212 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
GREGORY THE FIRST, or THE GREAT, the last of the Latin fathers and the first of the popes, connects the ancient with the mediaeval church, the Grseco-Roman with the Romano-Germanic type of Christianity. He is one of the best representatives of mediaeval Catholicism: monastic, ascetic, devout and supersti tious ; hierarchical, haughty, and ambitious, yet humble before God ; indifferent, if not hostile, to classical and secular culture, but friendly to sacred and ecclesiastical learning ; just, humane, and liberal to ostentation; full of missionary zeal in the interest of Christianity and the Roman see, which to his mind were inseparably connected. He combined great executive ability with untiring industry, and amid all his official cares he never forgot the claims of personal piety. In genius he was surpassed by Leo I., Gregory VII., Innocent III. ; but as a man and as a Christian, he ranks with the purest and most useful of the popes. Goodness is the highest kind of greatness, and the church has done right in according the title of the Great to him rather than to other popes of superior intellectual power.
The times of his pontificate (A. D. Sept. 3, 590 to March 12, 604) were full of trouble, and required just a man of his train ing and character. Italy, from a Gothic kingdom, had become a province of the Byzantine empire, but was exhausted by war and overrun by the savage Lombards, who were still heathen or Arian heretics, and burned churches, slew ecclesiastics, robbed monasteries, violated nuns, reduced cultivated fields into a wil derness. Rome was constantly exposed to plunder, and wasted by pestilence and famine. All Europe was in a chaotic state, and bordering on anarchy. Serious men, and Gregory himself, thought that the end of the world was near at hand. " What is it," says he in one of his sermons, " that can at this time de light us in this world ? Everywhere we see tribulation, every where we hear lamentation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down, the fields laid waste, the land made desolate. Vil lages are empty, few inhabitants remain in the cities, and even these poor remnants of humanity are daily cut down. The
I 50. GKEGORY THE GREAT. A.D. 590-604. 213
scourge of celestial justice does not cease, because no repentance takes place under the scourge. We see how some arc carried into captivity, others mutilated, others slain. What is it, breth ren, that can make us contented with this life ? If we love such a world, we love not our joys, but our wounds. We sec what has
become of her who was once the mistress of the world
Let us then heartily despise the present world and imitate the works of the pious as well as we can."
Gregory was born about A. D. 540, from an old and wealthy senatorial (the Anician) family of Rome, and educated for the service of the government. He became acquainted with Latin literature, and studied Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustin, but was ignorant of Greek. His mother Sylvia, after the death of Gordianus, her husband, entered a convent, and so excelled in sanc tity that she was canonized. The Greek emperor Justin ap pointed him to the highest civil office in Rome, that of imperial prefect (574). But soon afterwards he broke with the world, changed the palace of his father near Rome into a convent in honor of St. Andrew, and became himself a monk in it, after wards abbot. He founded besides six convents in Sicily, and bestowed his remaining wealth on the poor. He lived in the strictest abstinence, and undermined his health by ascetic ex cesses. Nevertheless he looked back upon this time as the hap piest of his life.
Pope Pelagius II. made him one of the seven deacons of the Roman Church, and sent him as ambassador or nuntius to the court of Constantinople (579).1 His political training and exe cutive ability fitted him eminently for this post. He returned in 585, and was appointed abbot of his convent, but employed also for important public business.
1 Apocrisiarius (cnroKpiatapio^ or a>}'fAof), responscdw. Da Cange defines it: *' Nuntius, Lcgatiis . . prccscrtlm qui a pontifice Romano, I'd ftiam ab archiepiscopis ad comitatum mittcbantur, quo res ecclesiarum suarum peragerent, ft de iis ad principcm refcrrcnt" The Roman delegates to Constantinople were usually taken from the deacons. Gregory is the fifth Roman deacon who served in thia capacity at Constantinople, according to Du Cange s. v. Apocrisiarius.