Gregory the Great
St. Gregory the Great (540-604A.D.)
Gregory was born in Rome about 540 A.D., the son of aristocratic, senatorial family with a tradition of public service. He began a very promising political career as an urban prefect at age 30 years old only to be convicted of the need to reform his life after his father's death. When he did so, he renounced all his worldly goals, sold
all his possessions in 574 A.D. and distributed the proceeds to the poor and still had enough remaining for the construction of seven monasteries. Six were built on his family's estates in Sicily and the seventh was dedicated to St. Andrew and established on Mt. Celio in Rome. At Mt. Celio, dedicated to the rule of St. Benedict, he became a monk and practiced an aesthetical lifestyle so rigorous that it ruined his health and actually endangered his life.
He was called from the monastic life he loved to serve Pope Benedict I as a regional deacon in 577 and was sent by Pope Pelagius II in 578 to the Court of Tiberius II in Constantinople as a kind of papal nuncio. He brought some of his beloved monks with him to keep him in the ascetic lifestyle and they prevailed upon him to begin his great commentary on the book of Job, some 35 volumes, entitled Magna Moralia (An Extensive Consideration of Moral Questions) not completed until 595.
In 585 he returned to his beloved monastery, where he was soon named abbot. He obtained permission to go to Britain to convert the population there with some of his monks, but was immediately recalled by Pope Pelagius who needed his service. But when the Pope died in February 590 of the plague that was sweeping the city, which had also been suffering from flooding, Gregory, who had been serving as his chief adviser, found that he was the unanimous choice of the Roman clergy, senate and people to become his successor.
Gregory, had been reluctant to become pope and wrote the Emperor Maurice requesting he withhold his consent but to no avail. While awaiting the Emperor's decision and ruling in conjunction with several other high officials, Gregory called for the people to join in a vast procession from the seven hills of the city and march together, praying all the while for pardon and relief from the pestilence, to the Basilica of the Blessed Virgin, and thereafter the plague abated and conditions were transformed. Gregory was confirmed as pope.
He was the first pope to use the phrase speaking "ex cathedra," meaning with the full weight and authority of the office of Peter. On the other hand he habitually referred to himself as the "servant of the servants of God." As the first monk to become pope, he did much to foster the spread of monasticism. He reorganized the scattered papal estates so that the poor of the city could be fed during the famine which was raging when he took office. He had food sent daily to the sick and infirm. He used papal funds to pay for the defenses of Rome in the absence of the necessary imperial troops and twice bribed the Lombards to cease their destructive siege of the city in 591, in the absence of imperial concern for Rome by the Emperor in Byzantium. One of his greatest achievements came after he sent the Prior of his Roman monastery, Augustine, with other monks to convert the Anglo-Saxons of England.
He set the tone of moral leadership in his book, The Rule of the Shepherd (591), in which he set rules for the conduct of his fellow bishops and did not hesitate to discipline clerics who failed to maintain the high moral tone of their office. He enforced clerical celibacy, which had been the rule for bishops, priests and deacons since the reign of pope Siricus (384-399) and for sub-deacons since the rule of Leo I.
Perhaps his papal style is best captured by his work entitled Pastoral Care, which spends much ink on the role of the teacher, which he notes, "the unlearned are not to presume to take" for mere prestige when souls are at stake. He constantly quotes the Scriptures for the principles he espouses, displaying the wisdom therein for all to see. Of him the St. Bede the Venerable wrote, "The extent of his writings is a source of amazement when one considers that throughout his youth he was often in agony from gastric pain, and frequently troubled by a slow fever. But in all these afflictions he reflected that Holy Scripture says: 'The Lord scourgeth every son that He receiveth', and the greater his worldly sufferings, the greater his assurance of eternal joy.' "
Finally, we must note his impact on the liturgy. He was responsible for many reforms of the liturgy, instituting the "Stations of the Cross," decreeing that the Holy Father and his clergy and people should pray each day of Lent and go in procession to one of the Churches in Rome to celebrate Mass with special solemnity. He is responsible for some of the changes in the liturgy of the Mass and the sacramentary compiled shortly after his death, the Hadrianum, contains 8 prayers of which he is said to be the author. The Gregorian chant, which has more "individuality and characteristic expression" is attributed to Gregory as well, though some scholars dispute his authorship