Moralia in Job 12

Argument. 1. The political state of the Christian world under the emperor Maurice. 2. The state of Italy. 3. Of the Gauls under the three kings of the Franks. 4. Of Spain under Reccared. 5. Of Greater Britain. 6. What endowments Gregory brought for governing the Church. 7. His supreme humility. 8. And charity. 9. Constancy of soul. (Years 590 and 591.) 1. Having briefly delineated, so far as concerns the ecclesiastical state, in some fashion the situation of the Christian world, it is now worthwhile to do the same with the same brevity, so far as concerns the political state. Maurice, proclaimed emperor from the year 582, administered the commonwealth with the same virtues — prudence, above all fortitude and religion — by which he had paved his own way to empire.

After many victories reported over the Persians, the constant enemies of the Romans, he kindly received their king Chosroes as a fugitive, and, having given him an army, restored him to his kingdom and former dignity. Since he burned with zeal for the catholic faith, in his reign — as St. Gregory also witnesses (Book XI, letter 46) — the mouths of the heretics fell silent, and they did not presume to utter the perverse things they held. 2. Solicitous for the safety of Italy and especially of Rome, he had appointed Smaragdus, a most excellent commander, as exarch, and had set him over the war against the Lombards. He had also, by sending envoys and offering money, urged the Franks — already provoked by them — to vengeance.

On hearing this, the dukes of the Lombards seriously deliberated about setting up a king for themselves, and chose Autharis (or Autharith), son of Cleph, who was the last among them to bear the royal name, second to none in the fame of valour. He assumed the praenomen Flavius, illustrious among the Romans, in order to procure for himself more dignity and favour among the Italians. And soon he attacked and recovered Brixellum, lately lost by the defection of Droctulf. And when he had learned that Childebert, king of the Franks, had crossed the Alps with an army for the sake of waging war upon the Lombards, distrusting that he could contend with them on equal terms in battle, he ordered his dukes to keep themselves within the walls of fortified cities and citadels.

Meanwhile he sent envoys to Childebert concerning peace, which he obtained by humble prayers and most ample gifts. Gregory of Tours writes (Book VI, ch. 42) that from this expedition Childebert, still almost a stripling, carried off very much glory. Often afterwards the Franks renewed the war against these same enemies, mostly with doubtful, or even unlucky, outcome — whose onset and warlike valour Autharis was wont to break by his arts and delaying prudence. At length in the year 590, in which St. Gregory entered upon the pontificate, the king of the Lombards as a suppliant begged for peace, and, to Italy's great detriment, obtained it from the Franks.

In the preceding year he had entered into a treaty with the Bavarians, having taken in marriage Theodelinda, daughter of Garibald their king, who, since she burned with ardour for the catholic faith, afterwards drew almost the whole Lombard nation to it. Meanwhile the Lombards, freed from fear of the Franks, freely gained possession of almost all Italy — namely from the farthest bounds of Istria as far as Reggio in the extremity of Calabria; and scarcely did Rome, the head of the world, escape the fury of the barbarians. (Cf. Paul the Deacon, Book III of the Deeds of the Lombards, chs. 32 and 33.) 3. What we have touched upon concerning the wars waged by Childebert against Italy does not suffice for understanding in what state the affairs of the Franks then were. All Francia was then divided into three kingdoms, and obeyed as many kings.

Clotaire II, son by Fredegund of Chilperic (slain in the year 584), still a minor, ruled over Neustria or Western Francia. Childebert, son of Sigebert and Brunhild of the royal Visigothic stock, held Austrasia or Eastern Francia, to which then a great part of Germany was reckoned. Guntram, uncle of both kings, ruled Burgundy — of which a province was then a portion — bereft of children; but he made Childebert his heir. This division of Francia, and especially the hatreds of the two queens Fredegund and Brunhild, were the seedbed of many wars. 4. Spain was far more peaceful, from the time when, having abjured the Arian heresy, the Visigoths had passed over to the orthodox faith.

For before, there had been contention with the Franks. For Guntram, taking it ill that Ingunde, his brother's daughter, wife of king Hermenegild, had been vexed even to death by Leovigild and by Goswintha, Hermenegild's stepmother, out of hatred of the catholic faith, had moved war against the Visigoths by sending two armies. But when Leovigild was extinguished, and when Reccared his son and successor, having embraced the catholic faith, had been reconciled to the Church, he obtained peace from the Franks, and as a pledge of peace and treaty, Clotsinda in marriage. She was the sister of Childebert, whom he had been unwilling to give to Autharis, king of the Lombards, earnestly seeking her. St. Gregory abundantly pursues the praises of Reccared in Book IX, letter 122, and in the third book of the Dialogues, ch.

31, where he says that he burned with such ardour for the catholic faith that he permitted none to serve as a soldier in his kingdom who did not fear, through heretical depravity, to be an enemy of the kingdom of God: which contributed not a little to the conversion of that most warlike nation. 5. Britain, commonly called the greater, occupied by the Angles, worshippers of idols, was divided into several dynasties. Those who survived of the former inhabitants, the Britons, fleeing the yoke of their new masters, betook themselves into the inaccessible places of Wales, or into Armorica, a province of Gaul. Ireland obeyed its own kings. 6. Behold, we have opened the arena in which Gregory, running and contending, is now about to be a spectacle to the world, nay even to angels and men;

though, if we believe himself, a worthless little man, torpid with sloth. But, as the fact is, a most valiant giant, and beyond the other shepherds most impatient of soft leisure. What endowments and virtues he brought to the pontificate, that he might rightly fulfil it, can easily be understood from what has already been said, and will shine forth more clearly from what is to be said. Let it suffice to observe in this place that in the most holy pontiff humility and charity shone forth even to a miracle and astonishment. Through humility, solicitous everywhere and always about the surrounding dangers, he took care not to flatter and fawn upon himself over the great honour conferred.

Through charity, since he had already become base in his own eyes, ever lifted up toward God, from that supreme summit he most vigilantly looked out for the needs and advantages of the flock subject to him. (See the Preface to the Dialogues and Book IX, letter 121.) 7. The abyss of his humility is betrayed by many things already brought forth from his letters, to which far more might have been added. Of what mind we may judge Gregory to have been toward the supreme dignity of the Church, to which he had been bound not willingly, when he wrote to his friend Leander, eight years having now elapsed since his inauguration: 'I had determined above all to be the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people, and to run in his lot of whom it is again said through the Psalmist:

'He hath disposed ascents in his heart, in the vale of tears' — that is, that I might so much the more truly ascend within, the more humbly I lay without through the vale of tears (Psalm 83:7). But now the burdensome honour greatly depresses me, innumerable cares clamour, and when the soul gathers itself to God, they rend it with their impulses as though with certain swords. There is no quiet of the heart. Prostrate in the lowest places it lies, weighed down by the burden of its own thought. Rarely indeed, or never, does the wing of contemplation lift it into sublime things. The sluggish mind lies torpid, and, with temporal cares barking around it, now brought almost to stupor, is compelled now to transact earthly things, now even to dispense those that are carnal (Book IX, letter 121).

When Natalis, bishop of Salona, took it ill that he had been rebuked by Gregory, he wrote back to him: 'I am ready to be corrected by all, to be amended by all; and him alone do I esteem my friend, through whose tongue, before the appearance of the strict Judge, I wipe away the stains of my mind' (Book II, letter 52). And this he confirmed by deed: for when Anastasius, patriarch of Antioch, making light of the controversy stirred up over the usurped ecumenical title, had written to St.

Gregory with the utmost freedom, that for no cause ought he to give place to scandals and to the malignant spirit seeking to sift souls — by which he intimated to his friend not obscurely that the question in which his zeal had so boiled up seemed to him trivial — the most holy father, not attending to the primacy of his own chair, most modestly and most patiently bore the bee's sting (so he calls Anastasius) fixed in him, and for the sting returned honey; I mean a letter flowing with honeyed charity, in which among other things he wrote back that 'better to him were the wounds of one who loves than the flattering kisses of an enemy' (Book VII, letter 27). And that he might comply with Anastasius's admonition, he received without delay the synodal letter of Cyriacus, lately raised to the see of Constantinople,

in which he claimed for himself the title of ecumenical patriarch — that he might not disturb the unity of the Church. Finally, he left the singular lowliness of mind attested in all his letters, and in a manner engraved there, when, the first of all the Roman pontiffs, he wished to preface himself in them as 'servant of the servants of God'; casting this token of modesty against the vain and proud ecumenical title in which the bishop of Constantinople gloried, and at the same time signifying not obscurely that the pontificate seemed to him a hard servitude, to which he had bowed his neck out of charity alone, at God's command. (Cf. John the Deacon, Book II, no. 1.) 8.

As regards charity, with how great a love toward God he burned is sufficiently proved by the continual complaints which he sprinkles into almost every letter about that love — either lost through pastoral solicitude, or slackened: for he who is thus anxious over the loss of this sacred fire, grieves, weeps, shows by this very thing with how great an ardour he loves God. Concerning charity toward one's neighbour it is of no concern to say anything here, after so many proofs of that liberality poured out upon the poor, which his letters supply, and which John the Deacon recounts, especially in Book II, chapters nine, namely from 22 to 30. 9.

From both those supreme virtues there issued a certain unbroken constancy of soul, which shone forth most of all in arduous things and in graver dangers: for the more Gregory distrusted himself through humility, the greater the confidence in God with which he said, with the Apostle: 'I can do all things in him who strengthens me' (Philippians 4:13). Thus he speaks of himself in letter 47 of Book IV, to Sabinianus: 'You have my ways well known, that I endure long. But if once I shall have resolved not to endure, I go joyful against all dangers.' But if we wish to know what manner of man St. Gregory came to the supreme pontificate, and how he lived in it, let us read the book of the Pastoral Rule, of which we must now speak briefly; for as he says of St. Benedict (Book II of the Dialogues, ch.

36) that he could not have taught otherwise in the Rule of Monks promulgated by himself than he lived, the same too concerning the most holy pope, author of the Rule of Shepherds, we do not fear to affirm.