During the last two years of his life, his health, early impaired by fasts and vigils, failed entirely, and he was unable to rise from his couch. He died in 604, in the fourteenth year of his pontificate. They still preserve, in the church of the Lateran at Rome, his bed, and the little scourge with which he was wont to keep the choristers in order.
The monastery of St. Andrew, which he founded on the Celian Hill, is now the church of San Gregorio. To stand on the summit of the majestic flight of steps which leads to the portal, and look across to the ruined palace of the Cæsars, makes the mind giddy with the rush of thoughts. There, before us, the Palatine Hill—pagan Rome in dust: here, the little cell, a few feet square, where slept in sackcloth the man who gave the last blow to the power of the Cæsars, and first set his foot as sovereign on the cradle and capital of their greatness.
St. Gregory was in person tall and corpulent, and of a dark complexion, with black hair, and very little beard. He speaks in one of his epistles of his large size, contrasted with his weakness and painful infirmities. He presented to the monastery of St. Andrew his own portrait, and those of his father, and his mother St. Sylvia: they were still in existence 300 years after his death, and the portrait of Gregory probably furnished that particular type of physiognomy which we trace in all the best representations of him, in which he appears of a tall, large, and dignified person, with a broad full face, black hair and eyebrows, and little or no beard.
As he was, next to St. Jerome, the most popular of the Four Doctors, single figures of him abound. They are variously treated: in general, he bears the tiara as pope, and the crosier with the double cross, in common with other papal saints; but his peculiar attribute is the dove, which in the old pictures is always close to his ear. He is often seated on a throne in the pontifical robes, wearing the tiara: one hand raised in benediction; in the other a book, which represents his homilies, and other famous works attributed to him: the dove either rests on his shoulder, or is hovering over his head. He is thus represented in the fine statue, designed, as it is said, by M. Angelo, and executed by Cordieri, in the chapel of St. Barbara, in San Gregorio, Rome; and in the picture over the altar-piece of his chapel, to the right of the high altar. In the Salviati Chapel, on the left, is the ‘St. Gregory in prayer,’ by Annibal Caracci. He is seen in front bareheaded, but arrayed in the pontifical habit, kneeling on a cushion, his hands outspread and uplifted; the dove descends from on high; the tiara is at his feet, and eight angels hover around:—a grand, finely-coloured, but, in sentiment, rather cold and mannered picture.[286]
By Guercino, St. Gregory seated on a throne, looking upwards, his hand on an open book, in act to turn the leaves; the dove hovers at his shoulder: to the left stands St. Francis Xavier; on the right, and more in front, St. Ignatius Loyola. Behind St. Gregory is an angel playing on the viol, in allusion to his love and patronage of sacred music; in front an infant angel holds the tiara. The type usually adopted in figures of St. Gregory is here exaggerated into coarseness, and the picture altogether appears to me more remarkable for Guercino’s faults than for his beauties.[287]
Several of the legends connected with the history of St. Gregory are of singular interest and beauty, and have afforded a number of picturesque themes for Art: they appear to have arisen out of his exceeding popularity. They are all expressive of the veneration in which he was held by the people; of the deep impression left on their minds by his eloquence, his sanctity, his charity; and of the authority imputed to his numerous writings, which commonly said to have been dictated by the Holy Spirit.
1. John the deacon, his secretary, who has left a full account of his life, declares that he beheld the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove perched upon his shoulder while he was writing or dictating his famous homilies. This vision, or rather figure of speech, has been interpreted as a fact by the early painters. Thus, in a quaint old picture in the Bologna Gallery, we have St. Gregory seated on a throne writing, the celestial dove at his ear. A little behind is seen John the deacon, drawing aside a curtain, and looking into the room at his patron with an expression of the most naïve astonishment.
2. The Archangel Michael, on the cessation of the pestilence, sheathes his sword on the summit of the Mole of Hadrian. I have never seen even a tolerable picture of this magnificent subject. There is a picture in the Vatican, in which Gregory and a procession of priests are singing litanies, and in the distance a little Mola di Adriano, with a little angel on the summit;—curious, but without merit of any kind.