Nor did he limit his exertions on behalf of ritual to the arrangement of the music. We are told that the Missal of Pope Gelasius then used in the Church was revised by him, and that he took away much, altered some things and added a little, among other things a confession of faith or Credo of his own writing, which is something between the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds. The Ordinary of the Mass remains now, another authority tells us, very much as it came from his hands. Thus his immediate authority and the impress of his mind remain on things which are still in daily use.
MONTE PINCIO, FROM THE PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.
And there could be no more familiar or characteristic figure in Rome than that of this monk-Pope threading everywhere those familiar streets, in which there were more ruins, and those all fresh and terrible in their suggestions of life destroyed—than now: the gentle spectator full of meditation, who lingered among the group of slaves, and saw and loved and smiled at the Saxon boys: who passed by Trajan's Forum which we all know so well, that field of broken pillars, not then railed off and trim in all the orderliness of an outdoor museum, but wild in the neglect of nature: and heard the story of the Emperor, and loved him too, and poured out his soul to God for the great heathen, so that the gates of Hades were rolled back and the soul set free—strange parable of brotherly kindness as the dominant principle of heart and life. We can follow him through all the lists of the poor laid up in his Scrivii, like the catalogues of books enclosed in caskets, in an old-fashioned library—with careful enumeration of every half-ruined tenement and degraded palace where the miserable had found shelter: or passing among the crowds who received their portions before, not after, the Pope in the precincts of the great basilica; or "modulating," with a voice broken by age and weakness, the new tones of his music which the "bibulous throats" of the barbarian converts turned into thunder, and of which even his own choristers, careless as is their use, would make discords, till the whip of the Master trembled in the air, adding the sting of a sharper sound to the long-drawn notes of the monotone, and compelling every heedless tenor and frivolous soprano to attention. These are his simpler aspects, the lower life of the great Benedictine, the picture of the Pope as he endeared himself to the popular imagination, round which all manner of tender legends grew. His aspect is less familiar yet not less true as he sits at the head of affairs, dictating or writing with his own hand those innumerable letters which treat of every subject under heaven, from the safety of Rome to the cross which is to be hung round a royal infant's neck, or the amethyst ring for the finger of a little princess; from the pretensions of John of Constantinople, that would-be head of the Church, down to the ass sent by the blundering intendant from Sicily. Nothing was too great, nothing too little for his care. He had to manage the mint and cummin without leaving graver matters undone.
And the reader who has leisure may follow him into the maze of those Dialogues in which Peter the Deacon serves as questioner, and the Pope discourses gently, to improve his ignorance, of all the wonderful things which the saints have done, chiefly in Italy, turning every law of nature upside down: or follow him through the minute and endless rules of his book of discipline, and note the fine-drawn scruples with which he has to deal, the strange cases of conscience for which he provides, the punctilio of extravagant penitence, so strangely contrasted with the other rough and ready modes of dealing with the unconverted, to which he gives the sanction of his recommendation. He was a man of his time, not of ours: he flattered Phocas while his hands were still wet with his predecessor's blood—though we may still hope that at such a distance Gregory did not know all that had happened or what a ruffian it was whom he thus addressed. He wrote affectionately and with devotion to Queen Brunhild without inquiring into that lady's character, which no doubt he knew perfectly. Where the good of Rome, either the city or the Church, was concerned, he stopped at nothing. I have no desire to represent him as faultless. But the men who are faultless, if any are to be found, leave but a limited record, and there is little more to say of perfection than that it is perfect. Gregory was not so. He got very angry sometimes, with bishops in Sicily, with stupid intendants, above all with that Eastern John—and sometimes, which is worse, he was submissive and compliant when he ought to have been angry and denounced a criminal. But on the other hand he was the first of the great ecclesiastical princes who have made Modern Rome illustrious—he was able, greatest of miracles, to put a heart into the miserable city which had allowed herself to be overrun by every savage: and stood between her and all creation, giving the whole world assurance of a man, and fighting for her with every weapon that came to his hand. Doing whatsoever he found to do thoroughly well, he laid the foundations of that great power which still extends over the whole world. I do not believe that he acted on any plan or had the supremacy of the Pontificate in his mind, or had conceived any idea of an ecclesiastical empire which should grasp the universe. To say, for instance, that the mission to England which he had cherished so long was undertaken with the idea of extending the sway of the Papacy seems one of those follies of the theorist which requires no answer. St. Paul might as well be accused of intending to spread a spiritual empire when he saw in his dream that man of Macedonia, and immediately directed his steps thither, obeying the vision. What Gregory hoped and prayed for was to bring in a new nation, as he judged a noble and vigorous race, to Christianity. And he succeeded in doing so: with such secondary consequences as the developments of time, and the laws of progress, and the course of Providence brought about.
There is a certain humour in the indignation, which has been several times referred to, with which he turned against the Patriarch of Constantinople and his pretensions to a supremacy which naturally was in the last degree obnoxious to the Bishop of Rome. The Eastern and Western Churches had already diverged widely from each other, the one nourished and subdued under the shadow of a Court, in a leisure which left it open to every refinement and every temptation, whether of asceticism or heresy—both of which abounded: the other fighting hard for life amid the rudest and most practical dangers, obliged to work and fight like Nehemiah on the walls of Jerusalem with the tool in one hand and the sword in the other. John the Faster, so distinguished because of the voluntary privations which he imposed upon himself, forms one of the most startling contrasts of this age with Gregory, worn by work and warfare, whose spare and simple meal could not be omitted even on the eve of Easter. That he who, sitting in St. Peter's seat, with all the care of Church and country upon his shoulders, obeyed by half the world, yet putting forth in words no such pretension—should be aggrieved almost beyond endurance by the dignity conferred on, or assumed by, the other bishop, whose see was not apostolical but the mere creation of an emperor, and the claim put forth by him and the Council called by him for universal obedience, is very natural; yet Gregory's wrath has a fiercely human sense of injury in it, an aggrieved individuality to which we cannot deny our sympathy. "There is no doubt," he says with dignity, writing to the Emperor on the subject, "that the keys of heaven were given to Peter, the power of binding and loosing, and the care of the whole Church; and yet he is not called Universal Apostle. Nor does it detract from the honour of the See that the sins of Gregory are so great that he ought to suffer; for there are no sins of Peter that he should be treated thus. The honour of Peter is not to be brought low because of us who serve him unworthily." "Oh tempora, oh mores!" he exclaims; "Europe lies prostrate under the power of the barbarians. Its towns are destroyed, its fortresses thrown down, its provinces depopulated, the soil has no longer labourers to till it; and yet priests who ought to humble themselves with tears in the dust strive after vain honours and glorify themselves with titles new and profane!" To John himself he writes with more severity, reminding him of the vaunt of Lucifer in Isaiah, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven." Now bishops, he says, are the stars of heaven, they shine over men; they are clouds (the metaphors are mixed) that rain words and are lighted up by the rays of good works. "What, then," he asks, "is the act of your paternity, in looking down upon them and pressing them into subjection, but following the example of the ancient enemy? When I see this I weep that the holy man, the Lord John, a man so renowned for self-sacrifice, should so act. Certainly Peter was first in the whole Church. Andrew, James, and the others were but heads of the people; yet all made up one body, and none were called Universal."
THE FORUM
To face page 170.