St. Gregory the Great, pope
Born: c.540
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| St. Gregory the Great, pope |
Died: March 12, 604
Canonized: 604
Feast Day: September 3
Patron Saint of: musicians, students, teachers
Pope Gregory I (Latin: Gregorius I)
(c. 540 – 12 March 604), better known in English as Gregory the Great, was pope
from 3 September 590 until his death. Gregory
is well known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of
his predecessors as pope.
He “… is certainly one of the most
notable figures in Ecclesiastical History. He has exercised in many respects a momentous
influence on the doctrine, the organization, and the discipline of the Catholic
Church. To him we must look for an explanation of the religious situation of
the Middle Ages; indeed, if no account were taken of his work, the evolution of
the form of medieval Christianity would be almost inexplicable. And further, in so far as the modern Catholic
system is a legitimate development of medieval Catholicism, of this too Gregory
may not unreasonably be termed the Father. Almost all the leading principles of
the later Catholicism are found, at any rate in germ, in Gregory the Great.
(F.H. Dudden, "Gregory the Great", 1, p. v).”
“Gregory's father was Gordianus, a
wealthy patrician, probably of the famous gens Amicia, who owned large estates
in Sicily and a mansion on the Caelian Hill in Rome, the ruins of which,
apparently in a wonderful state of preservation, still await excavation beneath
the Church of St. Andrew and St. Gregory. His mother Silvia appears also to have been of
good family, but very little is known of her life. She is honoured as a saint,
her feast being kept on 3 November. Portraits of Gordianus and Silvia were painted
by Gregory's order, in the atrium of St. Andrew's monastery, and a pleasing
description of these may be found in John the Deacon (Vita, IV, lxxxiii).
“Besides his mother, two of
Gregory's aunts have been canonised, Gordianus's two sisters, Tarsilla and
Æmiliana, so that John the Deacon speaks of his education as being that of a
saint among saints.
“Of his early years we know nothing beyond
what the history of the period tells us. Between the years 546 and 552 Rome was first
captured by the Goths under Totila, and then abandoned by them; next it was
garrisoned by Belisarius, and besieged in vain by the Goths, who took it again,
however, after the recall of Belisarius, only to lose it once more to Narses.
“Of his education, we have no
details. Gregory of Tours tells us that in grammar, rhetoric and dialectic he
was so skilful as to be thought second to none in all Rome, and it seems
certain also that he must have gone through a course of legal studies. Not
least among the educating influences was the religious atmosphere of his
home. He loved to meditate on the Scriptures and to listen attentively to the
conversations of his elders, so that he was "devoted to God from his youth
up".
“Gregory had a deep respect for the monastic
life. He viewed being a monk as the 'ardent quest for the vision of our
Creator. 'His three paternal aunts were
nuns renowned for their sanctity. However,
after the two eldest passed away after seeing a vision of their ancestor Pope
Felix, the youngest soon abandoned the religious life and married the steward
of her estate. Gregory's response to this family scandal was “many are called but few are chosen." Gregory's mother Silvia herself is a saint. On his father's death, he converted his family
villa suburbana, located on the Caelian Hill just opposite the Circus Maximus,
into a monastery dedicated to the apostle Saint Andrew. After his death it was rededicated as San
Gregorio Magno al Celio.
In his life of contemplation,
Gregory concluded that “in that silence of the heart, while we keep
watch within through contemplation, we are as if asleep to all things that are
without." Gregory was not
always forgiving, or pleasant for that matter, even in his monastic years. For example, a monk lying on his death bed
confessed to stealing three gold pieces. Gregory forced the monk to die friendless and
alone, then threw his body and coins on a manure heap to rot with a curse,
“Take your money with you to perdition”. Gregory believed that punishment of sins can
begin, even on one's deathbed. Eventually,
Pope Pelagius II ordained him a deacon and solicited his help in trying to heal
the schism of the Three Chapters in northern Italy. However, Italy was not healed until well
after Gregory was gone.
He became Pope in 590. During his pontificate, Gregory is credited
with re-energizing the Church's missionary work among the non-Christian peoples
of northern Europe. He is most famous
for sending a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, under Augustine of
Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew's, where he had perhaps succeeded Gregory, to
evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England. The mission was successful, and it
was from England that missionaries later set out for the Netherlands and
Germany. The preaching of the Catholic
faith and the elimination of all deviations from it was a key element in
Gregory's worldview, and it constituted one of the major continuing policies of
his pontificate.
In his official documents, Gregory was the
first to make extensive use of the term "Servant
of the Servants of God" (servus servorum Dei) as a papal title, thus
initiating a practice that was to be followed by most subsequent popes.[41]
Throughout the Middle Ages he was known as
“the Father of Christian Worship” because of his exceptional efforts in
revising the Roman worship of his day.
He is also known as St. Gregory
the Dialogist in Eastern Orthodoxy because of his Dialogues. For this reason, English translations of
Orthodox texts will sometimes list him as "Gregory Dialogus". He was the first of the popes to come from a
monastic background. Gregory is a Doctor
of the Church and one of the Latin Fathers. He is considered a saint in the Roman Catholic
Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, and some Lutheran
churches. Immediately after his death, Gregory was canonized in 604, by popular
acclaim. The Protestant reformer, John
Calvin, admired Gregory and declared in his Institutes that Gregory was the last
good pope. He is the patron saint of
musicians, singers, students, and teachers.
Gregory is certainly one of the
most notable figures in Ecclesiastical History. He has exercised in many respects a momentous
influence on the doctrine, the organization, and the discipline of the Catholic
Church. To him we must look for an explanation of the religious situation of
the Middle Ages; indeed, if no account
were taken of his work, the evolution of
the form of medieval Christianity would be almost inexplicable. And further, in so far as the modern Catholic
system is a legitimate development of medieval Catholicism, of this too Gregory
may not unreasonably be termed the Father. Almost all the leading principles of the
later Catholicism are found, at any rate in germ, in Gregory the Great.
(F.H. Dudden, "Gregory the Great", 1, p. v).
“Pope Saint Gregory the Great not
only saved the Church, in times so frightful that the men who lived in them
were sure that the end of the world was come, but he founded the great
civilization which has lasted down to our day and of which we are part, Western
Civilization. All alone, in the midst of famine and pestilence, floods and
earthquakes, endangered by Greeks and barbarians alike, and abandoned by the
Emperor, Pope Gregory, frail and ailing in body but strong and undaunted in
spirit, succored and saved his people, his city, his country, and the whole of
Christendom.”
Sacramentaries directly influenced
by Gregorian reforms are referred to as Sacrementaria Gregoriana. With the
appearance of these sacramentaries, the Western liturgy begins to show a
characteristic that distinguishes it from Eastern liturgical traditions. In contrast to the mostly invariable Eastern
liturgical texts, Roman and other Western liturgies since this era have a
number of prayers that change to reflect the feast or liturgical season; these
variations are visible in the collects and prefaces as well as in the Roman
Canon itself.
“Gregory's mind and memory were
both exceptionally receptive, and it is to the effect produced on him by these
disasters that we must attribute the tinge of sadness which pervades his
writings and especially his clear expectation of a speedy end to the world.”
Gregory is commonly accredited with
founding the medieval papacy and so many attribute the beginning of medieval
spirituality to him.[44] Gregory is the only Pope between the fifth and the
eleventh centuries whose correspondence and writings have survived enough to
form a comprehensive corpus. Some of his writings are:
·
Sermons (forty on the Gospels are recognized as
authentic, twenty-two on Ezekiel, two on the Song of Songs)
·
Dialogues, a collection of miracles, signs,
wonders, and healings including the popular life of Saint Benedict[45]
·
Commentary on Job, frequently known even in
English-language histories by its Latin title, Magna Moralia
·
The Rule for Pastors, in which he contrasted the
role of bishops as pastors of their flock with their position as nobles of the
church: the definitive statement of the nature of the episcopal office
·
Copies of some 854 letters have survived, out of
an unknown original number recorded in Gregory's time in a register. It is
known to have existed in Rome, its last known location, in the 9th century. It
consisted of 14 papyrus rolls, now missing. Copies of letters had begun to be
made, the largest batch of 686 by order of Adrian I. The majority of the
copies, dating from the 10th to the 15th century, are stored in the Vatican
Library.
