Sir Gregory

“ 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. ”

“ No two people could be more unlike than those two uncles, who would probably be the guardians of Edward and Bertie Rivers. Mr. Gregory was a tall, portly gentleman, with grey hair and keen eager eyes; his voice was loud, his manner always stern and abrupt. People usually feared and respected him more than they loved him; he was always very busy and fussy and important, and had an idea that nothing in London would go on quite right without him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And mock my muse ... a fellow ... a common fellow.
A man that is the servant of the servant
Of the adoptive sister of my Laura!
He shall be swinged. Sir Gregory will right me: [Pg 273]
Sir Gregory will avenge me. Had heaven but given me 2660
His inches, why, I’d do it myself. I’d flog him,
Till he cried mercy, mercy! mercy, St. Nicholas,
Mercy, I pray! No, no: no mercy, sir.
Down on thy knees! No mercy, sir, from me.
No mercy. (beating a chair.)
Enter Sir Gregory.
GREGORY.
St. Nicholas, where’s the Countess?
N. (shouting) . She says that she will see you in half an hour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ GREGORY, WILLIAM (1766–1840) , Irish under-secretary, was the youngest of three sons of Robert Gregory, a member of a family sprung from an offshoot of the Gregorys of Styvechale Hall, Coventry, who came to Ireland with Cromwell and settled in Tipperary. His father, Robert Gregory (1727–1810) , himself a man of some mark, was chairman of the East India Company for many years till 1783, and member of parliament for Maidstone from 1768 to 1774, and for Rochester from 1774 to 1784 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ Gregory was a man of great natural abilities, real political talent, and marked personal charm, who, but for a certain inherent instability, might easily have attained to the most eminent political positions. He was an excellent landlord, and enjoyed through the worst phases of Irish agrarian agitation the regard of his tenantry and the goodwill of all classes of his countrymen. ”

“ This much, however, was quite clear, that he might offer himself as a candidate to the electors of Strathbogy without resigning; and that Sir Gregory's hostile remonstrance on the subject, should he choose to make one, would not be received as absolute law by the greater powers.
Accordingly as Alaric was elated, Sir Gregory was depressed. He had risen high, but now this young tyro whom he had fostered was about to climb above his head. O the ingratitude of men! ”

“ 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." ”

“ Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the following year, A.D. 1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France, Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict and deposition. ”

“ Two hundred and fifty years have obliterated what must once have been written, and the Dee is gaining ground from the graveyard at every time of spate. The old church stands and the manse, which has been turned into a farmhouse, but that is all.
There is a memorial of John Gregorie and his wife in a mortification for the education and maintenance of ten poor orphans ‘within the said Burgh’ of Aberdeen.
John Gregory left three sons, Alexander, who was served heir to his father’s very considerable property in 1651, David, known as David of Kinairdy, and James, the great professor of astronomy. ”

“ Gregory died there on 13 April 1840. He married in 1789 Lady Anne Trench (d. 1833) , daughter of William Power Keating, first earl of Clancarty; by her he left issue two sons, Robert, father of Sir William Henry Gregory [q. v. Suppl.] , and William, rector of Fiddown.
'Though not at all a brilliant man, Gregory possessed many high qualities excellent judgment, sound sense, attention to business, and great clearness and accuracy in his transaction of it. ... Few people have been more popular in Ireland during so long a period of great power. ”

“ In due time we made our troth-plight known to the household of Beauseincourt, all of whom, from its formal master to my best-beloved, brightest, and ever-tantalizing pupil, Bertie, accorded me their heart-felt congratulations. Gregory alone—the evil genius of the place—cast his poisonous sneers and doubts above our happiness—a structure too firmly based, too far removed from him, however, for his arrows to reach or destroy. ”

“ Meanwhile Gregory was made First Physician to the King for Scotland in the place of Dr Whytt. He lectured for three years on the Practice of Physic, and then he and Cullen agreed to give alternate lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine. The university possessing three such able teachers as Gregory, Cullen and Black, grew more and more prosperous. It is impossible to go over the records of these years without admiration for John Gregory, who, amidst all the strife that waged around him and around Cullen, has not left a record of any bitterness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gregory knew nothing of the difficulty that a young man in England has, in obtaining an appointment of any kind, or of fighting his way single handed. Influence went for much in Egypt, and it seemed to him that, even if his father had quarrelled with his own people, there must have been many ways open to him of maintaining himself honourably. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.”) ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the instant she could not move but stood powerless to lift a hand, rooted to the spot. She noted that his face was unhidden now, his black hat pushed far back on his head, while from his hip pocket trailed the end of a handkerchief which may and may not have had slits let in it for his eyes to peer through.
"You ... here? Yet?" she found herself stammering at him.
"Yes," he answered heavily. "I have been all this time looking for the horses. The corral was broken; they had gotten out into the pasture." ”

“ His father, also named Gregory, had lately become bishop of the diocese; his mother, Nonna, exercised a powerful influence over the religious convictions of both father and son. Gregory visited successively the two Caesareas, Alexandria and Athens, as a student of grammar, mathematics, rhetoric and philosophy; at Athens he had for fellow-students Basil (q.v.) , who afterwards became bishop of Caesarea, and Julian, afterwards emperor. Shortly after his return to his father’s house at Nazianzus (about the year 360) Gregory received baptism. He resolved to give himself to the service of religion ”

“ He was told that they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Gregory was sorry to think that forms which were so fair without should have no light within, and he asked again what was the name of their nation. "Angles," he was told. "Angles," said Gregory; "they have the faces of angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven. But of what province or tribe of the Angles are they?" "Of Deira," said the merchant. "De ira!" said Gregory; "then they must be delivered from the wrath of God. And [Pg 170] what is the name of their king?" "Ælla." "Ælla ”