St. Gregory the Great

St. Gregory the Great (born c. 540, Rome [Italy]—died March 12, 604, Rome; Western feast day, September 3 [formerly March 12, still observed in the East]) was the pope from 590 to 604, a reformer and excellent administrator, “founder” of the medieval papacy, which exercised both secular and spiritual power. His epithet “the Great” reflects his status as a writer as well as a ruler. As the fourth and final of the traditional Latin Fathers of the Church, Gregory was the first exponent of a truly medieval, sacramental spirituality.

Historical context and early career

Gregory was born in troubled times. Cities and commerce had declined, and cycles of famine and the plague had depopulated the countryside in the wake of the emperor Justinian’s reconquest of Italy (535–554). The Lombard invasion of 568 triggered several more decades of war. Centralized bureaucratic control over civil matters continued to fragment, and this gave rise to local strongmen who held power at the expense of the civilian senatorial aristocracy. Usurpations of the property, rights, authority, and even regalia of others marked this fluid society. The church in these times either could act as a check against this new military aristocracy—in Rome the Senate was defunct, and the papacy assumed civic responsibilities—or could serve the secular ambitions of the strongmen and their patronage networks; Gregory fought tirelessly against these latter corruptions.

Gregory was well placed in society. His family held the Caelian Hill in Rome, properties outside the city, and estates in Sicily, and he may have shared distant links to gens Anicia, an eminent patrician family. His ancestors had held illustrious ecclesiastical positions: Pope Felix III (reigned 483–492) was his great-great grandfather, and Pope Agapetus I (535–536) also may have been a relative. Gregory’s father, Gordianus, held an office, possibly defensor, but no record of secular office exists for the family before 573, when Gregory became urban prefect, an office that eventually fell into desuetude. Germanicus, who succeeded Gregory, may also have been his brother. Gregory’s mother, Silvia, took vows on the death of her husband, and three of his aunts also entered religious life.

Well educated for the times, Gregory may have had legal training before entering public service. His conversion to monastic life in 574 was not sudden but grew from a lifelong conflict between his personal desire for contemplative purity and the public duty to serve others in the “pollution” of worldly affairs. Renouncing secular life, Gregory established, on family property on the Caelian Hill, a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew. The “rule” followed there cannot be identified as that of St. Benedict, nor does evidence exist that Gregory became abbot, although his Dialogues may give this impression. Gregory founded six more monasteries on family estates in Sicily but retained sufficient property to make later endowments to the church.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Quiz: 19 Things to Know About Christianity

In 579 Pope Pelagius II made Gregory a deacon, sending him as apocrisiarius (legate) to Constantinople. There Gregory lobbied for aid against the Lombards but remained ignorant of Greek. In 585–586 he returned to Rome and St. Andrew’s, resuming the office of deacon. In 590 Gregory was elected pope, taking office unwillingly. He succeeded Pelagius II, who had succumbed to the plague that swept Rome that year. According to tradition, Gregory led a penitential procession to Santa Maria Maggiore during that plague; a vision of the archangel Michael atop Hadrian’s Tomb (now the Castel Sant’Angelo) convinced him that Rome would be spared. Today a statue on the Castel Sant’Angelo depicts Michael replacing his sword in its scabbard. The Seven Penitential Psalms associated with this procession date from the 12th century and have been incorrectly ascribed to Gregory.

Accomplishments as pope

As pope, Gregory faced numerous challenges, including those posed by the Lombards, who sought to control Italy and practiced Arianism, and those posed by the Byzantines, who employed strategies that were designed to protect Ravenna, the administrative centre of Byzantine government in Italy, at the expense of Rome. Indeed, both Lombards and Byzantines posed threats: the sedition of imperial soldiers was as troubling as the swords of the Lombards. Forced to orchestrate an independent policy, Gregory saw himself as the “treasurer” who paid the daily expenses of Rome and the “paymaster” of the Lombards, whose swords were held back only by daily ransom from the church. In conducting war, he planned strategies, funded soldiers, and directed diplomacy, twice preventing Rome from being sacked by the Lombards. He also ransomed hostages, supported refugees, secured the grain supply, and repaired aqueducts.

Realizing he could neither defeat the Lombards militarily nor continue a cycle of warfare and ransom, Gregory repeatedly sought peace. However, a Roman alliance with the Lombards (and Gauls) would have threatened the independence of Ravenna, and Byzantine opposition to Gregory’s efforts undermined the peace in Italy. Nevertheless, there was a rapprochement with the Lombards. Through Gregory’s relationship with Theodelinda, the Catholic wife of the Lombard king Agilulf, Catholics became welcome at court. After 600, relations between Lombard and Roman Italy improved greatly. Friendship and patronage had thus accomplished what military strategy and imperial policies could not.

The problems with the Lombards underscore the tensions between Rome and the East at that time and also illuminate traditional administrative divisions between the north, Italia annonaria, dominated by the sees of Milan, Aquileia, and eventually Ravenna, and the south, Italia sububicaria, led by Rome and including Sicily and islands under the exarch of Africa. A fierce opponent of any practice smacking of simony (the purchase of ecclesiastical office) or other forms of corruption, Gregory rebuked offenders vigorously but often to little effect, because of the limits of his authority within Italy and the empire as a whole.

Gregory felt that he was part of a Christian empire, a “holy commonwealth” headed by the Byzantine emperor. Ideally, the emperor deferred to the church (though generally he did not), even as the church recognized him as a power ordained by God (for good or evil). Ambivalence dictated discretion: Gregory would execute obnoxious laws (such as Emperor Maurice’s prohibition of monastic life for state employees) while simultaneously protesting such laws. He explained this practice in one of his letters: “I have thus done my duty on both sides. I have obeyed the emperor, and yet have not restrained what ought to be said on God’s behalf.” He often protested Maurice’s policies regarding the Lombards and the church, and his dislike of Maurice explains his warm welcome to Phocas, the bloody usurper of the imperial throne, in 602.

This tension between Rome and Constantinople is revealed clearly in policies regarding the church. In the late 6th century, the Catholic church did not have a cogent hierarchical order headed by Rome, and no evidence exists that Gregory held such a vision. Because St. Peter, the founder of the Roman church, was the first among the apostles, Gregory asserted Rome’s right to judge on certain moral issues, but he made no claims of Roman primacy as the term later would be understood. Bishops were subject to Rome when they had committed a fault, but otherwise “when no fault exacts this submission all are equal by the law of humility.”

The dispute over the title “ecumenical patriarch” illuminates the widening distance at that time between Rome and the Eastern Empire. Traditionally, the patriarch of Constantinople represented imperial orthodoxy encompassing the entire Christian empire, and he was thus deserving of the title “ecumenical.” Gregory believed that the title offended the equity of all bishops and ignored Rome’s primacy as the heir of St. Peter, whose moral power was needed to ratify councils and discipline members of the church. He also believed the title was an expression of pride that anticipated the arrival of the Antichrist. For Gregory true holiness lay in humility; thus, he called himself “servant of the servants of God.” Despite Maurice’s commands to desist, Gregory protested the title (though he continued to have relations with the patriarch), fearing that a decline in Rome’s prestige might mean further neglect of Rome and the West by Constantinople. By ignoring Gregory’s protests, a succession of emperors supported the patriarch, and the long-standing rivalry between Rome and Constantinople continued. In an implicitly divided empire, Rome stood supreme in the West and Constantinople in the East.

In the wider church, respect for Rome’s moral leadership was similarly difficult to secure. When possible, Gregory tried to enlist secular authorities to further his aims (for both papacy and empire stood for orthodoxy), but this often led to frustration. Gregory was most successful close to Rome. The farther away he attempted to exercise his influence, the weaker was his power and the less accurate his control of the situation, despite his use of informants. Adding to Gregory’s difficulties was the schism (dating from later 543 or early 544) over the Three Chapters (certain writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa). In this case, Rome actually supported imperial policy, which declared these chapters to be Nestorian (meaning they portrayed the divine and human natures of Christ as independent), while Western churches accepted them as orthodox.

However, imperial policy provided little support for Rome. In Africa the pope fought a losing battle against the Donatists, who opposed the papacy’s position on the Three Chapters and excommunicated the pope in 550. For his part, Gregory appealed to the exarch of Africa to suppress the Donatists. However, the Byzantine government wanted to keep the peace and again ignored Gregory. While a council at Carthage condemned the Donatists in 594, the imperial edict issued to suppress them was not enforced. After a final complaint to the emperor in 596, Gregory let the matter drop.

In effect, two territorial churches emerged in Italy because of many political divisions. Opposition to the teachings of Rome survived in areas occupied by the Lombards. The northern churches of Aquileia in Istria (now part of Croatia and Slovenia) and of Milan broke off communion, rejecting Rome’s position on the Three Chapters, and tried to stay independent of Roman jurisdiction. In response, Gregory sent troops, under the command of a tribune and an imperial guardsman, against the patriarch of Aquileia, Severus, to rebuke the Istrians’ apostasy and summon Severus to a synod at St. Peter’s Basilica. The Istrians appealed to the emperor, threatening to ally with Gaul if Rome pressed conformity. This proposed alliance was a source of continual anxiety for the emperor, and he ordered Gregory to stop pressuring the Istrians. Typically, Gregory complied but continued to complain; on Maurice’s death, he called upon the new emperor, Phocas, to repress schismatics. Indeed, Gregory’s willingness to use force against schismatics and heathens allowed him to be misused as a model for those such as Gregory VII and Alexander II who advocated “holy war” in the high Middle Ages.

Circumstances, however, allowed the pope to intervene in the areas under imperial control in the north of Italy. In particular, he was able to gain a toehold in Ravenna, the mainstay of imperial orthodoxy in Italy, partly because of the absence of the bishop of Milan, who had jurisdiction over Ravenna but had been forced to live in Genoa to escape the Lombards. Gregory asserted his right to confirm the election of the bishop of Milan, and he drew closer to Ravenna when John, to whom Gregory had dedicated his Pastoral Rule, became its bishop. But even as Ravenna gradually entered Rome’s orbit, Gregory fought to dampen the bishops’ claim to the privileges of regalia (imperial symbols now appropriated by the papacy), which included wearing the pallium (a stole with hanging strips) and using special saddlecloths (mappulae). Gregory was forced to compromise, however, because Ravenna was the site of the imperial exarch.

Gregory adopted the Byzantine view that divine providence had subjected Germanic kingdoms to the Christian emperor, and his energetic pastoral care of those kingdoms heightened Rome’s visibility there. Although the pope kept his distance from Toledo’s royal councils of kings and bishops, he was linked to the Spanish court by Leander of Sevilla, who received the pallium from Gregory. Through letters to Brunhild, the Frankish queen who provided critical support for the reform of simony, and to other women, Gregory cultivated Catholic Frankish kingdoms. In letters to the bishops of Gaul, Gregory called for reform councils and the suppression of paganism. He also asked Brunhild and other Frankish rulers such as Theuderic II and Theudebert II to support St. Augustine of Canterbury’s mission to Kent, which the pope had organized. After visiting numerous courts in Gaul, Augustine visited the court of the Frankish queen Bertha, wife of Aethelberht of Kent. When Gregory sent Mellitus and Laurentius as reinforcements, they extended papal contacts in Gaul before joining Augustine. Gregory seems to have envisioned cooperation between English and Frankish churches that would have fostered reform and renewal.

While he believed that the Gospel was meant to be “preached to all parts of the world,” Gregory’s first concern was the Roman see and southern Italy, where he was powerful enough to effect reform. Papal administration was “monasticized”; Gregory continued to live as a monk, and monks and trusted clerics replaced the entrenched clergy of the church of the Lateran Palace. His one synod, held at St. Peter’s in 595, validated these and other reforms but highlighted the limits of his power because only bishops from the south attended. Nonetheless, he consolidated as many as 42 vacated episcopal sees in the south (Lucania, Apulia, and the Picene area), where Lombards had wrought particular devastation.

Papal patrimony flourished in the south, and Gregory’s efficient and just administration of estates brought revenue to support extensive alms in Rome, where systematic records of charitable expenditures were kept in the Lateran. In governing this patrimony, Gregory claimed his goal was “not so much to promote the worldly interests of the church as to relieve the poor in their distress and especially to protect them from oppression.” Gregory established colleges of rectores, or defensores, with staffs of tonsured agents who were sent to manage estates and render justice on-site (e.g., to protect peasants from exploitation by the nobles). For the future, Gregory’s most important reform was making land inheritable. Like his concern for justice, this reform improved the lot of peasants and encouraged them to remain in one locale to cultivate the land. Gregory did tolerate slavery, as a fact of God’s dispensation bestowed on humanity after the Fall, and he believed that humble obedience was required by God.

His concern with justice for Jews was limited. While he insisted in his letters that Jewish creditors were not to be defrauded, oppressed, or vexed unreasonably because they were protected by Roman law, he nevertheless believed that biblical prophecy foretold their conversion, and he adopted polices of “persuasion” that harmed Jews economically. A synagogue was moved because its services could be heard by Christians; slaves of Jews could claim freedom if they converted to Christianity—their masters could not sell them, and escaped slaves could not be returned to Jewish owners. Rural pagans fared worse: ruthless measures forced them to abandon their cults, and Gregory advised Brunhild to use armed force against them.

Although Gregory is remembered as a generous donor and friend of the needy, his biographers record that he left the papal treasury nearly bankrupt. Such criticism, however, may reflect the embittered clerical reaction to Gregory’s “monasticization” that arose with the next pope.