Medieval Leadership: Gregory’s Rule of Pastoral Care
Modern bookshelves are crammed with leadership advice, but it was not always so. Where would you have learned about leadership if you lived in the Middle Ages? Perhaps – if you were fortunate – you might have access to Gregory the Great’s Liber Regulae Pastoralis – a leadership manual for the spiritual shepherds of men. (If you aren’t familiar with Gregory the Great, you can learn more about his remarkable life here).
Gregory pictures the pastor (or ‘ruler,’ as he frequently styles him) as a man who is morally outstanding. The ruler knows how to rule himself in such a way that he stands above his people in moral dignity. Yet he must never hesitate to meet them where they are in their spiritual journey. This ideal is summarized in the first chapter and amplified in future chapters.
Recognizing that both the inward and outward life are important, Gregory begins his detailed discussion, in chapter two, with the necessity of inward purity. He notes that an impure vessel will sully all that it contacts, and therefore the pastor must live in purity of mind. Referring again to the pastor as a model for his people, the author says, “One who is set up for a model to others should ever, by the strictness of his way of life, display what a wealth of reason he carries in his breast.”[1] This is propagated, in part, through meditation on the saints of old.
Moving to the outward form of life, chapter three argues that the pastor is to live as one who has renounced worldly lifestyles. The pastor, like the prophet Isaiah, must get up to a high mountain of moral excellence if he will bring good tidings to Zion. In using this metaphor, Gregory hints at the idea of a pastor as one who is called to speak.
Yet speech is itself dangerous. In the fourth chapter, the Gregory discusses the tongue. He points out that “…just as incautious speech leads men into error, so, too, unseasonable silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed.”[2]
By the fifth chapter, Gregory’s ideal of the pastor as a moral giant is quite evident. At this point he issues a caution – that while the ruler must be elevated in his spirituality, yet he still condescends to the weakness of his flock. Several Biblical characters illustrate this condescension, including Moses, who meditated in the tabernacle but returned to rule the people.
There is now an evident shift from the life of the pastor to his leadership over the flock. In the sixth chapter, the ruler is instructed how to lead good and evil men. Since all men are equal, Gregory sees the pastor as a comrade of good men. However, since vice makes some men as beasts, the pastor is to exercise dominion over them. Even this severity must be moderated with gentleness, and the more power a pastor has, the more he must guard against abuses.
The great difficulty of the pastor – as Gregory well knew from his life in a monastery – is to maintain a spiritual frame of mind when caught up in the affairs of worldly men. In the seventh chapter he urges balance. Not only do worldly cares and spiritual solitude require balance, but so too do compassion and doctrine. Both are required for effective ministry.
In the eighth chapter, Gregory reveals how the pastor must not perform his duties to gain personal admiration, but he still must seek to please his flock in order to propagate the truth more effectively.
The ninth chapter contains a list of vices that often conceal themselves as virtues. Gregory is a student of the human heart, and he knows, for example, that negligence often conceals itself as kindness, and anger as zeal.
Perhaps the most baffling chapter, or at least the one which requires the most wisdom to apply, is the tenth. Pointing out that sometimes a rebuke will not help the errant, Gregory recommends passing over the faults of some, while at the same time indicating that those faults have been noticed. This method of ignoring while drawing attention to obvious error is contrasted with that of examining little faults in some people to discover their larger secret sins.
It is in this tenth chapter that we see one of the clearest statements of what Gregory believed the work of the pastor was: “It is, surely, the duty of the ruler to reveal the glory of our homeland in Heaven by preaching, to show what great temptations of the ancient Enemy are lurking in this life’s journey, and to correct with severe and zealous asperity those evils in his subjects which cannot be treated with forbearance, lest, being too little incensed against such faults, he himself be held guilty of all.”[3]
Finally, in the eleventh chapter, Gregory returns to the inner man. He recommends that the ruler requires constant meditation on Divine law as a remedy against worldly concerns.
Gregory was a man of his age. Those looking for a modern book on spiritual leadership with concise lessons or clear Biblical exposition are bound to be disappointed. Gregory often spiritualizes his texts, as when he describes the hair of a priest as worldly cares (which, he points out, the Scripture forbids to grow long, yet must not be entirely removed). He speaks as a medieval, not a modern.
Despite these shortcomings, the second book of the Liber Regulae
Pastoralis is a wealth of wisdom for anyone called to exercise spiritual
leadership. Gregory brings out many lessons of timeless leadership. He draws on
the truths of the Bible, his own thoughtful recognition of human nature, and
the wisdom of common sense. Despite living over fifteen hundred years ago,
Gregory distils many of the lessons that modern leadership books are just
discovering.
[1] Gregory. Pastoral Rule: Regula Pastoralis, trans. H. Davis (New York and Ramsey: Newman Press, 1978), 46.
[2] Gregory. Pastoral Rule: Regula Pastoralis, trans. H. Davis (New York and Ramsey: Newman Press, 1978), 51-52.
[3] Gregory. Pastoral Rule: Regula Pastoralis, trans. H. Davis (New York and Ramsey: Newman Press, 1978), 82-83.
