226 FOUKTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
pillars of orthodoxy; he also accepted the condemnation of the three chapters by the fifth oecumenical council. He was a mo derate Augustinian, but with an entirely practical, unspeculative, uncritical, traditional and superstitious bent of mind. His de struction of the Palatine Library, if it ever existed, is now rejected as a fable ; but it reflects his contempt for secular and classical studies as beneath the dignity of a Christian bishop. Yet in ecclesiastical learning and pulpit eloquence he had no superior in his age.
Gregory is one of the great doctors or authoritative fathers of the church. His views on sin and grace are almost semi-Pela gian. He makes predestination depend on fore-knowledge ; represents the fallen nature as sick only, not as dead ; lays great stress on the meritoriousness of good works, and is chiefly re sponsible for the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, and masses for the benefit of the souls in purgatory.
His Latin style is not classical, but ecclesiastical and monkish ; it abounds in barbarisms ; it is prolix and chatty, but occasionally sententious and rising to a rhetorical pathos, which he borrowed from the prophets of the Old Testament.
The following are his works :
1. Magna Moralia, in thirty-five books. This large work was begun in Constantinople at the instigation of Leander, bishop of Seville, and finished in Rome. It is a three-fold exposition of the book of Job according to its historic or literal, its allego rical, and its moral meaning.1
Being ignorant of the Hebrew and Greek languages, and of Oriental history and customs (although for some time a resident of Constantinople), Gregory lacked the first qualifications for a grammatical and historical interpretation.
The allegorical part is an exegetical curiosity : he reads be-
1 Ep. missoria, cap. 3 (ed. Migne I. 513) : " Primum quidem fundamenta histo ries ponimus; deinde per significationem typicam in artem fidei fabricam mentis erigimus ; ad extremum quoque per moralitatis gratiam, quasi superducto cediftdum colore vestimus"
I 52. THE WRITINGS OF GREGORY. 227
twcen or beneath the lines of that wonderful poem the history of Christ and a whole system of theology natural and revealed. The names of persons and things, the numbers, and even the syllables, are filled with mystic meaning. Job represents Christ ; his wife the carnal nature; his seven sons (seven being the number of perfection) represent the apostles, and hence the clergy; his three daughters the three classes of the faithful laity who are to worship the Trinity; his friends the heretics; the seven thousand sheep the perfect Christians; the three thousand camels the heathen and Samaritans; the five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred she-asses again the heathen, because the prophet Isaiah says : " The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."
The moral sense, which Gregory explains last, is an edifying homiletical expansion and application, and a sort of compend of Christian ethics.
2. Twenty-two Homilies on Ezekiel, delivered in Rome du ring the siege by Agilulph, and afterwards revised.
3. Forty Homilies on the Gospels for the day, preached by Gregory at various times, and afterwards edited.
4. Liber Rcyuhv Pastoralis, in four parts. It is a pastoral theology, treating of the duties and responsibilities of the minis terial office, in justification of his reluctance to undertake the burden of the papal dignity. It is more practical than Chrysostom's "Priesthood" It was held in the highest esteem in the Middle Ages, translated into Greek* by order of the emperor Maurice, and into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, and given to the bishops in France at their ordination, together with the book of canons, as a guide in the discharge of their duties. Gregory, according to the spirit of his age, enjoins strict celibacy even upon sub-deacons. But otherwise he gives most excellent advice suitable to all times. He makes preaching one of the chief duties of pastors, in the discharge of which he himself set a good ex ample. He warns them to guard against the besetting sin of