Who Was Pope Gregory the Great? The First Medieval Pope
Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604), the Roman aristocrat turned monk who shaped the medieval papacy, sent missionaries to England, and wrote the Pastoral Care.
Pope Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, was the bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, and he is widely regarded as the first of the medieval popes. A Roman aristocrat who had served as prefect of the city before becoming a monk, he brought to the papacy a combination of administrative skill, theological learning, and pastoral concern that shaped the medieval church for centuries. His writings, his missions, and his reorganization of the Roman liturgy defined the Western papacy and made him one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church.
Early life and conversion
Gregory was born into one of the richest and most ancient Roman senatorial families, around 540, as the city was still struggling to recover from the Gothic Wars. He received a thorough classical education, served as prefect of Rome - the highest civil office in the city - and was on the verge of a successful political career when his father died. Around 574, he converted his family home on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew, and he himself took monastic vows.
Gregory did not remain long in the monastery. The pope, Benedict I, soon ordained him as one of the seven deacons of Rome, and Pelagius II appointed him as papal apocrisiarius, or permanent representative, at the imperial court in Constantinople. Gregory spent six years in the Byzantine capital, where he was a sharp critic of the Patriarch of Constantinople and an able defender of papal claims. He returned to Rome around 586 and became the pope’s chief advisor.
Pontificate (590-604)
When Pelagius II died of plague in 590, Gregory was elected pope - reportedly against his will, by acclamation of the clergy and people of Rome. His pontificate coincided with one of the most difficult periods in Roman history. The city was plagued by famine, war, and pestilence, the Byzantine Empire was in full retreat before the Lombards, and the imperial exarch in Ravenna was unable to defend Italy. Gregory, as pope, had to perform many of the civil functions of a Roman magistrate: he negotiated with the Lombard dukes, organized the feeding of the Roman populace, and even commanded the city’s defense.
His letters - more than 800 of which survive - reveal a man of immense energy and shrewd political judgment. He corresponded with emperors, patriarchs, kings, and bishops, and he used his letters to assert the pope’s authority over the Western church. He was particularly active in Africa, where he worked to suppress the Donatist schism and to extend papal influence over the North African church, and in Spain, where he worked to convert the Visigoths from Arianism to Catholic Christianity. His famous letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, in which he claimed that the bishop of Rome held a unique position by virtue of his succession from Saint Peter, was one of the foundational documents of papal primacy.
Missionary activity
Gregory is best remembered today for the missionary movement that he directed. The Anglo-Saxon mission was the most famous. In 596, Gregory sent a group of monks led by the Augustine of Canterbury to the kingdom of Kent, where King Æthelberht had a Christian Frankish wife. The mission landed in 597, and within a few years it had baptized the king and established the first English bishopric at Canterbury. The mission was a model for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, and it laid the foundations of the English church.
Gregory also took a deep interest in the evangelization of the Lombards, the Visigoths, the Franks, and the peoples of the British Isles. He was not a systematic theologian in the manner of Augustine of Hippo, but he had a deep understanding of the practical problems of missionary activity, and he left detailed instructions for the conduct of missionaries in his letters. His approach - to work through kings, to found monasteries, and to develop indigenous clergy - became the standard for Western missionary activity for centuries.
Writings and liturgical reforms
Gregory was a prolific writer, and his works were among the most widely read of the early Middle Ages. The most famous of them, the Pastoral Care (Liber Regulae Pastoralis), was a manual of pastoral theology addressed to the bishops of the church. Drawing on the biblical and patristic tradition, Gregory laid out the duties of the pastor, the qualities required for the office, and the dangers of pride, avarice, and worldliness. The Pastoral Care was translated into Greek, into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, and into many other languages, and it was the most influential text in the education of the Western clergy for centuries.
Gregory is also remembered for his reorganization of the Roman liturgy. The so-called “Gregorian chant” - the system of plainsong used in the Western church - was traditionally attributed to him, although the actual development of the chant was a more complex process. He is also credited with the arrangement of the Roman liturgy into a form that would persist for centuries, and with the establishment of the Roman schola cantorum, or school of singers, that would train musicians for the papal chapel.
Gregory’s other major works include the Dialogues, a collection of miracles and lives of Italian saints, including a famous life of Saint Benedict of Nursia; the Moralia in Job, a massive commentary on the Book of Job; and numerous homilies on the Gospels and the prophets. His theology, while not original, was deeply pastoral and deeply concerned with the practical needs of the church. He is one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church, together with Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome.
Legacy
Gregory died on March 12, 604, and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. He was canonized almost immediately, and his cult was already well established by the seventh century. The medieval papacy of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries was built on the foundations that he had laid. His missionary strategy, his pastoral theology, his liturgical reforms, and his political claims for the papacy all became standard features of the medieval church. The image of the pope as a pastor, a teacher, a missionary, and a spiritual sovereign - as distinct from a secular ruler - was essentially Gregory’s invention.