[11] W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 125.
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CHAPTER V
THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT
[Sidenote: Gregory the Great.]
About 540 was born in Rome, of a noble family, the great Pope Gregory, whose work was to place the papacy at the head of Italian politics, and to lay the lines on which papal action for many centuries was to be based. When he was a child it might well have seemed that Italy under a strong Gothic rule would submit to the Arian teaching which the State supported. Theodoric endeavoured to make an united Italy; but the Church knew that there could be no compromise on the doctrine of the perfect Godhead of the Lord Jesus, and her attitude preserved Italy both for Catholicism and for the Empire. Gregory was taught as a Catholic, but he was taught also in classical grammar, composition, rhetoric, and the writings of the great Romans—pre-Christian, as well as of later days. He began his life's work as a Roman official, and by the year 573 he is found as prefect of the city. A year later, it would seem, he became a monk, giving up all his property, all his signs of rank and wealth, all his power and place. Soon, if not at once, he came to serve under the rule of S. Benedict, whose life he afterwards wrote, in the monastery dedicated to S. Andrew on the Caelian hill.
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[Sidenote: The Lombard invasion, 568.]
It was the time when Italy was again at the feet of the barbarians. The Lombards, the last of the Teutonic nations to settle in the West, established at Pavia a kingdom which lasted for two centuries (568-774), and which again rent away much of the fair Italian lands from the unity of the Empire, leaving the Exarchate at Ravenna in a state half isolated and wholly perilous.
[Sidenote: The effect on Italy.]