In culture Gregory was a true son of an age of credulity and superstition. He believed all the current tales about ghosts, miracles, and supernatural manifestations. The linen of St. Paul and his bondage-chains, he declared genuine and possessed of miracle-working power.[191:1] To the converted Visigothic King in Spain he sent a key made from Peter's chain, a piece of the true cross, and some hairs from the head of John the Baptist. Indeed this was a practice which he followed in the case of many of his friends whom he desired to especially favour.[191:2] The "monuments of classic genius" he despised, asserting that it was his wish to be unknown in this world and glorified in the next. He very severely censured the profane learning of a bishop who taught grammar, studied the Latin poets, and pronounced Jupiter and Christ in the same breath. It was his

constant habit, on the other hand, to enforce upon all Christians—clergy and laity alike—the great duty of reading the Bible. Still his own literary work was rather voluminous. He wrote 850 letters—more than all his 69 predecessors together—on all topics and to all Christendom. In addition he produced his Magna Moralia,[192:1] some homilies, a book on pastoral rule, and liturgical treatises. His productions are below mediocrity and he cannot compare with Leo I. as a critic, expositor, or original thinker. He had but a slight knowledge of Greek and knew no Hebrew, nor did he possess a deep acquaintance with the Church Fathers. Yet for that age he was a cultured man and enjoyed a high reputation for piety and learning, and spoke to unborn generations.

"By his writings and the fame of his personal sanctity, by the conversion of England and the introduction of an impressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than any other Pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority."[192:2] His virtues and faults, his simplicity and cunning, his pride and humility, his ignorance and his learning—all were suited to the times and made him "the greatest of all the early Popes."[192:3] He closes the period of the Church Fathers and opens the Middle Ages. For 150 years there were no material acquisitions of ecclesiastical power, hence the history of the Papacy becomes very uninteresting and comparatively unimportant.[192:4]

When Gregory the Great closed his remarkable career (604) the Papacy of the Middle Ages had been

born and in form resembled the Empire.[193:1] The head of the Church was known as "Pope." Because of his peculiar personal holiness he could be judged by none,[193:2] though himself judge of all. The hierarchy of officers had been practically completed.[193:3] The laity was distinctly cut off from the clergy, and deprived of powers exercised in the first and second centuries. The election of the clergy had changed from a democratic to an aristocratic process. There was a marked evolution in rites and ceremonies. Art and music were now employed. The mass gradually became the powerful, mysterious centre of all worship, while public worship became imposing, dramatic, theatrical. Festivals were multiplied almost without number. The worship of martyrs and saints[193:4] became so widespread and popular that a "calendar of saints" was formed. Pilgrimages grew to be very numerous and the use of relics[193:5] developed such a craze that the fathers, councils, Popes, and at last the Emperor himself sought to check it. Religious pageants were multiplied and the use of images and pictures of saints were encouraged in the churches. The Virgin Mary was exalted to the eminence of divinity. In imitation of the court-calendar, loftier titles of spiritual dignity were adopted or invented for the higher ecclesiastics. The dogma of the "unity of outward representation"

had acquired not merely a material and visible, but also a sacramental, character. Thus the Church was the only channel of spiritual graces, hence union with the Church was absolutely indispensable to salvation. The Church had become immensely wealthy in lands, buildings, and furniture. This corrupting familiarity with secular affairs was early seen and denounced. St. Chrysostom sharply rebuked the bishops who "had fallen to the condition of land-stewards, hucksters, brokers, publicans, and pay-clerks." The Council of Chalcedon ordered the bishops to appoint land-stewards to look after their estates.[194:1]

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