Moralia in Job 8

Summary. 1. Gregory's advancement in the monastery. 2. An argument for his longer stay in it. 3. His abstinence and fasts; whence most troublesome illnesses. 4. How much other monks profited by his example. 5. Already then he thinks of England. 6. He becomes a deacon. 7. By which pontiff. 8. Whether a cardinal deacon. 9. Whether an archdeacon. (Years 575, 576, etc.) 1. What Gregory became in the tranquil station of the monastery, he himself wonderfully depicts, while he bewails the quiet lost in his pastoral care, not with feigned tears of the eyes, but with the inmost groaning of the heart, thus: 'My unhappy soul, struck by the wound of its occupation, remembers what it once was in the monastery; how all transient things lay beneath it;

how much it towered above all things that revolve; how it had grown accustomed to think of nothing but heavenly things; how, even while retained in the body, it already passed beyond the very barriers of the flesh by contemplation; how it loved even death — which is to almost all a punishment — namely as the entrance to life and the reward of its labor. But now, on occasion of the pastoral care, it endures the affairs of worldly men, and after so fair an appearance of its quiet, it is befouled with the dust of earthly action. And when it has scattered itself outward through condescension to the many, even when it seeks inward things, it returns to these undoubtedly the lesser. I weigh, therefore, what I endure; I weigh what I have lost.' (Preface to the Dialogues.)

Familiar to Gregory, and almost continual, are similar complaints about the good things of the monastic life that were lost, while he unfolds his heart to friends, as in letters 4, 5, 6, 7, 25, 26 of the first book, and in the special letter prefixed to the books of the Morals. In public sermons to the people too he can scarcely press down and restrain his grief over the loss of his former life so most holily instituted in the monastery: 'And indeed, while placed in the monastery,' he says in the eleventh homily on Ezekiel, 'I was able both to restrain my tongue from idle things, and to hold my mind almost continually in the intention of prayer.' 2. Who would easily persuade himself that Gregory — who, by his own testimony (Letter

to Leander, or the Preface to the books of the Morals) had to struggle with an ingrained habit of a worldly, softer, and more pompous life — at once, while still a novice (if Baronius is to be believed), arrived at this summit of perfection, at the peak of almost continual prayer and of contemplation; and not rather attained it by relentless labor and assiduous exercise, with the divine grace nevertheless breathing upon him? And yet let us grant it. But by what means did he in so brief a stay acquire such great skill in moral and spiritual matters as shines forth in his exposition of the book of Job, to the elaborating of which he devoted his effort a little after he was torn away from the monastery and sent as legate to Constantinople?

Perhaps, almost immersed in the cares of the praetorship, he had made such progress in the knowledge of loftier theology, and had probed the more abstruse senses of sacred Scripture with such ease, with such felicity? Let us therefore ascribe to his sojourn and ascetic discipline of many years in the monastery that knowledge of divine and sacred things which those justly look up to, who, nourished in these studies almost their whole life, are the wiser and more skilled masters of the spiritual life. But we have already established Gregory's long sojourn in the monastery by sufficient arguments. 3.

Not only to prayer and contemplation did Gregory give himself wholly from his very entrance into the monastic wrestling-ground, but he was so devoted also to abstinence, fasts, and other works of penance, which he seasoned with the reading and meditation of the sacred books, that, with his stomach weakened and his health afflicted, he seemed about to die shortly. Nor yet could his frequent illnesses persuade him to relax somewhat from so great a severity of life. His food was the vegetables which his mother Silvia, herself perhaps living on the same food, supplied and prepared. Thence he contracted, by his own testimony, a most troublesome disease which the physicians call syncope, or a cutting of the vital powers;

laboring under which with frequent attacks lasting hours at a time, he was thought to be hastening to his end; and unless he was frequently refreshed with food, he felt the vital spirit being cut off from him; and yet he grieved more over the interruption of his fast than over his grave infirmity. But most grievously did he bear it that on the most sacred Vigil of the Sabbath of Easter itself, on which even all little ones would fast, he himself seemed unable to abstain from food. Yet this he at length obtained, by his own prayers and tears and by those of Eleutherius, a monk of St. Andrew's, his companion and comrade; although this man of the highest humility and modesty attributed this miracle to Eleutherius alone;

'At the voice of that man's blessing,' he says, 'my stomach received such strength that both food and sickness were utterly taken away from my memory. I began to wonder who I was, who I had been.... and when my mind was occupied in the arrangement of the monastery, I entirely forgot my sickness.' What the holy Father here says, about his occupation in the arrangement of the monastery, must perhaps be understood of some administration of temporal goods enjoined upon him, not of the office of abbot, which we have already said with Mabillon that Gregory did not hold except after his legation. (Cf. John the Deacon, Book 1, nos. 7, 9, 10; Gregory of Tours, Book 10, chapter 1; Book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 38.) 4.

That very many profited by his example in the monastery and attained the highest sanctity is proved by what he himself relates about many of his fellow-soldiers, especially in the Dialogues. About Eleutherius we have already touched on a few things. About the holy men Antonius, Merulus, and John — who, by daily tears, assiduous prayers, and continual meditation on the sacred letters, arrived, called from heaven, at that eternal felicity to which their minds had already flown before them — one should read chapter 47 of Book 4 of the Dialogues. About St. Maximianus, abbot of the monastery of St. Andrew, afterward bishop of Syracuse, one reads here and there in the Dialogues and in the Letters. Moreover, to assign to definite years what St. Gregory narrates about those holy men is most difficult.

About Merulus, however, it is established that he passed to a better life at least in the year 579, since from his death up to the time in which the Dialogues were written — that is, to the year 593 or 594 — at least fourteen years had elapsed. The rest we shall distinguish by that reasoning which John the Deacon perhaps confuses: if we say that those things happened before St. Gregory's legation, from the narration of which it does not appear that he was then in charge of his monastery, and after his return, the legation completed, other things from which it is established that he had already obtained the highest authority in the same monastery. 5.

The most burning zeal of the most holy man could not be contained within the cloister of the monastery, but, sending across the Ocean to procure the conversion of the English — not yet Christians — it blazed up more vehemently. On what occasion he entered upon that pious plan, Paul and John the Deacons relate, after Bede. But at what time — although all agree that this happened before Gregory's pontificate — yet John alone asserts that it happened before the Constantinopolitan legation, the others neither affirming nor denying it. We shall describe the matter from Bede, from whom it was first taken, and which he himself professes to have received from the tradition of his elders, a man of the highest faithfulness and of no less diligence, who from the time of St.

Gregory's times was not distant by a whole century. When Gregory had caught sight in the market of boys for sale, recently brought from Britain, of outstanding form, of fair body, distinguished even by their very hair, he asked from what nation they were. It was answered that they were Angles; to which he said, 'Good, for they have an angelic face too, and such ones ought to be consorts of the Angels in heaven.' Without delay he approaches the supreme pontiff, and asks that he send to the nation of the English — which he heard was still addicted to the worship of idols — some ministers of the sacred word, who might give their labor to their conversion, himself being ready for this work, if it should so seem good to the supreme prelate. The pope assented, overcome by his indefatigable prayers, says Paul the Deacon.

Gregory, having received permission to depart, and having taken along certain chosen companions from his own Andrean brotherhood, withdrew himself secretly as quickly as possible and set out on the journey; fearing what afterward happened, namely lest he should be recalled from the journey by the love and zeal of his fellow-citizens. And so the Romans, hearing of the holy man's departure, approach the supreme pontiff and cry out with a terrible voice: 'Alas, Apostolic one, what have you done? You have offended St. Peter, you have destroyed Rome.' So great was the esteem and confidence already conceived concerning the holy man, that the salvation of all seemed to hang upon Gregory alone.

Moved by these outcries, and vehemently fearing the sedition that was almost imminent, the pope very swiftly sent messengers who should recall the traveler — even if reluctant — from the journey as quickly as possible and lead him back to the City, so that, he being seen, the citizens might be restrained from tumult. And now, three days' journey completed, he was urging his companions, after a brief rest, to pursue eagerly the way they had begun, when behold, there arrive men sent by the supreme pontiff, with sweating horses, and they present a letter by which Gregory was commanded to retrace his steps and immediately revisit the City. Compelled to obey, the most holy man, who knew that obedience pleases God above all sacrifices, was received at Rome with the utmost congratulation of all the orders;

and, returned into the monastery, with new fervor he girded himself for the interrupted labors of the monastic institute, seeking in these a solace and compensation for the loss he was suffering. But hope deceived him. (Cf. Bede, Book 2, chapter 1; Paul the Deacon, no. 14; John the Deacon, Book 1, no. 20 and following.) 6. For scarcely had he betaken himself back into the monastery, when, drawn away from his quiet by the supreme prelate, he was created seventh deacon, both that he might minister at the altar, and that he might succeed to a share of the pontifical solicitude. That you hear here Gregory made deacon or levite the seventh, signifies that there still flourished at Rome the ancient custom which St. Cornelius the pope mentions in a letter in Eusebius, Book 6, chapter

43, namely that there should be only seven deacons, after the example perhaps of the earlier and apostolic Church in which only seven deacons were ordained. This sevenfold number too corresponded to the seven chief regions and basilicas of the City, over which the individual deacons were set; and hence they were called 'regionarii.' (Cf. Gregory of Tours, Book 10, chapter 2.) The violence then done to himself the holy man explains in the letter to Leander, already so often praised, and he testifies that the virtue of obedience was set before him, unwilling and reluctant, to which he was compelled to yield. By which pontiff he was consecrated, and called into a share of the ecclesiastical care, neither Gregory of Tours nor Paul teaches us; the latter, however, seems to ascribe it to Pelagius the second.

For he expressly testifies that Gregory was made deacon by that same pontiff, and sent to Constantinople. Since therefore it is established that he was the legate or apocrisiarius before the Emperor not of Benedict but of Pelagius II, it thence appears, according to Paul's mind, that he was made deacon not by Benedict but by Pope Pelagius II. 7. These things John the Deacon had read in Paul; and whereas in these matters especially which he relates about Gregory before his attainment of the pontificate he is not wont to depart from Paul's opinion, but to transcribe his very words and whole periods, when he is seen here to disagree with Paul, it is clear that this was done not rashly but for a most weighty cause.

For no doubt John had read otherwise in the archive of the Roman Church than in Paul's history. The most eminent Cardinal Baronius impugns John's opinion by no other reasoning than the necessity of defending his own chronology; but that this cannot stand has already been demonstrated by us, and moreover John's authority does not seem to us so contemptible. This deacon of the Roman Church wrote the life of St. Gregory, gathered both from his letters and other works, and from the ancient monuments of the Church preserved in the archive or record-office of the supreme pontiffs. These indeed for a great part have by no means reached us; but since we see the diligence and faithfulness of that writer in reading the works of the holy

Doctor's works, which we have in hand, that nothing at all is wanting (for the things he excerpted from them are read in St. Gregory with scarcely a single word changed), why should we not be certain and secure about his excellent good faith and sincerity in praising other things? Certainly, by calling John the Deacon into suspicion either of fraud or of carelessness, the authority of another John — namely Pope VIII — is impugned; who both exhorted him to write the life of St. Gregory, and approved it when written, no doubt after an accurate examination had been sent before, as indeed so weighty a work demanded. Therefore with John the Deacon we think it must be asserted that St. Gregory was torn away from the monastery by Benedict I and taken up into the ministry of the Church.

Benedict I, John III having died, governed the Church from the month of May of the year 573 to the end of July of the year 577; and after three months and a few days had passed, Pelagius II was created supreme pontiff; while he was sitting, Gregory began to discharge the office of deacon in the Roman Church almost fully, because he had been ordained by Benedict his predecessor a little before his death. In this way, indeed, we do not despair that John the Deacon can be reconciled with Paul. For what forbids one to say with John that Gregory was taken up to the diaconate of the Roman Church by Benedict I, and perhaps also for the discharging of the legation before the emperor;

and since these were not fulfilled except after Benedict had died and Pelagius II, his successor, was reigning, that Paul the Deacon not without reason wrote that these things were done by Pelagius? 8. That Gregory was made a cardinal deacon Baronius says (at the year 581, no. 2), although he read this in none of the ancients who wrote about him; unless perhaps we should think that by 'levite' or seventh deacon a cardinal is signified. And indeed those seven deacons of the Roman Church were affixed to their several titles as if to hinges (cardines); whence they could be called cardinals: not otherwise than as either presbyters were assigned to lesser churches, or bishops to greater ones as their proper priests, and, as Gregory himself speaks, 'incardinated';

concerning whom there is very frequent mention in the Register of his letters, where consult the notes, the torch of the index being applied. 9. St. Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, seems to have held that St. Gregory was an archdeacon, in whose hands lay the supreme prefecture of all ecclesiastical goods. For Eulogius, most intimately connected with our Gregory, asserts in his book On Ecclesiastical Administration against Novatus that the archdeacon in the Roman Church always succeeds when the bishop has died, by ancient custom and constitution. But in what way would he have affirmed this, if he had understood that St. Gregory, though not an archdeacon, had been advanced to the supreme priesthood?

He could not, however, have been ignorant, concerning a friend most intimate to himself, whether he had ascended to the pontificate from the diaconate only or from the archdiaconate. But it is credible that Eulogius is speaking of an ancient custom of the Church that was by then obsolete; for he is treating of St. Cornelius the pope, by whom, he says, Novatus, archdeacon of the Roman Church, was made a presbyter, lest, if he should remain in the archdiaconate, a successor might be given to himself; for according to the custom of that time it had been established that the archdeacon should succeed to the supreme priesthood. Argument. 1. Gregory is sent to Constantinople by Pelagius II. 2. His manner of living at the court. 3. With what companions. 4. What things were done by him at Constantinople. 5. Pope Pelagius's concern about driving out the Lombards.

6. Gregory suppresses the new heresy of Eutychius. 7. Whether he had even then contended with John, the successor of Eutychius. 8. From the date of the conference held with Eutychius, our chronology is established. 9. Concerning the rumour of yet another new heresy; what Gregory thought of it. 10. He labours to compose the books of the Morals. 11. His chief friends from the court. He receives the emperor's son from the sacred font. 12. How long he remained in the royal city. 13. He returns to Rome enriched with sacred relics. (From the year 578 to 585.) 1. Not long after his advancement in the ministry of the Roman Church and to the diaconate, St.

Gregory was ordered by Pelagius II to migrate to Constantinople, so that in that city, the seat of the whole empire, he might bestow care and solicitude upon ecclesiastical affairs, and there discharge the office of apocrisiarius (in Latin you would call him a 'responsalis,' or rather an agent of affairs). Although indeed it is difficult to determine in what year this province was committed to him, it is nevertheless nearer the truth that he was taken up to that office in the year 578 or the following, when Tiberius, after the death of Justin, began to reign alone; nor long after, having substituted Pelagius II for Benedict I, who doubtless thought he would render himself pleasing to Augustus by sending to him as legate so great and so eminent a man, one who had formerly discharged the chief offices of the commonwealth excellently and was well known to him. 2.

Although he lived among the courtiers in the royal city, and was compelled to remain in the emperor's very palace, he did not lay aside his purpose of the heavenly life — so say the oft-praised writers of his life, following the venerable Bede. For since, desiring to persevere in the monastery to his last breath, he had not been able to attain his wish, he brought it about in a certain manner that the monastery should migrate with him in safety and cleave to him always. Let us hear the man himself writing about this matter to St. Leander (in the Preface to the Books of the Morals): "When," he says, "I was keeping watch, all too freely, in the earthly palace, many of my brethren from the monastery, bound to me by kindred charity, followed me."

"This," he continues, "I perceive to have been done by divine dispensation, that by their example I might always be held fast, as by an anchor's cable, to the tranquil shore of prayer, lest I should be tossed about by the ceaseless surge of secular affairs. Indeed, I fled to their fellowship as to the bosom of a most secure harbour. And although that ministry, drawing me away from the monastery, had by the sword's edge of its occupation extinguished my former life of quiet, yet among them, through the converse of studious reading, the breath of daily compunction quickened me." By what words could it be more expressly sketched how piously Gregory conducted himself in discharging the Constantinopolitan legation? 3.

Among those who joined themselves as companions of the journey to the holy man, or, moved by charity, came to visit him while he was sojourning in the royal city, there stood out St. Maximianus, presbyter and abbot of the monastery of St. Andrew, afterwards given as bishop to the people of Syracuse, well enough known from many Gregorian letters written either to him or about him. But after a stay of some years, by the command of the supreme pontiff, he was compelled to return to Rome, in order to provide for and watch over his own monastery. John the Deacon sets forth Pelagius's letter recalling Maximianus, from which we can conjecture at what time he returned to Rome, leaving Gregory at Constantinople. If indeed the letter was given on the fourth day before the Nones of October, in the third indiction;

for so it is read in all the manuscripts we have consulted. Now this indiction, which had begun in the month of September, pertains to the year 584. Maximianus returned either at the close of this year, or at the beginning of the following one. Therefore in that year 585 Gregory was still sojourning in the royal city — or rather was in exile; for he grieved at being set in exile for as long as he was compelled to live amid the tumults of the court. As to Maximianus's return, St. Gregory relates an imminent peril of death from which, together with his companions, he was delivered in the Adriatic Sea by a signal miracle: for during eight days the ship in which they were sailing, filled with water up to its upper decks, accomplished its own course and floated on:

but on the ninth day it was brought into the harbour of the fortress of Crotona. From it all came out unharmed who were sailing with the aforesaid venerable man Maximianus. And when after them he too had gone out, straightway the ship was sunk into the depth of that same harbour, as though, once those men had disembarked, it had been deprived of buoyancy in proportion to their weight; and the ship which, full of men, had carried the waters on the high sea and had floated, when Maximianus with his brethren departed, was not able to carry the waters, without men, in the harbour. (Book III of the Dialogues, chap. 36.) After Maximianus departed, very many of the brethren clave to Gregory always;

for he — whether as legate of the Apostolic See, or afterwards as bishop — so highly esteemed the monks that he wished always to have them as his table-companions, as his helpers in works, as sharers of his counsels and witnesses of his life, and I might almost say as his moderators and arbiters. Hence there frequently belonged to the company of monks lodging with Gregory in the royal city St. Leander, likewise a devotee of the monastic life, of whom we shall have to treat more fully hereafter. 4. What Gregory did in the presence of Tiberius Constantinus Augustus the writers do not relate; he too, being altogether averse from all boasting, buried it in humble silence.

There were then two things which chiefly vexed the Roman Church and all Italy, namely the schism kindled on account of the Three Chapters, and the war of the Lombards. How solicitous Pelagius was about lulling the schism to rest and recalling the schismatics to the bosom of the Church, his letters, soon to be recorded by us, bear witness. Nor did our Gregory pursue this with less zeal, as is clear also from his own letters and other monuments; whence it is sufficiently understood that the most wise legate frequently pleaded before the emperor, that a remedy might be brought to so great a scandal, to so foul a division, to so grave a wound.

Great hope indeed had shone forth of extinguishing the schism, when Tiberius the pious emperor, most loving of ecclesiastical peace, had begun to sit alone at the helm of the commonwealth upon the death of Justin; and especially the Romans promised themselves that the Lombards would be driven by him out of all Italy, after the many and illustrious victories he had won over the Persians. At that time the Lombards, having shaken off the yoke of royal power, were obeying thirty-six dukes, who had divided among themselves the cities they had occupied. And by those tyrants, throughout a whole decade, the churches were despoiled, the priests slain, the cities overthrown, and the peoples who had multiplied after the manner of standing corn were cut down — so Paul the Deacon relates (Book II of the History of the Lombards, chap.

17). At the time of this interregnum and, as it were, anarchy, about the year 579 or 580, the monastery of Cassino, most renowned in all Italy, was plundered and destroyed by the barbarians. 5. Since Italy was suffering so many disasters from the Lombards, and heavier ones were threatening Rome, Pope Pelagius judged the time opportune for liberating his fatherland, when the power of the barbarous nation, divided into so many parts, into so many leaders, appeared to be diminished. For this cause he not only wrote to Gregory that letter which John the Deacon reports (Book I, no. 32), that with all speed, by means of envoys, money, a most skilled commander, and troops, aid might be brought to the imperilled Roman commonwealth;

but he also admonished Aunacharius, bishop of Auxerre, who was a counsellor to the kings of the Franks, that by the authority in which he was strong among them, he should procure that aid be brought to the Roman Church and to Italy — whence the light of faith had shone forth upon the Gauls — and should deter the pious princes, who together with the Romans held the same faith, from entering into any treaty with the Lombards. Pelagius's letter is read as given in the seventh year of the reign of Tiberius, where the time of his reign must be reckoned before he reigned alone. Not long after, King Childebert waged war successfully against the Lombards, who had already often invaded the Gauls, moved by the letters of Pelagius, as it is fair to believe.

But as regards Tiberius Augustus, distracted by other wars and cares, he gave little thought to recovering Italy, or even to preserving Rome; so much so that the City seems then and afterwards to have stood only by the prayers of the pious, and above all of the handmaids of God, and by the protection of the holy Apostles. 6. But Gregory, while acting at Constantinople, rendered nothing more useful to the Christian commonwealth than when he crushed the nascent heresy of Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople, concerning the impalpable body of the saints after the resurrection. The whole contest on this question he himself relates in Book XIV of the Morals, from number 72 to 75, whence, transcribed, it is read in John the Deacon (Book I, chap. 2). The victory fell to Gregory;

but the fruit of the victory fell to Eutychius, who abjured the error a little before his death, which soon followed. Tiberius Augustus approved Gregory's doctrine by his own vote, and deliberated about abolishing the book of Eutychius in the flames. In Eutychius's place was substituted, unwilling and reluctant, John, surnamed the Faster. 7. But whether Gregory even then contended with John over the ecumenical title which the latter had usurped, escapes us. Letter 68 of Book IX bears witness, indeed, that John

had usurped this proud appellation in a synod, and had made void the acts of this synod of his predecessor Pelagius, and, having first employed a most severe rebuke against him, had forbidden that his deacon or apocrisiarius should proceed together with John — that is, communicate in the celebration of the sacred rites. But who that deacon was — whether Gregory, or Laurentius who succeeded him — he passes over in silence. If, however, he had wished to speak of himself, why did he not say that it had been enjoined upon him by Pelagius not to proceed together with John? He seems therefore to designate someone other than himself. 8.

Since we read in Gregory that the emperor Tiberius was present at the contest with Eutychius, and since chronographers and historians of better repute constantly assert that his death occurred in the month of August of the year 582, from this a new argument is drawn against the opinion of Baronius concerning the monastic life having been undertaken later by St. Gregory — that is, in either the year 582 or 581, in which he contends that Gregory was still holding the praetorship. Gregory of Tours confirms our chronology, who writes that in the eighth year of King Childebert, Maurice began to reign, that is in the year 582. For, upon his father Sigebert being slain, Childebert succeeded in the year 575, and the fifteenth year of his reign, namely completed, according to the same writer's testimony, agrees with the year 590.

There is added the authority of the venerable Bede. For in Book I, chap. 25, of the Ecclesiastical History he says: "In the year from the incarnation of the Lord five hundred and eighty-two, Maurice, the fifty-fourth from Augustus, taking up the empire, held it for twenty-one years" — namely twenty full years and one begun. With the reckoning of the times thus established upon such unshaken foundations, it may be permitted to ask the defenders of the Baronian chronology, how it can be understood that Gregory was still a layman and praetor in the year 581, afterwards put on the monk's habit, then, torn away from the monastery in which he asserts everywhere that he lived a long time, was made a deacon, soon sent to Constantinople, and there disputed with the patriarch Eutychius, at least in the month of April of the year

582 — since it is agreed, as Baronius himself admits, that the death of Eutychius, according to the testimony of Eustathius who was present, preceded by four months the death of the emperor Tiberius, who, as we have said, departed this life in the month of August of the year 582? But enough of these matters. (Cf. Gregory of Tours, Book VI of the History, nos. 25 and 30; Book X, no. 1.) 9. At the same time that Gregory was sojourning in the royal city, a rumour gained strength about a new heresy — but, as Gregory himself suspects, an imaginary one — concerning which he treated in letter 45 of Book XI. Its followers were said, under the pretext of religion, to dissolve marriages, and to teach that baptism does not entirely take away sins. And that if anyone should do penance for his iniquities for a space of three years, he might afterwards be permitted to live perversely.

"But, my conscience bearing witness," says Gregory, "I confess that I never found in them anything of error, anything of depravity, anything of those things which were said against them. Whence also, holding rumour in contempt, I took care to receive them familiarly, and rather to defend them against their pursuers." By which example we are taught how one ought to deal with those who are gratuitously defamed concerning a false doctrine. 10. Whatever time was free from business, that was spent in reading the sacred Scripture and in pious studies. Then Leander, bishop of Seville, himself also discharging a legation before the emperor, was the one who prompted Gregory to expound the book of Job.

Between those most excellent men a great intimacy had been bound fast by the common profession of the monastic life to both, an almost equal holiness of character, and the same studies. Concerning the legation of St. Leander before the emperor on behalf of Hermenegild, king of the Visigoths, in Spain, the Spanish writers are to be consulted; and chapter 31 of Book III of the Dialogues is to be read. Gregory, being compelled to yield to the prayers of his most friendly man, and also of his brethren, girded himself to unlock the mysteries of such great profundity which lie hidden in the book of Job, being certain, he says, "that it could not be impossible which the charity of brotherly hearts commanded."

But concerning this work, which the holy Doctor dedicated to Leander, it is profitable to read what he prefaces about it, and the admonition which we have prefixed to the same. 11. Besides St. Leander, Gregory gained for himself many other friends in the royal city, among these especially Domitian, kinsman of Maurice Augustus, bishop of Melitene, of whom below; Theoctista, sister of the same emperor; Narses the patrician, most renowned for wars successfully waged against the Persians, whom, the matter not sufficiently examined, Baronius thought to be the same one who, after many victories won over the Goths in Italy, so illustriously achieved, afterwards — the Lombards having been invited to the plunder of Italy for the sake of avenging a private injury — befouled and disgraced them.

Others we pass over, of whom frequent mention will occur in the history of Gregory's pontificate. And to conclude in few words, he indeed obtained the familiarity and friendship of many, but the love and esteem of all. Yet we cannot pass over in silence what Gregory of Tours relates (Book X, chap. 1), that he received the son of Maurice Augustus — the holy Deacon, doubtless the elder by birth — from the sacred laver, while he was still sojourning at Constantinople: how greatly honourable this was to him, there is no one who does not understand. 12. From this testimony of the historian Gregory we can more easily establish in what year the most holy man returned to Rome.

Maurice did not marry Constantina, daughter of Tiberius Augustus, before he became emperor; but he received at once both a wife and, in the name of a dowry, the empire, namely in the year 582, in the month of August, as we have already demonstrated above. Therefore a son could not be born to him except in the following year, in the month of April or May. From these things it is evidently proved that Gregory did not depart from the royal city earlier. But from the letter of Pelagius written to him, which John the Deacon produces (Book I, chap. 32), a much longer stay is gathered; for this letter is read as given in the month of October of the third indiction, and consequently in the year 584.

Nor indeed did Gregory depart from Constantinople in this year, because it is manifest from Book III of the Dialogues, chap. 36, that Maximianus, recalled by the aforesaid letter, as we said above, and having set out from Constantinople in this year or even the following, preceded Gregory's return. How these things can stand together with the opinion of Baronius and of Binius I do not sufficiently see, who are pleased to hold that, immediately after Maurice was proclaimed emperor — which we have already shown to have happened in the month of August of the year 582 — Laurentius was sent by Pelagius to succeed in the office of apocrisiarius.

A proof of a longer stay in the royal city is still furnished by the huge volume of the Morals composed by Gregory in this city, for which several years — especially amid so many affairs — could scarcely have sufficed. Nor indeed would St. Leander, nor Gregory's brethren and companions, have exhorted him to undertake that work, if he were about to make so short a stay at Constantinople, as Baronius holds. 13. Now let us think about restoring Gregory to Rome, and let us follow, as he returns, the one whom we accompanied as he departed. He returned enriched with great gifts, namely with most holy relics — that is, with the arm of St. Andrew the Apostle, and the head of St.

Luke, which sacred pledges, obtained from the emperor, he placed in his Roman monastery, as Baronius relates (At the year 586, no. 24) from the first page of the Vatican codex marked with the number 153. Nor is it contrary to this narration what Gregory himself says (Book IV, letter 30, to Constantina Augusta), that it is not the custom, when the relics of the saints are given, that anyone should presume to touch anything of the body; for he is speaking of the usage and custom of the Romans and Latins, not indeed of the Greeks. To Italy also he brought back from Maurice Augustus the hope of speedy aid, which soon was at hand, under the leadership of Smaragdus the exarch, successor of Longinus.

If, however, anyone should contend that Smaragdus anticipated Gregory's return, on a matter so uncertain I will by no means dispute; for it is not easy to assign with certainty at what time Gregory returned to his homeland. But this is agreed, that by his prayers and solicitations this succour was obtained. Moreover, from the first letter of Pelagius to Elias, bishop of Aquileia, we learn what the arrival of Smaragdus rendered to Italy: for the supreme pontiff gives thanks that, "through the labours and solicitude of the most excellent son Smaragdus the exarch, and of the chartularius of the sacred palace, God has deigned to grant peace and quiet."