Was the undenied right of the barefooted friar.”
Only it may be safely questioned whether our Fortunatus was any more of an ascetic than Damasus himself. One almost wishes for an historical picture—and it should be a good theme, by the way—in which Fortunatus and his two friends appear. It should be that celebrated feast which he describes [J. P. Migne: Patrologia; Opera Fortunati, Lib. xi., cap. ii.], where Agnes had adorned the tables and the apartment with “every species of blossoming plant;” where the rich wines, and the generous fare, and the crystal, and the gold, and the flowers should brighten the fine hall of the chateau; and where, perhaps, the ecclesiastic should take his small harp and strike its strings with a delicate hand, while the fair face of Agnes and the darker beauty of Radegunda should inspire his song.
One traces to this mellow undercurrent of human life the swing of his best lyrics—the Pange lingua gloriosi praelium certaminis and those hymns to the Virgin of which he was the earliest promoter. No ene can doubt the influence of these women upon the Ave maris stella or the Quem terra pontus aethera. Say what we please about his piety, he has written what will live with the best. And to compare him to the melancholy Cowper, as Mrs. Charles has done, can only be characterized as a most amusing misconception.
We know nothing of him as bishop further than the fact that the office became vacant in 599, and he was an available as well as distinguished candidate. Surviving Radegunda, who passed away in 587, he died about 609, full of years and honors—the last of the classics and the first of the troubadours; the connecting link between Prudentius and the Middle Ages; the biographer of some of the saints and the interested collector of many legends of their miracles; and, finally, the first of Christian poets to begin that worship of the Virgin Mary which rose to a passion and sank to an idolatry. Venantius Fortunatus was neither a bad man nor, in the highest sense, a holy man. But he was a poet in spite of his barbaric Latin, and a writer of hymns which live to-day, long after the particulars of his career are forgotten.
CHAPTER X.
GREGORIUS MAGNUS [540-604].
The materials which are at hand for the life of Gregory the Great are, if anything, too numerous. In their original form they include all that Paul the Deacon (quoted by the Venerable Bede) and John the Deacon (quoted by everybody) have chosen to relate. And these have been so anxious to do entire justice to the great Pope that they fill their pages with miracles, wonders, and signs, as well as with the authentic facts of history. But Gregory carved for himself such a niche in the temple of fame that we are not likely to go very far astray in searching for the proper estimate of his work.
It may be safely assumed that from this pontificate dates the supremacy of the Roman see. It was Gregory whose missionary spirit opened the doors of Britain to the truth. It was he who, without asserting any superior claim, opposed successfully the encroachments of the Greek patriarchs. And it was again he who gave to the Church her sacred melodies.
He was born, says Paul the Deacon, in the city of Rome, of a father named Gordianus and a mother named Sylvia. These people were of the Anician family and were also of distinguished religious descent. Felix—fourth of the name and Pope under the title of Felix III.—was his atavus, or great-great-great-grandfather. The very name Gregorius our worthy deacon declares to be the Greek equivalent of the word “Watchful.”
The child of such a house would be well nurtured in all the learning of the time. Hence, he was trained in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics—the ancient trivium or complete course of liberal education. Naturally, too, he became an excellent scholar. And when he grew up he was called to an important post in Roman civil affairs. He became praetor of the city—a city which was subject to Byzantium and exposed to incursions of various barbarian invaders. The Lombards, indeed, attacked it during his praetorship.
At this period of his life his love for display was as remarkable as his subsequent simplicity. He delighted in rich attire and surrounded himself with the pomp and circumstance of his position. A rich man and a rich man’s son, he was thoroughly in sympathy with passing affairs, and as Rome bloomed the more vigorously above her own decay, he was himself one of those “flowers of evil” whose gaudy hues brightened the scene. But at the same time he became accustomed to the management of large affairs, and his administration secured to him the good will of his associates and subordinates. It can often be noticed that these early Fathers came to their power in the Church after having been strictly and carefully trained in the world. Hilary and Ambrose were as conspicuous examples of this foreordination as was Gregory the Great.