Gregory I, SAINT, byname GREGORY THE GREAT (b. c. 540, Rome--d. March 12, 604, Rome; feast day March 12), architect of the medieval papacy (reigned 590-604), a notable theologian who was also an administrative, social, liturgical, and moral reformer. Drawing upon St. Augustine of Hippo's City of God for his views, Gregory formulated ideas of a Christian society that became formalised in the Middle Ages. Among his accomplishments were a reform of the mass from which came the Gregorian chant. Since the 8th century he has been regarded as a doctor (teacher) of the church.

"The Holy Bible is like a mirror before our mind's eye. In it we see our inner face. From the Scriptures we can learn our spiritual deformities and beauties. And there too we discover the progress we are making and how far we are from perfection." - Saint Gregory

Gregory was the son of a Gordianus and Silvia. His great-grandfather was Pope Felix III (reigned 483-492). During his early years in Rome, the Lombards threatened and then invaded Italy (568). In about 572 Gregory, at the age of 32, became praefectus urbis (urban prefect; i.e., the administrative president of Rome). Political and social conditions apparently caused him to relinquish this highest civilian office only two years later. Having a great interest in monasticism, Gregory converted the palace at Caelian Hill, which he had inherited as part of a large paternal fortune, into St. Andrew's Monastery, but he did not become its abbot. He then utilised his entire estate for the establishment of six additional monasteries on his other holdings in Sicily.

Pope Benedict I (reigned 575-579) assigned him a diaconate in Rome, and in 579 Pope Pelagius II (reigned 579-590) sent him to Constantinople (the capital of the Byzantine Empire) as a papal nuncio, or representative, the curia's (papal administrative office) only foreign post. Gregory probably served there under Emperor Tiberius II (reigned 578-582) and Emperor Maurice (reigned 582-602) until 584, on the whole without much success in securing aid for Rome against the Lombards, who were also at war with Byzantium. Election to the papacy. After sincere efforts to evade election to the papacy, Gregory was elected in 590 to that highest ecclesiastical position in the West. He complained in letters that he had been forced to assume the office. He determined to be a pope for the people, and he immediately devoted himself to alleviating the misery of the populace and of the refugees, including 3,000 nuns who had fled from the Lombards. Gregory I had grain sent from Sicily and used the revenues from church property to aid those who were starving and living in severe poverty. He centralised the entire papal administration and vigorously opposed the graft and negligence of those in positions of responsibility, who, according to his view, administered the property of the poor and therefore were obligated to live up to the norms of absolute justice.

The corrupt Byzantine officials had to be kept in check with gifts. Gregory became the first pope especially known for his devotion to social concerns, a devotion succinctly stated in one of his letters (Epistle I:44): "We do not want the treasury of the church defiled by disreputable gain." The Pope attempted to reform and save the church in Italy, which was endangered spiritually as well as materially. He began his attempt by slowly catholicising, in spite of their external Arianism (a heresy that denied the essential unity of God the Father and God the Son), the uncivilised Lombards. He did not want to see them destroyed but rather won for the kingdom of God, without breaking with Byzantium. He protested against the oppressive fiscal policies of the Byzantine exchequer, which so harshly taxed the people that they sometimes had to sell their children or emigrate into areas controlled by the Lombards. The Lombards, in turn, so extorted the Pope on their behalf that he called himself the "paymaster of the city."

Romanus, the Byzantine governor of Ravenna, who wanted war instead of the proposed peace of the Pope, ignored the Lombard king Agilulf 's (reigned 590-616) stipulations for peace. He acted badly toward Gregory and agitated against him before the emperor Maurice. The letters of Gregory during the Lombard danger, citing the intrigues of Romanus and the accusations of the Emperor, provide a vivid and illuminating interpretation of the history of the time as well as an insight into the character of the Pope. Not until 598 did a temporary peace result in Italy. Relations with Byzantium. In 602 Phocas, a Thracian centurion in the imperial army, during a period of disorder, managed to get himself elected emperor. He had Emperor Maurice, Empress Constance, the couple's five sons - the oldest was the godson of the Pope - and three daughters executed. Knowing how to make use of the existing conditions of social and political disorder, Phocas, later a hated tyrant, also knew how to manipulate people. He gained the Pope's sympathy and approval of his Lombard policy, a blemish on Gregory's otherwise saintly character. Phocas, who was thus able to act with increasing terror, sought support from Gregory, whose blessing was tantamount to absolution for all offences. This action on the part of the head of the highest moral court of Europe established a precedent that was followed by many popes. The Byzantine Phocas, however, made peace with the Lombards, and thus peace for Italy in its relations with the Lombards was not secured by Gregory.

The realisation that a peace purchased at the price of agreement with Phocas also would incur negative consequences had not occurred to Gregory. Phocas recognised the papal primacy of jurisdiction in the church and gave Gregory the impression of subordination. The Roman papacy had always valued such an attitude and in doing so overlooked other matters, including even the character of those with whom it came to terms. Gregory was deceived by Phocas, who conferred on him, rather than on John IV (the Faster), the patriarch of Constantinople, the disputed title of "ecumenical patriarch." The deposed and executed emperor Maurice, a devout humane ruler, had not previously granted the sought-after title to the patriarch of Constantinople. The patriarch John, therefore, conferred this title on himself, as had other patriarchs before him, a practice that Pope Pelagius II had previously disputed. Gregory in 595 protested against this designation out of his conviction regarding the primacy of the pope. Instead, Gregory conferred on himself the title "servant of God's servants," a title borrowed from St. Augustine, which in its far too great humility meant, in effect, the opposite.

A reign of anarchy under Phocas spelled the end of the late Roman era. Gregory, with foresight, clearly recognised the approaching importance of the migrating peoples of the West, who were hardly or not at all christianised, and that the future of the church of the West lay with them. The visionary ideals of his conception in practice, however, would be to bring the barbarian powers of the West under the political sovereignty of Byzantium in the sense of a united Christian world under the ecclesiastical authority of Rome. He intensified his influential connections with Theodolinda, the Catholic Bavarian wife of the Lombard king Agilulf, whose son Adaloald only became Catholic in 615, and with Brunhild, the powerful Merovingian queen with whom he dealt just as submissively as he had with Phocas.

In 596, under the protection of Brunhild, he initiated one of the greatest acts of his pontificate, the establishment of missions in England. His decision to do so may have emanated from his apprehension that the highly spiritual Irish-Scottish monasticism, which was strongly influenced by the Eastern Church and had not joined Rome, might finally take possession of the mission to England. He appointed Augustine (later first archbishop of Canterbury) and a band of 40 monks to begin the work in England. In contrast to other regions, Gregory had much regard for the pagan mentalities and customs in England, to which Augustine seldom adhered. The later English missionary monks St. Willibrord (658-739) and St. Boniface (c. 672/673-754) were able to conduct their missionary campaigns on the European continent because of the efforts of Gregory in regard to England. Gregory, however, thought about missions in terms that were not always consistent with the monastic ideal of conversion by peaceful persuasion. He sometimes advocated a war of aggression against heathens in order to christianise them. His letter to Gennadius, the Byzantine governor from Africa, with the demand "to wage numerous wars"--in complete opposition to his peace efforts in Italy - in order to convert the subjugated to Christianity, can be viewed as the earliest conception of a crusade, a "holy war" differing from the spiritual battles of missionary activities.

Gregory became, according to some misrepresentations, the model for the warring Pope Gregory VII (c. 1025-1085) as well as for Anselm of Lucca (Pope Alexander II) and Bonizone of Sutri, the well-known war theorists and contemporaries of Gregory VII. The earliest war benediction originated with Gregory; he has become, along with St. Augustine (354-430), a precedent setter for the ecclesiastical war ideology of the Middle Ages. He admonished Brunhild to prevent pagan sacrifices by means of armed forces. In regard to the Jews, to whom he offered economic advantages at conversion, the Pope was essentially tolerant. Had forced conversions been successful, however - such a policy was practised in Spain by King Recared (died 601), who shortly beforehand (587) had become Catholic, and by the great church leader and adversary of the Jews, St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636)--it is probable that Gregory would have agreed to such a policy.

With the consolidation of the patrimony of Peter (lands controlled by the papacy), Gregory, without realising it himself, became the founder of the later Papal States and of the temporal papal authority. According to his view, the patrimony of Peter ought to be at the immediate disposal of the church and of the poor. The view that this state would at one time serve the authoritative demands of the popes and would result in wars conducted by popes for augmentation of their imperialistic policies was inconsistent with his concept of the papacy's role in temporal affairs. He understood his period of rule as one of irrevocable service, as charity over the authority. His epitaph bears his policy's most suitable distinguishing mark: God's Consul. Gregory did not comprehend that rulers and nations were incapable of following his conception of a societas reipublicae Christianae (a society of a Christian republic), which was formalised later in the Middle Ages. He was completely dependent upon the teaching (especially the concept of The City of God) of St. Augustine but not, however, predisposed to speculative theology.

The Pope, in whose views and actions are found the first attempts to subjugate secular authority to ecclesiastic authority and to elevate the priest to an extremely high status, exhibited a strange mixture of withdrawal from the world and energy, idealism and realism, melancholy and trust in God, and otherworldliness and the desire for power.

As a monk, which he always remained, he naturally had the expansion of monasticism especially at heart. Through him the Benedictine monastic principle attained broader support and results.
Because of his concern for people, he tried to make their faith more intelligible to themselves by popularising miracles and the concept of purgatory, as well as by encouraging a reform of the mass, from which came the Gregorian chant. His numerous writings, including his letters, possess little originality, but his Regulae pastoralis liber ("Book of Rules for Pastors") became a spiritual and practical guide to medieval bishops. The Moralia in Job, a textbook on moral theology and biblical interpretation, also exerted much influence in succeeding centuries. His ecclesiastical training was not extensive; he rejected culture and art as characteristic values; he treated the pre-Christian spiritual life with hostility.

Estimations of his character oscillate in history; and he has undergone highly contrary evaluation, ranging all the way from ecclesiastical adulation to sharp criticism. Gregory's body lies buried in St. Peter's basilica in Rome. He had forbidden veneration of his corpse under penalty of excommunication.