March 1992 Print

how he built the future

by Stephen Cannon

The “Fathers of the Church” were early Christian writers of extraordinary holiness and learning. They decisively shaped the development of Catholic doctrine in the post-apostolic period and set the foundations of the Christian faith as we know it today. The four great Western Fathers were Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great.

 

BETWEEN the death of St. Jerome in 420 and the birth of St. Gregory in 540, something astounding happened. The Western Empire fell.

In 476, after a century of invasion and struggle, Eternal Rome, the city of caesars, submitted to barbarian rule.

During Gregory’s youth, Rome was continually buffeted as the Eastern emperor (the Eastern Roman Empire would survive another 1,000 years) fought to recapture the city. For local residents, the result was devastating famine and plague.

Eventually the emperior triumphed. But then the Lombards, a barbarian tribe more savage than any before, swept down from the Alps and once again put Rome under siege.

Gregory’s family belonged to the old, pre-Christian aristocracy - though it had also given two Popes to the Church. Following family tradition, Gregory sought a career in public service and at the age of 33 became prefect of Rome. This was the highest civil office in the city, charged with administration of its finances, its food storage and distribution, and its judicial system.

As prefect, Gregory did succeed in easing Rome’s plight. But he was beset with a sense of hopelessness. ‘All I see is ruined buildings and crumbling walls,” he wrote. “Let us despise this present world as a torch that is being extinguished.” After two years, Gregory retired from public service. He sold his property, using the proceeds to endow religious houses and provide for the poor. His own house on the Coelian hill he turned over to a group of monks following the new rule of Benedict of Nursia, and joined their community himself.

After four years of monastic peace, Gregory was summoned back to public life, this time not in a secular capacity but in the service of the Church. Pope Pelagius II made him a cardinal-deacon and appointed him nuncio to the court of the emperor at Constantinople. He remained in this sensitive post for seven years, struggling against the emperor’s caesaropapism (the persistent imperial tendency to intrude in the government of the Church) and efforts by the patriach of Constantinople to have himself recognized as Christendom’s principal bishop.

At last Gregory was permitted to return to his monastery, where the grateful monks chose him as their abbot. But in 590, a new outbreak of the plague brought death to Pelagius H. To no one’s great surprise - though to his own considerable dismay - Gregory was elected the new Pontiff.

His first reaction was to flee the city. But he was found, brought back and duly installed as Pope Gregory I. Thereupon, despite his personal misgivings, despite a deep-seated sense of gloom that still haunted him, he set out on a course of action that would rescue his people from despair, revitalize the Church and lead society from chaos to the brink of a new era.

In response to the immediate crisis of the plague ravaging Rome, Gregory asked the whole city to take part in three days of public processions and prayers (the origin of the Rogation Days), after which the plague gradually subsided.

He then organized the Church’s relief and hospital services: Throughout his pon-tificate he would regularly take a place at the tables distributing food and clothing to the needy. He set up a new, more efficient administration for the Church’s vast property holdings, the so-called “Patrimony of St. Peter,” and reminded those whom he put in charge that they were working for the poor.

He also abolished the system of fees that the Roman clergy were accustomed to collect for various permissions and dispensations. And he transformed the Lateran palace, the papal residence, from a hotbed of politics and intrigue to a house of prayer, closing it to all seculars and in-viting some monks from his former monastery to dwell with him.

Farther afield, Pope Gregory negotiated a truce with the ferocious Lombards and ransomed prisoners being held by them. His impact on civil society was greater than that of any previous Pope. Not merely in Rome but throughout the Italian peninsula, he - and not the emperor - became the de facto ruler.

Gregory was agonizingly aware of his burden. In a letter written shortly after his election, he referred to the Church as “an old ship that is badly damaged, water leaking in from every side, the planks shattered by daily storms.” But a little later in another letter he wrote, “I am ready to die rather than allow the Church to degenerate in my days.”

To repair the Church, Gregory took charge of it as its supreme pastor throughout the world_ Though he preferred that bishops be elected locally, he acted decisively to fill Sees left vacant. He set up tribunals to hear complaints against corrupt bishops, and those judged guilty he deposed. He decreed that the decisions of any bishop anywhere - including, of course, the proud patriarch of Constan-tinople - could be appealed to the Holy See.

Such actions, which prepared the way for the “strong Popes” of the Middle Ages, were done with a sureness of purpose that never needed to be reinforced by pomp or bluster. Quite the contrary: Gregory’s favorite title for himself was “servant of the servants of God.”

Nowhere was Gregory’s effort to revitalize the Church more enduring than in his missions to the barbarians. Through him, the very people who destroyed the old civilization became the ones on whom the new civilization of the Middle Ages was built.

Yet Gregory was never motivated by any merely “institutional” concerns. He acted always from deep love for people themselves. Particularly dear to him was a mission to the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, on which he sent 40 monks from his own former monastery, headed by their prior who since has come to be known as St. Augustine of Canterbury.

But it’s not merely for his monumental deeds that Gregory is known as one of the four great Latin Doctors. “Doctors of the Church” are declared principally for their writings. For Gregory, this means chiefly two books, works of enormous influence throughout the Middle Ages.

The first of these is his “Pastoral Rule,” which during medieval times attained the sort of status as a guidebook for bishops that the “Rule” of St. Benedict had as a guide for monks. On the principle that “no art can be taught unless it is first learned,” it states that before a bishop can preach and teach effectively, he must be a man of prayer and deep spirituality. He must learn “to subdue himself rather than his brethren” and “to be a minister, not a master.” Not all medieval bishops followed the “Pastoral Rule,” of course; but it nonetheless served as a model for good bishops as well as a measure of those who were not.

The other important book by Gregory is his “Book of Morals.” Written in the form of a commentary on the Book of Job, it’s actually less exegesis than meditation.

It is, in fact, a treatise on prayer and contemplation, the most important such work until the coming of the great medieval mystics.

Finally, there are Gregory’s tremendous contributions to sacred liturgy. He fixed the form for the Canon of the Mass and published a missal. He also issued a sacramentary, detailing the proper rituals for the administration of the sacraments. And he established the liturgical chant which to this day is associated with his name and is still the Church’s official song.

On the 1,300th anniversary of Gregory’s death, Pope St. Pius X issued an encyclical in which he paid lasting tribute to this great monk and Pontiff:

“The whole medieval period bears what may be called the Gregorian imprint; almost everything it had came to it from this Pontiff - the rule of ecclesiastical government, the manifold phases of charity and philanthrophy in its social institutions, the principles of Christian asceticism and monastic life, the arrangement of the liturgy and the art of sacred music.”

Taken from the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER, 10/87

Stephen Cannon teaches history and theology. He lives in Boston.