Rome was collapsing into chaos and the course of history was changing dramatically, when a Benedictine monk was chosen as Pope. It was Gregory I, whom history has called “the Great.”
Newsroom (10/09/2022 11:45 PM, Gaudium Press) Like an uncontainable avalanche, in the year 568, 100,000 warriors landed in northern Italy, followed by more than 500,000 elders, women and children: they were the Lombards. This barbarian people, of Arian religion, soon revealed itself to be one of the most cruel and bloodthirsty invaders that had penetrated Western Europe up to that time.
Their method of conquest consisted of violence and terror, and to establish themselves definitively in those lands, they methodically eliminated the Latin elites and the remainder of the subsisting aristocracy.
The whole of northern Italy was conquered and the survivors fled to Rome, fleeing from the horrors that accompanied the Lombard occupation.
The light of hope
It was Autumn of 589. Torrential rains fell on Italy. The fields were flooded, crops were lost and almost all the rivers overflowed, destroying bridges and flooding many towns and cities.
In Rome, the meek Tiber river became a raging torrent. Leaving its bed and reaching a level never seen before, the waters devastated the city and submerged its lower districts in mud. The catastrophe then reached apocalyptic proportions: to this destruction and famine was added an epidemic of bubonic plague that spread rapidly, decimating the population.
In the midst of the turmoil, everyone’s eyes turned to the one Light of the world: the survivors flocked day and night to the churches, begging for a ray of divine light to dispel the anguish and uncertainty that darkened the horizon.
And so, the Romans of the end of the sixth century realized, in astonishment, that the divine light was already shining for them in a clear mirror; the clergy, the senate and all the people acclaimed with one voice: “Pope Gregory!”
It was Gregory, the “light of hope” that was relit at that sunset of a civilization.
The early years
Vox populi, vox Dei. There is no doubt that Gregory was the providential man chosen by God to govern the Church in those difficult and decisive times.
He was born in 540 into a noble and ancient Roman family, deeply Catholic and with a long history of fidelity to the Chair of St. Peter.
His father was the senator Gordian, who at the end of his life would enter the ecclesiastical state, and his mother, Silvia, a lady known for her piety and generosity, who would end her days withdrawn from the world and consecrated to the Lord. Both of them, and two of Gregory’s aunts, Tarsilla and Emiliana, are venerated as saints.
He certainly witnessed, on the night of 17 December 546, the terrible entry of the Ostrogoths into Rome, followed by the deportation of its inhabitants for 40 days, during which time the deserted city was at the mercy of the invaders. And perhaps he contemplated, desolate, the city walls razed to the ground on the orders of Totila, king of the barbarians.
This contrast between the piety of the domestic environment, firmly rooted in Roman traditions, and the instability of a new world that was emerging in violence, marked the first years of Gregory’s life.
Long preparation
After the destruction of the Ostrogoths by the army of Emperor Justinian, a relative peace reigned in Italy for several years, which allowed Gregory, following the family tradition, to study law.
His acute intelligence and unusual organizational capacity quickly caused him to stand out in the learned circles of the time, and his reputation grew with the passing of the years. Nevertheless, like two sturdy branches of the same tree, there grew in his spirit the desire to undertake great works to organize that wavering civilization, as well as the desire to abandon the world to consecrate himself exclusively to the contemplation of supernatural realities.
When he was a little over 30 years old, he was appointed Prefect of Rome, one of the highest offices of the city government. He performed this function with superior ability, facing all kinds of difficulties created by the drama of the invasion of the Lombards. Yet, in the midst of his most absorbing occupations, the call to a contemplative life always resounded in his soul.
In 575, the prescribed time for service was over and Gregory, relieved, left the most prestigious office in the city.
Gregory, the monk
Along with his earthly hopes, Gregory left forever the purple of the patriciate and donned the insignia of a higher nobility: the monastic habit. But instead of leaving troubled Rome for some distant cloister, he transformed the senatorial palace on Mount Celio into a Benedictine monastery under the invocation of St. Andrew.
Handing over the government of the house to an experienced abbot named Valentius, he began his religious life as a humble subject. Those were the happiest years of his existence.
During this period, Gregory was able to satisfy his longings for isolation, and abundant mystical graces of contemplation were bestowed upon him. With unspeakable longing he wrote decades later: “When I lived in the monastery, I could have my mind almost continually fixed on prayer”.
The light on the lampstand
After four years of monastic peace, by order of Pope Benedict I, he was ordained a regional deacon; meaning, he was put in charge of the administration of one of the ecclesiastical regions that at that time divided the city of Rome.
Shortly afterwards, the new Pope, Pelagius II, who recognized Gregory’s long experience in secular matters and his proven virtue, sent him as nuncio to the capital of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople.
Six years of intense labour at the imperial court provided Gregory with useful contact with Byzantine culture and grandeur, but also with the sinuous and ambiguous politics of their sovereigns. The heterodox tendencies of Monophysitism and Nestorianism, which were still alive and well there, were fearlessly combated by Gregory, who knew how to combine theological arguments with fine diplomatic skill.
Always accompanied by some monks from St. Andrew of Mount Celio, Gregory maintained in the beautiful palace on the banks of the Bosphorus, the sacral life of a religious, a son of St. Benedict. Despite their many occupations, everyone there prayed, sang and studied the Scriptures, in full observance of monastic discipline.
Around the year 585, Gregory was able to return to Rome. His greatest desire was to withdraw permanently from the world and shut himself up in his beloved monastery of St. Andrew. But the duties of the apostolate and the voice of obedience called him once more to other paths.
An ancient tradition tells us that one day, walking through the streets of the city, he came across a group of young Anglo slaves from faraway Britannia. Dismayed to see people so full of qualities submerged in the darkness of paganism, he exclaimed: “They are not Angles, but Angels!” This was a providential encounter that would move him to do everything possible to bring the light of the Gospel to this people and, later, to promote the conversion of all the new and feared inhabitants of Europe: the barbarians.
He asked the Pope’s permission to go to the country of the Angles, in order to bring them into the bosom of the Church. But in response to the pleas of the Roman people, who did not want to be deprived of a man whose holiness was already famous, Pelagius II retained him in the Eternal City and also called him to himself to make use of him as an experienced counsellor.
The Greatest of Crosses
After the death of Pelagius II, Gregory was chosen, by unanimous acclamation, to occupy the throne of St. Peter’s. Considering himself, however, unworthy, and astonished at the immeasurable responsibility, he fled from Rome and hid in the neighboring mountains and forests. There he was found by the people and humbly submitted to the unmistakable signs of God’s will.
He was solemnly consecrated in St. Peter’s Basilica on 3 September 590. However, always aware of his own insufficiency and unworthiness, he sincerely expressed his consternation: “I am so overwhelmed by grief that I can barely speak. Everything I see causes me sadness, and what for others is a cause for consolation, seems to me distressing”.
But if humility made him tremble, faith in the invincibility of the Chair of Peter instilled in him a supernatural strength: “I am ready to die before I become a cause of ruin for the Church of Peter”.
The prophetic point of view
Gregory I ascended to the supreme pontificate in a dismantled city, the symbol of a civilization in agony, and in a Church convulsed by invasions, schisms and laxity.
Nevertheless, the inspired farsightedness that was to characterize him to the end, manifested itself from the first moment of his government. Before a society devastated by apparently insoluble crises, he presented the ideal of Christian life in all its radical integrity.
The immense void left by the disappearance of the Roman civil life could only be filled by the Christian life of charity. The principal aim of the Pope-monk would therefore be to raise the spirits continually to a consideration of supernatural realities, so as then to experience temporal events from an eternal perspective.
In so doing, St. Gregory closed forever the last door uniting Europe with the ancient world, born of paganism, and planted the seed of a new civilization which would grow under the light of the Gospel, watered by the most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Pastor of souls
During the first years of his pontificate, the Italian peninsula was suffering one of the worst phases of the Lombard conflict. Almost totally abandoned by the Byzantines, the ancient city was twice besieged by the ferocious Lombards. But both times, thanks to the fortitude and skill of the new Pope, the siege was lifted and they withdrew.
Committed not to the destruction but to the conversion of the invaders, St. Gregory signed a truce with them and sought by every means to attract them to the true Faith. After no small number of attempts, it was possible – thanks to the fervour and influence of the princess Theodolinda, daughter of the Catholic king of Bavaria and wife of a leader of the Lombards – to baptize the couple’s son and thus prepare the future conversion of the whole people.
The Supreme Pontiff’s thirst for souls brought back the whole of western Europe to the Church
In Spain, he effectively supported St. Leander in the difficult evangelization of the Arian Visigoths. At last, the monarch of that nation embraced the true Religion. The holy Pope paid special attention to Gaul. He established good relations with the Frankish sovereigns, he renewed the decadent and simonious clergy, ordered synods to be convened, and energetically sought to put an end to the cruel pagan practices that still persisted.
Where St. Gregory was truly able to manifest his missionary ardour was in the conversion of Great Britain. Once a province of the Empire, this island had been evangelized in the early days of Christianity. But, invaded and dominated by the barbarian tribes of the Angles and Saxons, the light of the Faith had almost been extinguished.
The Pontiff spared no effort to convert these people: he established a house of formation in Rome for young Anglo-Saxons, arranged for one of their kings to marry a Catholic princess from France and, above all, sent a large number of missionaries. Among them was Augustine, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who, according to the records, was responsible for more than 10,000 new baptisms on Pentecost of 597.
Despite various ailments that caused him terrible suffering, Pope Gregory remained firm and vigilant to the end. In the year 604, Gregory, in the peace of the just, delivered his soul to the Shepherd of the shepherds.
Everything in this providential man was great, thanks to his humble docility before the designs of the Divine Spirit who governs the Bride of Christ. The life of this admirable Pope constitutes a fundamental milestone in the history of the Church. He published the “Pastoral Rule”, a veritable manual of holiness for the shepherds of the Lord’s flock; he reformed the Liturgy, creating the style of singing that today bears his name; and he made the whole of his Pontificate the starting point of a new, wholly Christian civilization.
His one burning desire was to serve Jesus Christ, the Eternal King, unconditionally, as a simple slave. For this reason, while from the Chair of Peter he governed the destinies of the world, he wished to receive no other title than that of servant of the servants of God. And the Holy Church, with maternal gratitude, has joined greatness to this slave’s name: forever and ever he shall be called St. Gregory the Great.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm