Long crushed between the Lombards and Byzantines, between the unsoftened ferocity of the barbarians and the vexatious decrepitude of despotism, Gregory, with that instinctive perception of future events which God sometimes grants to pure souls, sought elsewhere a support for the Roman Church. His eyes were directed to the new races, who were scarcely less ferocious than the Lombards, but who did not, like them, weigh upon Italy and Rome, and who already exhibited elements of strength and continuance. It is impossible to do more here than touch on these noble enterprises. He entered into correspondence with Childebert, the Gallo-Frank king, and with the French bishops, to obtain the rectification of abuses and the purification of the Gallican church from simony, and the nomination of laymen to the episcopal office, two vices which consumed the vitals of Christianity in France. Spain had become Arian under the Visigoths, but the Catholic faith had triumphed with the accession of Recared, in 587. S. Leander, bishop of Seville, was the principal author of the conversion of the Visigoths. Gregory wrote to him and to other bishops of Spain. They consulted him, and he gave them his advice. He wrote, and gave councils full of wisdom to the king Recared, himself. He brought back to the unity of the Church the schismatical bishops of Istria, and wholly suppressed the Donatist schism in Africa. But one of the most striking points in the life of S. Gregory is his zeal for the conversion of England.
Amid the labours of his exalted position, S. Gregory never remitted his anxiety for the evangelization of that distant isle. In July, A.D. 596, he dispatched S. Augustine (May 26th), with forty companions, on that mission to which we owe so much, that, with every feeling of love and veneration for the remnant of Celtic Christianity which had then escaped the sword of Pagan Saxondom, we may yet say, with the Venerable Bede, "If Gregory be not to others an apostle, he is one to us, for the seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord."
The services which he rendered to the Liturgy are well known. Completing and putting in order the work of his predecessors, he gave its definite form to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, in that celebrated Sacramentary which remains the most august monument of Liturgical science. It may be said also that he created, and, by anticipation, saved, Christian art, by fixing, long before the persecution of the Iconoclasts, the true doctrine respecting the veneration of images, in that fine letter to the bishop of Marseilles, in which he reproves him for having, in the excess of his zeal against idolatry, broken the statues of the saints, and reminds him that through all antiquity the history of the saints has been pictorically represented, and that painting is to the ignorant what letters are to those who can read.
But his name is specially associated, in the history of Catholic worship, with that branch of religious art which is identified with worship itself, and which is of the utmost moment to the piety as to the innocent joy of the Christian people. The name of Gregorian Chant reminds us of his solicitude for collecting the ancient melodies of the Church, in order to subject them to rules of harmony, and to arrange them according to the requirements of divine worship. He had the glory of giving to Ecclesiastical music that sweet and solemn character which has descended through ages, and to which we must always return after the most prolonged aberrations of frivolity and innovation. He made out himself, in his Antiphonary, the collection of ancient and new chants; he composed the text and melodies of several hymns, which are still used in the Church; he established at Rome the celebrated school of sacred music, to which Gaul, Germany, and England came in turns, trying with more or less success to assimilate their voices to the purity of Italian modulations. And when Gregory was too ill to leave his little chamber and his couch, he gathered about him the boys of the choir, and continued their instructions.
The gout made the last years of his life a kind of martyrdom. The cry of pain rings in many of his letters. "For nearly two years," he wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria, "I have been imprisoned to my bed by such pangs of gout, that I can scarcely rise for two or three hours on great holidays to celebrate solemn mass. And the intensity of the pain compels me immediately to lie down again, that I may be able to endure my torture, by giving free course to my groans. My illness will neither leave me nor kill me. I entreat your holiness to pray for me, that I may be soon delivered, and receive that freedom which you know, and which is the glory of the children of God."
Up to his last moments he continued with unwearied activity to dictate his correspondence, and to concern himself with the interests of the Church. He died on the 12th March, 604, aged nearly fifty-five, in the thirteenth year of his pontificate. He was buried in S. Peter's; and in the epitaph engraved on his tomb, it is said that, "after having conformed all his actions to his doctrine, the consul of God went to enjoy eternal triumph."
S. Hildefonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, in the seventh century, writes thus of him—"He surpassed Antony in holiness, Cyprian in eloquence, and Augustine in wisdom." Yet so great was his humility, that he subscribed himself, "Servant of the servants of God"—a style which his successors in the chair of S. Peter have retained till this day. He was buried in the basilica of S. Peter. His pallium, reliquary, and girdle were preserved as precious memorials.
He had, like so many other great hearts, to struggle with ingratitude, not only during his life, but after his death. Rome was afflicted with a great famine under his successor, Sabinian, who put an end to the charities which Gregory had granted to the poor, on the plea that there was nothing remaining in the treasury of the Church. The enemies of the deceased pope then excited the people against him, calling him prodigal and a waster of the Roman patrimony; and that ungrateful people, whom he had loved and helped so much, began to burn his writings, as if to annihilate or dishonour his memory. But one of the monks, who had followed him from the monastery to the palace, his friend the deacon Peter, interposed. He represented to the incendiaries that these writings were already spread through the entire world, and that it was, besides, sacrilege to burn the work of a holy doctor, upon whom he swore he had himself seen the heavenly dove fluttering. And as if to confirm his oath, after having ended his address, he breathed forth his last sigh, a valiant witness of truth and friendship, and is commemorated by the Church on the same day with S. Gregory.
In the year 826, the body of this holy pontiff was brought into France, and placed in the celebrated monastery of S. Medard, in Soissons. The head was given to archbishop Agesil, and deposited in the abbey of S. Pierre-le-Vif, at Sens, and a bone was given to Rome at the request of pope Urban VIII., in 1628.
In art, S. Gregory is represented as a pope, with a dove hovering over him, or at his ear, and with music in his hand: a frequent subject with Mediæval sculptors and painters was his Mass. According to the legend, as he was about to communicate a woman, and said, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto Eternal Life," he saw her smile, wherefore he refused to give her the host, and questioning her, found that she doubted how what her senses told her was bread could be the flesh of Christ. Then S. Gregory prayed that her eyes might be opened, and instantly the Host was visibly changed into Christ enduring His passion.