A.D. 585.

State of the

by the homage of posterity, that of the fourth great father of the Latin Church. Soon after his return to Rome the city became a scene of misery and desolation, so that all eyes could not but be turned on a man so highly favoured of God. The Lombard invasions continued to waste Italy; the feeble Exarch acknowledged that he had no power to protect Rome; the supplications for effectual aid from Constantinople had been unavailing. More dire and pressing calamities City. darkened around. The Tiber overflowed its banks, and swept away the granaries of corn. A dreadful pestilence ensued, of which the Pope Pelagius was among the first victims." With one voice the clergy, the senate, and the people summoned Gregory to the pontifical throne. His modest remonstrances were in vain. His letter entreating the Emperor Maurice to relieve him from the perilous burthen, by refusing the imperial consent to his elevation, was intercepted by the loving vigilance of his admirers. Among these was the prefect of the city, who substituted for Gregory's letter the general peti- Pope. tion for his advancement. But, until the answer of the Emperor could arrive, Gregory assumed the religious direction of the people. He addressed them with deep solemnity on the plague, and persuaded them to acts of humiliation. On an appointed day the whole city joined in the religious ceremony. Seven litanies, or processions with prayers and hymns, and the greatest pomp, traversed the streets. That of the clergy set out from the Church of St. John the Baptist; that of the men from St. Marcellus; the monks from that of the martyrs John and Paul; the holy virgins from SS. Cosmos and Damianus; the married women from St. Stephen; the widows from St. Vitalis ; that of the poor and the children from St. Cæcilia. But the plague was not stayed; eighty victims fell dead during the procession; but Gregory still urged the people to persist in their pious supplications.

Pelag. Epist. ad Greg. apud J. Diaconum in Vit.

"The pestilence was attributed to a vast number of serpents and a great dragon, like a beam of timber, carried down the Tiber to the sea, and cast back

Gregory

upon the shore, where they putrified, and caused the plague.- Greg. Turon. 589-590, Jaffè.

The speech in Greg. Tur. x. i.; Paul. Diac. Ep. ii.; Joh. Diac. i. 41.

The picturesque legend, from which

To the end Gregory endeavoured to elude the compulsory honour of the Papacy. It was said that, knowing the gates to be jealously watched, he persuaded some merchants to convey him to a solitary forest in disguise; but a light, like a pillar of fire, hovered over his head, and betrayed his flight. He was seized, hurried to the Church of St. Peter, and forcibly consecrated as Supreme Pontiff.a Monasticism ascended the Papal throne in the person of Gregory. In austerity, in devotion, in imaginative Monkhood of Superstition, Gregory was a monk to the end of Gregory. his days. From this turmoil of affairs, civil and spiritual; the religious ambition of maintaining and extending the authority of his see; the affairs of pure Christian humanity in which he was involved, as almost the only guardian of the Roman population against the barbarian invasions; oppressed with business, with cares, with responsibilities, he perpetually reverts to the peace of his monastery, where he could estrange himself entirely from sublunary things, yield himself up to the exclusive contemplation of heaven, and look forward to death as the entrance into life."

the monument of Hadrian took the name of the Castle of St. Angelo, cannot be reconciled with the Letters of Gregory. It ran, that as the last procession reached this building, an angel was seen sheathing his sword, as though the work of divine vengeance was over. The statue of the angel in this attitude commemorated the wonder.

The biographer of Gregory (John the Deacon) thinks it necessary to adduce evidence of the sincerity of this reluctance, which had been questioned by "certain perfidious Lombards." He cites a curious letter to Theoctista, the emperor's sister, among the strange expressions in which is this: "Ecce serenissimus Dominus Imperator fieri Simiam Leonem jussit et quidem pro jussione illius vocari Leo potest; fieri autem Leo non potest." In one letter he says: "Non Romanorum sed Longobardorum episcopus factus sum." Compare letter to John of Constantinople, i. 24, and the following epistles; also Epist. vii. 4, and Regula Past. in init.

Cum quibus (amicis) Gregorius diu nocteque versatus nihil monastica perfec

tionis in palatio, nihil pontificalis institutionis in ecclesiâ dereliquit. Videbantur passim cum eruditissimis clericis adhærere Pontifici religiosissimi monachi, et in diversissimis professionibus habebatur vita communis; ita ut talis esset tunc sub Gregorio penes urbem Romam ecclesia, qualem hanc fuisse sub apostolis Lucas et sub Marco Evangelistâ penes Alexandriam Philo commemorat.” Was Joh. Diaconus as ignorant of St. Luke's writings as of Philo's?-Joh. Diac. ii. 12.

"Infelix quippe animus meus, occupationis suæ pulsatus vulnere, meminit qualis aliquando in monasterio fuit, quomodo ei labentia cuncta subter erant ; quantum rebus omnibus, quæ volvuntur, eminebat; quod nulla nisi cœlestia cogitare consueverat; quod etiam retentus corpore, ipsa jam carnis claustra contemplatione transibat; quod mortem quoque quæ pæne cunctis pœna est, videlicet ut ingressum vitæ, et laboris sui præmium amabat."-Præfat. in Dial. Oper. iii. p. 233: compare Epist. i. 4 to 7.

Sept. 3.

But he threw off at once and altogether the dreaming indolence of the contemplative life, and plunged Consecrated into affairs with the hurried restlessness of the Jaffè. most ambitious statesman. His letters offer a singular picture of the incessant activity of his mind, the variety and multiplicity of his occupations. Nothing seems too great, nothing too insignificant for his earnest personal solicitude; from the most minute point in the ritual, or regulations about the papal farms in Sicily, he passes to the conversion of Britain, the extirpation of simony among the clergy of Gaul, negotiations with the armed conquerors of Italy, the revolutions of the Eastern empire, the title of Universal Bishop usurped by John of Constantinople.

character of

The character of Gregory, as the representative of his times, may be considered I. as a Christian Threefold bishop organising and completing the ritual Gregory. and offices of the Church; as administrator of the patrimony of the Roman See, and its distribution to its various pious uses. II. As the patriarch of the West, exercising authority over the clergy and the churches in Italy, in Gaul, and other parts of Europe; as the converter of the Lombards from Arianism, and the Saxons of Britain from heathenism; and in his conduct to pagans, Jews, and heretics, as maintaining the independence of the Western ecclesiastical power against the East. III. As virtual sovereign of Rome, an authority which he was almost compelled to assume; as guardian of the city, and the protector of the Roman population in Italy against the Lombards; and in his conduct to the Emperor Maurice, and to the usurper Phocas.

Services of

I. Under Gregory the ritual of the Church assumed more perfect form and magnificence. The Roman ordinal, though it may have received additions the Church. from later pontiffs, in its groundwork and distribution belongs to Gregory. The organisation of the Roman clergy had probably been long complete; it comprehended the whole city and suburbs. The fourteen regions were divided into seven ecclesiastical districts. Thirty titles (corresponding with parishes) were superintended by sixty-six priests; the chief in each title was the cardinal priest.

Each ecclesiastical region had its hospital or office for alms, over which a deacon presided; one of the seven was the archdeacon. Besides these, each hospital had an administrator, often a layman, to keep the accounts. The clergy of the seven regions officiated on ordinary occasions, each on one day of the week. Gregory appointed the stations, the churches in which were to be celebrated the more solemn services during Lent and at the four great festivals. On these high days the Pope proceeded in state, usually on horseback, escorted by the deacons and other officers, from his palace in the Lateran to St. Peter's, S. Maria Maggiore, or some other of the great churches. He was received with obsequious ceremony, robed by the archdeacons, conducted to the choir with the incense and the seven candlesticks borne before him. Psalms were sung as he proceeded to his throne behind the altar. The more solemn portions of the service were of course reserved for the Supreme Pontiff. But Gregory did not stand aloof in his haughty sanctity, or decline to exercise more immediate influence over the minds of the people. He Gregory as constantly ascended the pulpit himself, and in preacher. those days of fear and disaster was ever preaching in language no doubt admirably adapted to their state of mind, tracing to their sins the visible judgments of God, exhorting them to profound humiliation, and impressing them with what appears to have been his own conviction— that these multiplying calamities were the harbingers of the Last day.

Music.

The music, the animating soul of the whole ritual, was under the especial care of Gregory. He introduced a new mode of chanting, which still bears his name, somewhat richer than that of Ambrose at Milan, but still not departing from solemn simplicity. He formed schools of singers, which he condescended himself to instruct; and from Rome the science was propagated throughout the West: it was employed even to soothe and

The reader who may not be inclined to consult Gregory's own Sacramentarium and Antiphonarium, or the learned labours of Mabillon on the Ordo Ro

manus, will find a good popular view of the Roman service in Fleury, H. E. xxxvi. 16 et seq.

awe the barbarians of Britain. Augustine, the missionary, was accompanied by a school of choristers, educated in their art at Rome."

Gregory as

of the See.

As administrator of the Papal patrimony Gregory was active and vigilant, unimpeachably just and humane. The Churches, especially that of Rome, administrator now possessed very large estates, chiefly in Calabria, in Sicily; in the neighbourhood of Rome, Apulia, Campania, Liguria; in Sardinia and Corsica; in the Cozian Alps; in Dalmatia and Illyricum; in Gaul; and even in Africa, and the East. There are letters addressed to the administrators of the Papal estates in all these territories; and in some cities, as Otranto, Gallipoli, perhaps Norcia, Nepi, Cuma, Capua, Corsealano; even in Naples, Palermo, Syracuse. Gregory prescribes minute regulations for these lands, throughout which prevails a solicitude lest the peasants should be exposed to the oppressions of the farmer or of the Papal officer. He enters into all the small vexatious exactions to which they were liable, fixes the precise amount of their payments, orders all unfair weights and measures to be broken, and new ones provided; he directs that his regulations be read to the peasants themselves; and, lest the old abuses should be revived after his death, they were to be furnished with legal forms of security against such suppressed grievances. Gregory lowered the seignorial fees on the marriages of peasants not free. Nor, in the protection of the poor peasant, did he neglect the rights and interests of the farmer; he secured to their relatives the succession to their contracts,

The original copy of Gregory's Antiphonary, the couch on which he reclined while he instructed the singers, and the rod with which he threatened the boys, were preserved, according to John the Deacon, down to his time.Vit. Greg. M. ii. 6.

! These estates were called the patrimony of the patron saints of the city, in Rome of St. Peter, in Milan of St. Ambrose, in Ravenna of St. Apollinaris. Ravenna and Milan had patrimonies in Sicily.

5 Pope Celestine, writing, in the year 432, to the Emperor of the East, mentions possessiones in Asiâ constitutas VOL. I.

66

quas illustris et sanctæ recordationis Proba longâ a majoribus vetustate reliquerat Romanæ ecclesiæ." He prays the emperor that they may not be disturbed.

Securitatis libellos. The whole of this letter (i. 42) should be read to estimate the character of Gregory as a landlord. The peasants were greatly embarrassed by the payment of the first term of their rent, which being due before they could sell their crops, forced them to borrow at very high interest. Gregory directed that they should receive an advance from the church trea sury, and be allowed to pay by instalments.

2 G