This holy pope had labored many years under a great weakness of his breast and stomach, and was afflicted with slow fevers, and frequent fits of the gout, which once confined him to his bed two whole years. On the 25th of January, 604, he gave to the church of St. Paul several parcels of land to furnish it with lights: the act of donation remains to this day engraved on a marble stone in the same church. God called him to himself on the 12th of March, the same year, about the sixty-fourth of his age, after he had governed the church thirteen years, six months, and ten days. His pallium, the reliquary which he wore about his neck, and his girdle, were preserved long after his death, when John the deacon wrote, who describes his picture drawn from the life, then to be seen in the monastery of St. Andrew.[52] His holy remains rest in the Vatican church. Both the Greek and Latins honor his name. The council of Clif, or Cloveshove, under archbishop Cuthbert, in 747, commanded his feast to be observed a holyday in all the monasteries in England; which the council of Oxford, in 1222, {579} extended to the whole kingdom. This law subsisted till the change of religion.[53]
* * * * *
Every superior, who is endued with the sincere spirit of humility and charity, looks upon himself with this great hope, as the servant of all, bound to labor and watch night and day, to bear every kind of affront, to suffer all manner of pains, to do all in his power, to put on every shape, and sacrifice his own ease and life to procure the spiritual improvement of the least of those who are committed to his charge. He is incapable of imperious haughtiness, which alienates the minds of inferiors, and renders their obedience barely exterior and a forced hypocrisy. His commands are tender entreaties, and if he is obliged to extend his authority, this he does with secret repugnance, losing sight of himself, intent only on God's honor and his neighbor's salvation, placing himself in spirit beneath all his subjects, and all mankind, and esteeming himself the last of all creatures. St. Paul, though vested with the most sublime authority, makes use of terms so mild and so powerfully ravishing, that they must melt the hardest heart. Instead of commanding in the name of God, see how he usually expresses himself: "I entreat you, O Timothy, by the love which you bear me. I conjure you, by the bowels of Jesus Christ. I beseech you, by the meekness of Christ. If you love me, do this." And see how he directs us to reprove those who sin: "If any one should fall, do you who are spiritual remind him in that spirit of meekness, remembering that you may also fall," and into a more grievous crime. St. Peter, who had received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, shed more tears of tender charity than he speaks words. What heart can be so savage and unnatural, as to refuse to obey him who, having authority to lay injunctions, and thunder out anathemas, weeps instead of commanding. If SS. Peter and Paul pour out the water of tears and mildness, St. John casts darts of fire into the hearts of those whom he commands. "My little children," says he, "if you love Christ, do this. I conjure you, by Christ, our good Master, love affectionately, and this is enough. Love will teach you what to do. The unction of the Holy Ghost will instruct you." This is the true spirit of governing; a method sure to gain the hearts of others, and to inspire them with a love of the precept itself and of virtue. St. Macarius of Egypt was styled the god of the monks, so affectionately and readily was he obeyed by them, because he never spoke a word with anger or impatience. Moses was chosen by God to be the leader and legislator of his people, because he was the meekest of men: and with what astonishing patience did he bear the murmurs and rebellions of an ungrateful and stiff-necked people! David's meekness towards Saul and others purchased him the crown, and was one of the principal virtues by which he was rendered a king according to God's own heart. Those who command with imperious authority show they are puffed up with the empty wind of pride, which makes them feel an inordinate pleasure in the exercise of power, the seed of tyranny, and the bane of virtue in their souls. Anger and impatience, which are more dangerous, because usually canonized under the name of zeal, demonstrate persons to be very ill-qualified for governing others, who are not masters of themselves or their own passions. How few are so crucified to themselves, and so perfectly grounded in humility, {580} patience, meekness, and charity, that power and authority infect not their souls with the deadly poison of secret pride, or in whom no hurry, importunity, or perverseness can extinguish the spirit of meekness, in which, in all occurrences, they preserve the same evenness of mind, and the same angelical sweetness of countenance. Yet with this they are sons of thunder in resisting evil, and in watching against all the artifices of the most subtle and flattering passions of sinners, and are firm and inflexible in opposing every step towards any dangerous relaxation. St. Gregory, by his whole conduct, sets us an example of this perfect humility and meekness, which he requires as an essential qualification in every pastor, and in all who are placed over others.[54] He no less excelled in learning, with which, he says, that humility must be accompanied, lest the pastor should lead others astray. But above all other qualities for the pastoral charge, he requires an eminent gift of prayer and contemplation. Præ cæteris contemplatione suspensus. Pastor. Cura, part 2, c. 5.
Footnotes: 1. See Annot. at the end of his life, p. 580 {original footnote has incorrect page reference} infra. 2. Dial. l. 3, c. 33. 3. Hist. b. 2, c. 1. 4. Bede adds, that he again asked, what was the name of that nation, and was answered, that they were called Angli or Angles. "Right," said he, "for they have angelical faces, and it becomes such to be companions with the angels in heaven. What is the name (proceeded he) of the province from which they are brought?" It was replied, that the natives of that were called Deiri. "Truly Deiri, because withdrawn from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ," said he, alluding to the Latin, De irâ Dei eruti. He asked further, "How is the king of that province called?" They him that his name was All{} and he making an allusion to the word, said: "Alleluiah, the praise of God the Creator, must be sung in those parts." Some censure this conversation of St. Gregory as a piece of low punning. But the taste of that age must be considered. St. Austin found it necessary to play sometimes with words to please auditors whose ears had, by custom, caught an itch to be sometimes tickled by quibbles to their fancy. The ingenious author of the late life of the lord chancellor Bacon, thought custom an apology for the most vicious style of that great man, of whom he writes: "His style has been objected to as full of affectation, full of false eloquence. But that was the vice, not of the man, but of the times he lived in; and particularly of a court that delighted in the tinsel of wit and learning, in the poor ingenuity of punning and quibbling." St. Gregory was a man of a fine genius and of true learning: yet in familiar converse might confirm to the taste of the age. Far from censuring his wit, or the judgment of his historian, we ought to admire his piety, which, from every circumstance, even from words, drew allusions to nourish devotion, and turn the heart to God. This we observe in other saints, and if it be a fault, we might more justly censure on this account the elegant epistles of St. Paulinus, or Sulpitius Severus, than this dialogue of St. Gregory. 5. Eutychius had formerly defended the Catholic faith with at zeal against the Eutychians and the errors of the emperor Justinian, who, though he condemned those heretics, yet adopted one part of their blasphemies, asserting that Christ assumed a body which was by its own nature incorruptible, not formed of the Blessed Virgin, and subject to pain, hunger, or alteration only by a miracle. This was called the heresy of the Incorrupticolæ, of which Justinian declared himself the abetter; and, after many great exploits to retrieve the ancient glory of the empire, tarnished his reputation by persecuting the Catholic Church and banishing Eutychius. 6. St. Greg. Moral. l. 14, c. 76, t. 1, p. 465. 7. He died in 582 and is ranked by the Greeks among the saints. See the Bollandists in vitâ S. Eutychil ad 6 Apr. 8. Fleury thinks he was chosen abbot before his embassy to Constantinople; but Ceillier and others prove, that this only happened after his return. 9. It appears from the life of St. Theodosius the Cenobiarch, from St. Ambrose's funeral oration on Valentinian, and other monuments, that it was the custom, from the primitive ages, to keep the third, seventh, and thirtieth, or sometimes fortieth day after the decease of a Christian, with solemn prayers and sacrifices for the departed soul. From this fact of St. Gregory, a trental of masses for a soul departed are usually called the Gregorian masses, on which see Gavant and others. 10. Dial. l. 4, c. 55, p. 465, t. 2. 11. It is inserted by St. Gregory of Tours in his history. Greg. Touron. l. 10 c. 1. 12. Some moderns say, an angel was seen sheathing his sword on the stately pile of Adrian's sepulchre. But no such circumstance is mentioned by St. Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul, or John. 13. Paul the deacon says, it was by a pillar of light appearing over the place where he lay concealed. 14. L. 1, ep. 21, l. 7, ep. 4. 15. L. 1, ep. 25. 16. L. 1, ep. 5, p. 491. 17. L. 1, ep. 6, p. 498. 18. Conc. 3, Touron. can. 3. See Dom Bulteau's Preface to his French translation of S. Gregory's Pastoral, printed in 1629. 19. He reformed the Sacramentary, or Missal and Ritual of the Roman church. In the letters of SS. Innocent I., Celestine I., and St. Leo, we find mention made of a written Roman Order of the mass: in this the essential parts were always the same; but accidental alterations in certain prayers have been made Pope Gelasius thus augmented and revised the liturgy, in 490; his genuine Sacramentary was published at Rome by Thomasi, in 1680. In it are mentioned the public veneration of the cross on Good Friday, the solemn benediction of the holy oils, the ceremonies of baptism, frequent invocation of saints, veneration shown to their relics, the benediction of holy water, votive masses for travellers, for the sick and the dead, masses on festivals of saints, and the like. The Sacramentary of St. Gregory, differs from that of Gelasius only in some collects or prayers. The conformity between the present church office and the ancient appears from this work, and the saint's Antiphonarius and Responsorium. The like ceremonies and benedictions are found in the apostolic constitutions, and all other ancient liturgic writings; out of which Grabe, Hickes, Deacon, and others have formed new liturgies very like the present Roman, and several of them have restored the idea of a true sacrifice. Dom Menard has enriched the Sacramentary of St. Gregory with most learned and curious notes.
Besides his Comments or Morals on the book of Job, which he wrote at Constantinople, about the year 582, in which we are not to look for an exposition of the text, but an excellent compilation of the main principles of morality, and an interior life, we have his exposition of Ezekiel, in twenty-two homilies. These were taken in short hand as he pronounced them, and were preached by him at Rome, in 592, when Ag{}ulph the Lombard was laying waste the whole territory of Rome. See l. 2, in Ezech. hom. 6, and Paul the deacon, l. 4, hist. Longob. c. 8. The exposition of the text is allegorical, and only intended for ushering in {} moral reflections, which are much shorter than in the books on Job. His forty homilies on the gospels he preached on several solemnities while he was pope. His incomparable book, On the Pastoral Care, which is an excellent instruction of pastors, and was drawn up by him when he saw himself placed in the pontificate, consists of four parts. In the first he treats of the dispositions requisite in one who is called to the pastoral charge; in the second of duties of a pastor; in the third on the instruction which he owes to his flock; and, in the fourth, on his obligation of watching over his own heart, and of diligent self-examination. In four books of dialogues, between himself and his disciple Peter, he recounts the miracles of his own times, upon the authority of vouchers, on whose veracity he thought he could rely. He so closely adheres to their relations, that the style is much lower than in his other writings. See the preface of the Benedictin editor on this work. His letters are published in fourteen books, and are a very interesting compilation. We have St. Gregory's excellent exposition of the Book of Canticles, which Ceillier proves to be genuine against Oudin, the apostate, and some others. The six books on the first book of Kings are valuable work but cannot be ascribed to St. Gregory the Great. The commentary on the seven penitential psalms Ceillier thinks to be his work: but it seems doubtful. Paterius, a notary, one of St. Gregory's auditors, compiled, out of his writings and sermons, several comments on the scriptures. Claudius, abbot of Classius, a disciple of our saint, did the same. Alulphus, a monk at Tournay, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, made the like compilations from his writings. Dom Dionysius of St. Marthe, a Maurist Benedictin monk, favored the world with an accurate edition of the works of St. Gregory the Great, published at Paris in four volumes folio, in 1705. This has been reprinted at Verona and again at Ausburg, in 1758, with the addition of the useful anonymous book, De formula Prælatorum. 20. L. 6, Ep. 35. 21. L. 7, Ep. 26. 22. Animæ nostra pericula, l. 1, Ep. 14. 23. L. 1, Ep. 35, &c. 24. L. 1, Ep. 35. 25. L. 7, Ep. 5, l. 12, Ep. 30. 26. L. 4, Ep. 47. 27. Præf. in Dial. 28. L. 9, Ep. 22. 29. L. 2, Ep. 121. 30. L. 12, Ep. 24. 31. The Lombards came originally from Scandinavia, and settled first in Pomerania, and afterwards with the Hunns in Pannonia, who had remained there when they returned out of Italy under Attila. Narses, the patrician, after having governed Italy sixteen years with great glory, was recalled by the emperor Justin the Younger. But resenting this treatment, he invited the Lombards into that country. Those barbarians leaving Pannonia to the Hunns, entered Italy, easily made themselves masters of Milan, under their king Alboinus, in 568; and extending their dominions, often threatened Rome itself. In the reign of Charles the Fat, the Hunns were expelled Pannonia by the Hongres, another swarm from the same northern hive, akin to the Hunns, who gave to that kingdom the name of Hungary. That the Lombards were so called, not from their long swords, as some have pretended, but from their long beards, see demonstrated from the express testimony of Paul the Deacon, himself a Lombard of Constantine Porphyrogenetta, by Jos. Assemani. Hist. Ital. scriptor. t. 1, c. 3, p. 33. 32. Paul Diac. de Gest Longobard. l. 4, c. 8. S. Greg. l. 2, Ep. 46. 33. L. 5. Ep. 41. 34. L. 4, Ep. 30. 35. Sublatâ exinde, quâ par est veneratione, imagine et cruce. L. 9, Ep. 6, p. 930. 36. L. 9, Ep. 6, p. 930. 37. L. 14, Ep. 12, p. 1270. 38. These words are quoted by Paul the deacon, in the council of Rome, Conc. t. 6, p. 1462, and pope Adrian I., in his letter to Charlemagne in defence of holy images. 39. L. 11, Ep. 13. 40. L. 3, Ep. 56; l. 3, Ep. 53; l. 9, Ep. 59; l. 6, Ep. 66; l. 7, Ep. 19; l. 5, Ep. 20. 41. St. Gregory was always a zealous asserter of the celibacy of the clergy, which law he extended also to subdeacons, who had before been ranked among the clergy of the Minor orders, (l. 1, ep. 44, l. 4, Ep. 34.) The Centuriators, Heylin, and others, mention a forged letter, under the name of Udalrirus, said to be written to pope Nicholas, concerning the heads of children found by St. Gregory in a pond. But a smore ridiculous fable was never invented, as is demonstrated from many inconsistencies of that forged letter: and St. Gregory in his epistles everywhere mentions the law of the celibacy of the clergy as ancient and inviolable. Nor was any pope Nicholas contemporary with St. Udalricus. See Baronius and Dom de {Sainte} Marthe, in his life of St. Gregory. 42. L. 3, Ep. 29; l. 5, Ep. 13. 43. L. 6, Ep. 15, 16, 17. 44. L. 11, Ep. 28; olim 58, p. 1180, &c. 45. L. 7, Ep. 25. 46. Some Protestants slander St. Gregory, as if by this publication of the imperial edict he had concurred to what he condemned as contrary to the divine law. Dr. Mercier, in his letter in favor of a law commanding silence, with regard to the constitution Unigenitus in France, in 1759, pretends that this holy pope thought obedience to the emperor a duty even in things of a like nature. But Dr. Launay, Réponse à la Lettre d'un Docteur de Sorbunne, partie 2, p. 51, and Dr. N., Examen de la Lettre d'un Docteur de Sorboune sur la nécessité de garder In silence sur la Constitution Unigenitus, p. 33, t. 1, demonstrate that St. Gregory regarded the matter, as it really is, merely as a point of discipline, and nowhere says the edict was contrary to the divine law, but only not agreeable to God, and tending to prejudice the interest of his greater glory. In matters of faith or essential obligation, he calls forth the zeal and fortitude of prelates to stand upon their guard as opposing unjust laws, even to martyrdom, as the same authors demonstrate. 47. Ep. 55. 48. Theophanes Chronogr. 49. Ps. 118. 50. L. 13, ep. 31, 38. 51. We say the same of the compliments which he paid to the impious French queen Brunehault, at which lord Bolingbroke takes offence; but a respect is due to persons in power. St. Gregory nowhere flatters their vices, but admonishes by compliments those who could not be approached without them. Thus did St. Paul address Agrippa and Festas, &c. In refusing the sacraments of the church to impenitent wicked princes, and in checking their crimes by seasonable remonstrances, St. Gregory was always ready to exert the zeal of a Baptist: as he opposed the unjust projects of Mauritius, so would he have done those of Phocas when in his power. 52. The antiquarian will read with pleasure the curious notes of Angelus Rocca, and the {}enedic{ons on} the pictures of St. Gregory and his parents, and on this holy pope's pious donations. 53. St. Gregory gave St. Austin a small library which was kept in his monastery at Canterbury. Of it there still remain a book of the gospels in the Bodleian library, and another in that of Corpus-Christi in Cambridge. The other books were psalters, the Pastorals, the Passionarium Sanctorium, and the like. See Mr. Wauley, in his catalogue of S{} on manuscripts, at the end of Dr. Hickes's Thesaurus, p. 172. Many rich vestments, vessels, relics, and a pall given by St. Gregory to St. Austin, were kept in the same monastery. Their original inventory, drawn up by Thomas of Elmham, in the reign of Henry V., is preserved in the Harleian library, and published by the learned lady, Mrs. E. Elstob, at the end of a Saxon panegyric on St. Gregory. 54. Gregor. M. in l. 1. Reg. c. 16, v. 3 and 9.
ANNOTATION
ON
THE LIFE OF ST. GREGORY.
BARONIUS thinks that his monastery of Saint Andrew's followed the rule of St. Equitius, because its first abbots were drawn out of his province, Valeria. On another side, Dom Ma-billon (t. 1. Actor. Sanct. & t. 2, Analect. and Annal. Bened. l, 6,) maintains that it followed the rule of St. Benedict, which St. Gregory often commends and prefers to all other rules. His colleagues, in their life of St. Gregory, Natalis Alexander, in his Church History, and others, have written to support the same opinion: who all, with Mabillon, borrow all their arguments from the learned English Benedictin, Clemens Reynerus, in his Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia. Others object that St. Gregory in his epistles ordains many things contrary to the rule of St. Benedict, and think he who has written so much concerning St. Benedict, would have mentioned by some epithet the circumstance of being his disciple, and would have called the rule of that patriarch his own. These antiquaries judge it most probable that the monastery of St. Andrew had its own rule prescribed by the first founders, and borrowed from different places: for this was the ordinary method of most monasteries in the west, till afterwards the rule of St. Benedict was universally received for better uniformity and discipline: to which the just commendations of St. Gregory doubtless contributed.
F. Clement Reyner, in the above-mentioned book, printed at Doway, in folio, in 1626, displays much erudition in endeavoring to prove that St. Austin, and the other monks sent by Saint Gregory to convert the English, professed the order of St. Benedict. Mabillon borrows his arguments on this subject in his preface to the Acts of the Benedictins, against the celebrated Sir John Marsham, who, in his long preface to the Monasticon, sets himself to show that the first English monks followed rules instituted by their own abbots, often gleaned out of many. Dr. Hickes confirms this assertion against Mabillon with great erudition, (Diss. pp. 67, 68,) which is espoused by Dr. Tanner, bishop of St. Asaph's, in his preface to nis exact Notitia Monastica, by the author of Biographia Britannica, in the life of Bede, t. 1, p. 656, and by the judicious William Thomas, in his additions to the new edition of Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, (t. 1, p. 157.) These authors think that the rule of St. Benedict was not generally received by the English monks before the regulations of St. Dunstan; nor perfectly till after the Norman conquest. For pope Constantine, in 709, in the bull wherein he establishes the rule of St. Benedict to be followed in the abbey of Evesham, says of it: "Which does not prevail in those parts." "Quæ minus in illis partibus habetur." In 747, Cuthbert archbishop of Canterbury, in a synod held in presence of Ethelbaid, king of the Mercians, at Cloveshove, (which town some place in Kent, others more probably in Mercia, about Reading,) published Monastic Constitutions, which were {581} followed by the English monks till the time of St. Dunstan. In these we find no mention of the rule of Saint Benedict; nor in Bede. The charter of king Ethelbald which mentions the Black monks, is a manifest forgery. Even that name was not known before the institution of the Camaldulenses, in 1020, and the Carthusians, who distinguished themselves by white habits. Dom Mege, in his commentary on the rule of St. Benedict, shows that the first Benedictins wore white, not black. John of Glastenbury, and others, published by Hearne, who call the apostles of the English Black Monks, are too modern, unless they produce some ancient vouchers. The monastery of Evesham adopted the rule of Saint Benedict, in 709. St. Bennet Biscop and St. Wilfrid both improved the monastic order in the houses which they founded, from the rule of St. Benedict, at least borrowing some constitutions from it. The devastations of the Danes scarce left a convent of monks standing in England, except those of Glastenbury and Abingdon, which was their state in the days of king Alfred, as Leland observes. St. Dunstan, St. Oswald, and St. Ethelwold, restored the monasteries, and propagated exceedingly the monastic state. St. Oswald had professed the order of Saint Benedict in France, in the monastery of Fleury; and, together with the aforesaid two bishops, he established the same in a great measure in England. St. Dunstan published a uniform rule for the monasteries of this nation, entitled, Regularis Concordiæ Anglicæ Nationis, extant in Reyner, and Spelman, (in Spicilegio ad Eadmerum, p. 145,) in which he adopts, in a great measure, the rule of St. Benedict, joining with it many ancient monastic customs. Even after the Norman conquest, the synod of London, under Lanfranc, in 1075, says the regulations of monks were drawn from the rule of St. Bennet and the ancient custom of regular places, as Baronius takes notice, which seems to imply former distinct institutes. From that time down to the dissolution, all the cathedral priories, except that of Carlisle, and most of the rich abbeys in England, were held by monks of the Benedictin order. See Dr. Brown Willis, in his separate histories of Cathedral Priories, Mitred Abbeys, &c.