One of the greats receives his eternal reward
On this day in 604 AD, St. Gregory the Great passed from this life to the next, after living one of the most monumental lives in Christian and Roman history.
604 A.D.
Today in Papal History marks the death of Pope Gregory I, known better to those in his hometown of Rome as San Gregorio Magno – St. Gregory the Great.
Only three other popes in the history of Christendom bear that moniker – Pope St. Leo I, Pope St. Nicholas I, and (according to a growing number these days) Pope St. John Paul II – so just what sort of greatness are we talking about with Gregory?
The man we now know as St. Gregory the Great was born in Italy around the year 540 AD. His family was one of great wealth and status, but also one of profound holiness. In fact, his own mother (Sylvia), two of his aunts (Trasilla and Emiliana), and his great-great-grandfather (Pope Felix III), are listed among the canon of saints, and the medieval author John the Deacon called Gregory’s upbringing one of a “saint among saints.”
Gregory’s childhood in general, considering it occurred during an age where Rome was constantly changing hands as a result of Gothic raids, was likely very tumultuous, despite his family’s aristocratic standing. Once a city of over a 1 million inhabitants at its height, the Eternal City had shrunk to barely 100,000 by the time of Gregory’s life, but the Anicius family – of which Gregory was an heir – was Roman to the core. Abandoning their ancestral home wasn’t an option.
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that it was probably these disasters – Rome being captured by the Goths in 546, then abandoned, then garrisoned by another power, then attacked again by the Goths soon afterward, and changing hands once more, all while Gregory was between the ages of 6 and 12 – that resulted in his penchant for writing in a more solemn, somber style, and expecting the world to end sooner, rather than later.
In any case, Gregory did receive a rich education, having eventually become, according to his contemporary Gregory of Tours, second to none in the fields of grammar, rhetoric, and debate. He was also steeped greatly in the Scriptures, and was groomed initially for a prominent career in civil government. Before he was 30, in fact, Gregory was already made prefect of the city of Rome – though, admittedly, it was more out of necessity than any sense of grandeur, given the city’s dire state.
After 5 years in office, Gregory decided he wasn’t cut out for such a profession, and resigned his post after five years. Instead, he converted the family home into a monastery, took vows as a Benedictine monk, and began to live a cloistered, contemplative life.
Gregory lived the monastic life for three years, which he called the happiest of his life, but – as is often the case with those called to a life of greatness – the Lord needed him elsewhere. Pope Pelagius II drew Gregory out of his seclusion, ordained him a priest, and then sent him as a papal legate to Constantinople, to beg the help of Emperor Tiberius with holding off the Lombard army that was threatening Rome. Gregory ended up staying for six years as the pope’s representative, but his project as far as Rome was concerned was, sadly, a failure.
He returned to Rome around 585 to become abbot of the monastery he founded, and the community quickly grew famous under his rule. As mentioned, Gregory was a talented orator and a wise and holy teacher, so naturally crowds flocked from all around to hear and learn from him.
The year before Gregory became pope, 589, was an unmitigated disaster in Rome. Great floods ran roughshod through the city, carrying away farms and houses, and the Tiber itself overflowed its banks, taking out many buildings in the process – among them being the Church’s grain storage, which were used to feed the hungry when food became scarce. An outbreak of the Plague soon followed, crippling the city. And as if to add insult to injury, Pope Pelagius himself kicked the bucket in February of the following year.
Badly needing a shot in the arm, the people and clergy of Rome quickly elected Gregory as the next pontiff. Gregory, naturally, didn’t want the job, preferring the life of a monk, fearing his own inadequacy for the post, and worrying about the grandeur and public prominence that such a role brought with it.
Writing to his friend St. Leander of Seville, brother of the famous St. Isidore of Seville, Gregory said:
“Following the way of my Head (God), I had resolved to be the scorn of men, the outcast of the people. But the burden of this honor weighs me down; innumerable cares pierce me like swords. There is no rest of the heart. I was tranquil in my monastery. The tempest arose; I am in the waves, suffering with the loss of quiet, a shipwreck of mind.”
Considering the imperial requirement of confirming new popes in those days, Gregory objected to the emperor in a letter, pleading that he refuse and pick another man for the job. It took a full six months for a final answer to come down – but the emperor, history can gratefully report, saw Gregory’s greatness and refused. After hearing the news, Gregory’s reluctance to accept his new office remained. So naturally, a crowd had to seize him and CARRY HIM BODILY to St. Peter’s Basilica, where he was consecrated pope on September 3, 590.
He would reign as pope for 14 years, a papacy that included, as the Catholic Encyclopedia reports, “work enough to have exhausted the energies of a lifetime.”
Gregory began his papacy by writing the work Liber pastoralis curae – a book on the office of bishop, which he himself considered to be a game plan for his own ministry to the Church over the ensuing decade and a half.
Aside from that, as already mentioned, his output was astounding. He was a reformer in every sense of the word – including literally re-forming Rome from the ruins of the floods that had been left, and re-forming the Church in the places where it had fallen into disrepute.
In terms of temporal needs, Gregory made sure to feed both Rome’s poor and needy, as well as the many refugees who had come to the city as a result of the Lombard invasions, paying for it out of the estates of the Church. He also was immensely skilled in the Church’s financial and land management, considering the Church had now amassed upwards of 1,500 square miles of property and was pulling in substantial revenue from it annually. So much so that it’s said that his tenants were a bit bummed out that Gregory was so good, since it was now near-impossible to trick or cheat their newfound landlord.
All of this was done, I might add, while Gregory was almost constantly in ill health. He suffered almost constantly from indigestion (no Pepto Bismol in those days), was stricken with a slow fever often, and for the last near-decade of his life was afflicted with gout – which made it very difficult and painful to walk.
Important though temporal affairs were, he was even more gifted on the spiritual front. Gregory preached often on the Scriptures – he wrote vast commentaries on both Ezekiel and Job, in particular – drawing immense crowds who enjoyed his simple style and use of anecdotes to better illustrate his points.
Gregory reformed parts of the liturgy, many of which remain in place to this day. The Our Father being where it is, the placement of various liturgical prayers according to the season in the year, and some additions to the Roman Canon are all thanks to him. Gregorian Chant – even if just in seed form – is attributed to him through his founding of the famous schola cantorum – the choir schools at Rome which sought to restore to prominence the ancient chant of the Church, and he was the first pope to use the phrase to speak ex cathedra – or “from the chair” – referring to the dogma of papal infallibility.
It was Gregory who is thought to have instituted the placing of blessed ashes on the heads of the faithful during Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season, saying to each person, “Remember thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Lastly, Gregory is the one who started the tradition of referring to the pope as “Servant of the Servants of God”, and laid the foundation to lead the Barque of Peter into the High Middle Ages – basically the founding of Western Civilization as we know it – through this rebuilding of what had become a bloated, ailing Church.
The task was unimaginably formidable, with Gregory once writing:
“The billows of the world so surge upon me that I despair of steering into harbor the frail vessel entrusted to me by God, while my hand holds the helm amid a thousand storms.”
Still, he made sure the holiest and wisest of monks were his counsel, he made a point to give alms with great generosity, and made education and evangelization the cornerstones of his papacy. Gregory not only wanted people to learn the Faith, but progress in it and grow in holiness as well. What’s more, Gregory himself stood as the example for his people, not considering himself excepted from the rule.
Gregory died on March 12, 604 and was venerated as a saint almost immediately after his death, through unanimous acclaim of the people. It wasn’t long afterward, considering his great contributions to the Church through teaching, preaching, writing, and the acts of his papacy that Gregory was named as the 4th great Doctor of the West, along with St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.