The Life
who renounced his secular career to become a monk, served as papal legate to Constantinople, was elected Pope in 590, sent the mission to the English, and composed the Pastoral Rule and the Dialogues. Gregory was born around 540 in Rome to a wealthy patrician family. His great-grandfather was Pope Felix III. He received the best classical Roman education and rose quickly in the imperial civil service. By age thirty he was Prefect of Rome u2014 the highest civil dignitary in the city. Around 574 he renounced his secular career and embraced the monastic life. He turned his family home on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew the First-Called. He provided for six other monasteries on his family lands in Sicily and gave the rest of his inheritance to the poor. In 579 Pope Pelagius II sent him as papal apocrisarius to Constantinople, where he composed the Moralia in Job. He returned to Rome in 585. When Pelagius died of plague in 590, Gregory was elected Pope by popular acclamation. He governed the Church for fourteen difficult years through the Lombard wars and the collapse of the Western Roman world. He sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury to England in 596u2013597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons. He composed the Pastoral Rule, the Dialogues, 854 letters, and 60+ sermons. In the East he is associated with the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts. He reposed on March 12, 604.
Saint Gregory was born around 540 in Rome to a wealthy patrician family of senatorial rank. His great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III. His father Gordianus was a Roman senator. His mother Silvia would later be venerated as a saint. The family possessed large estates in Sicily and Italy. He received the best classical Roman education available. He rose quickly in the Roman civil service. By age thirty (around 570), he was Prefect of the City of Rome — the highest civil dignitary in Rome, president of the senate, the chief administrator of the city. After his father’s death around 574, Saint Gregory renounced his secular career and embraced the monastic life. He turned his family home on the Caelian Hill in Rome into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew the First-Called. He provided for six other monasteries on his family’s lands in Sicily. He gave the rest of his large inheritance to the poor. He spent four years in monastic retreat at Saint Andrew’s, pursuing the prayer, ascetical discipline, and theological study that would form the foundation of his later papal ministry.
Saint Gregory’s monastic retreat at Saint Andrew’s ended in 579 when Pope Pelagius II called him out of the monastery, ordained him a deacon, and sent him as papal apocrisarius to the imperial court at Constantinople. Saint Gregory took a group of monks with him and they lived as a Western monastic community within the Eastern imperial capital. He remained for some six or seven years (579–585). During these years he composed his great theological commentary the Moralia in Job. He made it a point not to learn Greek during his time at Constantinople, preferring to communicate through interpreters; the choice marked the distinct Latin theological tradition he would represent throughout his career. He was recalled to Rome in 585 and served as counselor to Pope Pelagius II.
In 590 a terrible epidemic struck Rome and Pope Pelagius II died of the plague. Saint Gregory was elected Pope by popular acclamation, despite his personal reluctance. He hesitated for some seven months before accepting the election through the entreaties of the Roman clergy and flock. His first act as Pope was to organize a three-day penitential procession through the streets of Rome, asking God in his mercy to end the plague. He showed a strong fatherly concern which lifted the spirits of the Roman people. According to the tradition, when the procession arrived at the church of Saint Peter, Saint Gregory saw the Archangel Saint Michael standing atop the ancient Mausoleum of Hadrian sheathing his sword, signifying the end of the plague. The building has been called the Castel Sant’Angelo (the Castle of the Holy Angel) ever since.
Saint Gregory’s most famous missionary achievement was the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon English. According to the famous tradition, Saint Gregory had once seen beautiful blond English boys for sale in the slave market of Rome before he became Pope and had asked who they were. When he was told they were Angles (Angli), he replied that they were not Angles but angels (Angeli), and resolved to send a Christian mission to the pagan English. As Pope he fulfilled his earlier resolution by sending Saint Augustine of Canterbury and forty other Roman monks from his own Monastery of Saint Andrew to England in 596–597. The mission succeeded; King Aethelberht of Kent was baptized at Canterbury; the Christian Faith spread among the Anglo-Saxon English. Saint Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The entire Christian history of England descends from this papal mission. Saint Gregory continued to direct the English mission through detailed correspondence with Saint Augustine.
Saint Gregory has left behind numerous written works. His Moralia in Job is an extensive allegorical and moral commentary on the entire Book of Job, composed during his years at Constantinople. His Pastoral Rule describes the model of the true Christian pastor and served as the prime manual for priests in the Western Christian Church for many centuries. He composed more than 60 sermons that survive. He composed approximately 854 letters that have been preserved, documenting the extensive papal administration of his pontificate. After the appearance of his book Dialogues Concerning the Life and Miracles of the Italian Fathers, Saint Gregory was called “Dialogist” in the Eastern Christian tradition. The Dialogues are organized as a four-volume conversation between Saint Gregory and his deacon Peter, in which Saint Gregory recounts the lives and miracles of the great Christian saints of sixth-century Italy. The Dialogues are the primary source of the biographies of Saint Benedict of Nursia and his sister Saint Scholastica.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Saint Gregory is venerated as the author or compiler of the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts — the liturgical service offered on weekdays during Great Lent and the first three days of Holy Week, in which Communion is received from Gifts that have been sanctified in advance at a previous Sunday Liturgy. Saint Gregory is traditionally said to have compiled the order of the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts in the Latin language, which before him was known only in the verbal tradition. The precise historical relationship between Saint Gregory and the Eastern Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts as it now exists is debated by scholars. Whatever the historical details, the Eastern Christian tradition has commemorated Saint Gregory as the author of the service for over a thousand years, and the service is called “The Divine Liturgy of Saint Gregory the Dialogist” in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
The biblical foundation of Saint Gregory’s practical pastoral ministry is the apostolic teaching of the Lord that the smallest acts of Christian charity to the least of his disciples will not lose their reward. Saint Gregory pursued the practical care of the poor of Rome throughout his pontificate, administering the papal estates for their relief and providing for the daily distribution of food to thousands of the city’s poor. The witness of his pastoral care across fourteen centuries reminds the Christian Church that the practical care of the poor is the central marker of authentic Christian leadership. May we, in our own particular vocations, pursue the practical care of the poor that the apostolic teaching commands.
Saint Gregory reposed in peace at Rome on March 12, 604. He was about sixty-four years old. He had been Pope of Rome for fourteen years. He had suffered greatly from various physical illnesses throughout his pontificate (gout, indigestion, recurring fevers) but had continued his tireless administrative, theological, and pastoral work to the end. He was buried in the original Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome; his relics were moved to the new Saint Peter’s Basilica during the Renaissance reconstruction. He was almost immediately glorified as a saint by popular acclamation. He is commemorated on March 12 in both the Eastern Orthodox tradition (where he is called Saint Gregory the Dialogist) and the Western tradition (where he is called Saint Gregory the Great). The Roman Catholic Church has declared him one of the four great Latin Doctors of the Church (alongside Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, and Saint Jerome).
Gregory gives the Christian Church a particular gift: the early Eastern dramatization that the providence of God uses the faithful work of individual saints in difficult transitional moments of history to found the new institutional and theological foundations on which the next era of the Christian community can build. He renounced the Prefecture of Rome in 574 for the monastic life. He served as papal apocrisarius at Constantinople 579–585 and composed the Moralia in Job there. He was elected Pope in 590 and governed the Church for fourteen difficult years through the Lombard wars. He sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury to England in 596–597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons. He composed the Pastoral Rule, the Dialogues, 854 letters, and 60+ sermons. In the East he is associated with the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts. He reposed on March 12, 604. We may not be popes. But we are all called to trust that our faithful work in our particular vocations is being used by the providence of God for purposes that may vastly exceed our particular vision.