Gregory returned from Constantinople in 585, and lived as one of the seven deacons on the Cœlian hill, when, on 8th February, 590, Pope Pelagius died of the pestilence, and Gregory was unanimously chosen to succeed him.
It was a moment of the greatest depression. The Tiber had in the winter overflowed a large portion of the city. The destruction wrought had been followed by a terrible plague. Gregory strove to escape the charge put upon him, and besought the emperor not to confirm his election. In the meantime, the clergy and people urged upon him the provisional exercise of the episcopal charge. As such he ordered a sevenfold procession to entreat the cessation of the plague. The clergy of Rome, the abbots, the abbesses with their nuns, the children, the laymen, the widows, and the married women, each company separately arranged, were to start from seven different churches, and to close their pilgrimage together at the basilica of St. Maria Maggiore.
During the procession itself eighty victims to the plague fell dead. But as Gregory was passing over the bridge of St. Peter's, a heavenly vision consoled them in the midst of their litanies. The archangel Michael was seen over the tomb of Hadrian, sheathing his flaming sword in token that the pestilence was to cease. Gregory heard the angelic antiphon from heavenly voices—Regina Cœli, lætare, and added himself the concluding verse—Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
The assent of the emperor Mauritius arriving from Constantinople about six months after his election compelled Gregory to become Pope. At first, indeed, he disguised himself and took to flight, and hid himself in the woods.[178] The people fasted and prayed three days for his discovery. He was found, and then permitted himself to be taken back to Rome, where he was received with great rejoicing. He was led, according to custom, to the "Confession" of St. Peter, where he made his profession of faith. He was then consecrated, the 3rd September, 590. Nor can any words but his own adequately express his feelings, together with the character of the time in which he lived. With heavy heart he approached the burden laid upon him. Neither then nor ever after did he deceive himself as to the gravity of the situation. "Since," are his words, "I submitted the shoulders of my spirit to this burden of the episcopal office, I can no longer collect my soul, distracted as it is on so many sides. At one time I have to consider the affairs of churches and monasteries, often taking into account the lives and actions of individuals. At another time I have to represent my fellow-citizens in their affairs. Again, I have to groan over the swords of barbarians advancing to storm us, and to dread the wolves which lie in wait for a flock huddled together in fear. Then, again, I must charge myself with the care of public affairs, to provide means even for those to whom the maintenance of order is entrusted, or I must patiently endure certain depredators, or take precautions against them, that tranquillity be not disturbed." In another place he says: "Daily I feel what fulness of peace I have lost, to what fulness of cares I have been exalted. If you love me, weep for me, since so many temporal businesses press on me that I seem as if this dignity had almost excluded me from the love of God. Not of the Romans only am I bishop, but bishop of the Lombards, whose right is the right of the sword, whose favour is punishment. The billows of the world so surge upon me, that I despair of steering into harbour the frail vessel entrusted to me by God, while my hand holds the helm amid a thousand storms." Again, in his synodical letter[179] announcing his accession to the patriarchs, he says: "Especially, whoever bears the title of Pastor in this place is grievously occupied by external cares, so that he is often in doubt whether he is executing the work of a Pastor or that of an earthly lord". Thus thirteen hundred years ago spoke the Pope. Does his language in the nineteenth century differ much from his language in the sixth? Shortly after his accession, preaching to his people in St. Peter's, he said:[180] "Where, I pray you, is any delight to be found in this world? Mourning meets us everywhere; groans surround us. Ruined cities, fortresses overthrown, lands laid waste, the earth reduced to a desert. The fields have none to till them. There is scarcely a dweller in the cities. Yet even these poor remnants of the human race are smitten daily and without ceasing. The scourge of heaven's justice strikes without end, because even under its strokes our bad actions are not corrected. We see men led into captivity, beheaded, slain before our eyes. What pleasure, then, does life retain, my brethren? If yet we are fond of such a world, it is not joys but wounds which we love. We see the condition of that Rome which anon seemed to be mistress of the world: worn down by sorrows which have no measure, desolate of inhabitants, assaulted by enemies, filled with ruins. We see in it fulfilled what long ago our prophet said against Samaria: 'Set on a vessel; set it on, I say, and put water into it. Heap together into it the pieces thereof.' And then: 'The seething of it is boiling hot; and the bones thereof are thoroughly sodden in the midst thereof.' And further: 'Heap together the bones, which I will burn with fire: the flesh shall be consumed, and the whole composition shall be sodden, and the bones shall be consumed. Then set it empty upon burning coals, that it may be hot, and the brass thereof may be melted.' Now the vessel was set on when our city was founded. The water was put into it and the pieces heaped together, when there was a confluence of peoples to it from all sides. Like boiling water they bubbled up with the world's actions; like bits of flesh they were boiled in their own heat. He says well, 'The seething of it is boiling hot, and the bones thereof are thoroughly sodden in the midst thereof'. For great, indeed, in it at first was the heat of secular glory; but presently the glory itself and those who followed it burnt out. Bones mean the powerful of the world; flesh its various peoples: as bones support flesh, so the powerful of the world rule the weakness of the masses. But now, behold, all the powerful of this world have been taken from it. The bones, then, are thoroughly sodden. The peoples are gone; the flesh, then, is boiled up. There follows then: 'Heap together the bones, which I will burn with fire; the flesh shall be consumed, and the whole composition shall be sodden; and the bones shall waste away'. For where is the senate? where any longer a people? The bones are wasted, the flesh consumed; all pride of secular dignities is perished out of it. The whole composition is sodden. Yet every day the sword, every day innumerable sorrows press upon us, the poor remaining remnant. So, then, this also applies: 'Set it empty upon burning coals'. For since there is no senate, since the people has died out, and yet sorrow and suffering are multiplied day by day on the few that remain, Rome is empty, and yet it burns. We apply this to men, but we see the very structures destroyed by the multiplication of ruins. So that he adds, upon the empty city, 'Burn it and melt its brass'. For it is come to the vessel itself being destroyed, in which before both flesh and bones were consumed. For when the dwellers have fallen away even the walls fall. But where are those who once rejoiced in its glory? Where is their pomp and pride, and those ecstasies of frequent transport?
"In Rome are fulfilled the prophet's words against Niniveh: 'Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions?'[181] Were not its commanders and its princes lions who overran the whole world, and ravened, and slaughtered the prey? Here the young lions found their feeding-place, because the boyhood, the youth, the flower of manhood, from generation to generation, flocked hither, when they sought to get on in the world. Now Rome is desolate, worn down, full of sorrows. No one comes to it to get on in the world; no man of power or violence remains to raven on the prey. Then may we say, 'Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions?' Upon it has fallen the lot of Judea, foretold by the prophet: 'Enlarge thy baldness as the eagle'.[182] For man is wont to be bald upon the head alone; but the eagle's baldness is over all his body. When very old, his plumes and feathers fall from his whole body. The city which has lost its inhabitants, in losing its feathers, has enlarged its baldness as the eagle. Shrunk also are its wings, with which it used to fly to the prey, for all its men of might, by whom it ravened, are extinguished."
We may here contrast the language concerning the Rome which lay before their eyes of the two Popes St. Leo and St. Gregory. They spoke with an interval between them of 140 years. The first spoke still of the actual queen of the world, of the secular empire subdued and inherited by the spiritual. The feathers of Leo's eagle shone to him with celestial light; the talons of the royal bird traversed the earth not to raven, but to feed a conquered world with Christian doctrine. St. Gregory speaks of the eagle as bald; but we shall see that he who day by day guarded the gates of defenceless Rome against the Lombard spoiler, barbarian also and heretic, fed no less the ends of the earth with Christian doctrine. It was he who brought the Ultima Thule, and its inhabitants the penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos again under the yoke of Christ, and taught the sea-kings humanity.
A little later St. Gregory closed his exposition of the prophet Ezechiel in St. Peter's with these sorrowful words: "So far, dear brethren, by the gift of God, we have searched out hidden meanings for you. Let no man blame me if I close them here, because, as you all witness, our sufferings have grown enormous. On every side we are encircled with swords: on every side we are in imminent peril of death. Some return to us maimed of their hands; of others we hear that they are captured; of others, again, that they are slain. My tongue can no longer expound, when my spirit is weary of my life. Let no one ask me to unfold the Scriptures; for my harp is turned to mourning, and my voice to the cry of the weeper. The eye of my heart no longer keeps its watch in the discussion of mysteries; my soul droops for weariness. Study has lost its charm for me. I have forgotten to eat my bread for the voice of my groaning. How can one who is not allowed to live take pleasure in the mystical sense of Scripture? How can one whose daily chalice is bitterness present sweets for others to drink? What remains for us but while we weep to give thanks for the strokes of the scourge which we suffer for our iniquities. Our Creator is become our Father by the Spirit of adoption whom He has given to us: sometimes He feeds His sons with bread; sometimes He corrects them with the scourge; because He schools us by sorrows and by gifts for the unending inheritance."[183]
This was the Rome in which Gregory ruled as Pope for fourteen years, since he saw the archangel's sword sheathed over the castle of St. Angelo, into which name the pagan mausoleum was baptised. Pestilence in the city, where the remnant of a people wandered disconsolate by the mighty halls and vast spaces of the old emperors—swords of pagan or Arian barbarians all round the patched-up walls of Aurelian. City after city through the hapless Italy reported as plundered or ruined by the Lombard devastation. Presently the trials of a sick-bed and frequent attacks of gout were added to his daily tale of sorrows. In the last years of Gregory it came to pass that the universal Church was governed from the sick-bed of one worn down, not by years—for he died at sixty-four—but by sufferings of body and mind. The prisoner of the Lombards had to struggle perpetually with the spirit of Byzantine despotism and the aggressive arrogance of a prelate whom successive eastern sovereigns had nursed from a suffragan of Heraclea to be the claimant of an ecumenical patriarchate. Yet the eyes of Gregory were bent likewise on the northern conquerors who had seized the provinces of the West. Before he was Pope he had observed in the slave-market of Rome the fair-haired Angles whom he would fain make angels; when Pope he sent forth from his father's house, which he had given to the great Father Benedict, those who were to carry the banner of that father into the isle lost to Christ. In that island he appointed the primate of Canterbury, and designed the primate of York. Through St. Leander and St. Isidore, and the martyr St. Hermenegild, he recovered Spain from the Arian blight; through the queen Theodelinda he made some impression upon Lombard cruelty and misbelief; through the Frankish monarchy he won back France from dissolution and heresy. As he saw the palaces around him deserted, and the broken aqueducts mourn over their intercepted streams in a wasted Campagna, and the glory of Trajan's forum become paler day by day, he thought that the end of the world was coming—and so thinking and so saying, he founded Christendom. In Rome itself, the almsgivers whom he had organised traversed the streets daily, carrying food to the hungry, medicine and medical aid to the sick. Every month he allotted portions of corn, wine, oil, cheese, fish, vegetables. The Church seemed to be the general provider. Every day he fed at his table twelve poor pilgrims, and served them himself. The nuns who took refuge in Rome, from the destruction of their monasteries by the Lombards, amounted to three thousand, whom Gregory supported, especially during the severe winter of 597. He wrote to the sister of the emperor Mauritius: "To their prayers and tears and fasts Rome owes its delivery from the sword of the Lombards".[184] Other cities also he saved, and so he distributed the vast patrimony of the Roman Church in Southern Italy, Sicily, Africa, France, Illyricum, with such wisdom and so beneficent a mercy, that historians trace to him the beginning of that temporal sovereignty which two hundred years after him the Popes were to take in change for the cruel abandonment, paired with incessant exaction, of Byzantine despotism; and the most loyal of subjects were called to be the most beneficent of sovereigns; and the people who had found them fathers from age to age rejoiced to see the fathership united with kingship.
What had happened to the Italy recovered by the arms of Belisarius and Narses, to the unity of the Roman empire, which caused the calamitous state described by Gregory?
Both Belisarius and Narses had enrolled a multifarious host of adventurers under the banner which professed to deliver Rome and Italy from the Gothic occupation. Narses especially had awakened the greed of the Lombards by the sight of Italy's fair lands. Scarcely had he ceased to govern Rome, in 567, when the effect of this became visible. What Alaric, what Odoacer, what Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly presents historic truth. Whether or not Narses called the Lombards into Italy, their king Alboin came from Pannonia over the Carnian Alps into the plain which has ever since borne their name; and this was in the next year—568—to the recal of Narses. The Goth and the Herules had worked much woe and wrought great destruction; but the Goths compared to the Lombards were as knights compared to villains. The Lombards, inferior to them by far in strength both of body and of mind, this rudest of Teuton races seemed incapable of receiving culture. It had, moreover, fewer elements in it capable of being worked into the stable order of a state. In belief it was partly Arian and partly pagan. It had also a mixture of Sarmatian blood. When they broke into Italy, the cities of that land, however wasted and depopulated through Attila and the Gothic wars, yet retained their Roman form, yet were full of ancient monuments, splendid still in desolation. Now, one after another fell under the sword of those barbarians. Milan surrendered to Alboin in the autumn of 569, and after three years' siege he entered as conqueror into Theodorick's palace in Pavia. Only Rome, Ravenna, and the cities of the coast still carried the imperial flag. The Romans themselves regarded as a marvel the maintenance of their scarcely defended city. Alboin aimed at making the palace of the Cæsars his royal residence. His warriors advanced with terrible devastation from Spoleto to the very walls of Rome in the time of Pope John III., who died, after nearly thirteen years' government, the 13th July, 573.