Gregory I

“ Gregory was famed for his learning and eloquence, his blameless life, and his great strength of character. He died on the 22nd of August 1241, while Frederick II. was advancing against him, and was succeeded by Celestine IV.
For the life of Gregory IX., consult his Letters in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Epistolae saeculi XIII. e regestis pontif. Roman. selectae (Berlin, 1883) ; “Les Registres de Grégoire IX,” ed. L. Auvray in Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome (Paris, 1890–1905) ; A. Potthast, Regesta pontif. Roman. ”

“ To Gregory it belonged to subdue men by courage, and to rule them by reverence. Addressing the world in the language of his generation, he proclaimed to every potentate, from the Baltic to the Straits of Calpé, that all human authority being holden of the divine, and God himself having delegated his own sovereignty over men to the Prince of the Sacred College, a divine right to universal obedience was the inalienable attribute of the Roman Pontiffs. ”

“ The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the Pope, not of God.
Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. ”

“ Once more, Gregory is remembered as a great organizer of missionary enterprise for the conversion of heathens and heretics. Most important was the two-fold mission to Britain—of St Augustine in 596, of Mellitus, Paulinus and others in 601; but Gregory also made strenuous efforts to uproot paganism in Gaul, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Arianism in Spain, Donatism in Africa, Manichaeism in Sicily, the heresy of the Three Chapters in Istria and northern Italy. In respect of the methods of conversion which he advocated he was not less intolerant than his contemporaries. ”

“ Gregory IX., Ugolino, born in Campania; had during his pontificate contests with the Emperor Barbarossa, whom he twice over excommunicated; was the personal friend of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he canonised; died at a very advanced age.
Gregory XIII., born in Bologna; was skilled in canon law; distinguished himself in the Council of Trent, and by his zeal against the Protestants; celebrated the Bartholomew Massacre by public thanksgivings in Rome, and reformed the calendar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He died in Friesland, June 5, 755, and was known as “the Apostle of Germany.”
25 Gregory I., surnamed the Great, was born about the year 540, and reigned as pope from 590 to his death in 604. He was famous for his zeal in enforcing ecclesiastical discipline and promoting missionary activity, especially in sending Christian missionaries to England. He is also noted for his arrangement of church music into what are still known as “Gregorian modes” or chants. His claim to being the greatest of the sixteen Gregories can be disputed by Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) alone. ”

“ As they sat at table, Gregory inquired of his host, what state it was, and who was the lord of it. "Sir," returned the other, "awhile ago, we had a very powerful emperor, but he died in the Holy Land, and left his throne to his sister. The Duke of Burgundy would have married her, but she was pleased to refuse his offer. Whereupon he has forcibly made himself master of the whole kingdom, save a single city in which the queen resides." "May I" returned the young knight, "declare with safety, the secret wish of my heart?" ”

“ It was, however, too popular to be easily suppressed. In England it was abolished by Henry VIII. in 1542, revived by Mary in 1552 and finally abolished by Elizabeth. On the continent it survived longest in Germany, in the so-called Gregoriusfest, said to have been founded by Gregory IV. in 828 in honour of St Gregory, the patron of schools. A school-boy was elected bishop, duly vested, and, attended by two boy-deacons and the town clergy, proceeded to the parish church, where, after a hymn in honour of St Gregory had been sung, he preached. ”

“ But while it may be admitted that Gregory was inclined to be unduly subservient to the great, so that at times he was willing to shut his eyes to the vices and even the crimes of persons of rank; yet it cannot fairly be denied that his character as a whole was singularly noble and unselfish. His life was entirely dominated by the religious motive. His sole desire was to promote the glory of God and of his church. At all times he strove honestly to live up to the light that was in him. ”

“ Although Gregory bewails this “thrusting out from port into the storm,” one cannot but feel how the alert fighting spirit in the man leaps to the call. The born leader may persuade himself that he is happiest in the seclusion he thinks good for his soul, but when the call to arms comes, every repressed fibre of his being wakes and cries for action.
When Gregory, taking with him several of his monks, sailed away from Italy, he little dreamed that years were to pass before he should return. ”

“ To remedy the evil, Gregory issued a decree that no ecclesiastic should do homage to a temporal lord, but that he should receive the ring and staff, the symbols of investiture, from the hands of the Pope alone. Any one who should dare disobey the decree was threatened with the anathemas of the Church. Such was the bold measure by which Gregory proposed to wrest out of the hands of the feudal lords and princes the vast patronage and immense revenues resulting from the relation they had gradually come to sustain to a large portion of the lands and riches of the Church. ”

“ Gregory experienced the most formidable opposition to his reforms in Germany. The Emperor Henry IV. refused to recognize his decree, and even called a council of the clergy of Germany and deposed him. Gregory in turn gathered a council at Rome, and deposed and excommunicated the emperor. This encouraged a revolt on the part of some of Henry's discontented subjects. He was shunned as a man accursed by heaven. ”

“ The renewal of the connexion between the Eastern and Western Empires, and the attempt of the Emperor Justinian to subject the see of Rome to that of Constantinople, placed Gregory under the necessity of vindicating the independence of the Church of Italy, and of denying the right of any one Patriarch to assume authority over another. St. Gregory's holiness and learning, and the wisdom of his endeavours to reform corruptions, were most beneficial to the Church over which he ruled. ”

“ Lord Cockburn (Memorials, p. 105) describes Gregory as ‘a curious and excellent man, a great physician, a great lecturer, a great Latin scholar, and a great talker, vigorous and generous, large of stature, and with a strikingly powerful countenance.’ He says that Gregory's popularity was increased by his controversies. He was never selfish nor entirely wrong in them; and the public preferred the best laugher, though with the worst cause. Gregory, in fact, won general regard among all classes of people outside his profession. He was frequently very generous, especially to his pupils. ”

“ At last, after six years of what must have been the most anxious work, requiring all that the great man had of wisdom and firmness and tact, he returned to Italy—to find his beloved Rome in terrible distress from a visitation of the pestilence. Gregory at once devoted himself to the care of the sick and dying, and one can fancy how the poor people’s eyes lighted up when he appeared among them again. Then the good Pope Pelagius succumbed to the disease, and at once all eyes turned to Gregory, who was unanimously elected as his successor. ”

“ He sent to the pontiff a letter filled with denunciation, and addressed "to the false monk, Hildebrand." Gregory issued decrees excommunicating Henry, deposing him, and declaring his subjects free from their obligation of allegiance. It was the received doctrine, that a heretic or a heathen could not reign over Christian people. The discontented German princes took sides with Gregory. In an assembly at Tribur in 1076, they invited the Pope to come to Augsburg, and to judge in the case of Henry: he was to live as a private man ”

“ On the death of the second Gregory in 731, the third Gregory succeeded to the papacy and continued his predecessor’s support of the Anglo-Saxon apostle, making him archbishop with authority to ordain bishops. Many Anglo-Saxons, both men and holy women, came to aid their countryman, and brought their education and their nobler views of life to form centres of Christian culture in the German lands. Cloisters for nuns, cloisters for monks were founded. ”

“ Gregory in the exercise of his Principate, of the immense influence wielded by him both in the East and in the West, of the acknowledgment of his Principate by the answers which emperor and patriarch made to his demands and rebukes, we possess an imperishable record in the fourteen books of his letters which have been preserved to us. They are somewhat more than 850 in number. They range over every subject, and are addressed to every sort of person. ”

“ No matter that Gregory—broken, defeated, miserable, outwardly ruined—died prematurely in exile; no matter that he did not, in his great reverses, anticipate the fruits of his firmness and heroism. His principles survived him; they have never been lost sight of by his successors; they gained strength through successive generations. Innocent III. reaped what he had sown. Kings dared not resist Innocent III., who realized those three things to which the more able Gregory had aspired,— "independent sovereignty, control over the princes of the earth, and the supremacy of the Church." ”

“ Tradition has pronounced Gregory the Great to have been the destroyer of the Palatine library, and to have been especially zealous in burning the writings of Livy, because they described the achievements of the Pagan gods. For these charges, however (which I am sorry to find repeated by so eminent a writer as Dr. Draper) , there is no real evidence, for they are not found in any writer earlier than the twelfth century. (See Bayle, Dict. art. “Greg.”) ”

“ In the time of Gregory the conflict was still swaying to and fro, and he himself in 1078 declared consecration by a simoniac null and void.
The pontificate of Gregory VII. came to a melancholy close, for he died an exile in Salerno; the Romans and a number of his most trusted coadjutors had renounced him, and the faithful band in Germany had shrunk to scant proportions. Too much the politician, too rough in his methods, too exclusively the representative of the Roman see and its interests, he had gained more enemies than friends. ”

“ He had great influence over the gentler nature of Gregory, who speaks of him with the highest respect, both for the purity of his faith and the sanctity of his life, as well as for his successful exertions in bringing back wanderers to the truth, acknowledging the benefit he had derived, both as hearer and teacher, from him (Ep. 164, 225) . He persuaded Gregory to remain at Nazianzus after his father's death, and to accept the unwelcome charge of the see of Constantinople. Gregory bitterly complained of his unscrupulous importunity, but yielded (Ep. 14, 15) . ”

“ While the clergy and laity stood beside his coffin, they chose his successor, who was consecrated thirty-five days later, when the consent of the exarch was brought from Ravenna, this being the last time it was given by a viceroy of the Greek emperor.177
Concerning this Pope, Anastasius writes:—“Gregory III., a Syrian by nation, son of John. He sat ten years, two months, and twenty days. A man most meek and most wise, well instructed in the holy Scriptures, knowing both the Greek and Latin tongues. ”

“ Despite his age and feebleness, Gregory displayed remarkable energy. He aided the emperor in the Thirty Years’ War, and the king of Poland against the Turks. He endorsed the claims of Maximilian of Bavaria to the electoral dignity, and was rewarded with the gift of the Heidelberg library, which was carried off to Rome. Gregory founded the Congregation of the Propaganda, encouraged missions, fixed the order to be observed in conclaves, and canonized Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri and Theresa de Jesus. ”

“ It is never pretended by any of his biographers or admirers that Gregory was a man of learning, or even interested very much in the preservation of letters, or the progress of intellectual life. Learning and philosophy were the inheritance of the Greek Church, which was the very presumptuous and arrogant rival of Rome, and the cradle of most of the heresies and all the difficult and delicate questions which had troubled the peace of the Church. ”

“ Judged by anything like a classical standard Gregory is guilty of almost every conceivable barbarity. He spells incorrectly, blunders in the use of the inflections, confuses genders, and often uses the wrong case with the preposition. ”