Moralia in Job 11

Argument. 1. St. Gregory is ordained, and issues a symbol of faith. 2. His synodical letter to the patriarchs. 3. On its inscription. 4. Why it is called synodical. 5. How humbly he replied to those congratulating him on his assumed pontificate. 6. Other causes, besides lowliness of mind, for declining the episcopate: the most grievous evils of the Church. 7. He removed them in great part. 8. His helpers in this work. John of Constantinople. 9. Eulogius of Alexandria. 10. Anastasius of Antioch. 11. John of Jerusalem. 12. Domitian, metropolitan of Arabia. 13. Dominicus of Carthage. 14. St. Leander in Spain. 15. Virgilius of Arles, Syagrius, etc., in the Gauls. (Years 590 and 591.)

According to custom, Gregory, about to be consecrated, was led to the Confession of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles (by this name is understood, among the ancients, the place of his burial), where he set forth the orthodox faith, which he comprised within a few articles. That symbol almost all the manuscript codices of the Register of Letters exhibit, either at the head or at the foot, and it is read in John the Deacon, Book II, ch. 2: therefore we have thought it should be appended to the letters as a genuine offspring of St. Gregory.

In order also to conform to the custom long since received, he wrote a synodical letter to all the patriarchs, in which he professes to receive and venerate four councils — Nicaea, the first of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon — as the four books of the holy Gospel (Book I, letter 4). In the same synodical letter, with the veneration that was fitting, Gregory embraces the fifth council, in which the letter which is said to be of Ibas, full of error, is reproved; Theodore, separating the person of the Mediator of God and men into two substances, is convicted of having fallen into the perfidy of impiety; the writings also of Theodoret, through which the faith of blessed Cyril is censured, put forth with the audacity of madness, are refuted. He adds:

But all the persons whom the aforesaid venerable councils reject, I reject (Ibid., letter 25). Finally he strikes with anathema all who think otherwise. Again, in another letter (Book III, letter 10), comparing the four synods of the universal Church with the same number of books of the Gospels, he attributes to them the highest and supreme authority. 3. In the inscription of this synodical letter to the patriarchs, the name of John of Constantinople occurs first of all — which Baronius rightly judges to have been done by the collectors of the Gregorian letters, not by Gregory himself (On the year 591). For to the individual patriarchs he sent individual copies of that letter, in which was inscribed only the name of the patriarch to whom each was being sent.

For indeed the copy which was delivered to John bore no other name than that of John himself. Hence it is read 'Most dear brother,' not 'Most dear brethren.' Our opinion is confirmed by the fact that after the names of the patriarchs there was subjoined 'from equals' (a paribus), as we have observed in the notes. Nevertheless, the other patriarchs now consenting, the bishop of Constantinople held the first place after the Roman pontiff. At that time there were two patriarchs of Antioch; for Anastasius having been driven from this see, Gregory had been substituted; and since this had been done more by wrong than by right, and since moreover Anastasius shone among the prelates of the Eastern Church with especial praise for piety and doctrine;

The holy pontiff was unwilling to regard him as one deposed from office, but sent to him, as to the other patriarchs, a synodal letter. And he had already replied to that man's letter of congratulation upon his own assumption of the supreme pontificate. But since Gregory, given as his successor, was acknowledged throughout the whole Church of the East as legitimate shepherd, with none resisting, and since he was moreover a man worthy of the episcopate on account of his most holy manners, the new pope ought not to pass him by unsaluted, lest he should disturb the peace. 4. The letter praised above was called 'synodica' or 'synodalis'; for as soon as anyone had been created Roman pontiff, gathering the neighbouring bishops, he would hold a synod, in which he professed himself an upholder of the catholic faith;

and from that synod a synodal letter was customarily sent to the absent bishops of the whole world, but chiefly to the patriarchs of the principal churches. Examples of this custom are indeed everywhere met with in the ancient monuments of the Church. Moreover, the one newly raised to the pontificate would send the confession of his faith, not only to prove himself orthodox, but also to teach those subject to him under what faith they must live according to the statutes of the fathers. In this letter too, the chief shepherd Gregory himself was the first to wish to set before the foremost bishops of the Eastern Church a most perfect model of rightly ruling and feeding the flock of Christ; for he writes to them most fully and most learnedly concerning the pastoral office;

so much so that in that letter he seems to have given a prelude to his own truly golden book On Pastoral Rule. But nothing shines forth in it more than the astonishing humility of that most holy man, sincerely professing himself unequal to the episcopal charge. (Cf. Letter 2 of Gelasius I, in our volume LIX.) 5. He left the same lowliness of mind attested in very many letters which he wrote in reply a little after taking up the pontificate.

For as soon as the report of his elevation to the supreme pontificate had spread abroad, very many illustrious men — especially those who in the imperial city had been witnesses and privy to his modesty, wisdom, piety, and other virtues — addressed him with friendly and congratulatory letters, to which he returned and repaid in reply tears and groans rather than words. Above the rest are to be read the third with the four following, the twenty-first, and the forty-third of Book I, in which he grieves most vehemently over the burdens of the episcopate imposed upon him undeservedly and beyond his strength: 'Know,' he says, addressing the patrician Narses, 'that I am so smitten with grief that I scarcely suffice to speak;

for the darkness of grief besieges the eyes of my mind. Sad is whatever is beheld,' etc. And because he judged his own tears, though continual, in no way sufficient to bewail his changed lot, he commanded his intimate friends, as a token of friendship, to weep and sigh on this account. John the ex-consul had contributed not a little both to Gregory's election, as we have already noted, and to the confirmation of that election; and so he seems to blaze up against him in a friendly way. But nowhere does he betray his grief over the lost tranquillity of the monastic life, and the pastoral charge undertaken, more than in the eleventh homily on Ezekiel.

Whence not without reason does John the Deacon rebuke the madness of certain of the Lombards, who were not ashamed to affirm that Gregory had sought the pontificate rather than fled from it (See Book I, letter 31). 6. It seems worthwhile to investigate here what cause there was that the holy man so abhorred the pontificate, besides his singular lowliness of mind and his love of the solitary life. At that time Rome, and all Italy, was oppressed by the most bloody war of the Lombards, to which were added its faithful companions, famine and pestilence. But the Church laboured under still graver evils. Grieving over these, he thus writes to his friend Leander:

I would have wished with my whole intent to reply to your letters, had not the toil of the pastoral charge so worn me down that I would rather weep than say anything. This your reverence too vigilantly perceives in the very text of my letters, when I speak negligently to him whom I vehemently love. For I am so shaken in this place by the surges of this world that I am in no way able to steer to port the old and rotting ship which, by God's hidden dispensation, I have taken up to govern. Now the waves rush in from the front, now on the side the foaming heaps of the sea swell up, now from behind the tempest pursues.

And amid all these things, thrown into confusion, I am compelled now to steer the very rudder against the adversity, now, with the ship's side bent, to turn aside the threats of the waves obliquely. I groan, because I feel that through my negligence the bilge of vices grows, and, as the tempest violently opposes, the rotten planks now and now again resound with shipwreck. (Book I, letter 43.) Assuredly, if Peter's ship could have been overwhelmed by the waves, it would never have emerged from the storms that then raged. For the Lombards, either given over to idolatry or followers of the impious Arian faith, threatened Rome, the citadel of the whole Christian religion; and little was wanting but that they should storm it.

Recently Autharis, their Arian king, had forbidden their children to be baptized in the catholic faith, and showed himself most hostile to the orthodox (Book I, letter 17). In Istria and the neighbouring provinces the schism stirred up over the Three Chapters seethed and raged; in Spain and Narbonese Gaul the Visigoths had, down to these very times, disseminated and propagated the Arian heresy. The Angles who had invaded Britain, still enslaved to the worship of idols, knew not the name of Christ. The Donatists went on rending and vexing the African Church for now almost three centuries. Foul was the face of the Eastern Church, on account of the errors of Nestorius and Eutyches everywhere rampant, of which very many offshoots had sprouted.

To these were reckoned the Agnoetae, who not long before had arisen at Alexandria. In the Gauls, which had more tenaciously clung to the catholic faith once received, various corruptions of morals had crept in, and had undermined ecclesiastical discipline itself, especially the simoniacal heresy (so St. Gregory calls it) and the immature and headlong promotions of Neophytes — that is, in his own mind, of laymen — to the priesthood. 7. It fell to Gregory to remedy so many evils, to whom, together with the supreme pontificate, the care of all the Churches had been entrusted. But judging himself, out of humility, unequal to a work of such magnitude, and being always of weak and worn-out health, he laboured with great anxiety of mind.

But he experienced God as his helper, whose call he had obeyed; and by His aid he who esteemed and repeatedly called himself an unprofitable servant restrained the schismatics troubling Italy, led the Lombards to the catholic faith, reconciled the Goths to the Church, imbued the Angles with Christian precepts and washed them in the sacred laver, repressed the Donatists rioting in Africa, subdued the Agnoetae and other heretics in the East, everywhere rooted out various errors springing up against the faith or against pious morals, and finally accomplished so many and so great things within the space of a few years that by the consent of all nations he rightly earned the surname of 'the Great.'

Now let us review the chief companions and helpers in his labour that he had, namely those who at that time presided over the greater Churches. 8. John, called the Faster on account of his wondrous abstinence, had been raised, upon the death of Eutychius, for his outstanding virtues to the see of Constantinople, which was now claiming for itself the second place after Rome, as we have said above. But by usurping in a synod the title of ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, which he never consented to lay aside, he stirred up against himself Pope Pelagius and afterwards St. Gregory. Of him we shall hereafter treat frequently.

The Greek writers extol him with the highest praises, on account of his learning, piety, and singular liberality and munificence towards the poor, though he was most sparing towards himself. He closed his last day in the year 596, and was placed by the Greeks in the catalogue of the Saints. Cyriacus succeeded him in the same see of Constantinople. 9. Eulogius, made patriarch from a monk (if credit be given to the author of the Spiritual Meadow), governed the Alexandrian Church from the year 581 to the year 608, and always proved himself a most fierce enemy of heretics and a most strenuous defender of the orthodox faith. He wrote five books against the Novatians, or against Novatus, and attacked various heretics of those times who rebelled against the Council of Chalcedon and against St.

Pope Leo. Photius treats of him and of his lucubrations in many places. On account of the exceptional virtues and endowments of soul with which he was gifted, he was always most acceptable to St. Gregory, as will become plain from the letters to be recalled below. After his death he was added to the roll of the Saints. (Cf. Photius, codices 182, 208, 225, 226, 227.) 10. Anastasius, whom very many, on the ground of many writings, have supposed to be the celebrated Sinaite, having been raised to the see of Antioch, had yielded it in the year 572 to Gregory (prefect, as they say, of the monastery on Mount Sinai), being driven out and cast down by the emperor Justin. Yet St. Gregory always held him for the legitimate patriarch of this see; whence he wrote to him (Book I, letter 26):

With me you are always that which by the gift of almighty God you have received to be, not that which by the will of men you are thought not to be. Upon the death of Gregory of Antioch — whose praises Evagrius fully pursues in his fourth book, on account of his manifold and most excellent virtues and his rightly administered Church — Anastasius was restored to his see in the year 591, or, as others prefer, 592, which he governed most holily until the year 599, in which he died. What he wrote, or was commonly believed to have written, read in the authors of the sacred Libraries. He obtained very many praisers and admirers of his acknowledged sanctity, among whom the first place beyond controversy is due to Gregory the Great.

St. Gregory displayed no ordinary testimony of the esteem he had conceived of Anastasius and of his singular love for him, when, immediately after assuming the pontificate, he made a petition full of the most earnest prayers to the most pious lords (as he himself witnesses, Book I, letter 28), that they ought to send the most blessed lord Anastasius the patriarch — with the use of the pallium granted him — to the threshold of blessed Peter the prince of the apostles, to celebrate the solemnities of the Mass together with him: so that, if it were not permitted him to return to his own see, he might at least live with him in his own honour. Whether, however, he sent this petition or supplicating little book, we are left in doubt, from what is there added.

With what tender charity indeed he embraced this friend, the things he wrote to him plainly demonstrate. Thus he prefaces in the 26th letter of Book I: 'Your Blessedness's writings I found as one weary finds rest, as one sick finds health, as one thirsting finds a fountain, as one sweltering finds shade. For those words seemed not expressed through the tongue of the flesh: because he so opened the spiritual love which he bore, as though the mind spoke through its very self.' Which things we have wished to set down in this place, that anyone might understand what manner of man Gregory showed himself towards his friends. 11.

To pass from the see of Antioch to that of Jerusalem, John IV held it from the year 561, in which he was substituted upon the death of Eustochius, until the year 595, and had as his successor Amos, to whom Nicephorus attributes eight years of episcopate. But there exists a letter of St. Gregory to Isacius (Book XI, letter 46), who succeeded him, written in the fourth indiction, that is in the year 601 or 600. Whence Nicephorus is convicted of error, and it is proved that already from the year 600 Isacius had been created patriarch of Jerusalem, and had sent a synodal letter to St. Gregory, to whom he replied by this letter of the fourth indiction. (Cf. Evagrius, Book V, ch. 46; Nicephorus, Book XVII, ch. 36.) 12.

Domitian, a kinsman of Maurice Augustus, was bishop of Melitene and metropolitan of Armenia when the most holy man entered upon the supreme pontificate. Having found him most apt for conducting the greatest affairs and most prudent in counsels, the emperor had been accustomed to employ him as helper in many matters, and had appointed him guardian to his children. He was also most dear to Gregory the Great, on account of the exceptional sanctity of his life, as is clear from the letters written to him. He is read in Theophanes's chronography to have died in the fifth indiction, which corresponds in small part to the year 601 and to 602. Having traversed the East, let us now survey the Western world: (Cf. Evagrius, Book VI, ch. 18.) 13.

Over the Church of Carthage and all Africa, not long before delivered from the yoke of the Arian Vandals, presided Dominicus, celebrated in very many letters of St. Gregory for his pastoral solicitude and the strenuous labour he expended in restraining heretics. The last things written to him, at the beginning of the fifth indiction — that is in the month of September of the year 601 — prove that he survived at least down to this time. 14. Although the bishop of Toledo, who is now heard as primate of all Spain, then already presided with the title of primate over very many Churches of that same Spain, nevertheless in the whole monarchy of the Visigoths, which embraced Spain and Narbonese Gaul, St.

Leander, bishop of Seville, was the most celebrated of all prelates, because he had led Reccared, the king, and the whole Visigothic nation, formerly enslaved to Arian errors and impieties, to the catholic faith. Nicolaus Antonius is the authority that the Arian heresy was proscribed by Reccared, at the effort of St. Leander in the Council of Toledo in the year 589 or 590. 15. Under the pontificate of Gregory, Virgilius, archbishop of Arles, among the other Gallican prelates, was eminent not only in the dignity of his see, but also in integrity of morals and all the virtues that befit a shepherd. From a monk of Lérins he had first been made abbot of the monastery of Autun; then, upon the death of Licerius, bishop of Arles, in the year

588, Syagrius, a bishop of much authority and favour among the princes of Gaul, to whom the holy man's exceptional endowments were most thoroughly known, took care to set him over the vacant Church, which he governed most holily for 49 years. There flourished then in the same Gallican Church Etherius of Lyons, Desiderius of Vienne, Gregory of Tours, Aregius of Gap, and above all the already praised Syagrius, and others well enough known from the Gregorian letters. Of the British isles, in which are now numbered the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, of Germany inclining toward the north, of Poland or Sarmatia and other northern regions, it is of no concern here to speak:

for these, not yet having shaken off the servitude of idols, had down to these very times refused the sweet yoke of Christ.