224 FOURTH PEEIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
to do no more, because what is given to others beyond what rea son requires is subtracted from you. I do not esteem that an honor by which I know my brethren lose their honor. My honor is that of the universal Church. My honor is the solid strength of my brethren. I am then truly honored when all and each are allowed the honor that is due to them. For, if your Holiness calls me universal pope, you deny yourself to be that which you call me universally [that is, you own yourself to be no pope]. But no more of this : away with words which inflate pride and wound charity!" He even objects to the ex pression, "as thou hast commanded," which had occurred in his correspondent's letter. " Which word, l commanded/ I pray you let me hear no more ; for I know what I am, and what you are: in position you are my brethren, in manners you are my fathers. I did not, therefore, command, but desired only to in dicate what seemed to me expedient." 1
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Gregory, while he protested in the strongest terms against the assumption by the Eastern patriarchs of the antichristian and blasphemous title of universal bishop, claimed and exercised, as far as he had the opportunity and power, the authority and oversight over the whole church of Christ, even in the East. " With respect to the church of Constantinople," he asks in one of his letters, " who doubts that it is subject to the apostolic see?" And in another letter : " I know not what bishop is not subject to it, if fault is found in him." " To all who know the Gospels," he writes to emperor Maurice, " it is plain that to Peter, as the prince of all the apostles, was committed by our Lord the care of the whole church (totius ecdesice curd). . . . But although the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power to bind and to loose, were intrusted to him, and the care and principality of the whole church (totius ecdesice cur a et principatus\ he is not called universal bishop ; while my most holy fellow-priest (vir sanctissimus consacerdos meus) John dares to call himself 1 Ep. VIII. 30 (III. 933).
2 52. THE WRITINGS OF GREGORY. 225
universal bishop. I am compelled to exclaim : 0 tcmpora, 0 mores ! "
We have no right to impeach Gregory's sincerity. But he was clearly inconsistent in disclaiming the name, and yet claim ing the thing itself. The real objection is to the pretension of a universal episcopate, not to the title. If \ve concede the for mer, the latter is perfectly legitimate. And such universal power had already been claimed by Roman pontiffs before Gregory, such as Leo I., Felix, Gelasius, Hormisdas, in language and acts more haughty and self-sufficient than his.
No wonder, therefore, that the successors of Gregory, less humble and more consistent than he, had no scruple to use equivalent and even more arrogant titles than the one against which he so solemnly protested with the warning : " God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble."2 But it is a very remarkable fact, that at the beginning of the unfolding of the greatest power of the papacy one of the best of popes should have protested against the antichristian pride and usurpation of the system.
§ 52. The Writings of Gregory.
Comp. the second part of LAU'S biography, pp. 311 sqq., and ADOLF EIJERT : Gcschichte dcr Christ lich-Lateinischcn Literatnr, bis zum Zcitaltcr Karls dcr Grosscn. Leipzig, 1874 sqq., vol. T. 51G sqq.
With all the multiplicity of his cares, Gregory found time for literary labor. His books are not of great literary merit, but were eminently popular and useful for the clergy of the middle ages.
His theology was based upon the four oecumenical councils and the four Gospels, which he regarded as the immovable
1 Epist. V. 20 (III. 745). He quotes in proof the pet-texts of popery, John xxi. 17 ; Luke xxii. 31 ; Matt. xvi. 18.
2 Such titles as UnircrsaUs Episcopus (used by Boniface III., a year after Gregory's death), Pontiffs jtfamnits, Summus Pontife.r, Vicfirius Christi, and even "tpt/us Dei in terris Vicarius" (Cone. Trid. VI. De reform., c. 1). First Vicar of Peter, then Vicar of Christ, at last Vicar of God Almighty !