The city of Rome was in a miserable condition. The Tiber had overflowed its banks and had swept away the granaries of corn, thus entailing famine and starvation. A dreadful pestilence had swept away thousands, among them the Pope himself. In a letter, Gregory compared the Roman See to an old shattered ship, letting in the waves on all sides, tossed by daily storms, its planks rotten and gnawed by rats—almost a wreck![187:1] An imperial organisation was needed to give Latin-Teutonic Europe the highest type of an organised, Christian civilisation under one law and one faith, and thus to preserve for future generations the best that was in old Greece and Rome, as well as the best that was in the Germans. "It is impossible to conceive
what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages, without the mediæval Papacy."[188:1] A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose—a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career—such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other.
Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. He felt unworthy of it and feared its duties might lure him to worldliness—hence he fled the city and wrote the Emperor beseeching him not to confirm the election. But the Roman prefect intercepted the letter and sent instead a petition urging the confirmation. Gregory was captured at last and forcibly consecrated Supreme Pontiff. He was the best qualified man in all Christendom for the place. He represented the best in Rome and the best in Christianity. His comprehensive policy, his grasp of fundamental issues, his political training, his capacity for details, made him the man for the hour. He merged the office of Roman Emperor and Christian bishop into essentially one and thus became the real founder of the mediæval Papacy. His pontificate, therefore, was an era in the history of the Church.
Gregory's policy was to uphold and extend the Petrine theory to the utmost, although personally refusing the title of "Universal Bishop." He censured
the ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople for assuming that title and wrote to John of Syracuse: "With regard to the church of Constantinople, who doubts that it is subject to the Apostolic See? . . . The Apostolic See is the head of all churches."[189:1] To the Patriarch of Alexandria he wrote: "In the preface of the epistle . . . you have thought fit to make use of a proud title, calling me Universal Pope. But I beg your most sweet Holiness to do this no more."[189:2] Again he exclaimed: "Whoever calls himself Universal Bishop is Antichrist."[189:3] Gregory meant to exercise as much autonomy as possible in ruling the West but, at the same time, to submit to imperial authority in all instances of conflicting claims.[189:4] He planned to unify and purify the Church and to extend Christianity over the known world.
Under Gregory's able management papal power was consolidated and made supreme in Western Europe. He systematised papal theology, and perfected and beautified the Church liturgy until it took three hours to celebrate the mass.[189:5] He regulated the calendar of festivals. He checked heresies by driving Manichæism and Arianism out of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, and even advised the persecution of African Donatists (591). The Jews, however, were tolerated and efforts made to convert them. To get rid of simony he personally
refused all presents and abolished all fees in his court. From priest to bishop he corrected the clergy and urged upon them celibacy.[190:1] He restored discipline throughout the Church and patronised all sorts of charity. He fought paganism fiercely by denouncing the Roman classics and even boasting of his own ignorance of them,[190:2] while at the same time he sent missionaries over most all of Western Europe. Monasticism, which he himself had adopted with all his heart, he encouraged and improved by restoring the early rigid discipline; by separating monks and clergy; by restricting admission to religious houses to persons above the age of eighteen years; by insisting on a probation of two years; by condemning deserters to life imprisonment; and by favouring the Benedictine Rule as the model. The papal court was reorganised, and clergy were substituted for boys and secular adults to attend the Pope. Even some efforts were made to check the European slave-trade.
In administrative power Gregory was perhaps inferior to Leo I. The Church was very wealthy, owning lands by this time all over Western Europe and in Africa. The Pope had to rule these vast estates as a mighty landlord. Subdeacons were his agents. Tenants were controlled politically as well as religiously. The surplus income was given to the clergy, papal domestics, monasteries, churches, cemeteries, almshouses, and hospitals. On the first of every month he distributed to the poor corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, meat, clothes, and money. The country was full of tramps and poor clergy; these he provided for and also supported impoverished nobles.[190:3] His letters
are full of items about law-suits, disputes over weights and measures, collection of rents, emancipation of slaves, marriage of tenants, produce accounts, and a multitude of other affairs.
In addition to these multitudinous duties, he was virtual King of Italy. He denounced the corrupt exarch and drilled the Romans for military defence, though he always laboured for peace. He held the haughty Lombards in check and converted them to Christianity. He extended his authority over Africa, Spain, Gaul, England, and Ireland and even claimed jurisdiction over the East. He was the first Pope to become in act and in influence, if not in name, the temporal sovereign of the West. He paved the way for Hildebrand and Innocent III.