In which is set forth how the holy Gregory lived in the pontificate. Argument. 1. Gregory, writing himself the servant of the servants of God, is clothed in modest garments. 2. He dictates an irreproachable symbol of his faith. 3. He directs his synodal letter to the patriarchal thrones. 4. He confesses that he venerates five councils. 5. Having convened a synod, he condemns depraved customs. 6. Compiling an antiphonary from selections, he establishes a school of cantors. 7. Why the Westerners corrupt the sweetness of the chant. 8. Through John the Roman cantor they were corrected. 9. King Charles, offended by the dissonance of the chant, sent two of his clerics to Rome to be instructed. 10.
The same king, offended by the dissonance of the chant, received two Roman cantors again from Adrian. 11. Gregory, having expelled the laymen, chose clerics to be his intimates. 12. He presented such a Roman Church as it first was under the apostles. 13. How great and of what kind were the studies then flourishing again at Rome. 14. That he summoned to his council not the rich, but the wise. 15. For what reason laymen first began to be tonsured. 16. He does not admit laymen to ecclesiastical office, but only to the monastic habit. 17. He abridges the Gelasian codex. 18. Establishing the stations, he delivers discourses on the Gospels. 19. Together with the food of the word he ministers nourishment to the poor. 20. He introduces new customs. 21.
To those who murmur about these same things he gives satisfaction humbly. 22. In place of a guest he receives the Lord. 23. Having invited twelve, he recognizes a thirteenth, an angel divinely assigned to him. 24. He judges that distribution should be made four times a year by the register. 25. He bestows gold pieces and foreign garments. 26. Month by month he dispenses various kinds of goods. 27. To three thousand handmaids of God he provides eighty pounds annually. 28. Day by day he sends the gathered stipends by couriers. 29. For a dead pauper he laments most vehemently. 30. How many and of what kind, to be rewarded, are the pints kept in the strongbox. 31. He dedicates to the Lord the basilica of the Arians in the Suburra. 32. How many and what kind of miracles were there shown by divine power. 33.
For the conversion of the Angles and Saxons he sends Augustine with others. 34. Those wishing to return without accomplishing anything, he exhorts to proceed. 35. As they preach, they work miracles and convert many. 36. Augustine, consecrated bishop, requests helpers. 37. Gregory transmits to him the pallium, and various necessary things, and likewise several responses. 38. Questioned concerning degrees of kinship, he sets forth the reasoning peaceably. 39. How many and what kind of things Gregory proclaims concerning the conversion of the Saxons and the signs of his disciples. 40. He warns Augustine not to swell with pride over the miracles. 41. He reformed a fragment of bread into flesh, and again the flesh into the first substance of bread. 42. He pricked a cloth, and blood flowed out. 43.
He punished sorcerers with blindness. 44. In what way it should be understood that Gregory freed the soul of Trajan from the torments of hell. 45. He miraculously loosed a monk who had died under excommunication. 46. He purchases pagan boys, that he may make them Christians. 47. On behalf of the pagan peasants he threatens the bishops. 48. He relieves converted Jews of their rents. 49. He bestows garments upon those to be baptized. 50. He preaches that the children of the Arians be aided. 51. He appoints rectors over the individual diaconies and hospices. 52. Establishing a hospice at Jerusalem, he assigned annual stipends to monks both there and on Mount Sinai. 53. He appoints individual rectors over the individual patrimonies. 54.
He determines that two ministries should by no means be committed to one person. 55. He orders almsgiving by locality and by person. 56. That he willingly gave to everyone who asked of him. 57. That he ministered necessities even to one who did not ask. 58. The innocence of his liberality is proved. 59. For the making of alms he purchases grain with fifty pounds of gold. 60. What kind of dream a hermit came to know concerning him. 1. Come now, then, since—the aforesaid little book having been set forth—the sinewy limbs of Christ's athlete Gregory, sweating manfully in the wrestling-school of His holy Church, have been described, let it be brought forward, by the Lord's inspiration, in what manner he also contended in the palaestra.
Indeed, as soon as, by the counsel of Christ for mortals, he obtained the supreme pontificate of the most blessed Roman city, he refused, after the manner of his predecessor pontiffs, under the sentence of the strictest interdiction, the superstitious title of Universal, which John, bishop of Constantinople, was at that time insolently usurping to himself; and he first of all defined, quite humbly, that he should be written at the beginning of his letters as the servant of the servants of God, and left to all his successors, as a hereditary document of his humility, both in this and in his modest pontifical vestments—which indeed is preserved to this day in the holy Roman Church. 2.
Finally, standing on the watchtower of the holy universal Church—a man of all humility, authority, and orthodoxy—whence the evangelical herald might be more clearly seen and heard, with the most divine sword of his mouth he both fortified the right faith and dissipated all heresies with a single symbol. This symbol of the sacred confession is as follows: I believe in one God almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons, one substance: the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten, but the Holy Spirit neither begotten nor unbegotten, but coeternal, proceeding from the Father and the Son.
I confess the only-begotten Son to be consubstantial, and begotten of the Father without time, the Creator of all things visible and invisible, light from light, true God from true God, the splendor of glory, the figure of the substance; who, remaining the Word before the ages, was created a perfect man at the end of the ages, conceived and born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, who took upon Himself our nature without sin; and under Pontius Pilate He was crucified, and being buried, on the third day rose again from the dead; and on the fortieth day ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. Whence He is to come to judge the living and the dead, about to set before the eyes of all the hidden things of each.
about to give to the saints the perpetual rewards of the heavenly kingdom, but to the wicked the punishments of eternal fire, about to renew the world by fire in the resurrection of the flesh. I confess one faith, one baptism, one apostolic and universal Church, in which alone sins can be loosed in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 3. Gregory also directed his synodal letter, according to the ancient custom of his predecessors, to John of Constantinople, Eulogius of Alexandria, Gregory of Antioch, John of Jerusalem, and Anastasius, patriarch of Antioch, which is as follows:
To me, considering that, unequal in merits and resisting with my whole soul, I have been compelled to bear the burdens of pastoral care, the mist of sorrow comes over me, and my sad heart sees nothing but those shadows which permit nothing to be seen. For what is a prelate chosen for before the Lord, if not as an intercessor for the sins of the people? With what confidence, then, do I come as an intercessor for the sins of others to Him with whom I am not secure concerning my own? If perchance someone should seek to make me his intercessor before a powerful man who was both angered against him and unknown to me, I would straightway reply: I cannot come to intercede, since I have no acquaintance with him from close familiarity.
If, then, I should rightly blush to become an intercessor before a man for someone of whom I had presumed too little, how great is the audacity that before God I hold the place of an intercessor for the people, when I do not recognize myself, by the merit of my life, to be one of His familiars? In this matter there is yet another, and graver, thing for me to dread; for, as we all clearly know, when one who is displeasing is sent to intercede, the mind of the angered party is provoked to worse things. And I greatly fear lest the people of the faithful committed to me should perish by the addition of my own guilt, whose offenses the Lord until now has borne with an even mind.
But when I somehow suppress this fear, and gird my consoled mind for the labours of the pontifical office, I am deterred when I consider the very immensity of the task. For I weigh how it must be watched over with all care, that the ruler be pure in thought, foremost in action, discreet in silence, useful in speech, near to each in compassion, above all others uplifted in contemplation, an ally of the well-doing through humility, upright against the vices of sinners through zeal for righteousness — and the rest which he afterwards pursues in the book of the Pastoral Rule. 4. Moreover, since, as it is said, with the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Rom. 10:10),
— even as the four books of the holy Gospel, so I confess that I receive and venerate the four councils: namely the Nicene, in which the perverse dogma of Arius is destroyed; the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; the first Ephesine likewise, in which the impiety of Nestorius is judged; and the Chalcedonian, in which the depravity of Eutyches and Dioscorus is reproved. These I embrace with total devotion, I guard with most complete approval, because upon these, as upon a squared cornerstone, the structure of the holy faith rises; and whoever, of whatever life or action, does not hold to their solidity, even if he seems to be a stone, nevertheless lies outside the building.
The fifth council likewise I venerate, in which the letter said to be Ibas's, full of error, is reproved, and Theodore, who divided the person of the Mediator of God and men into two subsistences, is convicted of having fallen into the perfidy of impiety. The writings of Theodoret also, through which the faith of blessed Cyril is impugned, put forth by an audacity of madness, are refuted. Indeed, all the persons whom the aforesaid venerable councils reject, I reject; those whom they venerate, I embrace. For since they were established by universal consent, whoever presumes either to loose those whom they bind, or to bind those whom they loose, destroys himself and not them. Whoever therefore thinks otherwise, let him be anathema. (Book i, chap. 25.) 5.
In this manner, after Gregory had brilliantly set forth the foundation of his faith to the apostolic thrones, according to the ancient custom of his predecessor pontiffs, perceiving that he had for this reason been appointed by the Lord as supreme pontiff over the nations and kingdoms, that, according to that prophetic word (Jerem. 1:10),
— that he might pluck up the roots of vices, tear them down and scatter them, and so at last build up and plant the virtues — all the customs which he had learned had newly sprung up against the ancient apostolic tradition (namely concerning the minister-cantors; concerning laymen adhering too familiarly to the pontiff; concerning the prejudicial claiming of any goods whatsoever by title; concerning the covering of the apostolic bier with dalmatics; concerning the burial-fee; and concerning the not admitting of laymen indiscriminately to an office of ecclesiastical right, in place of the pallium or the consecration of pontiffs) — these he first separated by the Roman Church, and afterward, having gathered the bishops of the provinces situated round about, from the body of the whole holy universal Church, and condemned them, under the interposition of a terrible anathema, as generally as perpetually.
6. Then in the house of the Lord, after the manner of the most wise Solomon, on account of the compunction of musical sweetness, that most zealous man very usefully compiled a compendium-Antiphonary of the cantors; he also established the school of cantors, which up to this day sings by those same institutions in the holy Roman Church;
and for it he built, along with several estates, two dwellings — namely, one beneath the steps of the basilica of the blessed apostle Peter, the other beneath the buildings of the Lateran patriarchate — where to this day his bed, on which he reclined while chanting, and his rod, with which he used to threaten the boys, are preserved with fitting veneration together with the authentic Antiphonary; which places indeed, by the terms of an ordinance under the interposition of an anathema, he divided out on account of the daily grace of the ministry in either place. 7.
The sweetness of this melody, among the other peoples of Europe, the Germans or Gauls were notably able to learn and often to relearn; yet they were by no means able to preserve it uncorrupted, both by lightness of mind — since they mingled certain things of their own with the Gregorian chants — and also by their natural savagery.
For the Alpine bodies, thundering forth on high with the roar of their voices, do not properly render back the sweetness of the melody they have received, because the barbarous savagery of their drink-soaked throats, while it strives to bring forth the gentle chant with inflections and repercussions, casts out rigid tones with a certain natural crashing, like wagons confusedly sounding down over steps; and thus, by exasperating and drowning out, it disturbs rather the minds of the hearers, which it ought to have soothed. 8. Hence it is that in the time of this Gregory, when Augustine was then going to Britain, the cantors of the Roman institution, dispersed also throughout the West, notably instructed the barbarians.
When these had died, the Western Churches so corrupted the melodic organ they had received, that a certain John, a Roman cantor, together with Theodore — likewise a Roman citizen, but archbishop of York — was sent by pope Vitalian through Gaul into Britain; who, recalling the sons of the Churches situated round about to the pristine sweetness of the chant, both by himself and through his disciples, preserved the rule of Roman teaching for many years. 9.
But also our patrician Charles, king moreover of the Franks, being offended at Rome by the discord between the Roman and the Gallican chant — when the boldness of the Gauls argued that the chant had been corrupted by certain wailing tunes of our people, and ours on the contrary plausibly displayed the authentic Antiphonary — is said to have asked who was accustomed to keep the clearer water, between a stream and a spring. When they answered, the spring, he prudently added: Therefore we too, who have hitherto drunk the corrupted water from the stream, must needs run back to the principal streams of the perennial spring.
And so presently he left two of his diligent clerics with Hadrian, then bishop; and when these had at length been quite elegantly instructed, he recalled the metropolis of Metz to the sweetness of the pristine melody, and through it corrected his whole Gaul. But when, long afterward, those who had been educated at Rome having died, that most prudent of kings saw that the chant of the Gallican Churches differed from that of Metz, and observed each side boasting that the other's chant was corrupted, he said: Let us return again to the spring.
Then pope Hadrian, moved by the king's entreaties — as some to this day truthfully attest — sent two cantors into Gaul; by whose judgment the king learned that all indeed had corrupted the sweetness of the Roman chant through a certain lightness, but foresaw that the men of Metz differed only a little, and by natural savagery alone. Finally, to this day, by how much Metz yields to the Roman chant, by so much the chant of the Gallican and German Churches yields to the Church of Metz — as is attested by those who love the pure truth. These things, then, I have related by anticipation, lest I should seem to have passed over unexamined the lightness of the Gauls. 11.
For the rest, that most prudent ruler Gregory, having removed worldly men from his chamber, chose for himself the most prudent of the clergy as counsellors and intimates; among whom was Peter the Deacon, his contemporary, disputing with whom he afterward composed the four books of the Dialogues; also Aemilianus the notary, who together with his companions took down forty homilies on the Gospel; likewise Paterius the notary, who, made by him secundicerius, culled some most useful things from his books; and John the defensor, who by his command was sent as inquisitor into the Spains, and restored Januarius, bishop of the city of Malaga, deposed by his fellow-countrymen bishops,
restored to his proper see, and with equal sentence condemned his deposers together with the one who had crept into his place. Of the monks, moreover, he chose the most holy as his intimates; among whom were Maximian, abbot of his own monastery, whom he afterward made bishop of Syracuse, and committed to him his vicariate throughout Sicily; Augustine, the prior of that same monastery of his, and Mellitus, through whom he summoned the peoples of the Angles to the grace of Christianity; Marinianus, a monk of that same monastery of his, whom he consecrated bishop in the metropolis of Ravenna; Probus, whom, suddenly appointing abbot by the Spirit's revelation, he sent to Jerusalem for the building of a hospice;
and likewise Claudius, abbot of the city of Classis, who — the pope disputing — composed much on the Proverbs, on the Song of Songs, on the Prophets, on the books of Kings, and on the Heptateuch, though not in the same sense (Book xii, epistle 24). 12. Living with these day and night, Gregory left nothing of monastic perfection undone in the palace, nothing of pontifical order undone in the Church. Everywhere the most religious monks were seen to cleave to the pontiff along with the most learned clerics, and in diverse professions a common life was maintained, so that such then was the Church under Gregory at Rome as Luke records it to have been under the apostles, and as Philo records it to have been under Mark the evangelist at Alexandria. 13.
Then the Wisdom of things was in a manner visibly building for herself a temple at Rome, and was propping the atrium of the apostolic see with the seven arts, as with columns of just so many most noble stones. None of those serving the pontiff, from the least to the greatest, displayed anything barbarous in speech or dress; but a toga-clad Latinity, after the manner of the Quirites, or a trabea-clad one, singularly maintained its own Latium in the very Lateran palace. There flourished anew the studies of the diverse arts, and whoever chanced to lack either holiness or prudence had by his own judgment no confidence of standing before the pontiff. 14. To the deep pontifical councils prudent men were summoned — such as I have described — rather than powerful ones;
and while a poor philosophy inwardly, by artful argumentations, reasonably inquired what in each affair should rather or most of all be followed, rich sloth — which now avenges itself upon the wise with an equal lot — remained despicable before the doors of the chamber. Only the skill of interpreting in two tongues was lacking, and that most eloquent maiden Cecropia, who once, when Varro robbed her of her celibacy, had handed on to the Latins the keenness of her mind, was claiming for herself the deceptions of impostures, as he himself complains in his epistles. 15.
No layman managed any ministry of the palace, or any ecclesiastical patrimony; but ecclesiastical men undertook all the offices of ecclesiastical right, laymen of course being assigned only to the soldiery of arms, or to the continual care of the fields. On this account certain of the nobles, under the pretext of religion, first began to tonsure themselves. Prudently meeting their evasion, the emperor Maurice, by a law given through Longinus the Strator, decreed that whoever had been involved in public administrations should not be permitted to come to an ecclesiastical office. Gregory greatly praised this law on this point, saying:
He who, forsaking the secular habit, hastens to come to ecclesiastical offices, does not desire to relinquish the world, but to change it. (Book iii, epistle 65.) 16. But since to the clerical profession, from both the ecclesiastical and the secular soldiery, by diverse occasions a daily and almost innumerable multitude was flowing together, the pastor, provident in all things, judged that they were by no means to be received to an office of ecclesiastical dignity, but only to the taking up of the monastic purpose, saying: We know that many from the ecclesiastical or secular soldiery hasten to the service of Almighty God, that, freed from human servitude, they may be seen to dwell more intimately in the divine service in monasteries.
But if we dismiss this indiscriminately, we afford to all an occasion of fleeing the dominion of ecclesiastical or secular right. Yet if we incautiously retain those hastening to the service of Almighty God, we are found to deny certain things to Him who has given all. Whence it is necessary that whoever, from the servitude of ecclesiastical or secular soldiery, desires to be converted to the service of God, be first proved while established in the lay habit; and if his morals and manner of life bear witness to that good desire, let him be permitted, without any retraction, to serve Almighty God in a monastery, so that he may depart free from human service, who longs to undergo a stricter servitude in the divine obedience.
But if in the monastic habit also he shall have conducted himself irreproachably according to the rules of the Fathers, then, after the times prefixed by the sacred canons, let him now lawfully be advanced to any ecclesiastical office — provided, however, that he has not been stained by those crimes which in the Old Testament are punished with death. 17. Moreover, the Gelasian Codex concerning the solemnities of the Masses he compressed into the volume of a single book, subtracting much, altering a few things, but superadding some, for the expounding of the Gospel readings. In the canon he added: And dispose our days in Thy peace, and command that we be snatched from eternal damnation and numbered in the flock of Thine elect. 18.
He carefully arranged the stations through the basilicas or the cemeteries of the blessed martyrs, in the manner in which the Roman people up to now runs to and fro, as it were vying, as though he were living; through which, running about at the same time himself, while he was yet strong enough to speak, he delivered before the Church, at diverse times, twenty homilies on the Gospel; but the remaining ones of the same number he indeed dictated, yet, his stomach failing with continual weakness, he committed them to others to be pronounced. 19.
The army of the Lord followed Gregory as he went before, on this side and on that; and, to hear the word of teaching, innumerable cohorts of every sex, age, and profession flocked together from all sides voluntarily, to all of whom he, as a teacher of the heavenly soldiery, supplied at least spiritual arms; but to the poor and the strangers, who by the condition of the times had flowed into Rome, he administered daily stipends. 20. He decreed that the solemnities of the Masses should be celebrated over the bodies of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, having acquired very numerous olive-groves, the sum of which he noted on marble tablets before the doors of that same basilica. He added lamps, and appointed assiduous services.
He forbade the hope of gain from burial next to the Church. He directed that seven of the defensores be honoured with the dignity of a regionary. He caused the Alleluia to be said at the Masses outside the season of Pentecost. He appointed that the subdeacons should go forth stripped. He commanded the Kyrie eleison to be sung, and judged that the Lord's Prayer should be recited over the host immediately after the canon. 21. When afterward he perceived certain men murmuring about these things, as though he were following the customs of the Church of Constantinople, the most pious Father did not disdain to render an account, saying: In none of these have we followed another Church.
For as to the Alleluia's being said here — it is handed down as having been drawn from the Church of Jerusalem, from the tradition of blessed Jerome, in the time of pope Damasus of blessed memory; and therefore we have rather cut off, in this see, that custom which had been handed down here from the Greeks. But as for my making the subdeacons go forth stripped — it was the ancient custom of the Church; but it pleased a certain pontiff of ours, I know not whom, who commanded them to go forth clothed. For the Churches of Sicily — did they by any chance receive the tradition from the Greeks? Whence, then, do they have it today that the subdeacons go forth in linen tunics, except that they received this from their mother the Roman Church?
But the Kyrie eleison we have neither said nor do we say as it is said by the Greeks; for in Greece all say it together, but with us it is said by the clerics together, and answered by the people. And just as many times Christe eleison is also said, which among the Greeks is in no way said. But in daily Masses we are silent as to other things which are wont to be said, and say only Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison, that in these voices of supplication we may be occupied a little longer. The Lord's Prayer, moreover, we say immediately after the prayer for this reason: because it was the custom of the apostles to consecrate the host of oblation at that prayer alone.
And it seemed to me very unfitting that we should say over the oblation the prayer which some scholastic had composed, and should not say over His body and blood that very tradition which our Redeemer composed. But among the Greeks the Lord's Prayer is said by all the people, whereas with us it is sung by the priest alone. In what, then, have we followed the customs of the Greeks — we who have either restored our old usages, or established new and useful ones, in which nevertheless we are not proved to imitate others?