of the independence of the Church of St. Ambrose. We
see that they must now have their selection of a bishop approved by
Gregory, and that the Pope often quietly reproves the prelate for his
indiscretions; but we find also that when, on a more serious occasion,
Gregory proposes to have Archbishop Constantius tried at Rome, the
latter acridly refuses.
Ravenna, the seat of the Eastern Exarch, who is generally hostile to
Gregory, occasions some of his least saintly letters. He hears that
Archbishop John wears his pallium on forbidden occasions, and he
reproves John with an air of unquestioned authority.[87] John partly
disputes the facts, and partly pleads special privileges of Ravenna,
but Gregory finds no trace of such privileges and orders him to
conform.[88] Then he hears that John and the fine folk of the court are
poking fun at him, and his honest anger overflows[89]: "Thank God the
Lombards are between me and the city of Ravenna, or I might have had
to show how strict I can be." John dies, and we see that the clergy
of Ravenna must submit the names of two candidates to Gregory. He
rejects the Exarch's man, and chooses an old fellow-monk and friend,
Marinianus. But the new Archbishop is forced to maintain the defence of
the supposed privileges of Ravenna, and the dispute seems to reach no
conclusion during the life of Gregory.
In the isolated peninsula of Istria, the spirit of independence has
gone the length of flat defiance, or schism, because the Papacy has
acquiesced in the endorsement by the Eastern bishops of the Three
Chapters: three chapters of a certain decree of Justinian. The schism
is of long standing, and when Gregory is made bishop he sends a troop
of soldiers to the patriarch of Aquileia, commanding that prelate and
his chief supporters to appear at Rome forthwith, "according to the
orders of the most Christian and most Serene lord of all." The use
of the Emperor's name seems to have been, to put it politely, not
strictly accurate, for when Bishop Severus appealed to Maurice, the
Emperor curtly ordered Gregory to desist. We have another indication
of the mediæval aspect of Gregory's ideas when, in the following
year, he refused to contribute to the relief-fund for the victims of
a great fire at Aquileia. His monies were "not for the enemies of the
Church," he said. He went on to weaken the schism by other means,
partly by bribes, and when Maurice died in 602 and a friendly Exarch
was appointed, he at once urged physical force.[90] "The defence of
the soul is more precious in the sight of God than the defence of the
body," he enacted. He was legislating for the Middle Ages.
His relations with the Lombards and the civil power reveal another side
of his character. Small Catholic towns, and even Rome, were constantly
threatened by the Lombards, yet Constantinople was unable to send
troops, and the Exarch remained inactive behind the marshes and walls
of Ravenna. Gregory indignantly turned soldier and diplomatist. He
appointed a military governor of Nepi, and later of Naples; and many of
his letters are to military men, stirring them to action and telling
of the dispatch of troops or supplies. In 592, the Lombards appeared
before Rome, and Gregory fell ill with work and anxiety. He then
purchased a separate peace from the Lombards[91] and there was great
anger at Ravenna and Constantinople. Gregory's sentiment was hardly one
of patriotism, which would not be consistent with his philosophy; he
was concerned for religion, as he was bound to be since the Lombards
were Arians. On the other hand, he acknowledges that if he makes a
separate peace with the Lombards, it will be disastrous for other parts
of the Empire[92]; and it is clear from the sequel that the Exarch had
a policy and was not idly drifting.
A later legend, which some modern writers strangely regard as
credible,[93] makes Gregory meet the Lombard king outside Rome, and
strike a bargain. A bargain was certainly struck, but the angry Exarch
issued from Ravenna with his troops and cut his way to Rome, where his
conversation with the Pope cannot have been amiable. The Lombards were
back in 593, but were either bribed, or found Rome too strong to be
taken. They returned again in 595. Gregory now wrote to a friend in
Ravenna[94] that he proposed again to purchase peace, and the Emperor
Maurice seems to have written him a scalding letter. From Gregory's
indignant reply[95] we gather that Maurice called him "a fool," and
hinted that he was a liar and traitor. The government idea evidently
was that Gregory was a simple-minded victim of the cunning Lombards,
as is very probable; but we must take account of his sincere concern
for religion and his longing for peace. His policy of bribes would
have been disastrous. At Ravenna, some person posted on the walls a
sarcastic "libel" about his statesmanship, and another fiery letter
appears in Gregory's register.
In other parts of Italy, he had grave ecclesiastical abuses to correct,
and some strange bishops are immortalized in his letters. In 599, he
had to issue a circular letter,[96] forbidding bishops to have women
in their houses, and ordering priests, deacons, and subdeacons to
separate from their wives. Sicily, controlled by his agents, gave
him little trouble, but his informers reported that in Sardinia and
Corsica the clergy and monks were very corrupt, and the pagans, who
were numerous, bribed the officials to overlook the practice of their
cult. The metropolitan at Cagliari was an intemperate and avaricious
man, and Gregory, after repeated warnings, summoned him to Rome; but
there is a curious mixture of indulgence and sternness in the Pope's
letters, and Januarius did not go to Rome or alter his wicked ways. As
to the pagans, Gregory, at first, merely urged the Archbishop to raise
the rents and taxes of those who would not abandon the gods.[97] When
this proved insufficient, he ordered physical persecution. If they were
slaves, they were to be punished with "blows and tortures"; if they
were free tenants, they were to be imprisoned. "In order," he says, in
entirely mediæval language, "that they who disdain to hear the saving
words of health may at least be brought to the desired sanity of mind
by torture of the body."[98]
With other provinces of the old Empire, his correspondence is mainly
directed to the correction of grave abuses. His letters to Spain show
that Papal authority was fully recognized there, and it is of interest
to find a Spanish bishop bemoaning, when Gregory urges that only
literate men shall be promoted to the priesthood, that they are too few
in number. Africa virtually defied his efforts to reform the Church.
The province had recovered a little under Byzantine rule, but its
bishops and civic officials took bribes from the Donatists.[99] They
refused to persecute the schismatics, when Gregory ordered them to do
so, and they defeated his attempt to break up their system of local
primacies.[100] He was compelled to leave them in their perverse ways.
The same condition of simony and clerical laxity prevailed generally
throughout the Roman-Teutonic world, and Gregory could do little more
than press for the election of good men to vacant bishoprics.
The diplomatic side of his character appears in his relations
with Gaul, where the fiery and wilful Brunichildis was his chief
correspondent.[101] It is true that her graver crimes were committed
after Gregory's death, but he was particularly well informed, and one
cannot admire his references to her "devout mind" or appreciate his
belief that she was "filled with the piety of heavenly grace." When,
in 599, she asked the pallium for her obsequious Bishop Syagrius of
Autun, Gregory granted it: on condition that Syagrius convoked a synod
for the correction of abuses and that Brunichildis attacked paganism
more vigorously. When, on the other hand, the learned and devout Bishop
Desiderius of Vienne, who was hated by Brunichildis for his courage
in rebuking her, asked the pallium, Gregory found that there was no
precedent and refused. It is true that Brunichildis was generous to the
clergy and, in her way, pious; but Gregory must have known the real
character of the woman whose influence he sought to win. His sacrifice,
moreover, was futile. A few synods were held, but there is no trace
of any diminution of simony, drunkenness, and vice among the Frankish
priests and monks.
His interest in the neighbouring island of Angle-land is well known. He
began, early in his Pontificate, to buy Anglo-Saxon youths and train
them for missionary work, but, in 596, he found a speedier way to
convert the islanders. The all-powerful Ethelbert was married to the
Christian Bertha, and Gregory's friendly relations with Gaul opened
the way to his court. He sent the historic mission of monks under
Augustine, and, in a few years, had the converted King transforming the
pagan temples into churches and driving his people into them. It was
Gregory who planned the first English hierarchy.
The monks, who ought to have been Gregory's firmest allies in the
reform of Christendom, had already become an ignorant and sensual body,
sustaining the ideal of Benedict only in a few isolated communities,
and Gregory's efforts to improve them were not wholly judicious. He
insisted that they should not undertake priestly or parochial work, and
he forbade the bishops to interfere with their temporal concerns. There
can be little doubt that this tendency to free them from episcopal
control made for greater degeneration. Here again, also, we find a
curious illustration of his diplomatic liberality. As a rule he was
very severe with apostate monks, yet we find him maintaining through
life a friendly correspondence with a renegade monk of Syracuse.
Venantius had returned to his position of wealthy noble in the world,
and had married a noble dame. Gregory, it is true, urged him to return
to his monastery, but the amiability of his language is only explained
by the position and influence of the man. The last phase of this part
of Gregory's correspondence is singular. Venantius died, and left his
daughters to the guardianship of the Pope; and we find Gregory assuring
these children of sin that he will discharge "the debt we owe to the
goodness of your parents."[102]
We have already seen that Gregory's relations with the eastern
Emperor were painful, and another episode must be related before we
approach Eastern affairs more closely. The Archbishop of Salona, who
was one of the typical lax prelates of the age and who had smiled at
Gregory's admonitions and threats, was removed by death, and the Pope
endeavoured to secure the election of the archdeacon, a rigorous priest
who had been the Pope's chief informer. Neither clergy nor laity,
however, desired a change in the morals of the episcopal palace, and
they secured from Constantinople an imperial order for the election of
their own favourite. Gregory alleged bribery and excommunicated the new
archbishop. When the Emperor ordered him to desist, he flatly refused,
and a compromise had to be admitted. In another town of the same
frontier province, Prima Justiniana, the Emperor proposed to replace
an invalid bishop with a more vigorous man, and Gregory refused to
consent.[103]
A graver conflict had arisen in the East. Constantinople, with its
million citizens and its superb imperial palace, naturally regarded
its archbishop as too elevated to submit to Rome, and its ruling
prelate, John the Faster,--a priest who rivalled Gregory in virtue
and austerity,--assumed the title of "Ecumenical Bishop." Gregory
protested, but the Emperor Maurice, with his customary bluntness,
ordered the Pope to be silent. A few years later, however, some
aggrieved Eastern priests appealed to Rome, and Gregory wrote, in
entirely Papal language, to ask John for a report on their case. When
John lightly, or disdainfully, answered that he knew nothing about
it, the Pope lost his temper. He told his ascetic brother that it
would be a much less evil to eat meat than to tell lies: that he had
better get rid of that licentious young secretary of his and attend
to business: that he must at once take back the aggrieved priests: and
that, although he seeks no quarrel, he will not flinch if it is forced
on him.[104] John made a malicious retort, by inducing the Empress
Constantina to make a request for relics which Gregory was bound to
refuse.
The priests were eventually tried at Rome. Whether Gregory's sentence
was ever carried out in the East, we do not know, but John took the
revenge of styling himself "Ecumenical Bishop" in his correspondence
with Gregory, and the Pope then tried to form a league with the
patriarchs of the apostolic Sees of Antioch and Alexandria against the
ambitious John. In his eagerness to defeat John, he went very near to
sharing the Papacy with his allies. Peter, he said, had been at Antioch
before Rome, and Mark was a disciple of Peter; therefore the three were
in a sense "one See."[105] He added that Rome was so far from aspiring
to the odious title that, although it had actually been offered to
the Popes by the Council of Chalcedon, neither Leo nor any of his
successors had used it.[106]
To John himself Gregory sent a withering rebuke of his pride. To the
Emperor Maurice he described John as "a wolf in sheep's clothing,"
a man who claimed a "blasphemous title" which "ought to be far from
the hearts of all Christians"! John may "stiffen his neck against the
Almighty," he says, but "he will not bend mine even with swords."[107]
He assured the Empress Constantina that John's ambition was a sure sign
of the coming of Anti-Christ.[108]
Gregory's peculiar diplomacy only excited the disdain of the
subtler Greeks. His position is, in fact, so false--repudiating
as "blasphemous" a title which, the whole world knew, he himself
claimed in substance--that it has been suggested that he thought
the term "Ecumenical Bishop" meant "sole bishop." Such a suggestion
implies extraordinary ignorance at Rome, but there is no need to
entertain it. To his friends Anastasius of Antioch and Eulogius of
Alexandria, Gregory complained that the phrase was an affront, not to
_all_ bishops, but merely to the leading patriarchs, and the whole
correspondence shows that there was no misunderstanding. Gregory lacked
self-control. Anastasius of Antioch, though very friendly, ignored his
letters; Eulogius advised him to be quiet, and hinted that people might
suggest envy; the Emperor treated him with silent disdain. John died,
but his successor Cyriacus actually used the offensive title in telling
Gregory of his appointment. There was another outburst, and Maurice
impatiently begged the Pope not to make so much fuss about "an idle
name." Eulogius of Alexandria, who had some sense of humour, addressed
Gregory as "Universal Pope," saying gravely that he would obey his
"commands" and not again call any man "Universal Bishop." Possibly
Eulogius knew that Gregory had, a few years before, written to John of
Syracuse: "As to the Church of Constantinople, who doubts that it is
subject to the Apostolic See?"[109] Gregory protested in vain until the
close of his life. The Greeks retained their "blasphemous" title: the
Latins continued to assert their authority even over the Greek bishops.
Toward the close of the year 602, the Emperor Maurice, now a stricken
old man of sixty-three, was driven from his throne by the brutal
Phocas; his five boys were murdered before his eyes and he was himself
executed. Phocas sent messengers to apprise Gregory of his accession.
We may assume that these messengers would give a discreet account
of what had happened and, possibly, bring an assurance of the new
Emperor's orthodoxy; and we do not know whether Gregory's assiduous
servants at Constantinople sent him any independent account. Yet, when
we have made every possible allowance, Gregory's letters to Phocas are
painful. The first letter[110] begins, "Glory be to God on high," and
sings a chant of victory culminating in, "Let the heavens rejoice and
the earth be glad." The bloody and unscrupulous adventurer must have
been himself surprised. Two months later, Gregory wrote again, hailing
the dawn of "the day of liberty" after the night of tyranny.[111] In
another letter he[112] saluted Leontia, the new Empress,--a fit consort
of Phocas,--as "a second Pulcheria"; and he commended the Church of St.
Peter's to her generosity. These two letters were written seven months
after the murders, and it is impossible to suppose that no independent
report had reached Gregory by that time. Nor do we find that, though he
lived for a year afterwards, he ever undid those lamentable letters. It
is the most ominous presage of the Middle Ages.
Gregory died on March 12, 604. The racking pains of gout had been
added to his maladies, and plague and famine and Lombards continued
to enfeeble Italy He had striven heroically to secure respect for
ideals--for religion, justice, and honour--in that dark world on which
his last thoughts lingered. He had planted many a good man in the
bishoprics of Europe. He had immensely strengthened the Papacy, and a
strong central power might do vast service in that anarchic Europe.
Yet the historian must recognize that the world was too strong even
for his personality; simony and corruption still spread from Gaul to
Africa, and the ideas which Gregory most surely contributed to the
mind of Europe were those more lamentable or more casuistic deductions
from his creed which we have noticed. Within a year or so--to make the
best we can of a rumour which has got into the chronicles--the Romans
themselves grumbled that his prodigal charity had lessened _their_
share of the patrimonies, and we saw that more bitter complaints
against him were current in the Middle Ages. Yet he was a great Pope:
not great in intellect, not perfect in character, but, in an age of
confusion, corruption, and cowardice, a mighty protagonist of high
ideals.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 77: Another of them, Gelasius (492-496), is, or was until
recently, regarded as the author of the first canon of Scriptures
and the first list of prohibited books. But this so-called "Gelasian
Decree" does not bear the name of Gelasius in some of the older
manuscripts, and is now much disputed. Father Grisar thinks that "we
may take it as certain that it did not emanate from him" (_History of
Rome and the Popes_, iii., 236). The canon is probably due to Damasus
(see p. 36) and the rather loosely written list of books which follows
it is ascribed to the later age of Hormisdas (514-523). Gelasius was an
able and vigorous Pope, and would hardly issue so poor a decree.]
[Footnote 78: Lives of Gregory must be read with discretion. The best
and most ample source of knowledge is the stout volume of his letters,
but there are early biographies by Paul the Deacon and John the Deacon.
Paul wrote about 780, but his fairly sober sketch--into which miracles
have been interpolated--does not help us much. John wrote about a
century after this, and his fantastic and utterly undiscriminating work
is almost useless. The best biography of Gregory is the learned and
generally candid work of W.F.H. Dudden (_Gregory the Great_, 2 vols.,
1905).]
[Footnote 79: _Ep._, ix., 69.]
[Footnote 80: See Dudden's _Gregory the Great_, i., 264-276.]
[Footnote 81: _Ep._, vi., 54.]
[Footnote 82: Dr. H.A. Mann (_The Lives of the Popes in the Early
Middle Ages_, 1902, etc.) would show that Gregory had a regard for
culture by quoting much praise of secular learning from the _Commentary
on the First Book of Kings_. This is not a work of Gregory at all. Even
the Benedictine editors of the Migne edition claim only that it was
written by an admirer who took notes of Gregory's homilies, and they
admit that it frequently departs from Gregory's ideas.]
[Footnote 83: See John of Salisbury, _Polycraticus_, ii., 26. It is
difficult to conceive that so unflattering a tradition was entirely an
invention.]
[Footnote 84: _Ep._, ix., 6, etc.]
[Footnote 85: _Ep._, ii., 32.]
[Footnote 86: _Ep._, vii., 1.]
[Footnote 87: III., 56.]
[Footnote 88: V., 11.]
[Footnote 89: V., 15.]
[Footnote 90: XIII., 33.]
[Footnote 91: II., 46; v., 36.]
[Footnote 92: V., 36.]
[Footnote 93: It is first found in the unreliable Continuer of
Prosper's _Chronicle_, and seems to be founded on the meeting of Leo
and Attila. Neither Gregory nor Paul, the Deacon speaks of a meeting
with the Lombard king.]
[Footnote 94: V., 36.]
[Footnote 95: V., 40.]
[Footnote 96: IX., ii.]
[Footnote 97: IV., 26.]
[Footnote 98: IX., 65.]
[Footnote 99: I., 84.]
[Footnote 100: I., 74.]
[Footnote 101: See _Ep._, vii., 5, 50, 59 etc.]
[Footnote 102: XI., 35.]
[Footnote 103: XI., 47.]
[Footnote 104: III., 53.]
[Footnote 105: V., 43.]
[Footnote 106: It is not true that the Council offered the title to Leo
I. It occurs only in petitions which two Eastern priests directed to
the Pope and the Council (Mansi, vi., 1006 and 1012), and the Council,
as we saw, decreed precisely the opposite. The only other place in
which we find it in some form is the spurious Latin version of the
sentence on Dioscorus to which I referred on p. 50.]
[Footnote 107: V., 20.]
[Footnote 108: V., 21.]
[Footnote 109: IX., 12.]
[Footnote 110: XIII., 31.]
[Footnote 111: XIII., 38.]
[Footnote 112: XIII., 39.]