ST. GREGORY I THE GREAT.

AD 590-604.

 

Emperors of the East. Maurice, 582-602. Phocas, 602-610.

Kings of the Lombards. Authari, 584-590. Agilulph, 590-615.

Exarchs of Ravenna. Romanus, 590-597. Callinicus, 597-602. Smaragdus, 602-611. (Second time.)

 

THE EARLY YEARS OF GREGORY

In passing from the public affairs of his times to Gregory himself, as an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ priest in communion with the See of Rome, and writing in ‘Northumbria’, I cannot do better than begin with the words of another Anglo-Saxon cleric in communion with the See of Rome, who wrote also in Northumbria, about Gregory the Great some twelve hundred years ago. “The Holy Catholic Church”, says the monk of Whitby in his little preface, “never ceases to celebrate her teachers in every nation, who, rejoicing in the Lord, she glories, were sent to her by the will of Christ; and, in faithful writings, hands down their memory to future ages, that they may place their hope in God, and, not forgetting His works, may seek to do His will; so we too, to the best of our ability, and with the help of God, may treat of our master, and describe him whom with all the world we may call Saint Gregory”. Like the greater number of those whom the Church honors as saints, Gregory was of noble birth, and sprung from a family of saints. Arguing with De Rossi from inscriptions, it is the opinion of the learned that Gregory belonged to the patrician family of the Anicii, a family famous in the annals of the State and of the Church. A Lucius Anicius Gallus subdued the Illyrians and became consul B.C. 163; and in 541, about the year of Gregory’s birth, the last ‘consul ordinarius’ (as opposed to the perpetual consulship of the emperors) was no less a personage than Flavius Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius. No less famous in the history of the Church was the Anician family. Speaking of the virgins it had given to the Church of God, St. Augustine wrote “The descendants of Anicius make a more generous choice in giving their illustrious family the glory of foregoing marriage than in multiplying it by fresh members, and by imitating in the flesh the life of angels rather than by increasing the number of men through physical birth… May virgins desirous of securing the splendor of the Anicii make choice of their holiness”. It is also said that to this family belonged the patriarch of Western Monasticism, St. Benedict (d. 543). Whether Gregory belonged to this family or not, it is certain that his family was saintly. His ‘Atavus’ (third or fourth grandfather) was Pope St. Felix III (483-492), who had been married before he had taken sacred orders. His mother, Sylvia, and his aunts Tharsilla and Emilina, are counted amongst the saints. His father, the Senator Gordianus, before his death, joined the ranks of the clergy and became a ‘regionarius’, i.e., one of the seven regionary deacons who looked after the interests of the poor in the seven regions into which the ecclesiastical authorities had divided the city. The same uncertainty prevails about the date of Gregory’s birth as about the other chief events of his life before he became Pope. It must, however, have been about the year 540. Whenever he was born, it was in the paternal mansion on the Clivus Scaurus, a declivity of the Coelian Hill, a home in the very midst of the architectural glories of ancient Rome, and where the Church dedicated to our Saint now stands. On one side of his home was the Lateran palace of the popes, and opposite to it the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, at that time still intact. The destruction of the great classical monuments of ancient Rome took place mainly during the Middle Ages; and we have no less an authority than that of Belisarius bearing testimony to the wonderful grandeur of Rome even at the time of the early days of Gregory. When, in 546, Totila, King of the Goths, had resolved to make of Rome “pasture land for cattle”, Belisarius wrote to dissuade him from putting such a barbaric idea into execution. “Beyond all doubt Rome surpasses all other cities in size and in worth. It was not built by the resources of one man, nor did it obtain its magnificence in a short time. But emperors and countless distinguished men, with time and wealth, brought together to this city architects, workmen, and all things needful from the ends of the earth; and left as a memorial to posterity of their greatness the glorious city, built by little and little, which you now behold. If it be injured, all ages will suffer. For thus would the monuments of the worth of the ancients be removed, and posterity would lose the pleasure of beholding them”.

Of Gregory’s early youth, passed in the midst of such elevating surroundings, we know nothing. But great must have been the impression made upon his youthful mind by the troubles he saw inflicted on Rome by its rapidly succeeding captures by Totila, Belisarius and Narses. These early impressions, deepened by similar calamities he saw inflicted on different parts of Italy by the Lom­bards throughout the course of his life, were doubtless the cause of the vein of melancholy which pervades his writings. This tinge of sadness, which led him to see in these political disasters a prelude to the approaching end of the world, is noticed by most of Gregory’s biographers and cannot but be observed by anyone who will take the trouble to read almost any portion of his writings. In his early studies he displayed a tenacious memory, good judgment, a zeal for learning and a respect for antiquity. He soon had the greatest reputation in Rome for certain branches of knowledge.

PREFECT OF THE CITY, 573

He must have begun early to take a part in the government of the city, for in 573 we find him Prefect or chief magistrate of Rome with the care of its public buildings and corn supply. Called, however, to higher things, Gregory for a long time resisted the voice of God. But riches and worldly dignities could not satisfy him. And after founding six monasteries in Sicily out of his inheritance and after converting even his home on the Coelian into another, he gave up everything he had in the world and became a Benedictine monk in the house where he was born. “And he who was wont to go through the city clad in the ‘trabea’, and all aglow with silk and gems, served the altar of God clad in a worthless gown”.

In the cloister he devoted himself with all the fervent energy of his character to the work and austere life which become a monk. Indeed, in the matter of austerities he pushed them too far, brought himself to death’s door, and injured his health permanently. This, however, did not interfere with his happiness. And in later years he often expressed keen regret at the loss of his peaceable life in his monastery on the Coelian. It is quite characteristic of the man that in the cloister he was not merely a monk, or ‘servant of God’ (servus Dei), as monks were then emphatically called, but a monk of monks, or ‘servant of the servants of God,' as he already signed himself even before he became Pope. He was not, however, suffered to remain long in the enjoyment of that monastic peace, by which, though still in the body, he was enabled to live out of and above it.

APOCRISIARIUS

Pope Pelagius II (578-590) made him one of the seven regionary deacons of Rome who had to superintend the ‘serving of tables’ in their respective districts. It was while going his rounds in this capacity that he is said to have encountered those Saxon slave boys who so filled his mind that he could not rest till he had done something for his ‘Angels of the North’. Soon after his ordination as deacon, Pelagius did but add to the burden of temporal affairs already laid on Gregory’s shoulders. The Pope sent him (c. 579) as his apocrisiarius or nuncio to Constantinople, trusting that by his birth and talents the accomplished deacon might be able to procure some help for Italy against the Lombards, These papal nuncios date in the main from the days of Justinian, the first of that name who sat on the imperial throne at Constantinople; and they received the Greek appellation (apocrisiarii), given them by the writers of those times, from the fact that it was their business to carry out the ‘answers’ or instructions which had been given to them by those who sent them. For the same reason they were sometimes called by the Latin name of like meaning—‘responsales’. To be sent as apocrisiarius to Con­stantinople was to graduate for the Papacy. When the Eastern emperors had arrogated to themselves the right of confirming the papal elections, it was clearly of moment, in order to avoid disagreements, that men should be chosen as popes who would not be wholly unacceptable to the emperors. And it was, moreover, very advantageous for the Church that such should be elected to fill the Chair of Peter as were acquainted with the Church and State in the East. Hence we find Vigilius, Pelagius L, St. Gregory, and Sabinian, all of whom had been apocrisiarii at Constantinople, elected popes.

To form conjectures as to the thoughts of men on any given occasion is the work not of the historian but of the poet or novelist. For once, however, play may be given to the fancy, and on that authority may be set down the ideas that passed through the mind of Gregory on his journey to Constantinople. When driving south, along the Appian Way and passing by Forum Appii and the Three Taverns, the young apocrisiarius thought with tenderness of the brethren going thus far to meet St. Paul when he came to Rome after his appeal to Caesar (Acts xxviii. 15). Threading his way through the Caudine Forks there may have flashed to his mind with pride the dash made for them by his countrymen when Rome’s star was in the ascendant. And if not before, certainly when he reached Egnatia and found there a scarcity of water, he must have thought of “Gnatia Lymphis iratis exstructa”, and how amusingly Horace had long before described this very journey he was now making to Brundusium. Tossed about on the Hadriatic when crossing to Dyrrachium, his imagination will have conjured up Caesar and his fortune in a small boat, the sport of the waves. Arrived at Dyrrachium, Gregory continued his route by the Via Egnatia, one of the greatest military roads of the Empire, and which even Cicero, some five hundred years before, had spoken of as connecting “us with the Hellespont”. In passing by the lofty Lychnidus (a town which will appear again more than once in these pages) could Gregory have speculated as to whether the Slavs, of whose ravages in Illyricum he often speaks with anxiety in his letters, would ever be masters of it and found there a capital? When he came to Thessalonica, it is more than likely he may have left a letter for its metropolitan, as he was a papal vicar. Journeying on through Amphipolis and Philippi again, he thought of St. Paul and his travels “round about as far as unto Illyricum” (Rom., xv. 19). By the time he had reached Cypsela on the Hebrus in Thrace, the Via Egnatia had traversed 500 miles, and had still many a weary mile to run. Arrived at Perinthus, then called Heraclea, where most of the roads which led to Constantinople met, his thoughts began to turn more definitely to his journey’s end, Constantinople. He reflected how its bishops, from being simple suffragans of Heraclea, had become patriarchs, and how with imperial aid they had even pushed themselves above the ancient patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria. He wondered where their ambition would end. At length the Via Egnatia terminated, and Gregory entered Constantinople by the '’Golden Gate’ at the south-west corner of the city.

Of the official work which Gregory had to perform in the Eastern capital of the Empire, a good idea can be got from a letter of instructions to him from Pelagius II which has been preserved. The Pope informs Gregory that he has sent to him the notary Honoratus, who, fresh from Ravenna, is thoroughly acquainted with the condition of affairs in Italy, and along with the notary, Bishop Sebas­tian Honoratus will give Gregory all the necessary informa­tion, and, should the latter think fit, the notary will tell the emperor (Maurice) of all the disasters which, against their plighted word, the perfidy of the Lombards had inflicted on the peninsula. The bishop too had promised the Pope to point out to the emperor the dire straits in which the whole of Italy lay. “Wherefore”, continues Pelagius, “consult together how you can, as quickly as possible, bring aid to our necessities. For the republic (i.e., the empire) is in such a desperate pass here that, unless God move the compassion of the emperor to grant to us a Master of the soldiery and a Duke, we are utterly helpless; for Rome is particularly defenseless, and the exarch writes that he cannot send us any help, as he declares that he has not force enough to defend Ravenna. May God therefore move him to come at once to our assistance before the troops of the unspeakable race are able to seize the places still held by the republic”.

Besides spending much of his time in trying to obtain from the emperor men and munitions of war for Italy, which Maurice would not (probably because he could not) spare, Gregory had to use his influence at Constanti­nople for others besides the Pope. Municipal authorities appealed to him to protect their rights against the tyranny of imperial officials. And Gregory obtained from Maurice a confirmation of the rights possessed by the civic authority of Naples over certain islands.

In the midst of all these secular affairs which his posi­tion forced Gregory to attend to, he endeavored, as far as his business engagements would allow him, to lead the same life of prayer and study that he had done in his monastery of St. Andrew. Several of his fellow monks attached to him by the bonds of love had followed him to the imperial city. Gregory regarded this as brought about by God, “that by their example as by an anchor he might be bound fast to the quiet shore of prayer, whilst he was ceaselessly tossed about by the waves of secular business”. In the midst of all the worries and vexations which accom­pany dealings with the great, Gregory, urged on by his monks, and especially by St. Leander, Bishop of Seville, who had come to Constantinople to solicit aid for St. Hermenegild against his father Leovigild, delivered homilies to them on the book of Job. In this work, remarks the Lombard deacon, Gregory so treated of the virtues and vices that he seemed not so much to explain them in words as to make them stand out in living forms. Whence, concludes Paul, he must have attained to the perfection of those virtues, the effects of which he set forth so well. Thus, though residing in the splendid palace of ‘Placidia’, the usual residence of the papal apocrisiarii, though constantly engaged in intricate diplomatic negotia­tions, and necessarily coming into daily contact with men and women who, in that gay and corrupt centre of civilization, were of the world worldly, Gregory still contrived to live, to a very large extent, the retired, studious and morti­fied life he had led in his Roman monastery.

THE HERESY OF EUTYCHIUS

Before Gregory returned from his mission to Constantinople, he was the means of withdrawing Eutychius, the patriarch of that city, from error. The patriarchs of Con­stantinople seem to have had a natural bent towards unsound doctrine, and Eutychius was no exception. He taught that after the general resurrection our bodies will be impalpable, more subtle than air, seemingly calling in question the identity of our present bodies with our risen ones, Gregory argued with the patriarch not only with learning, but what is more important, with sweet­ness. At first, indeed, he only got the better of the argu­ment. The patriarch, though beaten in discussion, wrote a book on his theories. The dispute came to the ears of Tiberius. To listen to and even to give dogmatic decisions on theological subjects was a weakness with the Greek emperors. Tiberius would have the disputants before him. After hearing the arguments of both sides, he concluded to burn the work of Eutychius. In the end Gregory gained the patriarch as well as his argument. For on his deathbed (582), in the presence of some of Gregory’s friends, Eutychius grasped the skin of one of his hands by the other and said, “I confess we shall all rise with this flesh”.

But if Gregory found it necessary, whilst still nuncio, to raise his voice against heresy in the person of the patriarch, he found it equally necessary to defend others from a similar charge. Actuated, it would seem, by motives of envy, many persons took pleasure in ascribing various heretical tenets to certain pious Christians; among others, at least later on, to Theoctista, the sister of the Emperor Maurice. Many who were thus accused betook themselves to the papal apocrisiarius, and as he could not find that they really held any false doctrines at all, he not only did not pay the slightest heed to the accusations, but received the heretics into his friendship and defended them against their accusers.

Despite all this varied work accomplished by Gregory at Constantinople, and despite the fact that he there made many life-long friends, he left the imperial city (585 or beginning of 586), after standing god-father (585) to Theodosius, the son of Maurice, without ever thoroughly mastering the Greek language. His sojourn at Con­stantinople had lasted perhaps some six years, and if his efforts to obtain a Roman army for the deliverance of Italy from the hated Lombard were not successful, no doubt his representations had something to do with the money sent to the Franks by Maurice to induce them to attack the Lombards. Between the years 584-590 the Franks had invaded Italy four if not five times. And if they did not make much headway against the Lombards, their ravages would have helped to make the latter ready to conclude a three years’ truce with the exarch Smaragdus. It was during the early months of this truce that Gregory was recalled to Rome.

Once back in Rome, Gregory was soon again inside his beloved monastery. But a man with his capacity and secretary willingness for work was not to be allowed to remain in peaceful retirement. He was called by the monks to rule them as their abbot and by the Pope to help him (as his secretary) to rule the Church.

THE THREE CHAPTERS

His principal task as secretary was to write to the bishops of Istria, who were in schism on account of the so-called Three Chapters. This complicated controversy, like all the other religious controversies of this period, had its origin in the East and in the Arian heresy. Nestorius, who, after he had been educated in the school of Antioch under Theodore of Mopsuestia, became patriarch of Con­stantinople in 428, taught that there were two separate and distinct persons in Our Lord, and that consequently Our Lady was not Mother of God but only mother of the man Christ, in whom “God dwelt as in a temple”. He was supported in his errors by the able Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, and by the writings of his master Theodore of Mopsuestia, by Ibas, of the great school of Edessa, who was afterwards bishop of that city, and many others. Nestorius was, however, condemned in the third ecumenical council of Ephesus (431). One of those who had been very active against Nestorius was the monk Eutyches. His zeal led him into the opposite error. He denied the two natures of Our Lord. “As”, he said, “a drop of water let fall into the ocean is quickly absorbed and disappears in the vast expanse, so also the human element, being infinitely less than the divine, is entirely absorbed by the divinity”. This ‘Monophysite’, or ‘one nature’ doctrine, was naturally opposed among others by Theodoret and Ibas. Eutyches was condemned in the fourth ecumenical council of Chalcedon (451). Some time before this date Theodore of Mopsuestia had died in communion with the Church, and so a council held at Antioch about 440 refused to condemn his works. And as Theodoret and Ibas condemned Nestorius at Chalcedon, that council did not condemn their works, as, by their own declaration, they did so sufficiently themselves. Though the Monophysites were condemned, they were not extinguished. How­ever, like all heretics, they split up into endless parties, and the Encyclicons, Henoticons and other dogmatic in­terferences of the Roman emperors only made matters worse.

Under Justinian I (527-565) a new controversy arose which played into the hands of the Monophysites. Theodore Ascidas, metropolitan of Caesarea, to divert attention from certain heretical doctrines, ascribed to the great Origen, of which he was a supporter, turned the mind of the emperor, who was very fond of issuing dogmatic decrees, to the writings of Theodoret, etc. Justinian, very much exercised at the time with schemes for uniting the Acephali (a branch of the Monophysites) to the Church, was assured by Theodore that all he had to do was to anathematize Theodore of Mopsuestia and his writings and those of Theodoret and the letter of Ibas, Bishop of Edessa, to the Persian Maris, i.e., the so-called Three Chapters. The Council of Chalcedon, urged Ascidas, showed favor to Theodoret and Ibas. Condemn them and the Acephali will become reunited to the Church. Justinian accordingly issued an edict (c. 544) condemning the Three Chapters, and compelled Pope Vigilius, when at Constantinople, to do the same (548). The condemnation was reaffirmed by the fifth ecumenical council of Constantinople (553). The emperor did not succeed in his object. Though no opposition was raised to the decrees of the fifth council in the East, the Acephali were not gained. On the contrary, the Mono­physites were delighted. The Council of Chalcedon had declared Theodoret and Ibas orthodox, and therefore, they insinuated, had approved their writings. Theodoret and Ibas condemned—the Council of Chalcedon was condemned. While the Monophysites were thus in high glee, the Catholics were placed in a dilemma. They could not accept the Three Chapters because they were heretical as a matter of fact; and if they anathematized them, the unlearned and unthinking many would suppose that the Council of Chalcedon, which declared the authors of the Three Chapters orthodox, was being anathematized. The latter was exactly what did take place in certain parts of the West. Doubtless partly because they would mistrust what had been done in the East under the personal influence of the emperor, and certainly partly because, more or less ignorant of the writings of Theodore, etc., they did not fully understand the decisions of the fifth council, some of the Western bishops formed a schism. Despite the express declaration of Justinian to the contrary, some of the Westerns persisted in main­taining that his edict and the decrees of the council of Constantinople were aimed at those of Chalcedon and were framed in the interests of the Monophysites. The schism, however, had duration only in the north-east of Italy, where the bishops of Venetia and Istria paid no heed to the admonitions of Pope Pelagius I, the successor of Vigilius; but under the influence of Paulinus of Aquileia (557-569), assembled in synod (c. 557) and condemned the fifth council. The ‘barbarity of the Lombards’ forced Paulinus to take the treasures of his Church and fly to the little island of Grado at the mouth of the Isongo, and near Trieste. Soon after this Paulinus died, and after the brief rule of Probinus, was succeeded by Elias (571-586). It was to this Elias and the other schismatical bishops of Istria that Pelagius II bade Gregory write (585-6). Though little or nothing seems to have been effected at the time by the three letters which Gregory wrote, he partially healed the schism when Pope. It was not, however, finally closed till about the year 700.

In the first of the three letters, the Pope assured the Istrian bishops and their metropolitan that it was the troubles of the times which had hindered him from writing to them before. Now that by the mercy of God, through the exertions of the exarch Smaragdus, they had obtained the blessings of peace, he hastened to beg them to cease rending the Church by schism. He wrote to them because the command of Christ was upon him, “to confirm the faith of his brethren” (St. Luke xxii. 31, 32), and he bade them remember that the faith of Peter, to whom the Lord had given the commission to feed all the sheep and to whom He had entrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven (St. Matthew xvi. 18), could not fail or be changed. He proceeded to tell them what that faith was, assured them that he received the Council of Chalcedon as he did the first three General Councils, and concluded by ex­horting them most pathetically to unity, that there might be one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Father of all.

The Istrian bishops made no attempt to reply to the Pope’s contentions. They simply sent him a statement of their decisions. Accordingly in a second letter, Pelagius reminded them of the danger of keeping so long apart from the Universal Church, “for the sake of superfluous questions and of defending heretical chapters”. To bring the trouble to an end, he begged them to send suitable persons to Rome, with whom the difficulties might be properly discussed; or, if they were afraid of distance and the quality of the times, he bade them hold a synod at Ravenna to which he would send those who would give them every satisfaction.

Having no case, the bishops in schism would do neither the one thing nor the other. Like children they would only reiterate with obstinacy what they had made up their minds about. In a third very long letter, to which Gregory is thought to allude, when in his letter to the bishops of Iberia he speaks of the “Book of Pope Pelagius on the Three Chapters”, the Pope expresses his astonishment at their conduct, the more so on account of the mild manner in which he has treated with them. However, he must strive to bring them back to that unity which their schism is blurring. He goes on to show that what was done in the time of Justinian did not militate against the Council of Chalcedon; but that as the fifth council was merely concerned with persons, the Istrian bishops were simply seeking for a cause of quarrel under a show of peaceful words, and despising the authority of the Fathers, whilst pretending to follow it. “By your letter you contend that you were led by the Apostolic see itself not to consent to what was done under the Emperor Justinian, because in the beginning of the affair the Apostolic see, through Pope Vigilius, and all the heads of the Latin provinces, stoutly resisted the condemnation of the Three Chapters. We hence note that what ought to have won your consent has torn you from giving it. Latins, and inexperienced in Greek ways (Graecitas), whilst ignorant of the (Greek) language they learnt their mistakes slowly. The more readily, therefore, ought they to be believed after their acknowledgment, inasmuch as their firmness did not shrink from the contest until they learnt the truth” ... “If, then, in the matter of the Three Chapters one view was held whilst the truth was being sought, but another when the truth was discovered, why should a change of opinion be objected to this see as a fault, when a similar change in the person of its author (S. Peter) is humbly reverenced by the whole Church?”  Gregory then proceeds to show by extracts from their works that Theodore, Ibas and Theodoret all, as a matter of fact, put forth heretical pro­positions, and therefore, of course, deserved to be condemned. And he very pertinently remarked with regard to Theodoret: “How rash must he be who would defend the writings of Theodoret, when it is certain that Theodoret him­self condemned them”. He concludes by once again affirm­ing that he receives the Council of Chalcedon as he receives the first three ecumenical councils; and assuring his cor­respondents that he looks to God to give effect to his words.

The zeal of the Pope, however, had but little effect, at least at the time. But the exarch Smaragdus, of opinion that a little force might succeed where words failed, seized Severus (586-606), the successor of Elias, and some others, and forced them by threats to communicate with the orthodox John of Ravenna (588). However, on his return to Grado, finding himself unpopular, Severus repudiated his submission. A fit of insanity { prevented the exarch from renewing his violence. He was replaced by Romanus (589-597).

When he became Pope, Gregory continued to labor to put an end to the schism. A few months after his acces­sion he wrote to blame Severus for his relapse, pointing out to him that it was a less evil not to know the truth than not to remain in it when learnt, and bidding him come to Rome with his adherents, in accordance with the will of the emperor, that their contentions might be examined in a synod. With this letter went a body of soldiers under the command of a tribune and an imperial life-guardsman. Alarmed at this strong action on the part of the Pope, the schismatics appealed to the emperor. One of their letters has come down to us. Following a very common precedent of ecclesiastics in trouble with their proper superiors, they offered to submit their case to the emperor himself as soon as the Lombards should be over­come and peace restored to Italy. And at the same time, to put pressure on the emperor, they declared that if force were employed against them, the metropolitan of Aquileia would soon lose his authority over his province, as his subjects would turn to the neighboring archbishops of Gaul. This representation, signed by ten bishops, pro­duced its effect. Fearful of anything happening which might in any way lessen his hold on Istria, “the emperor Cesar Flavius Mauricius Tiberius, Faithful in Christ, the Peaceful, Mild, Mightiest, the Beneficent, Alamannicus”, despatched a letter “to the most holy Gregory, the most blessed archbishop of the fostering city of Rome and Patriarch”. After informing Gregory of the letters and request he had received from the schismatics, and assuring him that he was well aware that the Pope correctly imparted the doctrine of the Catholic Church to all, the emperor continued: “Since therefore your Holiness is aware of the present confusion in Italian affairs, and knows that we must adapt ourselves to the times, we order your Holiness to give no further molestation to those bishops, but to allow them to live quietly, until, by the providence of God, the regions of Italy be in all other respects restored to peace, and the other bishops of Istria and Venetia be again brought back to the old order (viz., doubtless the political order). Then by the help of your prayers, all measures will be taken for the restoration of peace, and the removal of differences in doctrine”.

As this whole question of the Three Chapters had been raised by one of the predecessors of Maurice, Gregory had certainly some reason to complain of such a mandate as this—a mandate he regarded as obtained surreptitiously. However, he did not cease to importune the emperor on the subject with the greatest zeal and freedom. He moreover encouraged those of the laity who were aiding him in the good work of reconciliation. And he entered into correspondence with individual bishops among the schismatics, who had expressed a wish of discussing the situation with him. Certainly at first no striking results followed Gregory’s work. In 593 we read of the return to Catholic unity of a deacon, and in 595 of a monk. But after the death of the exarch Romanus (596 or 597), an impossible man, at least to the Pope, we find Gregory commending to his suc­cessor, Callinicus, several people who have returned “to the solid rock of the Prince of the Apostles” (599). In the same year Gregory had the pleasure of receiving the adhesion of the inhabitants of the island of Caprea, “which appears to be the island in the lagunes at the mouth of the Piave, upon which was soon to arise the city of Heraclea, the precursor of Venice”. And before he died, Gregory learnt that Firininus, Bishop of Trieste, had abandoned the schism. From what we know of the persecution that Firininus had to endure at the hands of his metropolitan Severus, and from the fact that many of those reconciled to the Church went to live at Constantinople and in Sicily, there can be no doubt that well-grounded fear of persecution at the hands of the remaining schismatics kept many from returning to the Church.

The schism was unfortunately not confined to Venetia and Istria. Three bishops cut themselves off from communion with Constantius of Milan (to whom Gregory had sent the pallium in September 593), who on account of the Lombards was residing at Genoa. And what was worse, they managed to seduce from her allegiance to the Church the Bavarian Catholic princess, Theodelinda, formerly the wife of Authari, but since 590 the wife of Agilulph. However, through the prudence of Constantius, and the words of Gregory, the disaffection of the Lombard Queen, who showed herself the Pope’s faithful fellow-worker in all his efforts for the conversion of the Lombards, did not last long, Gregory impressed on her that the men who had led her astray neither read themselves nor believed those who did read. He made it plain to her that he received the Council of Chalcedon as he received the three General Councils, and that he condemned anyone who either added to or subtracted anything from the four Councils, especially that of Chalcedon about which there has arisen a question of faith in certain ignorant men. After this confession of faith on the part of the Pope, it is only right that the Queen should have no further mistrust of the Church of St. Peter. "”Stand firm in the true faith, and fix your life in the rock of the Church, in the confession of the Prince of the Apostles, lest your tears and good works should avail naught, if not done in the true faith”.

THE MONK JUSTUS AND HIS MONEY, 590

Gregory had to combat the schism even in Asiatic Iberia. But it is one man that soweth and another that reapeth. It was not till about a hundred years later, at the synod of Pavia in 698, that the schism of the Three Chapters was closed, that the harvest from the seed sown by Gregory I was gathered by Sergius I.

The one act which is recorded  of Gregory as abbot took place in the year in which he was elected Pope, and shows him animated by the same ideas of discipline which filled the breast of the general who is said to have shot a soldier for stealing a turnip after he had issued special orders against looting. One of his monks, Justus by name, who had been a physician before he came to the monastery, and had been most attentive to Gregory himself in his frequent illnesses, confessed when dying to his brother Copiosus, also a doctor, that he had secreted three golden solidi. For a monk to possess money was of course against the rule of the Benedictine Order. The coins were discovered among Justus’ medicines, and the affair was reported to the abbot. Overwhelmed with grief, Gregory reflected on what he had best do “for the benefit of the dying man and for an example to his living brethren”. He accordingly forbade the monks to visit the dying man, and told Copiosus to let Justus know that this was done on account of his breach of the rule. When the poor monk died, Gregory ordered his body to be cast into a ditch and the money to be thrown on the top of him, whilst all exclaimed, “Thy money perish with thee!” Gregory assures us that his conduct had the desired effect. The monk died in the greatest sorrow for his fault, and the rest of the community became extremely particular about the observance of their vow of poverty. However, after thirty days Gregory was touched at the thought of the sufferings the poor monk would be enduring in Purgatory, and accordingly gave orders for Mass to be offered up for him every day for a month. At the end of that period Justus appeared to his brother and assured him that his sufferings were over and that he had been received into Heaven.

THE PLAGUE. DEATH OF POPE PELAGIUS II, 590. ELECTION OF GREGORY

The time had now arrived when, in the designs of God,  Gregory was to take on his own shoulders the cares he had helped Pope Pelagius to bear, and which his abilities, piety and experience fitted him to cope with. A moment’s reflection will suffice to make it clear how deep and varied that experience was. The years that he had held the prefectship of the city had enabled him to gain a clear insight into the workings of its civil administration; and as one of the regionary deacons he had got in touch with its ecclesiastical government. Apocrisiarius at Constanti­nople, he must have learnt something of the relations between the East and West in matters affecting both the Church and State. As a monk and abbot of the monastery of St. Andrew he became acquainted with the monastic life and its needs.

The close of the year 589 saw the swift yellow Tiber in flood. Great portions of Rome were soon under water, many monuments of antiquity were undermined, and some thousands of bushels of grain, which were stored up in the granaries of the Church, were destroyed. A bubonic plague followed in the wake of the flood and Pope Pelagius was one of its first victims (February 7, 590). The plague waxed furious, and very many houses of the city were rendered tenantless. “But because the Church of God cannot be without a ruler, the whole people chose Gregory Pope”.

Gregory’s was the only dissentient voice. At a loss what to do to avoid the honor he dreaded, Gregory wrote to the Emperor Maurice and begged him not to confirm his election. Contested elections had furnished the State with an excuse for concerning itself with the elections of the popes. The disputed election of Boniface I (418-422) had given the Emperor Honorius an opportunity of intervening in the matter. When Italy fell under the sway of the Teutonic barbarian, still greater liberties were taken with the natural rights of the Church. And a council at Rome (502) had to condemn a decree of Basil, prefect of the praetorium for the Herulan Odoacer, which had forbidden a successor to Pope Simplicius (t483) to be chosen without the approval of the king. Troubled elections enabled Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, to go so far as actually to nominate Felix IV (526-530). When by the valor and skill of Belisarius and Narses, Italy was recovered for the Empire, Justinian and his succes­sors followed the lead of the barbarian and claimed the right of confirming the papal elections. In later times we shall see the popes justly struggling against this assumption.

Whilst the answer of the Emperor Maurice was awaited, the plague was raging in Rome. Gregory made use of the occasion to remind the people of the necessity of ever keeping before their minds the judgments of God, which they ought to have averted by a salutary fear of them. “See”, he cried, “the whole people struck by the sword of God’s anger, smitten down by sudden death. For death anticipates sickness. Men are dying, not one by one, but in groups”. He therefore invited them to join in a Sevenfold Litany which was to be celebrated at dawn on the following Wednesday, and assigned the churches at which were to assemble the different groups, who were to join in the great procession to St. Mary Major’s, (1) The clergy in general with the priests of the sixth region were to start from the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian by the Roman Forum; (2) The abbots and their monks with the priests of the fourth region from the Church of SS. Gervase and Protase on the Quirinal; (3) The abbesses and their nuns with the priests of the first region from the Church of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, not the one on the Via Labicana, two miles out of Rome, but the one described as ‘juxta Lateranis’, on the modern Via Merulana, and which figures as a titular church in a council held at Rome by Pope Gregory (595); (4) All the children with the priests of the second region from the Church of SS. John and Paul, near Gregory’s home on the Coelian; (5) The laymen with the priests of the seventh region from the Church of St. Stefano (the protomartyr) Rotondo near the Lateran; (6) All the widows with the priests of the fifth region from the Church of St. Euphemia, now destroyed, but formerly near the Church of St. Pudentiana; (7) All the married women with the priests of the third region from the Church of St. Clement.

On the appointed day, whilst the people in their seven great companies walked to the basilica sadly chanting the Kyrie Eleison, so fiercely did the plague rage that in a single hour no less than eighty men fell to the earth and died during the procession. St. Gregory of Tours, from whom we have all these particulars, gathered them from one of the deacons of his church who was at Rome at the time. This penitential devotion of the Sevenfold Litany may have become annual. At any rate, it is plain from Gregory’s register that it was repeated a few months (September 603) before he died. Possibly there may have been some pestilence then again devastating the city in connection with the famine, which we know was raging when Sabinian became Pope.

Just as round great warrior kings like Prince Arthur, our own Alfred and Charlemagne, legends of imaginary fights gather, so round Gregory, justly the admiration of after ages, accumulated many a pretty story. It came to be told how, when the great procession, on its way towards St. Peter’s on the Vatican, crossed the Tiber by the bridge opposite the Mausoleum of Hadrian, the whole people, with trembling joy and gratitude, beheld the angel of wrath on top of the Mausoleum sheathing his deadly sword as a sign that the plague was at an end. From that hour the Mausoleum changed its name, and has been known ever since as the Angel’s Castle (the Castle of Sant' Angelo).

At length the plague ceased, and a letter came from the emperor in which he expressed his pleasure that his friend had been raised to the honor of the Papacy, and giving the required consent for his consecration. For Maurice had received full information of what had been done at Rome from Germanus, the prefect of the city, who had caused Gregory’s messenger to be seized and had opened all the letters of which he was bearer, substituting letters of his own. Disappointed in his hopes of the emperor’s interference in his behalf, Gregory resolved to escape from the dreaded dignity by flight. But his movements were carefully watched; he was seized, hurried off to St. Peter’s, and consecrated (September 3, 590).

Here again has legend been busy. According to it, Gregory contrived to get himself taken out of the city by some traders in a basket. For in fear lest by flight he might endeavor to escape the honor it was known that he dreaded, the gates of the city were all carefully watched. For three days Gregory managed to hide himself in caves, but at night on the third day, after many prayers and fasts on the part of the people, he was found by a column of light resting over the place where he was.

GREGORY LAMENTS OVER HIS DIGNITY

What, however, was the people’s joy was Gregory’s profound regret. “The congratulations of strangers”, he wrote to Paul the Scholastic, “on the honor to which I have been raised do not weigh upon me. But I am dis­tinctly grieved that you, who know my wishes so well, should felicitate me, as though I had received a promotion. The highest promotion for me would be to work my own will, which, as you well know, is to earn a wished-for retire­ment”. To John the Faster, the famous patriarch of Constantinople (582-595, September 2), who was afterwards to come into collision with Gregory : “I know how earnestly you tried to escape the episcopal yoke yourself, and yet you did nothing to prevent the same burden being imposed upon me. Clearly you love not me as you love yourself. Since, weak and unworthy, I have taken in hand an old and much battered bark, into which the water pours in all parts and the rotten timbers of which, beaten daily by direful tempests, threaten shipwreck, I pray you for God’s sake stretch out to me the helping hand of your prayers”. To the emperor’s sister Theoctista he writes in the same strain : “I have returned to the world, pretending that as a bishop I am leaving it. I am bound to greater cares than ever I was as a layman. I have lost the solid joys of retirement, and whilst externally seeming to rise, I have fallen internally. I grieve that I am driven from my Maker’s face. The emperor has given orders for an ape to become a lion. He can doubtless cause the ape to be called a lion, but he cannot make it become one”.

Gregory was not, however, the man to be content with sitting down and groaning under the burden which the will of God had placed upon him. He was resolved to carry the load as far forward as he could. Although the weakness of his stomach was always troubling him, and although especially during the last five or six years of his pontificate he was constantly suffering from gout, he managed to get through more work than any ten of the secular or ecclesi­astical rulers of his age were capable of—to use the striking expression of Herder, in his Thoughts on the History of Mankind. “I am so oppressed with the pains of gout and with my troubles that life is most wearisome to me”, is the constant burden of Gregory’s letters.

 SYNODICAL LETTER OF 591

After a word or two on Gregory’s synodical letter, we will make a beginning of narrating his life as Pope by considering his work for his own home, so to speak, i.e., for the city of Rome. In accordance with the custom of his age, a custom certainly in vogue in the days of Gelasius I, Gregory dispatched his synodical letter to John of Constantinople, Eulogius of Alexandria, Gregory of Antioch, John of Jerusalem, and Anastasius, ex-patriarch of Antioch. The first and longer portion of this epistle is taken up with unfolding, in the language of his Regula Pastoralis, what manner of man a bishop ought to be, in the course of which he incidentally reminds them of the supremacy of St. Peter in the Church. In conclusion he begs their prayers, placed as he is in the midst of daily troubles which threaten to overwhelm the mind and to kill the body. He will not fail to pray for them. Hence, helping one another by prayer, they will be like men walking along a slippery road holding one another by the hand. Each one can put his foot down more securely because he is supported by his neighbor. He declared that he received the four ecumenical councils as the four Gospels; “for in them as in faced stone the structure of the faith was built up”; and that he venerated in like manner the fifth council (of Constantinople, 553). Though Gregory himself vouches for the practice of this inter­change of synodical letters between the great patriarchs on the occasion of the election of a new one, only a few of those of the popes have been preserved.

In Rome itself Gregory showed himself a true pastor indeed to his people. He broke to them the bread of life which nourishes the soul and that which nourishes the body. His mind and his money were ever at the service of the Roman people. He was practically their temporal ruler as well as their spiritual head. As their priest we find him going about from church to church preaching to them, and regulating their spiritual affairs by councils held in Rome and by decrees. To preach to them he made use of the ancient Roman practice (observed in a modified form to this day) of making stations. At a church previously marked out, the Pope, a body of the clergy and the people assembled, to walk thence in solemn procession to the church of the station, where the Pope delivered a homily, and solemn or High Mass was cele­brated. The church of the station was sometimes the church where was buried or where was specially honored the saint whose glorious death (spoken of as his birthday, dies natalis or nativitatis) was being that day celebrated. Sometimes, on the occasion of some more solemn feast day or more special event, one of the greater basilicas was selected to serve as the church of the station.

HOMILIES

And so of the forty homilies of Gregory on the Gospels, either preached by him or read in his presence by a notary to the people, some were delivered in churches in the city dedicated to different saints of lesser fame; one at least (the 28th) in the basilica of SS. Petronilla, Nereus and Achilleus in the cemetery or Catacomb of Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina; and several in the more important basilicas of St. Peter, St. John Lateran, St Mary Major, St. Clement, etc. “In the apse and behind the altar” of the basilica of St. Petronilla, just mentioned, “stood the marble episcopal chair from which St. Gregory read his 28th Homily; it was removed by Leo III in the eighth century to the church of SS. Nereus and Achilleus. Near the niche (in the apse) a curious graffito is preserved on the wall, representing a priest, dressed in the casula (the prototype of the modern chasuble), preaching to the people, a record of St, Gregory’s sermon”. And it is interesting to English Catholics to know that the Church of St. Silvester in Capite, given to them by Leo XIII in 1890, once echoed to the voice of the Apostle of Our Nation. In it he delivered his 9th Homily. That our readers may form for themselves an idea of the discourses delivered by Gregory to the people at the stations, discourses which from their practical character deservedly earned for themselves a great reputa­tion in the Middle Ages, this very 9th Homily may well be given here.

“The Gospel of today, my dearest brethren, earnestly bids us beware lest we who have received more than others in this world be hence more heavily judged. The more has been given to us, the greater the account we shall have to render. Hence he ought to be the more humble and the more ready to serve God, who sees that he will have a greater account to render. The man who went abroad calls his servants and gives them talents to trade with. After a long time he returns to demand an account as to how they have been used. Those who bring him gain he rewards; but he condemns the unprofitable servant. Now who is that man who went into a far country but Our Redeemer who went to Heaven with the flesh he had assumed? For the natural place for the flesh is the earth, which is, as it were, taken to a foreign land when by Our Redeemer it is transported to Heaven. But when going abroad that man gave of his goods to his servants, inasmuch as he gave spiritual gifts to the faithful. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one. The five talents are the five bodily senses— viz., the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. The two represent intellect and will. The one signifies intellect. Now the one who received five talents gained other five. For there are some who, although they know not how to penetrate the internal and the mystical, still, with minds fixed on Heaven, teach truth to whomsoever they can, and from the external gifts they have received double their talents. And whilst they restrain themselves from the waywardness of the flesh, from seeking after earthly things and from taking sinful pleasure in what they see around them, by their warnings they keep others from the same evil courses. And there are some, too, who, endowed as it were with two talents, have received intellect and will, and comprehend the subtilties of internal things and in externals work wonders. And so preaching to others by their understanding and their works, they also from their trading, as it were, gain a twofold profit. Well is it said that both the five and the two talents reap profit, because whilst to both sexes the preaching is addressed, the talents received are, as it were, doubled. But the man who received the one talent went his way and hid his lord’s money. To hide one’s talent in the earth is to bury oneself in the things of this world, not to seek spiritual profit, and never to raise one’s heart from earthly thoughts. For there are some who have intelligence but are only wise in what concerns the flesh. And when the lord returns, the servant who has doubled what was entrusted to him is praised, and to him the lord says, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things I will place thee over many: enter thou into the joy of thy lord'. For few indeed are all the goods of this present life, though they may seem to be many, in comparison with an eternal reward. But the servant who would not employ his talent approached his lord with words of excuse: 'Lord, I know that thou art a hard man, thou reapest where thou hast not sown, and gatherest where thou hast not strewed. And being afraid I went and hid thy talent in the earth; behold here thou hast that which is thine'. The unprofitable servant says he feared to put out his talent to interest, whereas he ought only to have been afraid of returning it to his lord without interest. There are many in the Church who are like this servant. They fear to tread the way of a better life, but do not fear to lie in sloth. Hence the lord replied to the idle servant, 'Wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sow not, thou oughtest therefore to have committed my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received my own with usury'. To commit money to the bankers is to preach to those who can put the preaching into practice. But, as you see our danger if we hold the lord’s money, so my dearest brethren earnestly think of your own; for an account will be demanded of you of what you are now hearing. But let us hear the sentence passed on the unprofitable servant: ‘Take away, therefore, the talent from him and give it to him that hath ten talents’. With reason is the one talent given to the servant that had the five rather than to the one that had the two. For the one that had the five was really the poorer, as he had only external gifts. Finally there is added : ‘To everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall abound, but from him that hath not that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away’. Yes! for who hath charity hath every gift, and who hath it not, loses the gifts which he seemed to have acquired. Hence, my brethren, in all that you do see that you guard charity. And true charity is to love your friends in God and your enemies for God”. In conclusion Gregory urges that there is no one but has received at least one talent, and he points out that he must use that talent for the honor of God and the good of his neighbor. If a man’s talent be merely that he has a rich friend, he may well fear that he may be condemned for not employing his talent, if, when oppor­tunity offers, he does not intercede with him in behalf of the poor. Let this much of this homily suffice to show the character of Gregory’s addresses to the people. That they teem with allegory does not render them unpractical.

These forty homilies on the Gospels were dedicated by Gregory to his friend Secundinus, Bishop of Taormina, on the east coast of Sicily, and sent to him in 593. He complains that many of them had got into circulation without receiving his corrections. They had been taken down when he delivered them; and he likens those who did so to starving men who will not wait for the food to be cooked, but eat it half raw. He tells Secundinus that he has arranged the homilies in two volumes. In the first were the twenty which his weak health had forced him to get read by his notaries; in the second those he had preached himself. That there might be a standard text by which any copy might be corrected, Gregory assured his friend that he had deposited a complete collection of the homilies in the scrinium (or archives) of the Roman Church.

Gregory also preached to the people, but not at the stations, a number of homilies on Ezechiel. These, inter­rupted in their delivery by the siege of Rome (593), and corrected eight years after as best he could in the midst of his troubles, Gregory sent, at his request, to Marinianus, Archbishop of Ravenna. In sending them he remarked that he was aware that Marinianus was in the habit of drinking deep of the works of Ambrose and Augustine. And he added that with that knowledge he would not have forwarded his own homilies, was he not convinced that the occasional use of a little coarser food made one turn again with greater avidity to the more refined.

COUNCIL OF ROME

To improve the people, Gregory knew it was necessary to improve the priest. And so, from the very beginning of his pontificate, he issued a variety of decrees for the reformation of various blameworthy customs which had sprung up in the Roman Church. As many at least of these decrees were confirmed in the synod held by Gregory, July 5, 595, the enumeration of those issued by it will show the nature of the reforms which he was striving to introduce. The decrees of the synod, signed by twenty- three bishops and thirty-five priests of titular churches, related to six subjects,

(1) By the first, the ordaining of deacons merely with the view of utilizing their voices for singing is strictly forbidden for the future. The deacons have to preach and look after the poor. The Gospel in the Mass must be sung by them, but everything else must be chanted by the inferior clergy.

(2)                   Henceforth the personal needs of the Pope must be attended to not by lay servants, but by clerics or monks, that they may be witnesses of his private life.

(3)                   The rectors of the patrimony of the Church are not to act like the officers of the public revenue and place ‘titles’ (boards bearing the name of the owner of the property) on lands which they imagine to belong to the Church. Such conduct implies defence of the goods of the Church by force and not by right.

(4)                   In honoring us the intention of the faithful is to honor St. Peter. But it behoves our infirmity ever to recognize itself and to decline honors. From love of the rulers of this See an undesirable custom has arisen. When their bodies are carried forth for burial, the faithful cover them with dalmatics, and then, tearing these to shreds, they keep the pieces as relics. They are eager to take from the bodies of sinners, but never think of taking a portion of the cloths that enwrap the bodies of the saints. For the future these coverings must never again be placed on the bodies of the deceased pontiffs.

(5)                   Following the old regulation of the fathers, it is strictly forbidden to any cleric to exact money for the conferring of orders, the pallium or the necessary docu­ments relating thereto. A present in every way freely offered may be accepted.

 (6) With regard to such slaves belonging to the Church as wish to become monks, they must be thoroughly tested before being received into a monastery, otherwise there would soon be no slaves left.

Besides these decrees for the salvation of the Romans, Gregory found it necessary, in order to counteract the doctrine of certain puritanical people in Rome, to inform “his most beloved children, the citizens of Rome”, that the laws regarding the observance of the Sabbath were not to be rigidly stretched, and that of course they might wash themselves on Sunday! It was high time that such an instruction was given to the “Pope’s children”. For it will scarcely be believed, though it is nevertheless a fact, that a simple Irish saint (S. Conall, who died before 594), on a visit to Rome at this period, and zealous about everything Roman, thought these puritanical habits were approved at Rome, and introduced them into Ireland when he returned home. O'Curry tells us of a Law of Sunday, not indeed a general law enacted at Tara, “but simply a rule brought from Rome (by S. Conall) for the observance of Sunday as a day totally free from labor, with certain unavoidable exceptions. (But) .... No out or indoor labor .... no shaving .... no washing the face or hands!”

GREGORY’S MONASTERY OF SAINT ANDREW

We might have been sure that when Gregory became Pope he would not have forgotten his monastery on the Coelian. Not only did he make of its abbots and monks his confidants, not only did he send them as bishops to various parts of the world, but he was at pains to secure their possessions and privileges. Some six hundred years after the death of Gregory another abbot of St. Andrew’s came (1240) before another Pope Gregory—the Ninth—and showed him a sheet of papyrus almost dropping to pieces with age. However, the writing on it could still just be read, and showed that it was ‘a charter of privilege’ which Gregory I had granted to the abbot Maximus or Maximianus just 650 years before! The said abbot begged the Pope to have an authentic copy of the ancient papyrus made, and then to ratify it under his seal. This Gregory IX consented to do, and it is through his bull of 1240 that we have the ‘privilege’ of 590 and learn these interesting par­ticulars. The charter 2 is addressed by Gregory, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to his most beloved son Maximus, and sets forth that the Pope owes a debt of gratitude to the monastery of St. Andrew, because it was there that he took the habit of a monk and began a new life. He therefore confirms to it for ever, and forbids anyone, even a Pope, to alienate from it the property which he and others have made over to it. Gregory in this document specifies property which he made over to the monastery three years before. Now it happens that the very deed making over that property has been preserved. The deed is dated December 28, 587. In it Gregory, “an unworthy deacon of the Apostolic See” and “Servant of the Servants of God”, makes over to the abbot Maximianus, and through him to the monastery of St Andrew, certain farm properties, with their slaves, serfs, and their appurtenances of all kinds, which had been left to Gregory by a certain Desiderius, vir clarissimus. The deed, as full of redundant phraseology as any modern legal document of a similar nature, is signed by Gregory, and witnessed by a vir clarissimus, a vir honestus (burgher) and notary public (tabellaritis) of the city of Rome, and a reader (lector) of the title of St. Mary. Gregory’s interest in his own monastery is only a sample of his interest in the monastic order in general. But of that more will be said in another place.

GREGORY AS METROPOLITAN

Before turning to narrate deeds which show Gregory in light of Head of the Church, or of a temporal ruler and landlord, we may pass from considering him as Bishop of Rome to treat of his conduct as Metropolitan of Italy and Patriarch of the West. The Pope’s metropolitical jurisdiction in Italy extended over all Italy (with the exception of the archdioceses of Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan), Sicily and Corsica. And consequently his relations with those parts were more close than even with the rest of the West. To him pertained directly the government, through bishops approved by him personally, of the Church in that wide district. What that rule meant may be gathered from his own words : “When in the monastery I was able to restrain my tongue from useless words, and to keep my mind almost continu­ally intent on prayer. But after I placed the pastoral burden on the shoulders of my heart, the soul could not concentrate itself, because it wandered over many things. For I am compelled to examine into cases, sometimes of churches, sometimes of monasteries, and often to deliberate upon the lives and actions of individuals. Sometimes I have to take up the affairs of the citizens, sometimes to groan under the invading swords of the barbarians, some­times to fear the wolves that steal in to the flock committed to my care. Sometimes I have to take charge of affairs lest help be wanting to those on whom the rule of discipline is binding; sometimes to endure plunderers with equanimity, sometimes to resist them for the sake of preserving charity”. Of Gregory’s over eight hundred extant letters by far the greater number, as might be expected, are taken up with the business of his metropolitical duties. And how numerous those were we may judge not merely from the general terms of the extract just quoted, but from such a fact as this—that in “the first year of his pontificate, in spite of the difficulties and complications attending removal or erection of Sees, he dealt with no less than fifteen deserted churches”. The terrible campaigns of Belisarius, Narses and Alboin had played dreadful havoc not only with Christian discipline but with the ecclesiastical organization of Italy. And so “the necessities of the times urge us and the decay of the population compels us to spend anxious thought on the best way of helping destitute churches”.

SICILY

Of Sicily Gregory took especial care. There had the Sicily, greater part of his ancestral estates been situated, there were the most valuable patrimonies of the Church, and thence came most of the grain for the support of the people of Rome. The very first letter in Gregory’s Register is addressed to “the Bishops of Sicily”. In it he informs them that he has sent one of his subdeacons to represent him throughout the province of Sicily, and that to him he has entrusted the management of the whole patrimony of the Roman Church. This subdeacon was Peter, with whom Gregory had been on terms of intimate friendship from his youth, and who is the same as the Peter whom he addresses in his Dialogues. With him the Pope bids the Sicilian bishops hold a council once a year at Syracuse or Catania to regulate what pertains to the good of the pro­vince and of the churches, to the succor of the poor and the oppressed, and to the correction of abuses. And, having in view the tendency of the Sicilians to quarrel and to the vendetta, he concludes by exhorting them to show by their harmonious action that their meetings are those of bishops, and to keep far away from them “hatred, the source of crimes, and jealousy, the internal, most abominable decay of souls”. But if Gregory increased the burdens of the bishops of Sicily in one direction, he lightened them in another. According to ancient custom they were bound to present themselves in Rome every three years. Gregory extended the term to five years. Further, to prevent constant appeals to Rome “on small matters”, and thus to facilitate the transaction of business, he appointed (October 591) Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse, his vicar, so that there would be an authority on the island itself for the settling of any but very important affairs, the so-called causas majores. The civil governor, Justin, the praetor of Sicily, is also written to and exhorted to keep the peace with the bishops, having God ever before his eyes, and on no account to fail in dispensing just judgment. Among the other commissions given to Peter, was to bring back under control the monks of the city of Taurus, then situated somewhat to the north of Reggio, in the province of Bruttium, and now no longer in existence. Dispersed apparently by some inroad of the Lombards, they were wandering about all over Sicily. This incident is worth recording, as it sheds light, a wild light certainly, on the state of the times.

The Sicilian patrimonies will be discussed when we depict Gregory as a landlord.

Heartbroken at the devastation which he saw the Lombards everywhere inflicting on Italy, Gregory’s dis­tress was rendered still keener when the rumor reached him that they were planning a descent on Sicily. Point­ing out to the bishops of Sicily what they would have to expect if the Lombards landed in Sicily, he exhorts them to try and turn away the anger of God by ordering litanies, and by all leading a better life. “For prayer is offered to no purpose where conduct is bad”.

CORSICA

From Gregory’s letters dealing with Corsica many interesting particulars may be gathered. There, as every­where, matters, civil and religious, were in dire confusion. Harried, at least by the Lombards, the unfortunate inhabitants were so taxed by their rulers that they were reduced to selling their children to pay the tribute which was wrung from them, and at last to take refuge with the unspeakable Lombards themselves. For, as Gregory might well ask in his letter to the empress in behalf of the oppressed islanders, “How could they suffer more cruelly at the hands of the barbarians than to be so oppressed as to be forced to sell their children?” Hence he never ceased trying to get officials of the right stamp sent to the island. And of course he did not fail to look after their religious welfare. He encouraged the bishops who were successfully laboring to bring, or to bring back, to Christianity the still numerous idolaters; and for the spiritual benefit of the island sent there a body of monks under the abbot Orosius. And that they might not be easily scattered by marauding Lombards, as other monks before them had been who dwelt in a monastery in the open country, he directed his agent or defensor in Corsica to sail round the island with Orosius and pick out a spot near the sea which was either naturally strong or could be easily fortified. A sign of the times indeed!

SARDINIA

Gregory’s relations with Sardinia and with the arch­dioceses of Ravenna, Aquileia and Milan were the same as with Spain, Gaul and Illyricum; that is to say, his ecclesiastical dealings with all those parts were in the main conducted through the metropolitans of the various districts of those countries.

Passing easily from Corsica to Sardinia, the letters in Gregory’s Register reveal the same corruption among the imperial officials, the same oppression of the poor as in Corsica. The venality of the judges greatly interfered with the Pope’s efforts for the conversion of the many pagans who were still to be found in the island, especially among the rural population. For not only did they accept money from the heathens that they might be allowed to go on offering their idolatrous sacrifices, but they continued to wring the same money from them even after they had been baptized and had given up idolatry. When called to task for such base rapacity, the judges replied that they had promised such fees (suffragium) for their positions that unless they got money, even by such methods, they could not fulfill their undertakings. Corruption, therefore, was seated in high places. This offering of money to obtain appointments had been forbidden by Justinian. But it went on, to the increasing misery of the provincials.

Nothing daunted by the difficulties which cropped up to prevent Gregory from accomplishing this good work of the conversion of the rustic pagan islanders (against the performance of what great act do they not spring up?), he labored on. He begged the co-operation of the land­lords, and conjured the bishops of the island to stir themselves up if they would avoid his displeasure. And considering that the heathens, “living like beasts, were utterly ignorant of God”, and were steeped in all kinds of degrading superstitions, he thought it well to put a little pressure on them to bring them to the truth. He accord­ingly ordered that such of them as were on Church lands and remained obstinate in their paganism should have their taxes raised, that the inconvenience hence arising might bring them to the truth. Later on (July 599) he advises that severer measures (stripes and imprisonment) be employed, at least against certain classes of the pagans, probably against such as practiced what was cruel or seductively injurious to the simple. If these methods may seem to some those of a tyrannical proselytizer, it must never be forgotten that the savagely cruel and the wildly licentious are inseparably connected with paganism. The first principles of humanity and civilization imperatively demand that the ferocious and outrageously licentious elements of heathenism be put down if necessary by force. And hence we see our own government, in the different countries where it comes in contact with paganism, suppressing many heathen customs, such as suttees, witch-finding, etc., by main force.

In Sardinia, as elsewhere, the Jews, who were there very numerous, found in Gregory a merciful defender of their just rights.

But the imperial officials on the island, mere self-seekers, showed themselves as incompetent as they were unjust. Repeatedly warned by the Pope to prepare to repel a descent of the Lombards, they allowed themselves and the island to be caught unprepared. Gregory had therefore good reason to write to Januarius (October 598): “If proper notice had been taken of the warning letters I wrote both to you and to Gennadius (the exarch of Africa), the enemy would either not have made any descent upon you at all, or if they had they would have suffered the losses they have been able to inflict”. And although negotiations for peace between Agilulph and the exarch Callinicus were then on the point of being definitely concluded, Gregory exhorted Januarius to see that the walls were ceaselessly guarded till the treaty of peace was finally signed. The treaty was apparently duly sealed, but it was only for a short truce; and some nine months after the last letter (viz, in July 599) Gregory wrote to advise Januarius that he did not think Agilulph would renew the treaty of peace, and that, therefore, whilst there was still time, he should look to the victualling and fortifying of his own metropolitical city, Caralis (Cagliari), and other places. Truly the temporal as well as the spiritual ruler of the world at that time was Gregory the Great.

This same Januarius of Cagliari gave Gregory a great deal of trouble. A well-meaning, simple-minded man, he was incapable of displaying energy in either spiritual or temporal matters. And when, galvanized by Gregory’s letters or from some other cause, he did launch forth, it was generally in the wrong direction. One Sunday before Mass he went and ploughed up a neighbor’s harvest, and after Mass had his boundary stones dug up! For such vagaries, for exacting funeral fees, and for general torpor, Januarius was in constant receipt of authoritative letters from Gregory, who, considering the aged metropolitan’s simplicity, old age and ill-health, was most considerate to him. However, through Vitalis, the rector of the patrimony, he excommunicated for two months the advisers of Januarius in the matter of the harvest.

RAVENNA

A different character was John of Ravenna. A Roman, and, like Gregory himself, brought up in the bosom of the Holy Roman Church, he was sent by the Holy See to Ravenna, after being consecrated bishop in 578. To him, as one of his special friends, Gregory dedicated his Pastoral Care and expressed  his great grief at his death (January 11, 595). To him also Gregory committed the care of certain of the bishops who belonged to the Pope’s juris­diction as metropolitan, because the interposition of the enemy prevented them from coming to Rome. Corre­spondence between them was frequent. Gregory had, however, occasion to write to him letters of expostulation and reprimand. Whether from hereditary Roman pride and haughtiness, or from undue elation at being the archbishop of the city which boasted the residence of the emperor’s representative, the exarch, and which was con­sequently the centre of the civil and military administra­tion of imperial Italy, John began to arrogate to himself various privileges which were not his due. Word soon reached Gregory that John was doing various things that were opposed to both the custom of the Church and to Christian humility, “which”, as the Pope neatly puts it, “is the priest’s only proper pride”. Among other points urged against John was that of wearing the pallium at forbidden times. To Gregory’s remonstrance, John replied warmly, in a letter now lost, citing as an excuse for his conduct a privilege which John III had granted (September 569) to a former archbishop of Ravenna. In reply, after reminding him that it was contrary to eccle­siastical custom for him not to have submitted with patience to his correction even had it been unjust, Gregory shows the archbishop that the custom everywhere was that the pallium had only to be worn during Mass, and that he had failed to prove any exceptional privilege. He must therefore conform to the general custom. However, to do honor to John, and despite the opposition of the Roman clergy, the Pope concedes the use of ‘mappulae’ (orna­mental vestments worn only by the Roman clergy) to his ‘first deacons’. In acknowledging the receipt of this letter, “a compound of honey and vinegar”, as he calls it, John asked whether it was likely he could have wished to go against that most Holy See, which gives its laws to the universal Church, and to preserve the authority of which he had incurred much hostility. Conscious to himself that he had done nothing but what had been done before him, he is consoled in the midst of his trouble by the reflexion that sometimes fathers chastise their children to make them purer, and that “after this devotion and satis­faction you may not only preserve the old privileges of the holy Church of Ravenna, which is yours in a very special way, but may grant it new ones”. John concludes by begging the Pope not to diminish the privileges which the Church of Ravenna has hitherto enjoyed, and assuring him of his obedience meanwhile. Somewhat over a year later (October 594) Gregory granted the archbishop leave to wear the pallium four times a year during the solemn litanies, till such times as the ancient custom of the Church of Ravenna could be thoroughly examined. For this concession Gregory dis­covered that he received fair words from John in his letters, but that the archbishop let his tongue loose against him at home. His duplicity and pride were severely reprimanded by Gregory; for, as he said, he could not tolerate any arrogant assumption of rights. And he took care to let John know that he had instructed his apocrisiarius (Sabinian) at Constantinople to find out from the leading bishops (i.e., the eastern patriarchs, etc.), who had from 300 to 400 bishops under them, what was the custom with them as to the times of wearing the pallium. Most touching, however, was the conclusion of the letter : “Be straightforward with your brethren. Do not say one thing and have another in your heart. Seek not to seem greater than you are, that you may be greater than you seem. Believe me, when I reached my present position I was animated with such feelings of love towards you, that had you been willing to reciprocate them, you would never have found one who would have loved you better or served you with more zeal. But I must confess that when I learnt your words and conduct I shrank back. I beg you, therefore, by Almighty God, to amend what I have pointed out, especially the vice of duplicity. Permit me to love you. For it will be for your benefit both in this life and the next to be loved by your brethren. To all this reply not in words but by your conduct”.

To change his conduct not much time was allowed to John. He died very shortly after (January 11, 595) the receipt of the last-mentioned letter. His successor, Marinianus, was also a Roman. He had been one of Gregory’s friends in the monastery, and was asked for by the Ravennese when Gregory had rejected the two candidates they had chosen. Marinianus seems to have proved rather a small-minded man, whom Gregory had to admonish that “Our Redeemer expects from a priest not gold but souls”. Marinianus imagined that he was doing good if he looked after the temporalities of his See in a close-fisted manner and continued to live like a monk. Gregory, however, did not. He wrote to one of his friends at Ravenna to rouse up the archbishop, to tell him that with his position he must change his mind, that he must not think that prayer and study were enough for him, and that if he does not want to carry in vain the name of bishop he must act. Narrow-minded­ness, however, was the worst fault of Marinianus. He was free from the ambition which besmirched the character of his predecessor, and, as we shall see, of many of his successors. He never lost the friendship of Gregory. To him the Pope dedicated his homilies on Ezechiel; and when he was ill nothing could exceed Gregory’s kind­ness to him. He consulted the most learned physicians in Rome on his case, sent him their opinions, and though at the time like to die himself, he begged the archbishop to come to Rome, so that he might take care of him.

METROPOLITANS OF ILLYRICUM

After premising that sufficient has been said of Gregory’s relations with the metropolitan of Aquileia in schism, and that, in connection with the same schism of the Three Chapters, Milan, which figured as a metropolitan See as early as the fourth century, has been also treated of, we may pass on to some of the important metropolitan Sees of Illyricum. In the division of the empire made by Constantine, Illyricum was divided into Western and Eastern. Western Illyricum embraced the Roman province of Illyricum (which stretched from the rivers Arsia and Dravus to the Drilo, and was bounded by Macedonia and Moesia Superior), Illyricum Proper, i.e., most of modern Albania (from the Drilo to the Ceraunian Mountains, and bounded on the east by Macedonia), Pannonia and Noricum. Eastern Illyricum included Dacia, Moesia, Macedonia, and Thrace, all south of the Danube. These two Illyricums (less Thrace), which were comprehended in the later Dioceses of Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, and Thrace, were subject to the Pope as Patriarch of the West. And so in his letter to the Emperor Michael (September 25, 860), Nicholas I, in substantial accord with Innocent I (402-17), averred that of old were subject to the Roman Church the Old and New Epirus, Illyricum, Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, Dacia Ripensis, Dacia Mediterranea, Moesia, Dardania, and Praevalis, i.e., all the country south of the Danube to the sea, with the exception of Thrace. Now in Eastern Illyricum Gregory had two vicars. One resided at Prima Justiniana, anciently Scupi, and now Scopia or Uskup, on the Axius (now Vardar), the principal river in Macedonia, and his powers extended over the Latin portion of Eastern Illyricum, over the civil diocese or government of Dacia. The other was the bishop of Thessalonica, whose metropolitan jurisdiction extended over Greece and the Greek portion of Eastern Illyricum, over the civil diocese of Macedonia. The apostolic vicariate of Thessalonica, established by Pope Damasus or his successor, originally embraced the whole of Eastern Illyricum, i.e., the civil dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia. But Justinian, anxious to glorify his birth­place (Scupi), founded there a fine city, gave to it his name (Justiniana Prima), transferred to it the residence of the Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum, and made it a metropolitan See over the bishops of Dacia. At the same time Pope Vigilius declared the new metropolitan his vicar.

Gregory’s extant correspondence shows that he was in constant communication as a ruler with Illyricum, both western and eastern, with its vicars, its metropolitans and its bishops. Acting in conjunction with the imperial authority, Gregory directed a letter to “all the bishops throughout Illyricum” (May 591), on the subject of pro­viding means of livelihood for those bishops who had been driven from their Sees by the incursions of the dreaded Avars with their subject Slavonic tribes. The Avars, a Turanian people, of the same stock as the Huns before them, and the Hungarians after them, invaded the Roman Empire towards the close of the reign of Justinian, settled on the Middle Danube, soon founded a large loosely-jointed empire of marauders which they almost as soon lost at the hands of the Slavs (early part of seventh century), and were finally crushed by Charlemagne. Whilst Gregory was Pope their wild ravages did a great deal of damage in Illyricum. The Avars and Slavs were one of the troubles of Gregory’s life. And if at one time he is elated with news of their defeat, at another he is depressed by their success. “Concerning the Slavs, who are so seriously threatening you”, writes Gregory to Maximus, Bishop of Salona, the metropolitan See of Dalmatia, “I am very much afflicted and grieved. I am afflicted by what I suffer in you, I am grieved because through Istria they have begun to find a way into Italy”. One of the results of the Avar incursions was that through the destruction of their episcopal cities many of the Illyrian bishops were rendered destitute. Maurice, who was very much disposed to take the initiative in matters ecclesiastical, wrote to Jobinus, the prefect of the praetorium of Illyricum, order­ing that the bishops whose Sees were yet intact should support those who had lost theirs, and instructing Jobinus to inform the Pope of the arrangement he had made. In his letter to the Illyrian bishops, Gregory added his in­junction to that of the emperor. He reminded them that over and above the command of an earthly sovereign there was that of the Eternal King by which we have to help in their bodily necessities even those who have caused us trouble, not to say our brethren and bishops. He concluded his letter by assuring the bishops whom he wished to give hospitality that he did not give their destitute brethren any authority in their dioceses.

We have various other authoritative communications of Gregory to bishops both of Western and Eastern Illyricum. Just before the dispatch of the last-mentioned letter, he had sent (March 591) off another to one of the Dalmatian bishops, Malchas, in which he commissioned him to compel Stephen, bishop of the important city of Scodra (Scutari), on the Barbana, to submit a dispute he had with one of the court of the prefect of the praetorium of Italy to arbitration. Malchas had also to see that the award was put into effect.

In connection with Eastern Illyricum there is a letter of Gregory to Felix, Bishop of Serdica, now the capital of Bulgaria, Sophia, and then in the province of Dacia Mediterranea, reminding Felix that from what he him­self expects from his own subjects he ought to understand what obedience requires. Gregory expresses the sorrow he felt when he was informed by John of Prima Justiniana of the way in which he (Felix) set at nought the com­mands of his metropolitan. Gregory impresses on the recalcitrant bishop that he will have to obey; but in one of his happy phrases adds: “But you will do well if you will let your mature reflexion make you what canon law will force you to become”. John had himself just received the pallium and had been recognized as papal vicar by Gregory. Informed by the bishops of Eastern Illyricum that their unanimous choice and the consent of the Emperor Maurice had fallen on John, and in response to their request, Gregory authori­tatively ratified their choice, recognized his consecration, sent him the pallium, and nominated him his vicar, according to custom. The subject of this letter was probably not the same man as the John of P. Justiniana with whom Gregory had the difficulty concerning Adrian, Bishop of Thebes, in 592. But if Gregory concurred with the emperor’s choice in the matter of John’s consecration, he would not have him deposed in accordance with the emperor’s wishes. Maurice wanted his deposition on the ground of his ill-health, and that the times required that the cities should not be without the care of their bishops lest “they might be destroyed by the enemy”. Evidently in the days of Gregory he was not the only bishop who was as much the military or civil governor as the ecclesiastical superior of his See. He pointed out to the emperor that it was against the canons that a bishop should be deposed on account of sickness. “Depose him I cannot, lest I defile my soul with sin”. The Pope, however, instructed his apocrisiarius at Constantinople to suggest that an auxiliary might be given him who would do all the active work. John was not deposed. Gregory was still in correspondence with him in March 602.

Despite the accession of authority which the will of Justinian had brought to the bishop of his new city, Gregory made it plain that the first bishop of Eastern Illyricum was still the bishop of Thessalonica. In his Register there are two letters of the Pope to various metropolitans mentioned by name. In each case it is Eusebius of Thessalonica who occupies the first place. Of course Eusebius was one of the many with whom Gregory corresponded. At one time the Pope is bidding him examine certain clergy suspected of heresy, at another he is warning him that his (Gregory’s) letters had been corrupted by their bearer, and, on the other hand, defending Alcison, Bishop of Corcyra, from op­pression at the hands of his metropolitan’s officials.

Other events, which we prefer to relate in illustration of Gregory’s dealings with the emperor, will also avail to further elucidate his action in Illyricum,

AFRICA

The famous sixth canon of the first council of Nice Africa, recognized as belonging to the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt and Lybia, which latter included the Pentapolis “and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene” (Acts II. 10). Our present concern is with the remaining portion of North Africa. The Church in North Africa was for many ages in a most flourishing condition. It had produced such men as Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St. Augustin. But before the middle of the fifth century it had been rudely shattered by the savage Vandals from Spain. Their rule, or rather misrule, though never to be forgotten for its ferocity, did not last long. In 535 Africa was re-added to the Roman Empire by the genius of Belisarius. However, some twelve years before the coming of Belisarius, the persecution of the Catholics had ceased with the advent to the throne of Hilderic (523). Efforts were at once made to reorganize the Church. Councils were held (525 and 535) and Rome consulted. At Gregory’s accession Africa was divided into six provinces, presided over, like the various provinces in Italy, by an exarch. Counting westwards from Lybia, the provinces were Tripolis (the country of the Three Cities, Sabrata, or Abrotonum, Oea and Leptis Magna), Byzacium or Byzacene, Proconsular Africa, Numidia, Mauritania Sitifensis and Mauritania Caesariensis.

With regard to the ecclesiastical organization of these provinces, it may be safely stated that it was excep­tional, but not so safely what it actually was. The most important bishop in Northern Africa was the bishop who had his episcopal throne at Carthage, and who exercised the rights of a metropolitan over all the provinces. Constantine the Great wrote to him in connection with Numidia and Mauritania as well as with proconsular Africa, and speaks of him as the head of, or as the one who presides over, the latter Church. And the great council of Hippo-Regius (393) recognized the position of the bishop of Carthage when it decreed (can. 1 and 4) that certain matters of interest for all the African provinces had to be settled by him. The bishop of Carthage then was not only the metropolitan, as the African title had it, of his own province of proconsular Africa, but was the metropolitan of the remaining provinces. In these latter, neither the first of the subordinate archbishops or primates (again called the bishop of the first See), nor, presumably, the subordinate primates themselves, had their episcopal thrones in any fixed city. They succeeded to their position as primate, and ultimately as first primate, by some automatic arrange­ment agreed to among themselves. The consequence was that the See of the first primate was often to be found in some very second-rate town. The classical authority for this statement seems to be a letter of Gregory, in which he asked the exarch of Africa to cause the bishops to be admonished : “Not to make their primate from the order of his position, setting aside merit; since before God it is not a more elevated station that wins approval, but a better conducted life. And let the primate himself reside, not, as the custom is, here and there in different towns, but in one city, according to his election”. Following in the wake of St. Leo IX (1049-1055), it has been generally agreed among historians that it was length or duration of episcopal consecration which settled the acquisition of primatial dignity. In his note to this letter, however, Ewald not unnaturally fails to see how number of years of ordination can be got out of the words, ex ordine loci. Doubtless not directly; but, though automatic arrange­ments, by which ecclesiastical preeminence in a province might be settled other than that of seniority may be imagined, promotion by age must be acknowledged to be in every way the most likely. If this be conceded, Ewald’s difficulty would be solved, and the explanation of Leo IX stand good. For age would settle the position (ordo) of the primates among themselves, and then the senior amongst them would become the primate of the first See.

It remains to be settled what was the relation of the Pope to the Church in Africa. Did he treat with the Bishop of Carthage as with one of the great patriarchs, or as with one of the great metropolitans of the West? That is, did he deal with the African Church as Patriarch of the West, or only as head of the whole Church? A letter of Pope Siricius to the African bishops (ad. an. 386) is sometimes quoted as deciding the matter in favor of the former supposition, viz., that the Pope ruled Africa as patriarch. In the letter in question, Siricius inserted the canons of a council just held in Rome. By the first of these, the ordination of a bishop “without the knowledge of the Apostolic See, i.e., of the primate”, was forbidden. But it is pointed out that this was an encyclical letter, and would have to be interpreted according to the custom in vogue in the different parts to which it was sent. Hence in Africa it might simply mean that no bishop must be consecrated without the knowledge of the primate (of the province). There is no doubt that, although the bishop of Carthage never had the power of the patriarchs of Antioch or Alexandria, he may very well have had a more independent jurisdiction than, say, the Bishop of Thessalonica. But as the African Church owed its origin to the See of Rome, and as Gregory exercised very direct control over the African Church, it may well be treated of when that Pope is being considered as Patriarch of the West.

Because men are very prone to prefer their long-accustomed inumpsimus, the bishops of Africa were prob­ably not at all pleased when Gregory’s wishes in connection with their mode of electing their primate by seniority instead of by merit were made known to them. For it is certain that they had petitioned Gregory’s pre­decessor for the confirmation of their ancient customs, “which long usage had preserved up till then from the time of their first conversion from Rome”, or, keeping closer to the original, “from the beginning of their orders (received from) Bl. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles”. It fell to Gregory to reply to the petition of the Numidian bishops. But though he might express a wish that they should themselves alter their customs, with the conserva­tive spirit which has generally animated the popes of not interfering with established custom, Gregory consented to allow their customs, “whether for constituting their primates or other matters”, to remain inviolate, as it was at least clear that they were not “opposed to Catholic faith”. However, he would not permit that anyone, who had formerly been a Donatist and had afterwards become a bishop, should ever become a primate, even if their position, obtained, as we have said, by seniority, entitled them to the rank.

Next it is the primate of Africa, Dominicus of Car­thage, who asks Gregory for the confirmation of his privileges. “Lay aside all anxiety on that matter”, replied Gregory, “and let your fraternity hold to the ecclesiastical privileges concerning which you write. For as we defend our own rights we preserve those of all the other churches. For favor I will not grant to anyone more than he deserves, nor at the suggestion of ambition will I take away from anyone what is his due. For in all things am I anxious to honor my brethren and to advance them as far as possible without detriment to the rights of others”.

We have now to turn to another of the African pro­vinces, to Byzacium, and to the judging of its primate by the Pope. Crementius, thought by Hartmann to be the same as Clementius, Primate of Byzacium, had been accused of some crime (what, is not stated), a notice of which had been brought before the emperor. “In accordance with the canons”, he referred the matter to the Pope. At first Crementius was able to set everybody at defiance. He had no difficulty in buying the support of an important imperial official for forty pounds of gold. Then, finding that the emperor was urgent in pressing the Pope to move in the matter, and that his fellow-bishops were contriving to make things objection­able for him, Crementius appealed to Rome, declaring that he was subject to the Apostolic See. Though Gregory doubted the sincerity of his appeal, he took occasion therefrom to remark to John of Syracuse, into whose hands he was entrusting the investigation of the case, that “Where there was question of fault among bishops, he did not know what bishop was not subject to it”. Nearly four years after the bishop of Carthage was still unjudged. Various affairs, but most of all “the enemies that rage on all sides of us”, the Lombards, had prevented the Pope from pushing on the case. In March 602, in a letter “to all the bishops of the province (council as it was called) of Byzacium”, Gregory entrusted the task of examining the charges against their primate to the bishops of his province, that if proved they might be canonically amended, and if shown to be false an innocent brother might be freed from galling accusations”. He begged them not to be influenced by blandishments of any kind, but “to gird themselves up to find out the truth, for God’s sake, like true priests”.

Not only this case of Crementius, of whom no more is known, but divers others show Gregory’s supreme authority in Africa. Now he is defending a priest or deacon against a bishop, and now ordering the trial of bishops charged with beating their clergy and with simony or with encroach­ing on the diocese of another. Then there are letters to the primates exhorting them to be careful in the matter of those they raise to sacred orders, and not to confer them on boys or for gold; and to the civil authorities, asking them to co-operate with the bishops in efforts to restore discipline, naturally much upset by the rapid rise and fall of the rule of the Arian Vandals, and to repress the avarice of their own subordinates. We shall return to Africa when we come to tell of Gregory’s efforts to heal the schism of the Donatists.

SPAIN

The course of our investigations leads us now to the country whence came (about 427) the Vandals to Africa, viz., to Spain. Of all the provinces of the Roman Empire, Spain had been one of the finest. To the imperial throne it had given perhaps the greatest number of those who had been any ornament to it—Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. Pagan literature had been ennobled by the writings of the Spanish Seneca, Christian beautified by the poems of Prudentius. In the Chair of Peter had sat Damasus, and in place of Peter’s successor at the first ecumenical council had figured in deserved honor Hosius of Cordova. But in Spain, as in the other provinces of the empire, a disease, which even Christianity could not arrest, was eating its way. The corruption of the heart of the empire spread to its members. An earnest of what worse was to come, a horde of Suevi and other barbarians, crossed the Pyrenees (about 260), and for some twelve years laid waste the land by fire and sword. This storm then passed away, but in the beginning of the fifth century burst another which was to devastate the whole country. First came Alans, Suevi and Vandals, and divided the country between them, only to have to fight for it against the Visigoths. The Alans were annihilated, the Suevi driven into the fastnesses of the North-West; the Vandals left Spain (c. 427) for Africa. But this did not mean peace for the wretched Spaniards or their country. Not only were the Suevi constantly descending in arms from their mountains, but the Romans, who had never lost their hold on the sea-coast towns, especially in the South-East, were ever pushing forward from the latter quarter by fomenting any disturbance that might arise. And with Arian Visigoth persecuting Catholic Spaniard, with raiding Frank and Suevi, and with one Visigothic king ascending the throne over his assassinated predecessor, there were disturbances enough. However, when Gregory came to have spiritual authority over Spain, whether as Patriarch of the West or as Head of the Universal Church, matters had taken a turn for the better. The Suevi had been finally subdued under Leovigild (570-587); and the Arian persecution (of which more later) terminated by the conversion of his son Recared to Catholicity. Thus, with the exception of the South-East portion, still belonging to the Roman Empire, Spain was ruled in the year 590 by a Catholic sovereign of the nation of the Visigoths, Recared (587-601).

There is no need, however, to be told that religion, learning and morality were not in a satisfactory state in Spain in the year 590. Here we shall merely pause to note in this connection an interesting letter addressed to “the most Blessed Lord Pope Gregory” in the early years of his pontificate by Licinianus, Bishop of Carthagena. In the course of passing a most favorable judgment on the Pope’s Pastoral Rule, and asking that his other works might be sent to him, he gives an indication of the decay of learning in Spain. “Necessity”, writes the bishop, “compels us to do what you say ought not to be done. For if no duly instructed person can be found who can be advanced to sacred orders, what is left to be done but to ordain some ill-instructed person like myself? You say that the uninstructed must not be ordained. But let your prudence consider whether to know Jesus Christ and Him Crucified may not be enough. If it is not, no one here can be said to be instructed. And we shall have no priests if we are only to have duly qualified ones. ... I know your precepts must be obeyed, that only such be ordained as apostolic authority orders. But such are not to be found .. We are therefore left in this difficulty. Either those must be ordained who ought not to be, or there will be no one to celebrate the sacred mysteries”.

His friendship with St. Leander of Seville would have been quite enough to turn Gregory’s thoughts towards Spain. A regular correspondence was kept up between the two; and in August 599 Gregory sent the pallium to his friend “only to be used during the celebration of mass. Whilst sending it, I ought also to send you word how you should live. I do not, however, because your virtuous life has anticipated my words. How far I am overcome by work and weakness you may estimate from this short letter, in which even to him whom I greatly love I say little”.  It would seem that by sending him the pallium Gregory made Leander his vicar in Spain, i.e., in the Visigothic portion of it.

Of the five provinces into which Constantine divided Spain itself, while three, Lusitania, Galicia, Tarragona, were wholly in the hands of the Visigoths, part of Baetica and Carthagena were still, as we have said, in the hands of the Romans. Had this portion been administered in the interests of its inhabitants, a course which would also have been in the interest of the empire, instead of remain­ing Roman till only about the year 616, it would have served as a base from which the rest of the peninsula might have been won back to the obedience of the Caesars. But like Africa and the parts of Italy still under the Romans, it was administered solely in the interests of the greedy imperial officials who ruled it. Of Gregory’s further relations with Spain, apart from correspondence in connec­tion with the conversion of the Visigoths (which will be spoken of in another place), but very little is known. However, towards the close of his pontificate he seems to have come into collision in Roman Spain with one of the avaricious and insolent governors just alluded to. In 603 Roman Spain was apparently under the rule of the ‘glorious’ Comitiolus. If it be lawful to draw conclusions, from the one-sided account of the affair which has reached us, this ‘glorious’ official behaved in the most high-handed manner with regard to two bishops, Januarius of Malaga and a certain Stephen. On the pretext that they had entered into a treasonable correspondence with the enemies of the empire, he had contrived to get some other bishops to pass sentence of deposition against them and ordain others in their stead. He then expelled them from their Sees by force, though they claimed the benefit of sanctuary, and plundered their property. The ill-treated bishops at once appealed to Rome. Gregory took up their case, in the justice of which, from the cast of the documents he drew up for their cause, he evidently believed. And he dispatched the defensor John to Spain (August 603) to thoroughly in­vestigate the affair on the spot. It is from the papers with which the Pope furnished him on that occasion that all our acquaintance with the affair is derived. They were three in number. The first, called a capitulare, gave the defensor the most elaborate instructions as to how he was to conduct his investigations and enquire into the validity of all the pro­ceedings which had been taken against the bishops. These instructions show at once Gregory’s knowledge of the processes of law and the practical, painstaking care with which he himself examined the cases which came before him. John was directed to examine, with regard to the trial to which the bishops, or at least Bishop Stephen, had been subjected, whether it had been conducted in accordance with the prescribed forms, of law, and whether the accusers and witnesses were distinct persons. He was to examine into the gravity of the case and see whether it was deserving of exile or of deprivation, then whether the testimony had been given on oath, in presence of the accused, or had been committed to writing, and whether the accused had had permission to reply and defend himself. John was further ordered to look into the characters of the accusers and witnesses and see whether they were needy, and so more naturally open to be bribed, or whether they had any enmity against the- accused. He had also to enquire whether their evidence was mere hearsay or whether they spoke from their own knowledge and so forth. The second instrument  with which John was furnished was a list of the laws of the State against which, if the case as put by the exiled bishop were true, their opponents had run counter, or which were likely to be involved in the reopening of the affair. This list of imperial enactments serves to illustrate the fact (otherwise well known) that the ideas of Chris­tianity and the laws of the Church had so deeply influenced the Christian emperors that their laws were largely framed in accordance with those views. Among the laws cited by Gregory were acts decreeing the punishment of death against those who violated the rights of sanctuary, or inflicted any injury on a bishop in church. Deprivation of office and a heavy fine was the punish­ment decreed against the secular official who caused a bishop to be dragged before him without an imperial commission. For it was the law of the empire that bishops had to be tried by their metropolitans. And if, adds Gregory, it be urged that the said bishop Stephen had no metropolitan or patriarch, the cause ought to have been brought for settlement before the apostolic See, which is the head of all the churches, a course which the bishop, who regarded the bishops of the neighboring province as prejudiced, is known to have desired.

John was also furnished with a copy of a formula, according to which he was to pronounce sentence, if Januarius proved to be innocent; and with a commission, to visit, on his way to Spain, the Island of Capria (Cabrera, near Majorca), and reform, if necessary, the discipline of a body of monks there. Whether or not the papal defensor carried out these injunctions is not known; but “obvious”, as the non-Catholic authors of the Histoire Universelle now in course of publication, note, is the effective supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in Spain.  This authority was exercised over the whole of Spain, till its subjugation by the Moors in 711. For that Witiza (701-709), the last but one of the Visigothic kings of Spain, bad as he may have been, prohibited his subjects under pain of death from corresponding with or yielding obedience to the popes is the most baseless of assertions.

THE LAND OF THE FRANKS

Crossing the Pyrenees and avoiding a narrow strip of land (Septimania) touching the Gulf of Lyons, which was in the hands of the Visigoths, we enter the country of the Franks. Of all the Germanic tribes who won for themselves a home in the Roman Empire, the Franks were the noblest. Soon after the beginning of their conquests, salted with Catho­licity, they formed an enduring kingdom. The Ostrogoths of Italy, the Visigoths of Spain, the Vandals of Africa passed away and left little or no trace behind them. But the Franks gave their name to a land famous to this day in the annals of the world’s history. And it would never do for a Catholic historian not to treat of France, a country that has never ceased to be Catholic, and a country at all times great, even from time to time in its crimes; and which, while never mean, hypocritical or sordid, has often been the wonder and admiration of the civilized world for its deeds of startling glory.

The name and fame of the Franks was made by Clovis. This chieftain led his wild warriors from their homes about the lower Rhine into Gaul, broke to pieces the last remnant of the Roman power there, overran the whole of it, and died (511) master of most of it. Some twenty years after his death (534) almost the whole of the present France, and a considerable portion of the modern Germany, had been completely subjugated by the Franks. But for several centuries no strong kingdom arose out of the ashes which they made. At the root of the trouble during those ages was the unfortunate custom which prevailed (a custom in the matter of private property fatally reintroduced into modern France) of kings dividing their territories among all their sons. Hence endless plots, counterplots and civil wars, and the constant aggrandizement of turbulent nobles at the expense of king and people alike. To these potent causes of fearful disorder among the Franks in Church and State, was added the large proportion of incompetent rulers among the descendants of Clovis. The disease, viz., excess, which always with fatally degenerating effects attacks more or less barbaric races brought into contact with a high state of material civilization, did not fail to assail the Franks. Excess begot monsters and imbeciles. And so Gregory of Tours can only describe the character of Chilperic of Neustria (t584), by calling him “the Herod and Nero of our times”. His queen Fredegonda (Fredegundis, d. 597), in every way infamously worthy of her spouse, and Brunichildis (Brunhild, Brunehaut, d.613), the wife of Sigebert of Austrasia, goaded to desires of vengeance by the crimes of Fredegonda, kept all the Frankish kingdoms in a wild turmoil for thirty years.

When St. Gregory became Pope, all Gaul, not for the first time in its history, was divided politically into three parts—Neustria (though this name did not come into use till later), Austrasia and Burgundy. Neustria (between the Loire and the Meuse—the western kingdom) was then ruled by Clotaire II (584-628); Austrasia by Childebert II (Hildebert), 575-596, and Burgundy by Guntram (561-593). Austrasia, the eastern kingdom, may be said to have stretched from the Meuse to the Rhine, and even down to the Danube. Burgundy was more or less the valley of the Rhone. Childebert II, who was the son of Brunichildis, became the lord of Burgundy and Aquitaine on the death of Guntram (593). Clotaire II lived to be sole king of the Franks (613-628).

When it is remembered that in addition to the causes of disorder just specified, ecclesiastical positions were, through the interference of kings, one and all to be got for money; that neophytes laymen unprepared for the clerical state, were consecrated bishops, and that mad tyrants like Chilperic, who published verses, “in which there was not a trace of metre”, and added Greek letters to the Roman alphabet (ordering that his new characters should be taught in the schools and that old parchments should be cleaned with pumice stone and rewritten with his letters), took to legislating on the Blessed Trinity—when these additional facts are borne in mind, it will be easy to conclude that the task Gregory had before him to effect a reformation of manners in Frank-land was greater than one man could accomplish. Things were so bad that the very nobles themselves thus complained to Guntram of Burgundy. “The whole people is sunk in vice. Everyone takes pleasure in doing what is wicked. No one fears the king or respects the nobility. If anyone attempts to remedy the evils, there is straightway a tumult among the people. No ruler is safe who has not learnt to hold his tongue”.

Among the Franks, indeed, there was no wholesale con­version from paganism or from error to be effected. For had not Clovis been baptized (496) some hundred years before Gregory became Pope, and had not the Franks followed his example? But in a hundred years the Franks, as we have seen, had not quite changed the color of their skin or lost their spots! Their worship of brute force had not been eradicated, and so their Christianity was still of the muscular type. The line of demarcation between might and right was not broad to them. Much had yet to be done ere the Franks could be got to adopt the moral obligations which follow from the acceptance of the Christian faith. In the days of Gregory not only were simony and the intrusion of laymen into episcopal sees rampant among the Franks, but their kings were disposed to regard the bishops merely as a class or division of their lay nobility, and the property of their sees as crown lands, only crown lands which could be more easily confiscated and disposed of at their will than those in the hands of their more warlike nobles. Gregory tried to give true freedom to the bishops of the Franks, by striving to unite them more closely with one another and with the See of Rome. The history of the Christian world has shown plainly that when in full communication and dependence on the popes, then are the bishops truly free in the exercise of their spiritual duties and respected by men who do not wish to have their beliefs as well as their civil duties regulated by Caesar. The Liberties of the Gallican Church in later ages made the bishops of France mere tools of the king and justly, at length, hateful to their flocks. Throwing off the yoke of Rome has made the present Anglican bishops subject to a woman and her mixed lay tribunals. Separation from Rome has placed the bishops of Eastern Europe and the East under a Russian despot or a Turkish Sultan. For the spiritual freedom of themselves and their people it is an evil day when bishops cut themselves adrift from the bark of Peter.

To unite the bishops of the Franks to the Holy See, Gregory acceded to the united request of Childebert II and Virgilius, Bishop of Arles, and made the latter his vicar in the kingdom of Childebert, which then embraced Austrasia, Burgundy and Aquitaine, and sent him the much-coveted pallium (August 12, 595). The letters which the Pope dispatched on that occasion to Virgilius, to Childebert and to the bishops of his kingdom are models of the way in which unpalatable truths may be presented so as to be accepted by the one who hears them. As regards Virgilius himself, he (the Pope) has heard of his great charity and never imagines that in asking for the pallium and to be the Pope’s vicar Virgilius is merely thinking of external honor and glory. He is rather as a good child turning to his mother. Hence as he (the Pope) cheerfully grants what has been asked of him, he confi­dently looks for greater episcopal zeal in one who has received increased honor. He has heard that in Gaul and Germany simony and the ordination of neophytes is extensively practiced. Virgilius will doubtless put them down. “If men in building are careful to have the walls properly dried before they put weight upon them, and the sap out of the wood before they fix it in its place, why should we have unprepared men in the Church?”. Gregory concludes his letter by definitely naming Virgilius his vicar, and sending him the pallium. Bishops are not to go away any distance without the authority of the new vicar, who, if any more difficult question concerning the faith or any other im­portant question arises, is to try and settle the matter in a synod of twelve bishops. If it cannot be there decided, it must be referred to the Pope. Gregory makes all these arrangements in accordance with ancient custom. The giving of the pallium to the bishops of Arles can be traced back to Pope Symmachus, who, in 513, gave it St. Cesarius of Arles. And some hundred years before that (viz., in 417) Pope Zosimus is known to have made Patroclus, Bishop of Arles, his vicar, and to have decided that the bishops of the provinces of Vienne and Narbonensis Prima and Secunda, were to be consecrated by the Archbishop of Arles; that from all Gaul questions were to be referred to Arles for answer, unless the importance of the subject required the Pope’s investigation, and that bishops were not to go any distance without ‘litterae formatae’ from the metropolitan of Aries.

In writing to inform Childebert that, in accordance with his wishes, he has named Virgilius, whom he elsewhere calls metropolitan of the Gauls, his vicar, he says: “Certain matters have come to our knowledge which grievously offend Almighty God and inflict the greatest possible harm on the honor and reverence due to the priesthood. Hence we beg that with the co-operation of your power these matters may be thoroughly corrected, lest whilst things go on which are opposed to your devotion, either your kingdom or your soul may suffer through the fault of others”. Need­less to say, the things which Gregory thereupon proceeded to denounce were simony and the ordination of neophytes. The king would not put an untried general at the head of his armies; let him then see to it that untried men be not made leaders of souls.

With the same ends in view, viz., to promote episcopal unity and to improve the state of the clergy in the different kingdoms of the Franks, Gregory listened to the request of Brunichildis that the pallium might be conferred on Syagrius of Autun. After the death of Childebert II (596), Brunichildis became regent to her two grandsons Theoderic (Thierry) and Theodobert. Gregory was willing to grant the favor because he knew that Syagrius was in the good graces of Brunichildis, and he trusted that by his influence a council might be got together and the evils that choked the Church among the Franks lessened. For some cause or other in this particular instance Gregory consulted the Emperor Maurice about the bestowal of the pallium. However, despite the combined desire of Brunichildis and the emperor, Gregory only granted it on certain conditions.

He expresses himself as pleased with all he has heard about Syagrius, and especially with what he did to help forward the mission of St. Augustine to England. But two points have delayed the transmission of the pallium, he says. The first was the fact that the queen’s messenger who had come for the pallium was infected with the schism of the Three Chapters. Before leaving the messenger and going to the second point, his answer to Gregory’s question, “Why he was separated from the Universal Church”, is so typical of what so many who are today in error and schism might truly say, that it cannot be passed over. He declared that he knew not. He understood neither what he said nor what he heard. The second point was that Syagrius had not himself asked for the pallium. And in accordance with ancient custom it was only bestowed on those who made a formal request for it. However, to oblige the queen, Gregory sent the pallium to Candidus, the rector of the patrimony of the Roman Church in Gaul, on the understanding that if Syagrius and some of his suffragans presented a petition for it, it would be granted to him. Of course the Pope in return for his acquiescence to her wishes begs Brunichildis to repress simony, lest, as he wisely adds, it may sap the strength of your kingdom; not to suffer laymen to be consecrated bishops, to try to bring back to the unity of the faith those who have gone astray on the Three Chapters, since not reason but malicious ignorance has caused them to fly from the Universal Church and the four patriarchs, and to put down the remains of idolatry, the worship of trees or the heads of animals. The Pope exhorts her to do all this, lest God inflict on her people the scourge of perfidious nations (apparently the Avars), with which he has chastised many.

When Syagrius had complied with Gregory’s require­ments, the pallium was duly conferred upon him, and by virtue “of a concession of our authority”, the Pope decided that “proper regard being paid to the rights of metropolitans”, the See of Autun was in future to rank after that of Lyons. The letter by which the grant of these privileges was conveyed to Syagrius closed with an exhortation on the subject of the holding of a synod. Gregory was thoroughly convinced that if the bishops of the Franks could be drawn together in council the evils under which the Church among the Franks was groaning would be lessened, if not eradicated. Syagrius must therefore use his influence “with our most excellent sons, the kings of the Franks”, and strike with all his power that the Pope’s orders concerning the gathering of a council be put into effect.

To bring together the Frankish bishops had been an object for which Gregory had already worked for years. The evils which clamored for immediate remedy had been pointed out to the kings, and the bishops had been warned not to presume to disobey the Archbishop of Arles when he called them together.

Further enlightened as to the wretched state of the Church in the land of the Franks by a visit to Rome of Aregius, Bishop of Gap, Gregory made a determined effort in the July of 599 to get the bishops together under the presidency or direction of, or in the presence of his envoys Aregius and the abbot Cyriacus, a friend of the Pope frequently employed by him on important business. Brunichildis, Theoderic and Theodobert, her grandsons, and the metropolitans Syagrius of Autun, Etherius of Lyons, Virgilius of Arles, Desiderius of Vienne were all alike called upon to promote the synod which the Pope had ordered. The deaths of Cyriacus and Syagrius may have had something to do with the failure of this effort of Gregory. The principal cause was the supineness of the bishops. Undaunted by failure, Gregory returned to the charge about two years after (June 601). Brunichildis was reminded, “Bad priests are the ruin of the people. Who can intercede for the sins of the people, if the sins of the priests who ought to pray for men are greater? But since neither interest to look into nor zeal to punish the evils which exist moves those whose business it is to bestir themselves in these matters, I direct my letters to you, and if you give the word I will send, with the consent of your authority, one who with other bishops will look into and amend these things”. And this time not only are the kings of the east and the south, Theoderic and Theodobert, appealed to again to hold a synod, but the same request is addressed to Clotaire of Neustria. Some success seems to have attended this last effort of Gregory for the reformation of manners among the Franks. According to an old biographer of St. Betharius, Bishop of Chartres, a council was held at Sens this year (601) to put down the abuses complained of by the Pope. But if this council was not very influential, Clotaire did not forget the wishes of Gregory. After he became sole ruler of the Franks, he assembled their bishops to the number of 69 at Paris in 614 or 615. Important decrees were passed relative to the freedom of election of bishops, to simony, to the immunity of the clergy (except with leave of the bishop) from secular judges, to the inviolability of ecclesiastical property, etc. These decrees were accepted and confirmed by the king. But though most useful in themselves and published with the fullest ecclesiastical and civil authority, it is to be feared that they did not effect any great reformation. Political events were setting too strongly towards general confusion and disorder to admit of any particular decrease in the vices against which Gregory worked so untiringly. Owing either to the disordered state of civil affairs in Italy and Frank-land having actually prevented intercourse, or to the paucity of historical documents of the seventh century having failed to inform us of it, that age will not be found to be conspicuous for numerous relations between the Popes and the Franks.

For the flattering terms in which he often spoke of Brunichildis in his correspondence with her, Gregory is frequently blamed. But it must not be forgotten that she had helped forward the mission for the conversion of England, a work which the Pope had so greatly at heart. And there is a very natural tendency in every­one to speak of others as he finds them, in his own case. And while it is agreed that “her really atrocious crimes were, I think we can safely say, all committed after the death of Gregory”, it yet remains to be proved that she was as black as she is painted. It has been asserted that the darkest lines in her character were drawn by an author who did not write until a hundred years after her death. It may, indeed, be further contended that Gregory’s letters to Brunichildis are only a sample of very many of the others, and that they are all too courtly, not direct enough. But Gregory’s style of writing was, in that respect at least, in accord with that of the great ones of the empire in his time. Besides, his whole conduct furnishes proof enough that he invariably acted on the principle enunciated by St. Francis of Sales, when he said that more flies are caught by a spoonful of honey than by a whole barrel of vinegar. And the man, who, situated as Gregory was, only having at his command moral forces but imperfectly comprehended and so but little dreaded by Brunichildis, should have taken in hand to drive the beautiful but semi-barbaric Austrasian queen, would not have had the common sense possessed by the Apostle of our nation.

Gregory did not, however, fail to put their duties in a quiet way both before the son and the mother. To Childebert he wrote : “Inasmuch as the royal dignity excels that of other men, so surely does the glory of your kingdom exceed the kingdoms of other nations. In the midst of kings it is not exceptional to be a king, but to be a Catholic, when others have not merited it, is glory enough. As the splendor of a great lamp illuminates the darkness of the night by the brightness of its light, so does the brightness of your faith shine and gleam in the dark perfidy of other nations. Whatever glory other kings have you have; but in this they are completely overshadowed, since they have not the greatest of all gifts, which you have. In order that they may be eclipsed in deeds as they are in faith, let your Excellency always show yourself merciful to your subjects; and if anything should offend you, do not punish it uninvestigated. Then truly will you best please the King of kings, Almighty God, when, by restraining your power, you think less is lawful to you than you are able to command”. To Brunichildis herself he often tendered lessons similar to those he gave her son. To quote one instance. When exhorting her to call together a synod, he wrote : “When you have subdued the enemy you have within you, then offer sacrifice to God that with His help you may conquer your external foes; and with what zeal you contend against His enemies, you will find Him helping you. But believe me, as I have learnt after much experience, what is gathered together by sin, is soon expended to our own loss. If you do not want to lose anything through injustice, take care to acquire nothing with injustice. For with regard to the goods of this world, sin is the cause of loss”.

Whatever may have been her faults, it is allowed that Brunichildis was a great queen, and Gregory co-operated with her as far as he could. And so, at her request, he endeavored to negotiate a peace between her and what he called the republic, i.e., the empire. And at her request also he issued a decree forbidding anyone—king, bishop or anybody else—to tamper with the possessions of a hospital which had been built by Bishop Syagrius and the queen; and denouncing deprivation of his dignity and of the “Body and Blood of Our Divine Redeemer” against anyone who knowingly contravened his decree. “A charter”, notes Montalembert, “in which, for the first time, the direct subordination of temporal power to spiritual is clearly set forth and recognized”. And, indeed, to such as rightly spurn the doctrine of the right divine of kings to govern wrong, and believe that Christ submitted all men to his Church in the matter of moral right and wrong, it can only be regarded as natural that wrongdoing kings should be as subject to the Church’s censure as wrongdoing beggars.

Besides these efforts to build up the Frankish Church on correct principles, Gregory was equally solicitous over individual cases of injustice or ecclesiastical discipline. To the instances hereupon cited by Abbot Snow, from whom this quotation is taken, the following will serve to bring out Gregory’s care for the honor of his brethren in the episcopate as well as his love of justice. Etherius of Lyons wished to deprive of his diocese a poor bishop who had lost his reason. This the Pope will not allow. A bishop may be degraded for a crime, but not for illness. If, in a lucid interval, decided Gregory, he choose to resign, another may then be consecrated in his stead. Otherwise a vicar must be appointed to manage the affairs of the diocese. If he survive the present afflicted bishop, he should be consecrated in his stead.

When Gregory’s work for the conversion of England has been chronicled, the reader will have seen the immense influence exercised by Gregory throughout the entire West, whether as its Patriarch or as Head of the Uni­versal Church.

THE LOMBARDS

What gave a special color to the life of Pope Gregory were his dealings with the fierce Lombards. He was in close contact with them one way or another from the time he began his public life till his death. They were his chief trouble, his lifelong cross. Naturally did he exert himself to the utmost to check their advance. As he was a man of great unselfish virtue, so was he of course a man of great patriotism. And to a Roman of the Romans, such as Gregory was, what could be more abhorrent than the triumphs of savage Lombards over Italians. Some authors go out of their way to find reasons for Gregory’s regarding the Lombards with such hostility, for their ever being to him both in his mind and in his speech most objectionable, unspeakable (nefandissimi). With some it is because he was ambitious, with others because the Lombards were Arians or pagans. The fact is that Gregory loved his country, of which the Lombards were barbaric foes. Something has already been said of them, from which an idea of their barbarity may be gathered. A special student of their history, Dr. Hodgkin, thus writes of them : “Everything about them (the Lombards), even for many years after they have entered on the sacred soil of Italy, speaks of mere savage delight in bloodshed and the rudest forms of sensual indulgence; they are the anarchists of the Volkerwanderung whose delight is only in destruction, and who seem incapable of culture”. On their unteachableness, and on the length of time required to civilize them, Gregorovius also insists. “This rude people ... was incapable of receiving the ancient civilization which it found in Italy, otherwise than through the instrumentality of the Church ... More than 150 years were, however, required before the work of Lombard civilization was accomplished, and this interval constituted one of the most terrible periods in the history of Italy ... The Goths had protected Latin civilization, the Lombards destroyed it”.

Bursting through the Predil Pass (568), when Gregory was a young man of about thirty years of age, and when Italy was only just beginning to breathe again after the campaigns which had destroyed the Ostrogothic kingdom, a motley crowd of Lombards, Saxons and other Teutonic tribes inundated Northern Italy. Before the death of John III (561-574) they had encircled the walls of Rome. “Like a sword from its sheath the wild hordes of the Lombards flashed upon us; our multitudinous people withered before them. Cities were depopulated, strong places thrown down, churches burnt, monasteries of men and women destroyed, estates desolated, and the land cleared of its owners. Where before there were crowds of men, there now roam the beasts of the field”." And again, on the death of John’s successor, Benedict I (579) we are told that after him Pelagius II was consecrated at once without waiting for the consent of the emperor, “because the Lombards were so closely investing Rome that no one could leave it”. On both occasions its walls or the gold of the Church, or both, saved the city and caused the encircling Lombards to turn to easier conquests.

Either because they despised them, or because the Persians in the East, and the Avars and Slavs in Europe, occupied all their attention, the emperors of Constantinople did nothing to oppose the progress of the Lombards in their fair province of Italy. Their representative at Ravenna in the year 590, the exarch Romanus, would neither fight them nor let the Pope make peace with them. Gregory understood that if the Lombards were to be resisted successfully, it could only be by his own exertions. He would have to try all the resources of his energy, his diplomatic skill and his spiritual authority. He put them all in operation and saved Rome. He looked to the city defenses, to the posting of sentries. He raised and paid troops, he sent forth generals to cities in danger of capture. He exhorted the ecclesiastical authorities everywhere always to see to the political safety of their cities, and he directed generals in the field. Writing on the 27th September 591, he thus addresses Velox, a general stationed on the Flaminian road to watch the movements of Ariulf, the second duke of Spoleto: “I told your Glory some time ago that I had soldiers to come to you at your present quarters; but as your letter informed me that the enemy were assembled and were making inroads in this direction, I decided to keep them back. Now, however, it seems expedient to send some of them to you, praying your Glory to give them suitable exhortations, that they may be ready to undertake the labor which falls upon them. And do you, finding a convenient opportunity, have a conference with our glorious sons Martius (or Maurice?) and Vitalian; and whatever, by God’s help, you shall jointly decide on for the benefit of the Republic, that do. And if you shall discover that the unutterable Ariulf is breaking forth either towards Ravenna or in our direction, do you fall upon his rear and exert your­selves as becomes brave men”. At another time other commanders are advised to effect a diversion by raiding the enemies’ country should Ariulf advance on Rome. All this anxiety on account of the Lombards it was which caused Gregory to call himself rather bishop of the Lombards than the Romans. But withal he would only employ against them means that were scrupulously fair and open. He would not employ his diplomatic skill to destroy the Lombards by intriguing with their different dukes and playing off one against the other. “Briefly point out to our most serene lords”, wrote Gregory to his apocrisiarius, Sabinian (afterwards Pope), at Constantinople, “that if I their servant had wished to mix myself up with the death of the Lombards, that people would today have neither king, nor dukes, nor counts, but would have been split up in the utmost confusion. But because I fear God, I dread being concerned in the death of any man”. In the midst of all these troubles what most afflicted Gregory was that those who ought to have been a source of strength and comfort to him only gave him additional worry. And the bitter cry escaped him that worse than the swords of the Lombards was the mutinous spirit of what ill-paid troops the emperor left in Rome and the malicious jealousy of the exarch, the lord Romanus.

After this general sketch of Gregory’s dealings with the Lombards, we may now more usefully discuss them in chronological order. Authari, who died a few days after Gregory’s consecration, was succeeded by the warlike Agilulph (Free-helper), Duke of Turin, sometimes spoken of by the shorter form of his name, Ago. For to him the Catholic Bavarian princess Theodelinda, the widow of Authari, had given her hand. After the three years’ peace (585-8) concluded between the exarch Smaragdus and Authari had expired, hostilities, of course, broke out again. And in 590, the first year with which we are directly concerned, the Lombard dukes, Ariulf of Spoleto and Arichis (or Arogis) of Benevento, were engaged in cutting off communication between Ravenna and Rome, by subduing the fortified cities which commanded it, and in seizing other cities by force or treachery within fifty miles of Rome itself. Rome was, of course, the goal which was aimed at by Ariulf. To do what he could to stop his advance, Gregory dispatched a governor to Nepi, endeavored to stir up and guide the energy of the generals in the field, and to counteract the treasonable influences at work in Suana (now Sovana). In vain. Ariulf appeared (July 592) before the walls of Rome; while Naples, to which Gregory had dispatched as military commander the magnificent tribune Constantius, was being beset by Arichis. Worried by the inaction of the exarch Romanus, and by the lack of spirit of the Theodosiac legion whom want of pay rendered loth to man the walls; distressed by the sight of men killed or mutilated by Ariulf, no wonder that Gregory fell ill, and in his abandonment by all resolved to make peace with Ariulf on his own authority. This he seems to have done; and the Duke of Spoleto, prevailed upon by Gregory’s eloquence, spiritual power or gold, drew off his troops (before the end of July 592) and left Rome in peace. Whether indignant at this independent action on the part of the Pope, or simply because he was now ready, Romanus at length marched to Rome. What he did there, except take more troops away, is not known. However, a peace which he could not make he was able to break. He retook Sutrium (Sutri), Polimartium (Bomarzo), Hortae (Orte), Tuder (Todi), Ameria (Amelia), Luceoli (Ponte Riccioli, near Cantiano) and certain other cities, thus again opening up communication between Ravenna and Rome and separating the two Southern Lombard dukes from their king. But “while the king was yet a great way off, he had not sat down to consider whether with one thousand men he was able to meet him who was coming against him with ten thousand”. His precipitate and ill-considered action only raised a greater storm. It brought down Agilulph from Pavia in a fury. The important stronghold of Perugia was soon in his hands again, and he marched on Rome (593). From the city walls “the heartbroken Pontiff  saw Romans, with ropes round their necks like dogs, being led away to be sold as slaves in Frank-land (Francia)”.

When the news of Agilulph’s advance reached Rome, Gregory was engaged in expounding to the people the prophet Ezechiel. He had already delivered twelve homilies, when word was brought to him “that Agilulph had crossed the Po and was hastening to besiege Rome”. Well might he go on to ask how a mind full of fear and apprehension could penetrate the mystic sense of the prophet. However, for a time he persevered in address­ing the people on the prophet’s visions. But now the lurid light of blazing cities is reflected in his discourses. “Everywhere”, sighs Gregory, “do our eyes behold sorrow; at all times are our ears assailed with groans. Cities are destroyed, .... the country turned into a desert ... Of the people, some we see led into captivity, some maimed, some slain ... Rome herself, once the mistress of the world, in what a state is it now! Beaten to the ground on all sides by its ever-increasing woes, by the desolation of its citizens, and by the attacks of the enemy.... Where is the senate, where the people? ... We few who remain are daily exposed to the sword ... The very buildings we behold crumbling around us”.

THE SIEGE OF ROME (BEGINNNING OF 594)

The wild warriors of Agilulph draw nearer to Rome. The homilies are stopped. “No one will reproach me if after this my lips are silent ... On all sides are we surrounded by the sword ... Some come back to us with their hands cut off, others we hear are captured, others killed. I am forced to cease from continuing my exposition: ‘for my soul is weary of my life’ (Job x. 1)”.

Gregory, however, did not expend all his energies merely in talking. He was essentially one of those men “who pray as if everything, depended on God, and work as if everything depended on their own exertions”. Despite the efforts to prepare for a siege which had been made by the military men, Gregory saw that if Rome, with its weak walls, and want of men and corn, was to be saved, it must be by his exertions. And as Leo the Great went forth to meet Attila, so Gregory the Great went forth to meet Agilulph. On the steps of St. Peter’s, which was then outside the walls, the barbarian king and the Christian bishop met. And so “overcome was the king by the prayers, so affected by the wisdom and religious gravity of so great a man, that he broke up the siege of the city and returned north (594)”—to quote the exact words of the writer, who in Northern Italy, about the year 649, continued the Chronicle of Prosper,

By his character as a priest and a man Gregory had indeed once again saved Rome, and removed the horrors of war from its neighborhood. But with this partial success he was not satisfied. He would obtain for all Italy the so much needed blessing of peace. Before, however, showing what efforts he made to accomplish this end, clearness of narrative will be better served if we relate how his saving Rome brought him as sole reward from his civil superiors a sharp letter from the Emperor Maurice. It would seem that Romanus, to explain away his abortive expedition which had only resulted in en­dangering the city of Rome, suggested to the emperor that he had put his troops in motion to effect a diversion, because, despite Gregory’s assurance to the contrary, it was certain that Ariulf had no real intention of making peace. At any rate, Maurice, thus perhaps partly deceived, wrote a very hot letter (now lost) to the Pope, in which the latter was made out to be a fool and blamed for what he had done. In this the emperor showed himself very like his subordinate Romanus. Unable to do anything him­self, he could only blame or mar what had been done by another. In his reply (January 595), respectful but firm, Gregory says that the emperor in practically calling him a fool is not mistaken. “If I had not been a fool, I should never have borne what I have done here amidst the swords of the Lombards. In not believing what I stated, that Ariulf was sincerely ready to make peace with the Republic (the empire of course), you set me down as a liar ... If the captivity of my country did not daily extend, I would gladly hold my tongue on the subject of insults and derision directed against myself. But while I am called a liar, Italy is being still further dragged under the yoke of the Lombards. Believe if you will all evil of me; but in the cause of Italy, give not readily your ear to everybody, but trust facts rather than words”. He exhorted the emperor not to be quick in anger with bishops, but like the great Constantine to reverence them on account of their Master. In fine, after reviewing the course of events, he unselfishly defends the conduct of the military leaders in Rome during the siege, “for I am ready to suffer any adversity”; and concludes : “Sinful and unworthy though I be I trust more in the mercy of Jesus than in the justice of your piety”.

Notwithstanding the ungrateful treatment he received at the hands of the emperor and his representative in Italy, Gregory still toiled on to bring about a general peace.

The great difficulty in the way was the exarch Romanus, a man typical of the empire itself at this period, weak but pretentious. Safe himself behind the walls and marshes round Ravenna, he would not condescend to treat with Agilulph, who was really master of the situation, either before or after the siege of Rome. Gregory tried to move him through the influence of a mutual friend. “Know then”, wrote Gregory to their common friend, “that Agilulph, the Lombard king, is prepared to make a general peace (or truce rather) if my lord, the patrician, will submit to arbitration ... You know well how absolutely necessary for all of us such a peace is. Exert yourself, therefore, with your wonted wisdom, that the most excellent exarch agree to this without delay, lest the peace negotiations should appear to come to naught through him, which is anything but desirable. If the exarch will not come to terms, the king again promises to make a special peace with me. But we know that in that case several islands and other places will certainly be lost. Let, then, the exarch think over these matters, and hasten to make peace, that at least we may have an interval of rest during which the forces of the empire may, with God’s help, be the better prepared for resistance”. Gregory, then, did not want peace because he was a coward who wanted “peace at any price”; but because he had sense enough to see that the empire, at that time, could not fight.

Romanus, however, would not incline to peace or war; and Gregory could only beg his friends to pray that God would free him “from the body of this death”, as he cannot express what he has to suffer from the Lord Romanus, whose malice towards him, he complains, is worse than the swords of the Lombards. And yet the swords of the Lombards were at this time cutting his heart to pieces. For his country, “given over to the swords of the barbarians, had scarce an inhabitant, and yet saw men daily die”. And so, on through the years 596, 597, and into 598, it is the Lombards, the Lombards! But in 597 hope began to dawn to the afflicted Pontiff. “Romanus the exarch died, and was succeeded by Gallinicus (properly Callinicus), who entered into negotiations for peace with Agilulph”. These events took place probably in 597; and, though in the beginning of the following year Gregory found it necessary to insist that no one in Terracina should be excused from taking his share of sentry duty, he was able to announce in October, that through the exertions of his envoy the preliminaries of peace had at length been agreed to. The shifty conduct of Ariulf, who at first would not act in harmony with his king' on the matter, kept back the definite signing of the peace for a time. Letters of thanks, however, addressed before the close of the year to the Lombard king for granting the peace, and to his queen, Theodelinda, for forwarding it, would seem to show that hostilities had definitely ceased before the advent of 599. The peace or truce was to last till March 601. In his letter of thanks to the king, Gregory deemed it necessary to beg him to command the different dukes to keep the peace strictly, as he knew but too well how much they were disposed to act on their own account.

We can imagine with what fervor Gregory returned thanks to God and St. Peter (to whose intercession he attributed the safety of Rome), that at length there was a respite in the shedding of the blood of the wretched peasantry, to which he touchingly turns in his letter to Agilulph just quoted. “Hitherto war had been the normal relation between the empire and the Lombard invaders: henceforward peace, though doubtless a turbulent and often interrupted peace, prevailed”—is the rather rosy reflection of Dr. Hodgkin on what he justly describes as the Papal Peace. But Gregory had an eye to the future. During the period of repose he issued his warnings to prepare again for war, as he felt grave doubts whether the truce would be renewed.

His surmises proved to be well grounded. An act of treachery on the part of Callinicus caused war to break out (601) with greater fury than ever. The Lombards secured the co-operation of the fierce Avars, subdued Padua and other places which had hitherto defied their power, and defeated the exarch beneath the walls of Ravenna (601-3). Callinicus was accordingly recalled, and Smaragdus, for the second time, became exarch of Ravenna (602). Still the war went on; and again are the letters of Gregory ringing with the cries which the thought of the slaughter of men drew from him. But Smaragdus was a much more capable man than his predecessors. He realized that he could not cope with the Lombards. He accordingly first secured a short truce of thirty days, and then in September (603) a longer one, which was to last till April 1, 605. Gregory, then, was to die while peace smiled upon the land he loved so well. And he was to die working for its continuance. Among his last half dozen letters, when he could scarcely speak for pain, and the cold hand of death was upon him, there is a letter of his (December 603) to Theodelinda, in which he begs her to thank her husband for the peace, and, as was her wont, to influence his mind in the direction of peace for the future. Gregory must indeed have been a child of God, for he was certainly a peacemaker.

This sketch of our saint’s dealings with the Lombards will at least show what a trial they were to him. Truly it may be said that day and night throughout his long pontificate they were never absent from his mind. In his letters, in which that mind is seen so clearly, it is often the gout that is troubling him, sometimes the Lombards and the gout together, but always the Lombards. “My tongue as well as my pen fails me in any effort to tell what I have to suffer from the swords of the Lombards, from the iniquities of the judges (the imperial officials), from the pressing importunity of business, from the care of those subject to me, and the pain of my body”, is Gregory0s lament to Anastasius of Antioch. He was ever in fear of them because they could never be trusted, the more so as it made no matter to many of the dukes what their king bound himself to do. As we have seen, they made war or peace pretty much as they listed and whenever a suitable opportunity presented itself. Seeing then that, unaided, Gregory kept Rome from being crushed, Gibbon had good reason to note that it would have become a mere pile of ruins like Babylon and Carthage had it not had in the popes a vital principle which sustained it under the blows of the barbarians; that Gregory might justly be called “the Father of his country”; and that in the attach­ment of a grateful people he found the best right of a sovereign.

Moreover it must never be forgotten that in preserving the political independence of Rome, Gregory prevented the whole of Italy, and through it the whole of Europe, from being absolutely lost in intellectual darkness. If the Lom­bards were distinguished for anything, it was for their ignor­ance. On this point both the great historian of Italian literature, Tiraboschi, and that distinguished authority on Italy’s political history, Muratori, are agreed. Tiraboschi says that there is not a title of evidence that any of the Lombards either cultivated literature themselves or gave their protection or patronage to it. In all their laws, he adds, no mention is made of any kind of literary pursuit whatsoever. And Muratori reckons, as by no means the least of the evils wrought by the invasion of the Lombards, the introduction of a ferocious ignorance—and this with all his Lombard prepossessions. These barbarians only esteemed arms. And the Italians, apart from their want of good masters, had plenty to do amidst the rumors and horrors of war without devoting themselves to the study of letters. By keeping Rome free from Lombard rule, therefore, Gregory preserved it from complete intellectual decay under the shadow of Lombard ignorance, and through it not only Italy, but to a great extent Europe also. By thus preserving the sacred tradition of learning in Rome, he merited on this second and higher title that temporal power which his political action induced the people to yield to him. Even the cynical Milman could not but point out: “In the person of Gregory, the Bishop of Rome first became, in act and influence, if not in avowed authority, a temporal sovereign. Nor were his acts the ambitious encroachments of ecclesi­astical usurpation on the civil power. They were forced upon him ... The virtual sovereignty fell to him as abdicated by the neglect or powerlessness of its rightful owners”. It is to be hoped that the reader will bear in mind the reflections of this paragraph on Pope and Lom­bard when the efforts of the popes to stave off Lombard domination by the sword of the Frank come to be told.

THE EMPEROR

The Lombard question has shown us Gregory in contact with the emperor at Constantinople. Elaborating the rela­tions between them will only serve to show that the con­tact referred to was quite typical of their mutual dealings, which brought little else to Gregory but vexation of spirit. However, just as in the matter of making peace with the Lombards, his diplomatic caution and prudence, joined to a quiet firmness and pertinacity, generally enabled him in the end to get his own way in the questions in which their views differed.

In theory, at least, after their conversion to Christianity, the Roman emperors, renouncing the title of Pontifex Maximus, gave up all claim to interfere in matters of the soul and conscience. These matters were to be left to the decision of God’s representatives on earth, the bishops. In practice, however, like all other absolute monarchs since, masters of men’s bodies, they could not refrain from looking on themselves as masters of their souls too. And by their edicts they were ever placing themselves in opposition to that fundamental doctrine of Revelation (whether it be question of the Old or New Testament) that there are things of Cesar’s indeed which must be rendered to him, but that there are also things of God which have to be rendered to Him. Christians, with St. Paul, honor the King, but they fear God. And because they would not have their consciences regulated for them by Roman emperors, Christians had in the days of persecution offered their lives to the executioner in thousands and tens of thou­sands. They were often called upon to do the same, when the Roman emperors, who called themselves Christians, following in the footsteps of their pagan predecessors, issued dogmatic edicts. But with the empire proclaimed Christian, and with the principles of Christianity recognized by the State, the Christian Roman emperors were not permitted to act with the same impunity as their pagan predecessors. Their interference in matters of religion was resisted in the name of a Higher Power. And there was always one voice at least raised to remind them of their duty as Christians. That monitor was the Bishop of Rome. And so some hundred years before Gregory took up the same role, Gelasius plainly told  (494) the dogmatizing emperor Anastasius : “On two hinges turns the ruling of men. One of these is the holy authority of the priesthood, the other the secular power of princes ... In questions of doctrine the emperor is dependent on the decision of the Church, and has no right to force the faithful to follow his opinions”.

What, then, had been the mind of the children of God in the city of God from the very beginning of the human race was, of course, the mind of Gregory. And he frequently gave that mind a voice. In his own domain or province Caesar must be obeyed. But if he steps outside it, he must be resisted; for decrees of emperors against the laws and canons of the Church are vain.

Men’s best interests are no doubt best served when the Church and Caesar work in harmony, just as in each man it is best when nature and grace work together. Where, however, there is friction, it is essential for man’s happiness that recalcitrant nature should be subdued by grace. In the same way, where the State, acting outside its legitimate sphere, comes into adverse contact with the Church, the former must give place. And that the two should come into collision from time to time is only in accordance with the nature of things. For even given the best of intentions on the part of the representatives of both Church and State, it is only natural that they should sometimes dis­agree as to what in any given case were their particular rights. But just as in man himself the struggle between nature and grace is greater at one time than another, so the struggle between Church and State has varied at different periods. During the reign of Maurice it cannot be said to have been at all acute.

Gregory’s great desire was to have the One Church and the One Empire in harmony for man’s spiritual and temporal welfare. And so in the letter soon to be discussed, and to which all this argument is a sort of introduction, Gregory tells Maurice: “Power over men has been given by God to the Piety of my Lords, that those who aspire after good may be helped, that the way to heaven may become more easy to find, (in a word) that this world’s kingdom may serve that of the next”. To the emperor’s representative, the exarch Callinicus, he wrote (May 599) in the same strain: “You will the more readily be victorious over your foes, if you bring back under the yoke of the true God those whom you know to be His enemies, and in proportion as you attend with a sincere and earnest will to the interests of God, in that proportion will you forward your own interests among men”.

With such convictions, it will not surprise anyone that when Maurice took to legislating as to what men should do or what they should not do in working out their salvation, if not the servile patriarch of Constantinople, at least Gregory should offer resistance to him. The more so that it was the Pope’s noble contention that “the emperor of the Romans was the lord of free men”.

DECREE OF MAURICE FORBIDDING SOLDIERS BECOMING MONKS, 592

In the course of the year 592 the emperor issued a decree that no one who was actually engaged in any public office should embrace the ecclesiastical state, i.e. etc., join the ranks of the secular clergy; and he made it illegal for such a one or for a soldier to enter a monastery until the period of his service was over. With his wars in Europe against the Avars and Slavs, and in Asia against the Persians, and with his greed for gold, Maurice was in want of all the soldiers and money he could get. Hence he did not wish that his soldiers should become monks, and still less that the curiales, who were responsible for the revenue in the various provinces, should shirk their onerous duties. The first part of the law, which only reaffirmed a decree of Constantine, and which had been approved by some of his predecessors, Gregory had no difficulty in tolerating himself. For he argued that it was only too likely that those civil servants who wanted to became secular priests really only wanted to change one occupation in the busy world for another which would be less burden­some to their private fortunes. But because he believed that some men could only save their souls if “they sold all they had and followed Jesus” by that road, he felt it was his duty to oppose the latter portion of the decree, as an undue interference with the liberty which was each man’s right. He was unwell when the ordinance reached him. But a protest was needed, and as soon as he was able he indited a letter to the emperor, begin­ning with the words : “He is criminal in the sight of Almighty God, who is not straightforward in all His dealings with the most serene Lords”. Hence he could not give his sanction to that part of the law which pro­hibited civil servants and soldiers entering a monastery. He pointed out that the monastery which received such persons and their effects would be responsible for their debts. “I am in dread of this constitution because by it the way to heaven is barred to many ... Many can lead a good life in the world, but many cannot be saved unless they leave all things. Although I am but dust before my Lords, I cannot keep silence before them, because I think this decree is against God, the Author of all things. Power over all men has been given from heaven to the piety of my Lords to help the good towards heaven. And now a decree has been made that a man cannot become a soldier of Jesus Christ unless he has completed his term of earthly military service or become disabled. Lo! thus to thee, through me the lowest of His and thy servants, Christ makes answer saying, ‘From a notary I made thee Captain of the Guard; from Captain of the Guard, Caesar; from Caesar, Emperor, and not only that, but father of Emperors yet to be. I have committed My priests to thy keeping, and wouldst thou withdraw thy soldiers from My service?’Most pious Lord! I pray thee answer thy servant. What reply wilt thou make to thy Lord, when He comes and says these things to thee at the judgment?

“But perhaps you think that there is no such thing as the honest conversion of a soldier to the monastic life. I, your unworthy servant, know how many converted soldiers in my days have wrought miracles in the monasteries which they have entered. But by this law not even one such soldier is to be allowed the privilege of conversion.

“Let my Lord inquire who first issued such a law (the allusion is to Julian, the Apostate), and let him then more carefully consider if this one ought to be made. Let him consider this also, that he is hereby forbidding men to renounce the world at the very time that the world's own end is drawing near ... May your piety mitigate the severity of this law ... To obey you, I have sent the law all over the world, and, on the other hand, because the law is not in accordance with the interests of God, I send you this letter”.

Gregory, however, did not send it direct to Maurice. He enclosed it in one to his friend, the physician Theodore, begging him to present it to the emperor on some favorable occasion. The precise effect of this spirited protest is not known, but it was not without fruit. For in a letter addressed to the various metro­politans, Eusebius of Thessalonica, etc. (November 597), in which he again sends them notice of the law, Gregory bids them not to allow civil servants to enter monasteries till they have cleared themselves of their obligations to the state, nor soldiers till after a three years’ probation. He concludes by assuring them that such a course has received the emperor’s approval. Whilst negotiations with the imperial court on this subject were proceeding, Gregory caused a similar regulation to be issued with regard to the slaves of the Church who wished to become monks i.e., they were to be well tried in the lay dress. No doubt this decree served as the basis on which Gregory came to terms with the emperor on the matter.

THE BISHOPRIC OF SALONA

Another affair which brought the Pope more or less in opposition with the emperor was the case of Maximus of Salona, a case which dragged on for six years (593­-599). If Maurice did not overtly favor Maximus, nay, if in words he supported Gregory, he not only allowed him­self to intercede for Maximus, but certainly did nothing to check the open and violent advocacy of the claims of the usurper by his officials.

Natalis, Bishop of Salona, near Spalatro, the capital city of Dalmatia, had given both Gregory and his predecessor some trouble on account of the laxity of his life in the matter of the pleasures of the table, and on account of harsh treatment of his archdeacon, Honoratus, who had opposed his excesses. After having had to threaten (592) to deprive Natalis of the use of the pallium and of Holy Communion, Gregory had the happiness of seeing him return to his duty. On the death of Natalis, he wrote (March 593) to the subdeacon Antonius, the manager of the patrimony of the Roman Church in Dalmatia, bidding him to see to the prompt and canonical election of a successor to Natalis, and to the sending of the decree of election to him (Gregory), that, as in past times, the elect might be consecrated with his consent. Much to the Pope’s pleasure, who respected the man for his virtue, the clergy elected the above-mentioned archdeacon Honoratus. But the bishops of Dalmatia, worldly-minded men, objected to the choice of Honoratus. Their conduct brought down upon them a sharp letter from the Pope, who “by the authority of Blessed Peter”, forbade them “to impose their hands” on anyone for the vacant bishopric without his permission. However, if Honoratus were proved to be unworthy of the dignity, they might consecrate anyone upon whom the unanimous free choice of all might fall, with the exception of Maximus, of whom he has had a very sinister account (November 593).

The next thing that Gregory heard was that there had been a great commotion in Salona. Word was brought to him that many of the supporters of Honoratus had been treated with the greatest cruelty; that his rector had barely escaped with his life, and that with the aid of the bought troops of the exarch Romanus and under cover of a filched or forged mandate of the emperor, no other than Maximus had been conse­crated. Though conscious that Maximus dared not have defied him had he not felt that he had material force at his back, still Gregory would not allow the fear of this world to interfere with his duty. He at once (April 594) wrote to Maximus, the presumptuous intruder into the See of Salona. Gregory let him know that he was convinced that the mandate (jussio) he (Maximus) had produced was not genuine, because he knew that it was the intention of the emperor not to meddle with the causes of bishops, and concluded by forbidding him, and those who had consecrated him, to perform any episcopal function or to celebrate Mass until he had been assured by letters from the emperor or his own apocrisiarius that he (Maximus) had procured a real jussio from the emperor.  “And if you dare to act against this injunction, anathema to you from God and St. Peter, so that the sight of the punish­ment which has been meted out to you may serve as an example to the whole Catholic Church”. Unread, Maximus had this letter publicly torn up. He then devoted himself to trying to obtain the countenance of the emperor and to blacken the character of the Pope. Gregory thereupon wrote to his apocrisiarius Sabinian to meet the charges of Maximus, making it quite plain to the deacon that he was determined not to put up with the bishop’s insolence. “I am prepared to suffer death rather than allow the Church of Blessed Peter to be degraded in any way in my time. You know my disposition. I bear for a long time. But when once I have made up my mind to bear no longer, I cheerfully face every difficulty”.

Gregory had need of all his firmness. Maximus so far prevailed upon the emperor that the latter expressed a wish that the Pope should recognize him as bishop, and receive him with honor when he came to Rome. In writing to the empress (June 1, 595) Gregory declared he would fall in with the emperor’s wishes to the extent of passing over the fact of the ordination of Maximus without his consent. He could not, however, leave un­examined the charges brought against him of being elected by simony and of having said Mass after he had been excommunicated; nor was it right that, with such charges urged against him, and unanswered, he should be received with honor. “If the causes of bishops who are entrusted to me are through the patron­age of others settled by our most pious Lords, what is left for unfortunate me to do in this See? I assign to my sins that my bishops take no heed of me, and against my authority betake themselves to secular judges ... I will await his coming (to Rome) for a brief space, but if he puts it off long, I will not put off striking, him with canonical punishment”.

Peremptorily summoned to come to Rome within thirty-days, Maximus failed to put in an appearance; and when some of the clergy, true at length to the call of duty, fell away from him, he took to persecuting them. At last, however, whether because he found it hard to go on “kicking against the goad”, or because, touched by grace and the forbearance of Gregory, he was really moved to penitence, Maximus began to make serious efforts to get reconciled to the Pope. He succeeded in inducing the exarch Callinicus, who was on good terms with the Pope, to use his influence with him to allow his case to be tried at Ravenna. Overcome by the exarch’s impor­tunity, as he says himself, Gregory at length consented; and commissioned the archbishop of Ravenna, Marinianus, to examine whether the election of Maximus was simoniacal, and whether he was aware that he was ex­communicated when he said Mass. And in case Maximus regarded Marinianus as prejudiced against him, the Pope named Constantius of Milan as joint judge.

A contemporary document, inserted in Gregory’s register, tells us how Maximus came to Ravenna, and, casting him­self on the ground before all the people, cried out: “I have sinned against God and the Most Blessed Pope, Gregory”. In this position he remained for three hours; and then before the tomb of St. Apollinaris he swore that he had not been guilty of simony or breach of his vow of chastity. After the Pope had received full infor­mation as to the satisfaction which Maximus had offered, moved to compassion, he sent him the pallium in token of reconciliation (599). Next year Gregory is sympathizing with Maximus on the incursions of the Slavs as though nothing had happened between them. His firmness and kindness had overcome the powers of this world and saved a soul.

THE USURPATION OF PHOCAS, 602

Of all Gregory’s dealings with the Eastern emperors, the one most discussed is his attitude towards the usurper Phocas. Most non-Catholic and some Catholic writers seem to have little hesitation in condemning the Pope of a display of revengeful cruelty in the congratulatory letters he wrote to Phocas and his empress on the occa­sion of the former’s seizure of the imperial throne and his subsequent murder of Maurice and his family.

But to one who has followed the career of the saint up to this epoch, and who has noted his invariable extreme charity when dealing with those who have opposed him, but who is himself previously acquainted with the cruelty of Phocas to Maurice, these letters, especially on first reading, bring such a shock that an explanation is instinc­tively looked for. The question at once arises to the mind of such a reader—Can Gregory have known all the circum­stances attending the usurpation of Phocas when he wrote these letters? And to one who believes in the ‘law of continuity’, to anyone who holds that a good man does not suddenly become bad, or a kind and forgiving man harsh and revengeful, the answer No will come at once. Mature reflection, too, and study of the affair will, we venture to think, compel the endorsement of the spon­taneous negative. A preliminary examination of the facts of the case certainly proves that there is no evidence that Gregory was assuredly in possession of the knowledge of the ‘ins and outs’ of the affair. Nay, it does more, it furnishes us with solid grounds for believing that he was utterly ignorant of the details of the revolution when in the month of May 603 he penned the documents in question.

First for the facts of the case. As his reign progressed, the Emperor Maurice stained an otherwise fairly estimable character by avarice. This vice led him to try to shear a rather dangerous ram, the army. The result was that a mutiny, by no means the first in his reign, broke out among the soldiers. Phocas, a simple centurion, was proclaimed emperor, and was duly crowned by the patriarch Cyriacus (November 23, 602). One of his first acts, on being told by one of the factions in the city, “Begone! Reflect how matters stand! Maurice still lives!” was to cause Maurice and his sons to be put to death (November 27).

Then on April 25th (603) there came to Rome the icona (images) of the Emperor Phocas and his wife Leontia. They were received with the (customary) acclamations in the basilica of the Lateran (palace) by all the clergy and senate: “Graciously hear us, O Christ! Long life to the emperor and empress Phocas and Leontia!” Then the most blessed and apostolic Lord Pope, Gregory, ordered the images to be placed (as usual) in the oratory of S. Cesarius in the palace (on the Palatine)”. To this official account, prefixed to the thirteenth book of Gregory’s letters, John the Deacon adds that favorable letters from both the new emperor and empress were also brought for the Pope along with the images. To these friendly advances Gregory sent three letters in answer, two to Phocas himself (one certainly in the month of May), and one to Leontia. The first letter to Phocas is one of congratulation on his accession, and runs thus: “Glory be to God in the Highest, who, as it is written, ‘changeth times and taketh away kingdoms’ (Dan. II, 21); and who maketh known to all what He hath deigned to say by His prophet: ‘The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and He will give it to whomsoever it shall please Him’ (ib. IV. 14). In the incomprehensible dispensation of Almighty God, His methods of governing our lives vary. Sometimes when the sins of many must be punished, a man is raised up by whose severity the necks of those subject to him are oppressed by the yoke of tribulation, which in our own sad case we have long experienced. Sometimes, however, when the God of mercy has decreed to comfort with His own consolation the hearts of the sorrowing multitude, He raises to the supreme power one through whose merciful disposition He pours out upon all the grace of His own blessed happiness. We believe that we shall be speedily refreshed with this happiness in abundance, we who rejoice that the benignity of your piety has reached the summit of imperial greatness. ‘ Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad’ (Ps. xcv. 2), and may the whole republic, till now in grievous affliction, rejoice at your kindly deeds. May the haughty minds of our enemies be subdued beneath the yoke of your power. And (on the other hand) may the broken and depressed spirits of your subjects be encouraged by your pity. May the power of heaven's grace make you terrible to your enemies, and may paternal affection make you beneficent to your subjects. May the whole republic, dislocated under the pretext of law, which is destroying peace, have rest in your most prosperous times. May exactions under the cover of sham wills and donations have an end. May each one enter into the secure possession of his own, so that he may joyfully hold without fear what he has acquired without fraud. Under your paternal rule may each one’s liberty be renewed. For there is this difference between the kings of the nations and the emperors of the republic, viz., that the kings of the nations are the lords of slaves, but the emperors of the republic are the rulers of freemen. But we can say all this better by prayer than by expressing hopes. May Almighty God in all your thoughts and deeds hold the heart of your piety in the hand of His grace, and may the Holy Ghost dwelling in your breast mercifully guide all that has to be done with justice and pity, so that from this earthly kingdom your clemency may after many years reach the kingdom of Heaven”.

The second letter to Phocas, the new emperor, is taken up with the business of sending a papal apocrisiarius to Con­stantinople. Phocas in his favorable letters had evi­dently expressed his regret that he had not found, on his accession, a representative of the Pope in the imperial city. Gregory replied that the reason of it was that, owing to the unsettled and difficult nature of the times, the Roman ecclesiastics looked forward with dread to being sent to reside in the imperial palace, and he had not been willing to put pressure upon them. However, after it had become known that he (Phocas) had mounted the imperial throne, there had been a change of feeling, and he had ordained deacon the bearer of these presents (Boniface), for the purpose of sending him to Constantinople.

The letter to Leontia is practically the same in senti­ment and expression as the first to Phocas. Gre