Pope Saint Gregory, the first known written author of the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts which we celebrate in the Holy Orthodox Church during this Lenten season, is also a saint deserving of particular veneration and affection from those of us who have English blood. Pope Gregory, more than any other single man (with the possible exception of Saint Benedict), is probably the one most responsible for the Christianisation of the English people and the sanctification of the British Isles.
Gregory was born to Gordian, the head of an Italian senatorial family made illustrious by its fervent faith – his great-great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III who was elected to his position by Theodoric the Goth (a certain affinity for Christianising heathen Germans seems to run in the family as well – but more on that later), and his mother Silvia is still remembered as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church as a patroness of pregnant women, as well as his aunts Tarsilla and Æmiliana. It goes without saying that Gregory was given the best of sæcular learning by his attentive parents – he took to grammar, rhetoric, mathematics and the other liberal arts like a fish to water. Even so, his family’s position was precarious as the fighting between Roman forces and Germans to the north was fierce, and the Germans often pushed inward to the outskirts of the Old City itself. The conquest of Italy by Emperor Saint Justinian did ensure a certain degree of peace, but it also meant a drastic swing eastward in political power.
The family owned extensive land holdings throughout the country, particularly in Sicily and around Rome, which Saint Gregory sold off and gave the proceeds to the poor upon his father’s death, converting the family home into a monastery dedicated to Holy Apostle Andrew. He was drawn with great fervour to the life of contemplation, and he beautified it with the creation of the plainchant that still bears his name. However, as an abbot, he had a reputation for sternness and inflexibility that extended even to the sick and the dying.
He was appointed ambassador (apocrisarius) to Constantinople by Pope Pelagius II in 579, but apparently the City did not agree with him: he never learned Greek, and he held himself aloof from court politics. His efforts to gain support from the East against the incursions of Germanic tribes to the north proved fruitless. Instead he used his time to author, at his students’ insistence, scholarly and spiritual works such as a commentary on the Book of Job. He also entered into polemics with Patriarch Eutychios of Constantinople which left him with an unfavourable impression of Constantinopolitan theological life, although he did end up getting Eutychios to repent of his errant views before he died. (Eutychios is now commemorated as an Orthodox saint on 6 April.) Saint Bede assures us, however, that his time in Constantinople was not wasted: he spent it striving even more fervently after a humility he found wanting among the sæcular senatorial class there. Later in life he would bring his arguments against Eutychios’s theologoumena to bear upon weightier hæresies, such as those of Donatus and Arius.
After Pope Pelagius died of a plague that was sweeping Italy, Gregory, who had returned to Rome and was living in the monastery of Saint Andrew, was selected as Pope of Rome. However it was certainly a case of nolo efiscofari as Gregory, wishing to remain a simple monk, for seven months straight refused all the clamour for him to ascend to the papacy. He was finally prevailed upon by overwhelming clerical and public support, but his first act as Pope was to write an epistolary series stating firmly and strongly that he had no desire for the Papacy and praising the contemplative life. He continued to write in this vein for at least a year, complaining at the burden of his duties and longing again to retreat into his monastic cell, so deeply did Gregory miss his life as a monk.
However, as pope he proved remarkably effective – far more so than when he had been a monastic ambassador to the Christian East. He focussed his considerable intellectual and spiritual energies upon directing the gaze of the Church to the poor. He made it a priority and a demand upon the Church that the moneys that clergy received were to be redistributed directly to the poor as alms. Pope Gregory saw to it that the Church obeyed the maxim of Saint John Chrysostom that its property belonged, not to themselves, but to the poor, and encouraged the sæcular rich to adopt the same attitude. He oversaw a massive overhaul of the administrative structure of the Church, which he reorganised primarily to benefit the destitute and impoverished of the Old City – many of them refugees from the northern wars against the Germans. He set down his ideas for the reform of the clergy in his work The Pastoral Office; as a mark of his own humility and desire for a monastic sensibility among the higher clergy, he set the example of using in his own address, the title ‘Servant of the Servants of God’.
He also bent his formidable mind and spirit upon mission work. I have already detailed somewhat the rough contours of Pope Gregory’s mission to the English nation undertaken principally by Saint Augustine of Canterbury and later by Æþelberht King of Kent. But the tale of how he became interested in this mission from Saint Bede is just too good to pass up:
I must here relate a story which shows Gregory’s deep desire for the salvation of our nation. We are told that one day some merchants who had recently arrived in Rome displayed their many wares in the crowded market-place. Among other merchandise Gregory saw some boys exposed for sale. These had fair complexions, fine-cut features, and fair hair. Looking at them with interest, he enquired what country and race they came from. ‘They come from Britain,’ he was told, ‘where all the people have this appearance.’In the West he is therefore remembered primarily as the Apostle to the English, following Bede’s panegyric upon the virtues of this most saintly pope. But in the Greek-speaking East he is primarily remembered as ‘Dialogos’: the author of a four-volume series of Dialogues which serve as a hagiographical template for the saints of Italy – and most particularly Saint Benedict, for whom Gregory had a particular reverence. The Dialogues were translated quite early and quite readily into Greek, which gave Pope Saint Gregory a particular significance as a Latin Church Father read with deep reverence and gratitude by Orthodox Christian hierarchs going back to the seventh century. Today we pray for Pope Saint Gregory’s intercession for our salvation!
He then asked whether the people were Christians, or whether they were still ignorant heathens. ‘They are pagans,’ he was informed.
‘Alas!’ said Gregory with a heartfelt sigh: ‘how sad that such handsome folk are still in the grasp of the Authour of darkness, and that faces of such beauty conceal minds ignorant of God’s grace! What is the name of this race?’
‘They are called Angles,’ he was told.
‘That is appropriate,’ he said, ‘for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become fellow-heirs with the angels in heaven. And what is the name of their Province?’
‘Deira,’ was the answer.
‘Good. They shall indeed be de ira – saved from wrath – and called to the mercy of Christ. And what is the name of their king?’ he asked.
‘Ælle,’ he was told.
‘Then must Alleluia be sung to the praise of God our Creator in their land,’ said Gregory, making play on the name.
Receiving divine grace from God on high, O glorious Gregory,
And strengthened with its power,
You willed to walk in the path of the Gospel, O most blessed one.
Therefore you have received from Christ the reward of your labors!
Entreat him that he may save our souls!
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