Gregory I

Gregory I, called Gregory the Great, was one of the four great Fathers of the Western Church. Though he never accepted the title of Pope, he was bishop of Rome for 14 years, from 590 to 604.

Gregory was born into a wealthy and noble Roman family about 540 A.D. He was given the best education possible, yet his interests and talents lay in the direction of administration rather than science or philosophy. This was fortuitous, because Rome was suffering badly from invasions, vandalism, and general decay. An able administrator was more urgently needed than a pious, star-gazing philosopher.

When his father died, Gregory cashed in most of his inheritance and distributed it among the poor. He also established monasteries, using his father’s property on Sicily and in Rome. He himself never became a monk, but he highly approved of the calling, and did live a rather ascetic life. He greatly admired Benedict of Nursia, and provided us with most of the information we have about the man by writing his biography. He frequenty retired to various monasteries for study, prayer, and fasting. Through hard study and long meditation, his knowledge of the Bible and of the Latin Fathers grew, providing a solid foundation for his theology. He was especially influenced by Augustine.

In 578 the pope appointed him to be one of seven deacons who served the church in Rome. Later he was sent to represent the pope at Constantinople, still the capital of the Roman Empire. He was called back to Rome in 586, and became one of the pope’s chief advisors. The pope, Pelagius II, died during an epidemic brought on by a disastrous flood in 590. Gregory was immediately elected as his successor by the clergy and people of Rome. He organized a city-wide prayer meeting, urging the people to accept the plague as being from God, and to repent. He encouraged the people to trust God, and the panic melted away. Many more serious problems still remained to be solved, however. The Lombards were attempting to take the city, there was a chronic shortage of food, and the church was being splintered by Monophysitism.

He was obviously gifted in administration and management, for he not only tackled and solved the most pressing problems, but also expanded the power, wealth, and authority of the church. The church had vast land holdings throughout Southern Europe and North Africa, the legacy of wealthy land-owners hoping to insure their salvation by large post-humous gifts. Gregory managed these so well that their deterioration was reversed, and revenues began flowing from them into the church treasury. He sent a monk named Augustine with a group of missionaries to evangelize Great Britain. He reorganized and rewrote much of the church liturgy and ritual. He, in the steps of Augustine, tried to suppress the Donatists. (In respect to both of these men, it must here be said that though their motives may have been pure, their understanding was faulty and their methods were in opposition to Christ.) He fought for stricter standards of morality among the priests, and this found expression in his call for clerical celibacy. He attempted to purify the monasteries, enforcing the Benedictine Rule.

He was also a gifted preacher and teacher. He wrote many letters and books, including a 25-volume commentary on the book of Job, biographies of the saints of Italy such as Benedict of Nursia, and a treatise on the life and work of a Catholic bishop. This latter treatise, Pastoral Care, was translated into Greek, and even into English (though not until 901). It was as influential in the Middle Ages among bishops and priests as Benedict’s rule was in the monasteries. He interpreted Scripture almost entirely allegorically, and added a good share of psychological insight to his expositions. In spite of this faulty method of interpretation, he claimed the Bible to be his textbook. His homilies are full of graphic illustrations to make the concepts of death, hell, Heaven, and judgment more real and vivid to his audience.

Gregory could be called an empire-builder. In his mind the empire corresponded to Augustine’s “City of God,” for he saw himself as the chief representative of Christ among men, and all men and nations as ultimately belonging to Christ. In the midst of a civilization which seemed to many to be on the verge of total collapse, Gregory’s church stood for the solid values of truth, justice, order, and morality. Gregory, according to Latourette, laid the foundations for the power which the church of Rome was to exercise in Europe for the next 900 years.