Saint Gregory the Great

“ Gregory the Great delivered his third homily on the Gospels, on the festival of St. Felicitas, in the church built over her tomb on the Salarian road. In this discourse he says, that this saint “having seven children was as much afraid of leaving them behind her on earth, as other mothers are of surviving theirs. She was more than a martyr, for seeing her seven dear children martyred before her eyes, she was in some sort a martyr in each of them. ”

“ He sent monks to Constantinople to negotiate with the Greeks for church unity, but without result. He canonized Saints Elizabeth of Thuringia, Dominic, Anthony of Padua and Francis of Assisi. He permitted free study of the Aristotelian writings, and issued (1234) , through his chaplain, Raymond of Pennaforte, an important new compilation of decretals which he prescribed in the bull Rex pacificus should be the standard text-book in canon law at the universities of Bologna and Paris. Gregory was famed for his learning and eloquence, his blameless life, and his great strength of character. ”

“ Yet it is very satisfactory to note how numerous, and especially how important are, after all is said, the theologians who have continued to walk, in this matter, in the footsteps of the great Alexandrines. St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches a healing of the soul in the beyond and a purification by fire. [275] St. Augustine says that “fire burns up the work of him who thinketh of the things of this world, since possessions, that are loved, do not perish without pain on the part of their possessor. It is not incredible that something of this sort takes place after this life.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jerome writes against Vigilantius in defence of the relics of the Saints and the honours paid to them; as also against Jovinian for the rank to be allowed to virginity. Will they endure him? Ambrose honoured his patron saints Gervase and Protase with a most glorious solemnity by way of putting the Arians to shame. This action of his was praised by most godly Fathers, and God honoured it with more than one miracle. Are they going to take a kindly view off Ambrose here? Gregory the Great, our Apostle, is most manifestly with us, and therefore is a hateful personage to our adversaries. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ Though ignorant of secular learning, he was eminently replenished with the Spirit of God, and an experimental science of spiritual things: on which account he is said by St. Gregory the Great to have been "learnedly ignorant and wisely unlettered." [6] For the alphabet of this great man is infinitely more desirable than all the empty science of the world, as St. Arsenius said of St. Antony. From certain very ancient pictures of St. Benedict, and old inscriptions, {634} Mabillon proves this saint to have been in holy orders, and a deacon. Several moderns say he was a priest ”

“ A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose—a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career—such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other.
Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if he, like the first Gregory, avail himself of his elevation, merely to be a teacher and an unwearied laborer, an example to the community, then will the Christian people, and not alone the Roman Catholics, but all, reverence him, and voluntarily give him the surname of the Great, even if he should divest himself of the triple-crowned tiara, and perhaps even for that very cause. There is a grandeur, to which the whole Christian world more and more willingly pays homage, and that is of the spirit. ”

“ When the Roman Empire was submerged under the deluge of barbarian races, a yet closer centralization became necessary, at least in the West; and the ark in which floated over that terrible deluge not only the Christian religion, but the remains of ancient civilization, both Greek and Roman, was the patriarchate of Rome. The man who not only clearly perceived, but was absolutely compelled to assume, his awful responsibility in the West, the Saviour at once of the Church and the world, was the splendid pontiff, Gregory the Great ”

“ 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.”) ”

“ He calls himself servant just when he is supreme.
In St. Gregory the Great, the whole ancient world, the Church's first discipline and original government, run to their ultimate issue. In him the patriarchal system, as it met the shock of absolute power in the civil sovereign, and the subversion of the western empire by barbarous incursions, accompanied by the establishment of new sovereignties and the foundation of a new Rome, the rival and then the tyrant of the old Rome, receives its consummation. The medieval world has not yet begun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Gregory's time the great enemy has laid down his arms. He is dispossessed from the Teuton race in its Gallic, Spanish, Burgundian, African settlements. Gregory, at the head of the western bishops who in every country have risked life for the faith of Rome, has gained the final victory. One only Arian tribe survives for a time, ever struggling to possess Rome, advancing to its gates, ruining its Campagna, torturing its captured inhabitants, but never gaining possession of those battered walls, which Totila in part [Pg 348] threw down and Belisarius in piecemeal restored. ”

“ It would seem that in all the tumultuous and factious city there was but one thought of horror at the 249 sacrilege, and determination to save the Pope if it were still possible. Gregory was not, like his great predecessor the first of that name, the idol of his people. He had not the wealth with which many great ecclesiastics had secured the homage of the often famished crowd; and a stern man, with no special geniality of nature, and views that went so far beyond the local interests of Rome, he does not seem the kind of ruler to have secured popular favour. ”

“ From Gregory's own hand, and in virtue of his apostolic power, England in its second spring received its division into two provinces, one to be seated at Canterbury, the other at York. His letters to St. Augustine still exist to show how he entered into all the difficulties of the missionary, all the needs of a land in conversion from paganism. From him date the great prerogatives of the see of Canterbury, extending over the whole island, inasmuch as it was the matrix of the Church in England. If sons may deny their father, Englishmen may deny Gregory, and add to schism the guilt of parricide. ”

“ Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility thereof with his neighbor." ”

“ But the dignity of “universal patriarch” being assumed by the bishop of Constantinople, “Gregory the Great” denounced it as a “profane,” “proud,” “antichristian” title; as “impious,” “execrable,” “blasphemous,” “infernal,” “diabolical.” On this occasion, Gregory assumed the title of affected humility, ever since retained by the Popes, “Servant of the servants of God!” Still that lofty title, which he condemned in his ambitious brother John, he sought for himself, as is evident from his adulatory letter to those monsters of wickedness, Phocas and his wife Leontia. ”

“ Everywhere we can read in the lines and between the lines Gregory’s single-minded devotion to the church and above all to the cult of St. Martin.
The great value of Gregory’s writings is that we get in them an intimate view of sixth-century ideas. At first sight, perhaps, we seem to have incongruous elements which from the modern viewpoint we cannot bring into harmony with one another. Credulity and hard-headed judgment appear side by side. How could Gregory be so shrewd and worldly-minded in his struggle with Chilperic and at the same time show such an appetite for the miraculous? ”

“ In his relations with the churches which lay outside the strict limits of his patriarchate, in northern Italy, Spain, Gaul, Africa and Illyricum and also in the East, Gregory consistently used his influence to increase the prestige and authority of the Roman See. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But of all these three hundred or four hundred men who have swayed the destinies of Europe,—an uninterrupted line of pontiffs for fifteen hundred years or more, no one is so famous as Gregory VII. for the grandeur of his character, the heroism of his struggles, and the posthumous influence of his deeds. He was too great a man to be called by his papal title. He is best known by his baptismal name, Hildebrand, the greatest hero of the Roman Church. There are some men whose titles add nothing to their august names,—David, Julius, Constantine, Augustine. ”

“ It is the nature of noble, generous deeds to exalt a man's soul so that he can fearlessly face death, when in calm moments he would shrink back appalled. In the excitement of the hour, and under the inspiration of his strong human love, Gregory was not afraid to die, though life seemed, with its new possibilities, sweeter than ever before. He knew that his strength was failing fast, that reaction would soon set in, and that he would be helpless, and his great hope was that he could save the house first. ”

“ Gregory the Great has related many visions in a more famous work, which professed to be compiled with scrupulous veracity from the most authentic sources,448 and of which it may be confidently averred that it scarcely contains a single page which is not tainted with grotesque and deliberate falsehood. ”

“ They positively delighted in the task, as corrupted organs of smell will sometimes delight in abominable stenches. Even the average Christian has regarded damnation—especially the damnation of other people—with remarkable complacency, as a part of the established economy of the universe. But now and then a superior spirit revolted against it instinctively. Thus we hear of Gregory the Great, in an age when it was devoutly believed that the noblest Pagans were all in hell, being deeply impressed with the splendid virtues of the emperor Trajan, and begging for his release ”

“ A biography which portrays “distinctly the Gregory of his own time.” (Lond. Times.) The sketch follows a three-fold division: (1) a detailed history of the life of Pope Gregory the Great; (2) a systematic exposition of Gregory’s theological opinions; (3) an account of the political, social and religious characterization of the Gregorian age. “Mr. Dudden has fairly faced his difficult task, and his industry has been equal to his courage. The book rests upon a thorough analysis of the original sources to which, by the way, an admirable index serves as guide, whether one use the narrative or not. ”