Pope Gregory

Pope Gregory I, known to later ages as Gregory the Great, was born in Rome in the mid-sixth century, most often dated around 540, into a wealthy senatorial family commonly associated with the Anicii. His father Gordianus held civic office in the city; his mother Silvia was later venerated as a saint. The household possessed a residence on the Caelian Hill and estates in Sicily. Gregory received the literary and legal education expected of a Roman aristocrat of that century. In the early 570s he served as Prefect of the City of Rome, the principal civil magistracy still remaining in the former imperial capital, then under Byzantine authority and threatened by Lombard expansion in Italy.

After his father's death he turned the Caelian palace into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew and founded further houses on the Sicilian properties, living himself as a monk under a rule in the tradition of Saint Benedict. Pope Pelagius II sent him as apocrisiarius to the imperial court at Constantinople, where he spent several years representing Roman interests and formed a lasting association with the future emperor Maurice. Recalled to Rome, he returned to monastic life until the death of Pelagius II in a plague in 590. The clergy and people elected Gregory bishop of Rome. Contemporary accounts describe his reluctance, including an attempt to avoid the office; he was consecrated nonetheless and governed the Roman see from 590 until 604.

His pontificate combined pastoral writing, poor relief, and practical government at a time when imperial power in Italy was weak. He reorganized the papal patrimonies to feed the Roman poor and refugees, corresponded widely with bishops and secular rulers, and negotiated with the Lombards to spare the city. In 596 he dispatched the prior Augustine and a party of monks to preach among the Anglo-Saxons of Kent, a mission that established the see of Canterbury and led later English writers to call Gregory the apostle of the English. His principal works include the Pastoral Rule, the Dialogues (containing the life of Benedict), Moralia on Job, homilies on the Gospels and on Ezekiel, and a large surviving correspondence. Later tradition linked his name with the body of plainchant called Gregorian, though the historical development of that repertory is more complex than the medieval attribution.

Gregory died in Rome on 12 March 604 and was buried in St. Peter's. Veneration began at once among the Roman people; he was subsequently counted among the four great Latin Doctors of the Church. The anniversary of his death, 12 March, remained his feast in the West until the twentieth-century Roman calendar placed it on 3 September, the date associated with his episcopal consecration; Eastern churches continue to keep 12 March. His letters and treatises, his English mission, and his example of episcopal care shaped the self-understanding of the medieval papacy and the monastic and pastoral culture of Latin Christianity.