CHAPTER XXXI.
ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
A.D. 540-604.
PART I.
Gregory was born at Rome, of a noble and wealthy family, in the year 540. In his youth he engaged in public business, and he rose to be prætor of Rome, which was one of the chief offices under the government. In this office he was much beloved and respected by the people. But about the age of thirty-five, a great change took place in his life. He resolved to forsake the pursuit of worldly honours, and spent all his wealth in founding seven monasteries. He gave up his family house at Rome to begin a monastery, in which he became at first a simple monk, and was afterwards chosen abbot. A pope, named Pelagius, showed him great favour, by making him his secretary, and employing him for some years as a sort of ambassador at the emperor's court at Constantinople. And when Pelagius was carried off by a plague, in the year 589, the nobles, the clergy, and the people of Rome all agreed in choosing Gregory to succeed him.
Gregory was afraid to undertake the office. It was necessary that the emperor should consent to his appointment; and he wrote to beg that the emperor would refuse his consent. But the governor of Rome stopped the letter, and all the other attempts which Gregory made to escape the honour intended for him were baffled; so that in the end he was obliged to submit, and was consecrated as bishop of Rome in September, 590.
Gregory felt all the difficulties of his new place. He compares his Church to an old ship, shattered by winds and waves, decayed in its timbers, full of leaks, and in continual danger of going to wreck. The vast quantity and variety of business which he went through appears to us from the collection of his letters, of which about eight hundred and fifty still remain. We see from these how he strove to strengthen his Church in all quarters, and what steps he took for the government of it. Some of the letters are addressed to emperors and kings, and treat about the greatest affairs of Church or State. And then all at once we find him passing from such high matters to direct that some poor tenant on one of his estates should be excused from paying a part of his rent, or that relief should be given to some widow or orphan who had written from a distance to ask his help.
The bishops of Rome had by degrees become very rich. They had estates, not only in Italy and Sicily, but in Africa, in France, and even in Asia. And the people who managed these estates were employed by Gregory to carry on his other business in the same countries, and to report the state of the Church to him from all quarters. Very little of his large income was spent on himself. We may have some notion of the plain way in which the great bishop lived from one of his letters to the steward of his estates in Sicily. "You have sent me," says Gregory, "one wretched horse, and five good asses. I cannot ride the horse because he is wretched; nor the good beasts, because they are but asses." He lived chiefly in the company of monks and clergy, employing himself in study with them. And, in the midst of all the business which took up his time, he wrote a number of books, of which some are very valuable. He was also famous as a preacher. Among his sermons are a set of twenty-two on the prophet Ezekiel, which he had meant to carry further. But he was obliged to break off by the attacks of the Lombards, as he told his people in the end of the last sermon—"Let no one blame me," he says, "if after this discourse I stop, since, as you all see, our troubles are multiplied on us. On every side we are surrounded with swords; on every side we dread the danger of death which is close at hand. Some come back to us with their hands cut off; we hear of some as being taken prisoners, and of others as slain. I am forced to with-hold my tongue from expounding, since my soul is weary of my life (Job x. 1). How can I, who am forced daily to drink bitter things, draw forth sweet things to you? What remains for us, but that in the chastisement which we are suffering because of our misdeeds, we should give thanks with weeping to Him who made us, and who hath bestowed on us the spirit of adoption (Rom. viii. 15)—to Him who sometimes nourisheth His children with bread, and sometimes correcteth them with a scourge—who, by benefits and by sufferings alike, is training us for an eternal inheritance?"