Pope Gregory

Pope Gregory I, known to later ages as Gregory the Great, was born in Rome around the middle of the sixth century into a wealthy Christian senatorial family. His father Gordianus held civil office in the city; his mother Silvia was later venerated as a saint, as were two paternal aunts, Tarsilla and Aemiliana. Gregory received the literary and legal education customary for the Roman aristocracy. In early adulthood he entered public life and, about 573, served as prefect of the city of Rome, then the highest municipal office. After his father's death he used the family fortune for religious foundations: he converted the palazzo on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew and established further houses on Sicilian estates. He himself took up the monastic life under a rule in the tradition of Saint Benedict, a choice that shaped his spirituality and later patronage of monasticism.

In 579 Pope Pelagius II sent him to Constantinople as apocrisiarius, the papal representative at the imperial court. Gregory remained there for some six years, taking part in theological debate (notably with Patriarch Eutychius on the resurrection body) and beginning his long commentary on Job, the Moralia. He returned to Rome and to his monastery until Pelagius died in 590 amid plague and famine. The clergy and people elected Gregory bishop of Rome. Contemporary letters show that he tried to have the election set aside; once consecrated, he governed from 590 until his death. He organized grain distributions and hospitals, administered the papal patrimonies in Italy, Sicily, and beyond with close attention to accounts and justice, and negotiated with Lombard dukes and with King Agilulf to spare Rome and its countryside. These measures, taken while imperial help from Ravenna was weak, strengthened the practical authority of the Roman see in central Italy.

Gregory's missionary policy is best known from the mission he sent in 596 under Augustine of Canterbury to the kingdom of Kent. The conversion of King Æthelberht and the foundation of sees at Canterbury, London, and Rochester opened the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Roman Christianity and to Benedictine monasticism; Gregory's letters of instruction to Augustine remain a principal source for that enterprise. He corresponded widely with Frankish rulers, African and Illyrian bishops, and the imperial court, insisting on clerical discipline, the freedom of papal elections from simony, and the care of Jews and of the poor. He described his office as that of servus servorum Dei. His Pastoral Rule became a standard manual for bishops in the Latin West; the Dialogues, including a life of Benedict of Nursia, spread monastic ideals; the surviving register of letters documents day-to-day government. Later tradition associated him with the Roman liturgy and with the chant that bears his name, though the fully developed Gregorian repertory is a later medieval formation.

Gregory died in Rome on 12 March 604 and was buried in St. Peter's. Veneration began at once; he was counted among the four great Latin Doctors of the Church with Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome. In the Roman calendar his feast, long kept on the anniversary of his death, was moved to 3 September so that it would not fall in Lent; Eastern churches continue to commemorate him on 12 March. He is invoked as patron of teachers, students, musicians, singers, and England, among other causes. Historians treat him as a central figure in the passage from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages: a Roman aristocrat and monk who, as bishop of Rome, combined administrative competence, pastoral writing, and missionary initiative at a moment when imperial structures in the West were failing.