The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

by Mrs. Oliphant

The argument with which Gregory replies to a letter from Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, who had wished him to assume himself a similar title, is curious. The Apostolical See, he says, consists of three bishoprics, all held by St. Peter, that of Antioch, that of Alexandria, and that of Rome, and the honour of the title is shared between them. "If you give me more than my due," he adds, "you rob yourself. If I am named Pope, you own yourself to be no pope. Let no such thing be named between us. My honour is the honour of the Universal Church. I am honoured in the honour paid to my brethren." Nothing could be more determined than this oft-repeated refusal. Yet he never fails to add that it was Peter's right. The Council of Chalcedon, he says, offered that supreme title to the Church of Rome, which refused it. How much greater then, was the guilt of John, to whom it was never offered, but who assumed it, injuring all priests by setting himself above them, and the Empire itself by a position superior to it? Such were the sentiments of Gregory, in which the wrath of a natural heir, thus supplanted by a usurper, gives fervour to every denunciation. The French historian Villemain points out, what will naturally occur to the reader, that many of these arguments were afterwards used with effect by Luther and his followers against the assumptions of the Church of Rome. It will also be remembered that Jerome put the case more strongly still, denouncing the Scarlet Woman with as much fervour as any No-Popery orator.

But while he rejected all such titles and assumed for himself only that, conceived no doubt in all humility and sincere meaning, but afterwards worn with pride surpassing that of any earthly monarch, of Servus Servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God, Gregory occupied himself, as has been said, with the care of all the churches in full exercise of the authority and jurisdiction of an overseer, at least over the western half of Christendom. Vain titles he would have none, and we cannot doubt his sincerity in rejecting them; but the reality of the pastoral supervision, never despotic, but continual, was clearly his idea of his own rights and duties. It has been seen what license he left to Augustine in the regulation of the new English Church. He acted with an equally judicious liberality in respect to the rich and vigorous Gallican bishops, never demanding too servile an obedience, but never intermitting his superintendence of all. But he does not seem to have put forth the smallest pretension to political independence, even when that was forced upon him by his isolated and independent position, and he found himself compelled to make his own terms with the Lombard invaders. At the moment of his election as Bishop of Rome, he appealed to the Emperor against the popular appointment, and only when the imperial decision was given against him allowed himself to be dragged from his solitude. And one of his accusations against John of Constantinople was that his assumption injured the very Empire itself in its supreme authority. Thus we may, and indeed I think must, conclude that Gregory's supposed theory of the universal papal power was as little real as are most such elaborate imputations of purpose conceived long before the event. He had no intention, so far as the evidence goes, of making himself an arbitrator between kings, and a judge of the world's actions and movements. He had enough and too much work of his own which it was his determination to do, as vigorously and with as much effect as possible—in the doing of which work it was necessary to influence, to conciliate, to appeal, as well as to command and persuade: to make terms with barbarians, to remonstrate with emperors, as well as to answer the most minute questions of the bishops, and lay out before them the proper course they were to pursue. There is nothing so easy as to attribute deep-laid plans to the great spirits among men. I do not think that Gregory had time for any such ambitious projects. He had to live for the people dependent upon him, who were a multitude, to defend, feed, guide and teach them. He had never an unoccupied moment, and he did in each moment work enough for half a dozen men. That it was his duty to superintend and guide everything that went on, so far as was wise or practicable, in the Church as well as in his immediate diocese, was clearly his conviction, and the reader may find it a little difficult to see why he should have guarded that power so jealously, yet rejected the name of it: but that is as far as any reasonable criticism can go.

What would seem an ancient complaint against Gregory appears in the sketch of his life given by Platina, in his Lives of the Popes—who describes him as having been "censured by a few ignorant men as if the ancient stately buildings were demolished by his order, lest strangers coming out of devotion to Rome should less regard the consecrated places, and spend all their gaze upon triumphal arches and monuments of antiquity." This curious accusation is answered by the author in words which I quote from an almost contemporary translation very striking in its forcible English. "No such reproach," says Platina in the vigorous version of Sir Paul Rycant, Knight, "can justly be fastened on this great Bishop, especially considering that he was a native of the city, and one to whom, next after God, his country was most dear, even above his life. 'Tis certain that many of those ruined structures were devoured by time, and many might, as we daily see, be pulled down to build new houses; and for the rest 'tis probable that, for the sake of the brass used in the concavity of the arches and the conjunctures of the marble or other square stones, they might be battered or defaced not only by the barbarous nations but by the Romans too, if Epirotes, Dalmatians, Pannonians, and other sorry people who from all parts of the world resorted hither, may be called Romans."

This is a specious argument which would not go far toward establishing Gregory's innocence were he seriously accused: but the accusation, like that of burning classical manuscripts, has no proof. Little explanation, however, is necessary to account for the ruins of a city which has undergone several sieges. That Gregory would have helped himself freely as everybody did, and has done in all ages, to the materials lying so conveniently at hand in the ruined palaces which nobody had any mission to restore, may be believed without doubt; for he was a man far too busy and preoccupied to concern himself with questions of Art, or set any great price upon the marble halls of patrician houses, however interesting might be their associations or beautiful their structure. But he built few new churches, we are expressly told, though he was careful every year to look into the condition of all existing ecclesiastical buildings and have them repaired. It seems probable that it might be a later Gregory however against whom this charge was made. In the time of Gregory the First these ruins were recent, and it was but too likely that at any moment a new horde of unscrupulous iconoclasts might sweep over them again.

There came however a time when the Pope's suffering and emaciated body could bear no longer that charge which was so burdensome. He had been ill for many years, suffering from various ailments and especially from weakness of digestion, and he seems to have broken down altogether towards the year 601. Agelulphus thundering at his gates had completed what early fastings and the constant work of a laborious life had begun, and at sixty Gregory took to his bed, from which, as he complains in one of his letters, he was scarcely able to rise for three hours on the great festivals of the Church in order to celebrate Mass. He was obliged also to conclude abruptly that commentary on Ezekiel which had been so often interrupted, leaving the last vision of the prophet unexpounded, which he regretted the more that it was one of the most dark and difficult, and stood in great need of exposition. "But how," he says, "can a mind full of trouble clear up such dark meanings? The more the mind is engaged with worldly things the less is it qualified to expound the heavenly." It was from Ezekiel that Gregory was preaching when the pestilence which swept away his predecessor Pelagius was raging in Rome, and when, shutting the book which was no longer enough with its dark sayings to calm the troubles of the time, he had called out to the people, with a voice which was as that of their own hearts, to repent. All his life as Pope had been threaded through with the study of this prophet. He closed the book again and finally when all Rome believed that another invasion was imminent, and his courage failed in this last emergency. It is curious to associate the name of such a man, so full of natural life and affection, so humorous, so genial, so ready to take interest in everything that met his eyes, with these two saddest figures in all the round of sacred history, the tragic patriarch Job, and the exiled prophet, who was called upon to suffer every sorrow in order to be a sign to his people and generation. Was it that the very overflowing of life and sympathy in him made Gregory seek a balance to his own buoyant spirit in the plaints of those two melancholy voices? or was it the misfortunes of his time, so distracted and full of miserable agitation, which directed him at least to the latter, the prophet of a fallen nation, of disaster and exile and penitence?

Thus he lay after his long activities, suffering sorely, and longing for the deliverance of death, though he was not more, it is supposed, than sixty-two when the end came. From his sick bed he wrote to many of his friends entreating that they would pray for him that his sufferings might be shortened and his sins forgiven. He died finally on the 12th of March, ever afterwards consecrated to his name, in the year 603. This event must have taken place in the palace at the Lateran, which was then the usual dwelling of the Popes. Here the sick and dying man could look out upon one of the finest scenes on earth, the noble line of the Alban Hills rising over the great plains of the Campagna, with all its broken lines of aqueduct and masses of ruin. The features of the landscape are the same, though every accessory is changed, and palace and basilica have both crumbled into the dust of ages, to be replaced by other and again other buildings, handing down the thread of historic continuity through all the generations. There are scarcely any remains of the palace of the Popes itself, save one famous mosaic, copied from a still earlier one, in which a recent learned critic sees the conquest of the world by papal Rome already clearly set forth. But we can scarcely hope that any thought of the first Gregory will follow the mind of the reader into the precincts of St. John of the Lateran Gate. His memory abides in another place, in the spot where stood his father's house, where he changed the lofty chambers of the Roman noble into Benedictine cells, and lived and wrote and mused in the humility of an obedient brother. But still more does it dwell in the little three-cornered piazza before the Church of St. Gregorio, from whence he sent forth the mission to England with issues which he could never have divined—for who could have told in those days that the savage Angles would have overrun the world further than ever Roman standard was carried? The shadow of the great Pope is upon those time-worn steps where he stood and blessed his brethren, with moisture in his eyes and joy in his heart, sending them forth upon the difficult and dangerous way which he had himself desired to tread, but from which their spirits shrank. We have all a sacred right to come back here, to share the blessing of the saint, to remember the constant affection he bore us, his dedication of himself had it been permitted, his never-ending thought of his angel boys which has come to such wonderful issues. He would have been a more attractive apostle than Augustine had he carried out his first intention; but still we find his image here, fatherly, full of natural tenderness, interest and sympathy, smiling back upon us over a dozen centuries which have changed everything—except the historical record of Pope Gregory's blessing and his strong desire and hope.

He was buried in St. Peter's with his predecessors, but his tomb, like so many others, was destroyed at the rebuilding of the great church, and no memorial remains.

PONTE MOLLE.