216 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
the king a letter of congratulation, and exhorted him to humility, chastity, and mercy. The detested Lombards likewise cast off Arianism towards the close of his life, in consequence partly of his influence over Queen Theodelinda, a Bavarian princess, who had been reared in the trinitarian faith. He endeavored to suppress the remnants of the Donatist schism in Africa. Un compromising against Christian heretics and schismatics, he was a step in advance of his age in liberality towards the Jews. He censured the bishop of Terracina and the bishop of Cagliari for unjustly depriving them of their synagogues; he condemned the forcible baptism of Jews in Gaul, and declared conviction by preaching the only legitimate means of conversion ; he did not scruple, however, to try the dishonest method of bribery, and he inconsistently denied the Jews the right of building new synagogues and possessing Christian slaves. He made efforts, though in vain, to check the slave-trade, which was chiefly in the hands of Jews.
After his death, the public distress, which he had labored to alleviate, culminated in a general famine, and the ungrateful populace of Rome was on the point of destroying his library, when the archdeacon Peter stayed their fury by asserting that he had seen the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering above Gregory's head as he wrote his books. Hence he is rep resented with a dove. He was buried in St. Peter's under the altar of St. Andrew.
NOTE. Estimates of Gregory I.
Bishop Bossuet (as quoted by Montalembert, II. 173) thus tersely sums up the public life of Gregory : " This great pope . . . subdued the Lom bards ; saved Rome and Italy, though the emperors could give him no assistance ; repressed the new-born pride of the patriarchs of Constanti nople ; enlightened the whole church by his doctrine ; governed the East and the West with as much vigor as humility ; and gave to the world a perfect model of ecclesiastical government."
To this Count Montalembert (likewise a Roman Catholic) adds : " It was the Benedictine order which gave to the church him whom no one would have hesitated to call the greatest of the popes, had not the same
I 50. GREGORY THE GREAT. A. D. 590-G04. 217
order, five centuries later, produced St. Gregory VII. . . . lie is truly Gregory the Great, because lie issued irreproachable from numberless and boundless dilliculties ; because he gave as a foundation to the in creasing grandeur of the Holy See, the renown of his virtue, the candor of his innocence, the humble and inexhaustible tenderness of his heart."
"The pontificate of Gregory the Great," says Gibbon (ch. 45), "which lasted thirteen years, six months, and ten days, is one of the most edify ing periods of the history of the church. His virtues, and even his faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the tem per of the times."
Lau says (in his excellent monograph, pp. 302, 306): "The spiritual qualities of Gregory's character are strikingly apparent in his actions. AVith a clear, practical understanding, he combined a kind and mild heart ; but he was never weak. Fearful to the obstinate transgressor of the laws, on account of his inflexible justice, he was lenient to the repentant and a warm friend to his friends, though, holding, as he did, righteous ness and the weal of the church higher than friendship, he was severe upon any neglect of theirs. With a great prudence in managing the most different circumstances, and a great sagacity in treating the most different characters, he combined a moral firmness which never yielded an inch of what he had recognized as right ; but he never became stub born. The rights of the church and the privileges of the apostolical see he fought for with the greatest pertinacity; but for himself personally, he wanted no honors. As much as he thought of the church and the Roman chair, so modestly he esteemed himself. More than once his acts gave witness to the humility of his heart : humility was, indeed, to him the most important and the most sublime virtue. His activity was pro digious, encompassing great objects and small ones with equal zeal. Nothing ever became too great for his energy or too small for his atten tion. He was a warm patriot, and cared incessantly for the material as well as for the spiritual welfare of his countrymen. More than once he saved Rome from the Lombards, and relieved her from famine. . . . He was a great character with grand plans, in the realization of which he showed as much insight as firmness, as much prudent calculation of cir cumstances as sagacious judgment of men. The influence he has exer cised is immense, and when this influence is not in every respect for the good, his time is to blame, not he. His goal was always that which he acknowledged as the best. Among all the popes of the sixth and follow ing centuries, he shines as a star of the very first magnitude."
Rud. Baxmann (/. c., I. 45 sq.) : "Amidst the general commotion which the invasion of the Lombards caused in Italy, one man stood fast on his post in the eternal city, no matter how high the surges swept over it. As Luther, in his last will, calls himself an advocate of God, whose name was well known in heaven and on earth and in hell, the epitaph