Moralia in Job 10

Argument. 1. The overflowing of the Tiber. 2. The evils that followed thereupon. Among them, the plague. Pelagius being carried off by the plague, Gregory is elected in his place. The emperor's consent is sought. 3. Whether by right or wrong. 4. Whether money was paid to obtain the consent. 5. The plague rages more fiercely. Gregory exhorts the Romans to penance. 6. He proclaims public supplications. 7. By what authority. 8. He flees and seeks a hiding-place. He is recognized by the token of a shining column. (Years 589 and 590.) 1. In the year five hundred and eighty-nine, in the ninth month, that is, November, the river Tiber so covered the city of Rome with a great inundation that ancient buildings were destroyed;

even the granaries of the Church were overthrown, in which several thousand bushels of wheat perished, says the first writer of Frankish affairs (Gregory of Tours, Book X, ch. 1); and he observes that this happened in the fourteenth year of King Childebert — which must be understood not of that year begun but completed. For, on the testimony of the same historian Gregory, in the middle of the eleventh month following, that is, January, Pope Pelagius was struck by the plague. And because the Church of God could not be without a ruler, all the people elected the deacon Gregory. That Gregory was ordained in the month of September of the year 590, no one denies.

But if Pelagius had been seized by the plague and died when only the fourteenth year of Childebert had merely begun, that is, in the year 588, the Roman See would have been vacant for twenty months, namely from January of the year 588 until the ordination of St. Gregory in the month of September of the year 590; yet that Rome — nay, the whole Church — was then for so long without a pastor, no writer of history has committed to record. Therefore the inundation of which Gregory of Tours speaks occurred in the month of November of the year 589, and in the following January the pestilence carried off Pope Pelagius. A little afterwards Gregory was elected supreme pontiff.

But since he resisted, and the emperor's consent had to be awaited, his ordination could not be accomplished sooner than at the beginning of the next month of September. Within these fixed limits the chronology had to be defined and established, before we could pursue the other matters which either preceded Gregory's election or followed it. Gregory himself makes mention of the inundation of the Tiber in Book III of the Dialogues, chapter 19, in these words: About five years before this, when at this Roman city the Tiber went out of its bed, swelling so much that its wave flowed over the walls of the City, and thence already occupied the greatest regions, at the city of Verona the river Athesis, overflowing, came to the church of the blessed Zeno, martyr and bishop.

These things more and more confirm the chronology we have established. For Gregory wrote the Dialogues in the year 593, which was about the fifth — that is, the fifth reckoned from its beginning in the year 589. The swelling of the Tiber had before this more than once been deadly to Rome, and Horace had seen it in his own times: The Tiber, its waves violently hurled back from the Etruscan shore, is seen to go to overthrow the monuments of the King and the temples of Vesta. (Book I, ode 2.) Now among the greatest disasters of the City and the world was reckoned the overflowing of this river. Whence Tertullian, Apology chapter 40: If the Tiber, he says, rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise into the fields; if the sky stood still, if the earth quaked; if there is famine, if there is plague: at once, 'the Christians to the lion';

as though they were the provokers and authors of so many calamities by their crimes. 2. What great evils this almost boundless outpouring of the Tiber brought, the Frankish Gregory relates in these words: A multitude of serpents also, with a great dragon like the trunk of a tree, went down through the bed of this river into the sea; but the beasts, being choked among the salt waves of the turbid sea, were cast up upon the shore. Immediately in its track there followed the disaster which they call the 'inguinal' (bubonic). The first of all struck by this scourge and perishing was Pope Pelagius, on the testimony of the same Gregory, according to that which is read in the prophet Ezekiel: Begin from my sanctuary. Soon afterwards there followed a great slaughter of the people.

In so great a calamity, therefore, the Roman people fled to Gregory, and elected him supreme pontiff. But he, trying more earnestly to flee this summit, lest that vainglory over honour obtained in the world which he had formerly cast off should again creep upon him, at once by suppliant letters entreated Maurice Augustus — whose son he had received from the sacred font — to refuse his consent to the people who were electing him and demanding him for the episcopate.

That he also wrote to John, patriarch of Constantinople, that he might be the persuader and author of annulling this election with the emperor, before whom he had very great favour, is conjectured from letter 4 of Book I, in which he remonstrates with him because he in no way opposed his being raised to the episcopate. But the prefect of the city of Rome, his own brother, having anticipated the messenger, sent to the emperor the solemn decree of election. Maurice, giving thanks to God that the deacon most closely joined to him in friendship had been called by the votes of the people to the summit of so great an honour, having given the customary command, ordered that he be installed and ordained.

These things are excerpted from the historian Gregory, which he himself had learned from an eyewitness, a deacon of the Church of Tours (since he was then living at Rome). Among the leading men who by their votes, and perhaps by their counsels and authority, contributed very much to the election of Gregory, particular praise was earned by John, ex-consul and quaestor, a man of patrician nobility, and also Philip, count of the excubitors, of whom for this reason he complains in letters 31 and 32 of Book I. That Gregory was only a deacon when he was raised to the pontificate is clear from this testimony of the other Gregory. Nor indeed do we read that he was endowed with the presbyterate before he was anointed and consecrated as pontiff;

which we by no means deny is contrary to present-day customs; but perhaps it was not so to ancient ones. 3. It will doubtless also strike the minds of some, what the aforesaid writer relates about the emperor's consent being sought and awaited before the elected Gregory could be ordained. But at least from the times of the Gothic kings who held Italy it had been the practice that an elected pope should not take his seat unless the confirmation of the prince first intervened. To this right — or wrong — this pretext was found: that since the election of the supreme pontiff pertained then not only to the clergy, but also to the senate and people of Rome, it ought not to stand without the authority of the emperor or prince, who was the head of the senate and people.

Nor indeed did Gregory, who acknowledges that the sacred ministry was committed to him by the emperor (Book I, letter 5), anywhere appear to condemn this custom, or to have disapproved of it. For as to what Baronius brings forward to show that this custom had displeased the most holy pontiff, he drew it from a spurious, or at least doubtful, passage of the commentary on the Penitential Psalms. When the empire was restored in the West, Charlemagne and his successors enjoyed this right of confirming the supreme pontiff, none resisting, as is clear from Anastasius, librarian of the Roman Church, and from other writers everywhere not unfair toward the Apostolic See.

The same most eminent cardinal thinks that the consent of Maurice to Gregory's election was procured by money paid; which I know not whether it is read in any writing of this or of a lower age. For the complaint about the spouse of Christ made captive and subjected to tribute, which is brought forward from the commentary on the Penitential Psalms, neither signifies that, nor is it free from the suspicion of interpolation and forgery. It does not escape me that the Arian Athalaric once commanded three thousand solidi to be paid for the confirmation of the Apostolic pontiff, and two thousand for confirming the election of the other patriarchs, that is, of the metropolitans;

but that Catholic princes, after Italy had been freed from the Goths, exacted the same, or that Gregory did not shrink from this kind of simoniacal payment of money, no one who has read his very many letters written against the simoniacal heresy will ever be able to persuade himself. Besides, the Arian king does not order money to be paid, except when, concerning the election or ordination of prelates, a dispute of the peoples has been brought to the palace. But in the election of Gregory the consent of the peoples was wondrous. I add further that this passage, sought from the rescript to Pope John, is obscure, since in it the king promulgates most wholesome decrees against simoniacs, both those who give and those who receive. (Cf. Cassiodorus, Book IX, letter 15.)

Meanwhile, while the response and assent of Augustus were being awaited, the pestilence grew worse day by day, and Rome was being laid waste by continual funerals. From this plague the monastery of St. Andrew was not immune; and then above all shone forth the solicitude and charity of all the brethren toward Theodorus, a young man seized by this disease and brought to his last extremity; whom, freed by their prayers from a double death, namely of soul and of body, Gregory relates both in homilies 19 and 38 on the Gospels, and in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 38. The holy Father was then absent from the monastery, wholly intent on procuring consolations for the afflicted city.

And in order to lift up to hope in God the Romans who were now almost losing heart, and to summon them to penance amid so many scourges, even against their will, he delivered a sermon to the people, indeed worthy to have been committed to writing by Gregory of Tours. Paul and John the deacons also make mention of it, as well as very many others. In the earlier editions it is read as having been delivered in the sixth indiction, in place of which one should rather read the eighth indiction. For it is agreed that Gregory was ordained at the beginning of the ninth indiction. The cause of the error was that this oration had been prefixed to the book of Letters formerly numbered eleven, now thirteen, whose indiction, namely, is the sixth. Nor less erroneously is the day assigned as the fourth before the Kalends of September. 6. After the sermon, St.

Gregory proclaimed public supplications, that is, litanies, and commanded that, assembling at seven designated basilicas in as many regions of the City, all the clergy, monks, sacred virgins, infants, laymen, widows, and married women, together with the presbyters of the several regions, should proceed thence with prayers and tears to the basilica of the holy Mother of God at an appointed place. Moreover, when the throngs of clergy had been gathered, he commanded that psalms be sung for three days. Therefore at the third hour (in our reckoning, the ninth) all the choirs of the psalm-singers came to the Church, crying through the streets, Kyrie eleison. And during the very time of the supplication, within the space of a single hour, eighty men breathed out their spirit.

These things Gregory, bishop of Tours, handed down to memory from the undoubted report of his deacon who was then at Rome, to which Paul the Deacon subscribed (Book III on the Deeds of the Lombards, ch. 25). But John the Deacon and others differ not a little from other writers, whether in listing the order of persons, or in assigning the basilicas. For John the Deacon assigns for the litany of the clergy the church of St. John, and agrees with the document about the litanies which is now read in the appendix of the Letters: Gregory of Tours, the basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian. This disagreement, however, can be reconciled if we say that those supplications were proclaimed more than once;

and that in these the order related by Gregory of Tours was kept, while in others the other order assigned by John was kept; which can be confirmed from the ritual books, if faith is to be placed in the father of the Ecclesiastical Annals. The ritual books have it, says Baronius (On the year 590, no. 18), that in the last litanies there was a procession to the basilica of the Prince of the Apostles, and that by Gregory the holy image of the Mother of God was carried with great veneration. Then they relate that near the mole of Hadrian, adjacent to the Tiber, an angel was seen, in sign of the Deity reconciled, replacing his drawn sword into its sheath, and that by this symbol he wished to signify that the disease had ceased. About the supplications held more than once, and lastly held in the basilica of St.

Peter, we by no means wish to contend, even though all writers are silent about a manifold, or even double, procession held in the time of the plague. But the things related about the angel that was seen and the plague that was quelled seem of doubtful faith. For if it happened, how is it that Gregory of Tours did not receive it from his deacon? And if he did hear him relating such great miracles, how did he abstain from commemorating those very things, he who sometimes delights to relate the most trifling and not so certain matters? Deep too is the silence of Bede, Paul, and John about these things. That the pestilence nevertheless subsided, Paul and John, who pursued the deeds done by Gregory more accurately, testify not obscurely; but we shall show hereafter that it broke out again briefly afterward.

Since all writers are silent about supplications held again or more often in the time of the plague, perhaps the disagreeing writers will more happily be brought back to concord by saying that the order of one and the same litany was variously proclaimed and prescribed. For when these and those basilicas had first been assigned, to which the various orders should assemble, others were afterward chosen with changed counsel, either because they were more spacious, or because they were nearer, or because in the regions where those churches were situated the plague was raging less. For care had to be taken to avoid the places in which the disease was raging more fiercely. And so, according to this opinion — which I freely confess I have read nowhere — both the church of St.

John, and the church of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian, were designated as the place to which the litany of the clergy should assemble, and whence it should afterward proceed (the same is to be said of the other cases in which there is a discrepancy); but the clergy assembled at only one or the other. From those supplications seem to have taken their origin the litanies which are called the Greater, and are celebrated every year on the feast of St. Mark, while those which are held in the three days before the Lord's Ascension are called the Lesser. 7. It may be asked by what name or by what authority Gregory, being still only a deacon — elected indeed to the pontificate, but not yet ordained — in a certain manner anticipated the governance of the Roman Church, by decreeing all the things we have related above.

Some indeed think that he had already been made a presbyter, among whom Baronius stands out, on account of those words of Gregory of Tours about him: But so great a priest did not cease to preach to the people, etc. But in truth the ancients were not accustomed to designate a presbyter by the name of 'priest' (sacerdos). And so the bishop of Tours here calls our Gregory a priest for no other reason than that he had been elected to the supreme priesthood; whence a little afterward he not obscurely intimates that he was still placed in the grade of the diaconate. Nor indeed would the order of the presbyterate have conferred upon him the right of exercising power over the Roman Church.

We suspect, therefore, that Gregory, as pontiff-elect, obtained the administration of the vacant see together with the other vicars of the Roman Church; and this we conjecture from the letter of the Roman clergy sent to the Scots, when, upon the death of Pope Severinus, the Apostolic See was vacant about the year 640. For that letter is read as written in the name of Hilary, archpresbyter and keeper of the place, that is, as I surmise, vicar, of the holy Apostolic See; of John, deacon and elect in the name of God, who was John IV; of John, primicerius and keeper of the place of the Apostolic See; and of John, servant of God, counsellor of the same Apostolic See. This document the venerable Bede sets forth in Book II of his History, ch. 29;

whence one may learn to whom the administration of the Roman Church was entrusted, until he who had been elected pontiff should be consecrated. 8. Solicitous for the salvation of his fellow-citizens, Gregory had almost forgotten himself, and had suspended his purpose of fleeing the pontifical dignity. Perhaps he was sleeping secure, because he hoped that the emperor Maurice, moved by his suppliant letters, would not consent to the election that had been made. But when he learned that his letter to Augustus had been intercepted and another delivered, by which the prefect of the City informed him of the election made by unanimous consent, and of the incredible zeal of the whole people toward the elected man, thinking that he most of all had to fear, he thought of flight as soon as possible.

For he dreaded that lofty indeed, but arduous place, and thus he feared to lose the security of his poverty, just as greedy rich men are wont to guard riches that are to perish, to use the words of the same Gregory (Book III, Dialogues, ch. 14). But when he was preparing the hiding-places of his flight, he is seized, dragged, and led to the basilica of the blessed apostle Peter, and there, consecrated to the office of pontifical grace, he was given as pope to the City. These things Gregory of Tours relates, whose last words Paul the Deacon transcribed. He adds moreover that Gregory, when watch was anxiously kept at the gates of the City lest he escape, obtained from the merchants that, hidden in a wicker basket, he might be carried out beyond the City;

and that thus for three days he lay hidden, but on the third night was detected and apprehended by the token of a shining column. I pass over the other things that then befell — wondrous indeed and astonishing — because they may be read in Paul. John the Deacon, following Paul in almost everything, nevertheless makes mention of no other sign than the shining column. Gregory himself, though out of modesty and lowliness of mind (both which virtues shone forth in him especially) he would greatly have wished to suppress and dissemble the miracles then wrought, could nevertheless not entirely conceal them, writing to Natalis, bishop of Salona: We disclose our conscience: that I undertook the burdens of this honour itself with a reluctant mind.

But because I could not resist the divine judgments, etc. (Book I, letter 21). And to Cyriacus, patriarch of Constantinople: I too, who unworthily came to the place of governance, conscious of my weakness, had at one time resolved to seek more secret places; but perceiving the judgments from above to oppose me, I submitted the neck of my heart to the yoke of the Creator. (Book VII, letter 4.) He also makes mention of his flight and his hiding-places at the beginning of the book of the Pastoral Rule. Thus Gregory, obeying the signs of God who called him — or rather, I should say, who compelled him — more than the wishes of men, with the emperor's consent and congratulation supervening, was ordained on the 3rd day of September in the year

590, at the very beginning of the ninth indiction — which day, marked in the ecclesiastical tables, was formerly most celebrated. For since the birthday of the most holy Pontiff falls on the 12th of March, at which time, on account of Lent, there were anciently no solemn feasts of the Saints, the anniversary day of his ordination was consecrated to the celebration of his memory.

But now let us pause a little, and, having admired Gregory's almost unconquerable persistence in fleeing the pontificate, let us grieve for the lot of the Church, whose dignities and highest priesthoods are seized by very many ambitious men, who reckon these things due either to the splendour of their birth, or to the warlike valour of their kinsmen, or to their own attendance at court and their assiduous entreaties and vigils. So great an evil the most Christian King Louis XIV has already for the greater part driven from Gaul, by whose example may all whom it concerns comply: And yet the name of Christ retains the power of His glory even among the pursuers of gain. And in such causes there are made mercenary ministers, like cargo ships...

...whose masters gape rather after the money of those whom they convey than after their salvation: and yet the sea of this world has need of such transporters. (See Arnald of Bonneval, in the book On the Cardinal Works of Christ, in the chapter on the Baptism of Christ.)