Part 5 (1/2)

[Sidenote: The pastoral rule.]

His ideal of the pastoral office is set forth in that golden book, the _Liber regulae pastoralis_, in which he describes the life of a true shepherd of the Christian people. A life of absolute purity and devotion as therein sketched was that which made Gregory's pontificate notable for its wisdom, its discretion, and its wise governance. The pastoral office to him was one even more of the cure of souls than of government, and that idea is shown in all his letters. He wrote to kings, abbats, individual Christians, with the spirit of direct encouragement and admonition, as a wise teacher dispensing instruction.

In the Lateran he lived, as he had lived on the Caelian hill, a life of strict ascetic rule, wearing still his monastic dress, and living in common with his clerks and monks. [Sidenote: Gregory's life.] John the Deacon, who wrote his biography nearly two centuries after his death, says that ”the Roman Church in Gregory's time was like that Church as it was under the rule of the apostles, or the Church of Alexandria when S. Mark was its bishop.” Charity was by him developed into a great scheme of benevolence organised with the minutest care and recorded in detail in books that were a model to later times. The political and ecclesiastical cares of the papacy never prevented Gregory from what he considered the chiefest duty of his office, that of preaching. His sermons, which were as famous as those of Chrysostom in Constantinople, were {65} direct in their appeal, vivid in their ill.u.s.tration, terse and epigrammatic in their expression. Paul the Deacon sums up his work by saying that he was entirely engrossed in gaining souls.

[Sidenote: His statesmans.h.i.+p.]

At the same time he was a statesman as well as a bishop. He governed the ”patrimony of S. Peter,” lands scattered over Italy and even Gaul, with a careful supervision, entering into minute matters as well as general policy, freeing slaves, caring for the cultivation of land; and the intimate knowledge which he thus acquired is shown in his _Dialogues_, which throw a flood of light on the life, secular as well as ecclesiastical, of his age. Outside these districts, in purely spiritual matters, he showed a constant vigilance. Everywhere what was needed seemed to be known to the pope, and everywhere he was planning to remedy evils, to build up the Church, to reform abuses, to convert heretics, to supply new bishops, to encourage the growth of monasticism. This activity extended not only to what were called the suburbicarian provinces but to distant lands, such as Spain, Illyric.u.m, Gaul, Africa, as well as to Northern Italy. Something has been said of his relations in Gaul, and remains to be said of his intervention in Africa. His relations with Constantinople may be most significantly ill.u.s.trated by the dispute as to the t.i.tle of the patriarch of New Rome.

[Sidenote: The t.i.tle ”Universal Bishop.”]

In 588 the acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius II. to be invalid be-cause the patriarch used the t.i.tle _oikoumenikos_ or _universalis_. Just as at the Council of Chalcedon the Alexandrine representatives styled the pope ”oec.u.menical archbishop and {66} patriarch of the Great Rome,” so the patriarch of Constantinople used the style and dignity of ”oec.u.menical patriarch.” It was one that had been employed at least since 518, and it seems to have been commonly used. From the use of this t.i.tle came grave controversy. In 588 the acts of a synod of Constantinople were declared by Pelagius II. to be invalid because the patriarch used the t.i.tle _oikoumenikos_ or _universalis_: and in 595 Gregory the Great strongly condemned the use of such a phrase, at the same time repudiating its use for his own see.

”The Council of Chalcedon,” he wrote, ”offered the t.i.tle of universal to the Roman pontiff, but he refused to accept it, lest he should seem thereby to derogate from the honour of his brother bishops.” [6] And to the emperor Maurice he said still more distinctly, ”I confidently affirm that whosoever calls himself _sacerdos universalis_, or desires to be so called by others, is in his pride a forerunner of Antichrist.”

But the patriarchs continued to use the t.i.tle, and before a century had elapsed, the popes followed their example.

[Sidenote: The province of Illyric.u.m.]

The relation of Gregory with the Church of Illyric.u.m gives opportunity for mention of that anomalous patriarchate. Somewhat apart from the general Church history of the early Middle Age stands the province of Illyric.u.m. Its ecclesiastical status was even more ambiguous than its political. On its borders, or within its limits, the patriarchate of Rome touched that of {67} Constantinople, and the claims of the two, sometimes at least conflicting, were complicated by the privileges given by Justinian to his birthplace. In the tenth century it was undoubtedly under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, in the seventh it appears to have been under that of Rome. In the Councils at Constantinople in 681 and 692, the Illyrian bishops appeared as attached exclusively to Rome; and so, it has been noticed, did those of Crete, Thessalonica, and Corinth. In the sixth century there are instances, though not numerous ones, of papal interference, in the nature of the exercise of judicial power, in the province of Illyric.u.m; and at the end of the century Gregory the Great was especially active in his correspondence with the bishops. It would seem from one of his letters that he counted even Justiniana Prima as under his authority, though the intention of the emperor was certainly not to make it so.

This edict--for so it practically is--is interesting also because it appears to deal with all the ecclesiastical provinces of the empire which depended immediately on the Roman patriarchate. It omits Africa, and the fact that the popes did not send the pallium to the Bishop of Carthage (the North African Metropolitan) shows that the popes did not claim to confer jurisdiction, but merely to recognise a special relations.h.i.+p, by this act.[7] On the other hand, it is to be observed that the code of Justinian contains a law of Theodosius II. which places the Illyrian bishopric under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. But this law is beset with many difficulties, and it has been {68} argued that it was merely the expression of a temporary rupture between the Empire and the papacy, which in the schism of 484-519 was gravely accentuated; and there are grounds for thinking that the bishops of Thessalonica exercised authority in Illyric.u.m as delegates of Rome--yet rather from their political than their ecclesiastical a.s.sociations. However this may be, there can be no doubt that the position given by Justinian to the city of his birth was intended to be practically patriarchal, and that the Bishop of Thessalonica, whether vicar or not of the pope, was practically ignored. The whole question is indeed a notable example of the difficulties consequent on the close connection between religion and politics in the sixth century.

[Sidenote: Gregory's claim to jurisdiction.]

Gregory's action was that of a wise but masterful ruler, and it seems to have been based on the view that all the bishops of the West were directly under his jurisdiction. Similar cases of interference are to be found in regard to the churches of Istria, and to the great sees of Ravenna and Milan. In connection may be seen the claim to grant the _pallium_, a mark of honour which seems to have been gradually pa.s.sing into a sign of jurisdiction.[8] Gregory claimed for the successors of S. Peter something like an apostolic authority, and he at least suggested a theory of the papal office which was capable of almost indefinite extension. Politic and religion here met together. When Airulf in 592 appeared before Rome the pope made a separate treaty with him: he stepped into the {69} place of ruler of imperial Italy when he disregarded the exarch and even the emperor, and entered into negotiations on his own account; and up to the time of his death he was practically responsible for the rearrangement of Italy. His letter to the great Lombard queen, Theodelind, of whom memorials survive to-day at Monza, show how the two sides of his position mingled; how he was statesman and diplomatist as well as priest and missionary.

[Sidenote: His missions.]

In his missionary interests he pa.s.sed far outside Italy. The most conspicuous example is the conversion of the English, which he had in earlier years been most anxious himself to undertake, and which was begun in 597 under his direction by Augustine; but it is not the only one. In Northern Italy, in Africa and Gaul, Gregory was active in seeking the conversion of pagans and heretics, and in endeavouring by gentle measures to lead the Jews to Christ.

[Sidenote: His relations on monasticism.]

More important still in the history of the papacy was Gregory's work in spreading, organising, and systematising monasticism. He insisted on the strict observance of the rule of S. Benedict. Not only did he reform, but he very greatly strengthened, the monasticism of Italy.

Conspicuously did his _privilegia_, granting or recognising a considerable freedom from episcopal control, start the monks on a new advance. While not exempting them from the rule of bishops, he made it possible for future popes to win support for themselves by granting such exemptions.

But Gregory's fame does not lie wholly in any of these spheres of activity. Great as a ruler and an {70} organiser, he was known also to later ages, as to his own, for his theological writings. He was not only a practical ruler and practical minister of Christ; he was also a leader in Christian learning--the last, as men have come to call him, of the four great Latin doctors.

[Sidenote: His relations to learning.]

The work of Gregory the Great was here as elsewhere far-reaching, but rather an organising than a formative one. Cla.s.sical studies, in which he had been trained, he put aside; and when he did his utmost to spread monasteries over the length and breadth of Italy, it was not at all of learning in a secular sense, but wholly of religion that he thought.

Thus his own theology is primarily a biblical theology. The Bible was to him the word of G.o.d. Like the author of the _Imitatio Christi_ in later days, he did not care to argue as to the authors.h.i.+p of the different books but to profit by what was in them. He was a great expositor, a great preacher, and that always with a practical aim. As he said, ”We hear the doctrine words of G.o.d if we act on them.”

[Sidenote: His doctrine of the church.] In his more general theological writings he sums up, with the precision of a master, not any new doctrines or advances in speculation, but the theology of the Church of his age. And he is able thus to emphasise the crying need of unity in words which state the claim of the Church for the conversion of the pagans and heretics of his day: ”Sancta autem universalis ecclesia praedicat Deum veraciter nisi intra se coli non posse, a.s.serens quod omnes qui extra ipsam sunt minime salvabuntur.” Outside this there was no hope of spiritual health. And this doctrine he based {71} on the unity of Christ's life with that of the Church: ”Our Redeemer showed that He is one person with the Church, which He took to be His own”; and thus it was that ”The Churches of the true faith set in all parts of the world make one Catholic Church, in which all the faithful who are right minded toward G.o.d live in concord.” Thus he was, in theology as in ecclesiastical politics, a concentrating and clarifying force; and when, on March 12th, 604, he pa.s.sed to his rest, he had laid firm the foundations of the medieval papacy, and in hardly less degree those of the theological system of the medieval Church.

[1] _Paulus Diaconus_, iii, 26, ed. Waitz, pp. 105-7.

[2] Diehl, _op. cit._, gives a list, p. 256.

[3] Joannes Biclarensis, _Chronicon_ (Migne, _Patr. Lat._, lxxii. 868).

[4] See below, p. 76.