Gregory the Great: A Brief Biography
While the fall of Rome in AD 476 began the ‘Dark Ages,’ the transformation was not immediate. It took time for the church to adjust. The Roman Catholic Church was incipient in the Roman Church, but it did not have the form that it has today.
Perhaps the most pivotal churchman of the time was Gregory the Great: a monk, diplomat, Roman, and – according to John Calvin – the last Bishop of Rome worthy of the title.[1] Gregory may not have been a Protestant, but his doctrine was sufficiently Augustinian to be worthy of our respect – even if his thinking was shaped by the times and places in which he lived.
Early Life
Gregory was born around AD 540 in Rome to a wealthy and religious senatorial family. As a young man, Gregory studied law and was notable for his mastery of the trivium. He was certainly well-educated for his time. It comes as no surprise that he was appointed as the Praetor of Rome in his early 30s.
Life as Monk
Gregory’s time as Praetor was short-lived. He soon resigned the position to pursue the contemplative life. It was a lifestyle he would always pursue – and one that he would never fully attain. His father’s death left him in charge of considerable financial resources, so he used the wealth for charitable purposes. With some of it he constituted a new monastery – his own home – and became a monk under authority.
It was not this easy, however, for Gregory to escape the ways of the world. Pope Pelagius II noticed the pious monk and, after five years of world-renunciation, Gregory was sent to Constantinople as a papal representative, or apocrisarius.
For seven years Gregory involved himself in the politics of the Byzantine empire. On the side he pursued the contemplative lifestyle, aided by fellow ascetics who travelled with him. Despite his worldly concerns, he still managed during this time to write the Moralia, a massive commentary on Job.
Finally freed from Constantinople, Gregory returned for five more years of contemplation to his old home-turned-monastery, eventually becoming the abbot. It was his last time to pursue the contemplative life.
Life as Pope
The year AD 590 was extraordinarily chaotic. The Byzantines warred with the Lombards over Italy. The Tiber flooded, famine and disease ravaged Rome, and Pope Pelagius II died of plague in February. The Pope must handle all of this, because he acted as the political ruler of the city of Rome, especially in its most turbulent times.[2]
Faced with a power vacuum, the clergy, Senate, and people of Rome unanimously identified Gregory as the man to provide papal leadership. Gregory was disappointed. He had no interest in leaving the contemplative life. He attempted to escape the office, and while modern scholars doubt the sincerity, or even historicity, of his supposed flight from the city (his attempt to hide may have been a pious ritual),[3] his writings leave little doubt that Gregory truly lamented the office. Shortly after his ordination he penned the Rule of Pastoral Care on the characteristics, work, and responsibility of spiritual leaders, to explain his hesitancy.[4]
Gregory filled his fourteen years of service with activity. The political situation required constant supervision. His de facto role as politician in Rome – and the fact that Rome was nearly a no-mans-land between the Lombards and Byzantines – required constant political discussion. The new Pope drew the ire of the Byzantines when he made a truce with the Lombards, but it spared the city from a siege and eventually led to the catholic baptism of king Agilulph in AD 599.
His most famous controversy occurred with the Patriarch of Constantinople, John IV. When the Patriarch described himself as a ‘universal’ (the title could also be translated ‘ecumenical’) bishop, Gregory objected. In Gregory’s view, such a title claimed an excessive authority over the whole church, which the Pope disputed.[5]
Gregory did not believe that any bishop – even the bishop of Rome – could rightfully claim the title of universal bishop.[6] The Pope believed that the bishop of Rome was preeminent among the bishops, but not primary over the bishops.[7] Yet as the Byzantine patriarch turned deaf ears to his protest, Gregory was driven to use weightier arguments, including his own Petrine succession.[8] It is ironic that Gregory, in his effort to deny episcopal supremacy, helped give credence to an argument that would ultimately assert it.
Gregory is rightly famous for his mission to England. He met several Angles in the slave-market of Rome – or so the story goes – and inquired into their origin. Learning of the spiritual dearth in England, he commissioned a mission to the island which, under Augustine of Canterbury, was successful established Christianity.
Increasingly, Gregory’s health declined. A painful case of gout made it sometimes impossible for him to rise from his couch. Still, he had used his time well. When he died on March 12, 604, he left behind over 850 letters,[9] a mass of sermons, several Biblical commentaries, and – perhaps most valuable of all – the Rule of Pastoral Care. His interest in music led to his later association with the music that would bear his name, Gregorian chant.[10] Revered as a doctor of the church in the Roman Catholic Church, he maintained sufficiently Augustinian views to be accepted by the Protestant reformers.
[1] Lester Little, “Calvin’s Appreciation of Gregory the Great.” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 2 (April 1963): 151.
[2] J. Barmby. The Fathers for English Readers: Gregory the Great (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1879), 13-14.
[3] R. A. Markus. Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 13.
[4] Henry Davis, ed., Saint Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care (New York: Newman Press, 1978), 4.
[5] Barmby, Gregory the Great, 92-93.
[6] George Demacopoulos. “Gregory the Great and the Sixth-Century Dispute over the Ecumenical Title,” Theological Studies 70, no. 3 (2009): 608.
[7] Ibid., 611, 613-614.
[8] Peter McEniery. “Pope Gregory the Great and Infallibility.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 11, no. 2 (1974): 269-70.
[9] Markus, Gregory the Great and His World, 1.
[10] Barmby, Gregory the Great, 188.
