The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

by Mrs. Oliphant

ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.
To face page 152.

Doctrine, however, was not the point on which Gregory was most strong—his Dialogues, written it is said for the edification and strengthening in the faith of the Empress Theodolinda, are nothing more than pious discussions and sanctions of the miracles performed by the saints, which we fear would have a very contrary effect if published in our day. His works upon the pastoral law and the discipline of the Church are the most valuable and important of his productions; though in these also his point of view is extraordinarily different from ours, and he advises a kind and degree of toleration which is somewhat appalling to hear of. For instance, in his instructions to Augustine and his band of missionaries Gregory instructs them to interfere as little as possible with the customs, especially in the matter of religious observances, of the people among whom they were sent. They were not to put down the familiar accompaniments of their converts' native rites and ceremonies. The old temples of Woden and Thor were not to be abandoned but turned to a new and better use; even the system of sacrifice to these gods was not to be altogether set aside. "Let there be no more victims to demons," he says with curious casuistry, "but let them kill and eat giving thanks to God; for you must leave them some material enjoyments that they may so much more easily enter into the delights of the soul." On the other hand, his instructions to a bishop of Sardinia bear a curiously different character. He recommended this prelate to put a pressure more or less gentle upon the peasants there who still remained pagan, in the form of an increased rent and taxes until such time as they should become Christian. "Though, conversion does not come by force," he says with sagacious cynicism, "yet the children of these mercenary converts will receive baptism in their innocence and will be better Christians than their fathers;" an argument which certainly embodies much economic truth if not exactly the spirit of the Gospel.

THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.

Strangely different from these worldly-wise suggestions, however, are the detailed instructions for pastoral work, quoted by Bede, in Gregory's answer to the questions of Augustine, in which the artificial conscience of the confessional suddenly appears in full development, by the side of those strange counsels of a still semi-pagan age. Nothing can be more remarkable than this contrast, which exacts a more than Levitical punctilio of observance from the devout, while leaving open every door for the entrance of the profane. Though he entered with so much reluctance upon the pastoral care of the Church, no one has laid down more detailed directions for the cure of souls. It would seem to have been in reality one of the things which interested him most. His mind was in some respects that of a statesman full of the broadest sense of expediency and of the practicable, and of toleration and compromise carried to a length which fills us with dismay; while on the other it was that of a parish legislator, an investigator of personal details, to whom no trifle was unimportant, and the most fantastic stipulations of ritualistic purification of as great moment as morality itself.

In contrast however with those letters which recommended what was little more than a forced conversion, and which have been frequently cited as examples of the unscrupulousness of the early missionaries, we must here quote some of Gregory's pastoral instructions in which the true spirit of a pastor shines forth. "Nothing," he says in one of his epistles to the bishops with whom he kept up constant communications, "is so heavy a burden upon a priest as so to bend the force of his own mind in sympathy, as to change souls (cum personis supervenientibus animam mutare) with each new person who approaches him; yet this is very necessary." Nothing could be more happy in expression or fine in sentiment, and it shows how completely the monk-Pope, in cloister and on throne, understood the essential character of his great profession. Still more remarkable, as more involved in personal matters, is his advice to Augustine, who had consulted him as to the differences in worship between the Gallican churches and those of Rome.

"You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church in which you were bred up. But it will please me if when you have found anything, either in the Roman or Gallican or any other Church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you will carefully make choice of the same, and sedulously teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever good thing you can gather from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose therefore from every Church those things that are pious, religious and upright, and when you have as it were made them into one system, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto."

This is surely the truest and highest toleration.

The Papacy of Gregory began in trouble and distress; Rome was more disorganised, more miserable, more confused and helpless than almost ever before, although she had already passed through many a terrible crisis; and he had shrunk from the terrible task of setting her right. But when he had once undertaken that task there was neither weakness nor hesitation in the manner with which he carried it out. The public penance and humiliation to which he moved the people, the septiform litany with its chanting and weeping crowds, the ceaseless prayers and intercessions in the Church were not all, though no doubt the chief part to Gregory, of those methods by which he sustained the courage, or rather put a heart into, the broken-down population, so that for once a show of resistance was made when the Lombards threatened the city. And his anxious negotiations never ceased. The Emperor, far off and indifferent, not to say helpless, in Constantinople, had no rest from the constant remonstrances and appeals of the ever-watchful Bishop. Gregory complained and with reason that no efforts, or at least but fictitious ones, were made for the help of Rome, and that the indifference or hostility of the Emperor was more dangerous to her than the arms of the Lombards. On the other hand he addressed himself to the headquarters of the invaders, taking as his champion—as was his custom, as it has always been the custom of the Churchman—the Queen Theodolinda, who had become a Catholic and baptized her son in that faith, notwithstanding the opposition of her Arian husband, and was therefore a very fitting and natural intercessor. "What an overwhelming charge it is!" he cries to one of his correspondents, "to be at once weighted with the supervision of the bishops and clergy, of the monasteries and the entire people, and to remain all the time watchful to every undertaking of the enemy and on my guard against the robbery and injustice of our rulers." It was indeed a burden under which few men could have stood.