Argument. 1. St. Gregory becomes abbot of his own monastery. 2. Pelagius employs him as a helper in writing letters. 3. The argument of the first letter written to Elias against the schism. 4. Concerning the second letter to the same Elias. 5. Concerning the third. 6. Certain bishops feignedly abjure the schism. 7. St. Gregory revises the books of the Morals. (From the year 583 to 589.) 1. Having returned to Rome, Gregory betook himself again into the harbour of his own monastery, loathing the tumult of the city and of the court, where he exercised the office of abbot at the request — nay, the compulsion — of the brethren. That he dwelt and presided in the monastery after his return and before his assumption to the pontificate, Gregory himself does not permit us to doubt, relating in Book IV of the Dialogues, chap.
55, the unhappy death of Justus the Andrean monk, which he says happened three years before — that is, a little before he ascended the apostolic chair. From this passage it is clear that this monk, imbued with the medical art, was accustomed diligently to serve Gregory, established in the same monastery of St. Andrew, and to keep watch during his frequent illnesses. When Justus, found to be near death, had been detected as guilty of concealed money, as soon as so great an evil was announced to Gregory, he was not able to bear it with equanimity. And straightway, as the avenger of the violated rule of the monastery — because he was abbot — he began to consider either what he might do for the purgation of the dying man, or what he might provide as an example for the living brethren.
Having therefore summoned the provost of the same monastery, Pretiosus, he ordered him to take care that all the brethren should withdraw from any fellowship with the man. He also commanded that, when the dying man — even though penitent at the last — was dead, a dung-heap burial should be prepared, and that upon his corpse three concealed gold pieces should be thrown, while the brethren cried out: "Thy money be with thee unto perdition." At length, since Justus, penitent for his fault, had closed his last day, he procured that Pretiosus the provost should for thirty continuous days offer the sacrifice for his absolution. How greatly the most wise abbot's severity profited Justus and the rest of the brethren, read either in the aforesaid book of the Dialogues, or in John the Deacon.
The things which are read in the same author concerning the lavish almsgivings made by Gregory while he lived in the monastery, likewise prove that he then presided over the monastery; otherwise he would not have commanded the keeper of the wardrobe to give out so many coins. Afterwards John the Deacon relates many things which he testifies happened while Gregory was sitting in the place of abbot: such are the miracles and signs by which God terrified certain monks — whether fleeing, or thinking about flight, or guilty of some other offence — and recalled them to a sounder mind. But this writer is mistaken, since Gregory himself, writing to Rusticiana in letter 44 of Book XI, commemorates these same things, and says that they were narrated to him by the abbot and the provost of this monastery.
But why do we need arguments sought from elsewhere, when Gregory himself, before the synod, expressly professed that he had once governed a monastery, in these words: "How necessary it is to have regard to the quiet of monasteries... does the office previously discharged by us, which we exhibited in the governance of a monastery, inform us?" (Third Council, or Lateran, under St. Gregory.) 2. To the holy man, seeking leisure and hiding-places in the retreat of the monastery, it was nevertheless for a long time by no means permitted to enjoy them altogether, or to take respite from all ecclesiastical affairs. For as Jerome once was to St. Damasus the pope, Prosper to St. Leo the Great, so he was a helper to Pelagius the Younger in writing letters. Thus Baronius thought; and indeed Paul Warnefrid, in Book
III on the deeds of the Lombards, attributes to him a sufficiently useful letter sent by Pope Pelagius to Elias, bishop of Aquileia, which, he says, "blessed Gregory, while he was still a deacon, wrote." Three letters of Pelagius II to Elias and to the other bishops and sons of the Church of Istria, tumultuating for the cause of the Three Chapters, were published both by Baronius (At the year 586, no. 26) and by the collectors of the Councils. There is one argument of those three letters, one aim, a style altogether not dissimilar; and consequently the writer of all is the same Gregory, of whom it is established, by the testimony of Paul, that he wrote at least one.
Add that in these letters which Gregory, now made pontiff, wrote to the same schismatics, or to others whom he knew to cling to the condemnation of the Three Chapters, the same charity glows for the enemies of peace, the same indulgence shines forth for the anxious and scrupulous. And of these things indeed more fully hereafter; but now it must be set forth in few words what is chiefly contained in the three letters written in the name of Pelagius II. 3. In the first, the most pious Father prefaces that he had grieved, not without heavy weeping, over the division of his own bowels — namely over the schism rending the Church; with tears he exhorts the dissidents to peace. To those wavering in the faith, he opposes the unfailing faith of Peter;
to the tottering, the firmness of the See of Peter, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. Moreover, that he might give no occasion at all for calumny, he professes to embrace those things which were handed down by the apostles and their successors, and were explained and confirmed in the four ecumenical councils, especially in the Council of Chalcedon, whose authority the schismatics complained was being assailed and shaken, by the condemnation of the Three Chapters proclaimed in the fifth council after it. If, however, these things should not appear to suffice for checking the scandal, he begs them that, remaining in the charity of unity, they should choose and send some of the brethren, to propose and peaceably compose all the questions.
"And we are prepared," says that good shepherd, having compassion on the erring sheep, "according to the apostolic precept, both to receive them with charity, and with humility to render an account of the things that please by way of satisfaction; and, without any impediment, with all love, whenever they shall wish to return, with a most sincere will, to remit them" (1 Peter 3). 4. In order that the schismatics might respond to this letter, they directed writings infected with divers contagions, into which they inserted testimonies of the Fathers incongruous and not pertaining to the case, with the order so disturbed that what had been written in the name of one was set forth under the title of another's name, as Pelagius observes in letter
2 to Elias and his fellow-initiates, whence he attributes to them these words said by the Apostle: "Understanding neither the things they say, nor whereof they affirm" (1 Timothy 1:7). Therefore, in order that he might destroy the false and supposititious by the true and genuine, Pelagius took care that the sincere acts of the synods should be exhibited to the legates of the schismatics from the ancient registers of the archive of the holy Apostolic See; and in his second letter he vehemently exhorted them to charity and unity, the rending of which is a fault so inexpiable that it is not purged even by martyrdom. Finally he invites them to a conference to be held at Rome through legates;
or, if the intervals of the places should stand in the way, he begs that they should convene at the city of Ravenna, bordering on Istria, whither he promises that he will send legates, who in his stead may take part in the synod. 5. Vain was the solicitude and care of the most vigilant shepherd toward the sheep wandering outside the enclosures and pastures of the Church. And in order that they might maintain their obstinacy in the schism, they published an apology for the defence of the Three Chapters condemned in the fifth synod: to refute which, Pelagius, again using the labour of Gregory, wrote a third letter, which Gregory himself calls a book (Book II, letter 51).
From this letter we understand that the conspiring bishops of Istria and the neighbouring regions were carried to such a pitch of madness that, to the supreme pontiff offering such illustrious examples of humility and charity, they commanded, by a deliberate sentence of judgment, that he should desist from the condemnation of the Three Chapters. Over this rebellion Pelagius groans, and grieves that the sheep lie exposed outside the folds to the bites of the roaring lion, that the branches cut off from the vine are dried up and prepared for burning, that the labourers toiling and sweating outside the vineyard lack their wage, that — a new deluge overwhelming the world — frenzied men flee the ark. But in order to satisfy all the things which the schismatics had thrust forward, first he weighs one by one those things which they were abusing, of St.
He cites the testimonies of Pope Leo on behalf of the Council of Chalcedon, which he shows favour only to the definition of the faith; but he contends that the question at issue was not about that definition but about persons, as was also clearly proved in the earlier letter. Then he unties the knot which they had fastened from the resistance of Pope Vigilius and of the other Latin bishops, who, namely, had at first most steadfastly refused to consent to the condemnation of the Three Chapters. He says, of course, that the Latins, being less skilled in the Greek tongue, could not at once detect the errors lying hidden in the writings of Theodoret, Theodore, and Ibas; but once these had at last been recognized, they of their own accord subscribed to their condemnation, and retracted their former acts.
Moreover, it is no wonder that the successor of Peter should have wavered in his opinion, since Peter himself, who at first resisted lest the holy Church receive the Gentiles into the faith without circumcision, afterwards yielded to Paul who reproved him, and opposed the imposing of the yoke of the Mosaic Law upon the Gentiles. Finally, Pelagius brings forward from the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia many things most impious against Christ, and many things also from the letter of Ibas, by which it becomes plain with what obstinacy he clung to Nestorius, and how he blazed out against St. Cyril, the adversary of the impious Nestorius; whence it is manifest that their writings, being either heretical or favourable to heresy, were not undeservedly condemned. As concerns Theodoret, Pelagius says this:
We do not condemn all the writings of Theodoret, but only those which he is shown at some time to have written against the twelve chapters of Cyril, only those which he wrote against the right faith — writings which, moreover, he himself is known to have condemned. This letter is indeed worthy to be read in its entirety. And no one reading it, unless a stranger to the writings of St. Gregory, will be able to doubt whether it is his own offspring; for it savours of the Gregorian idiom and of his method of expounding Sacred Scripture. Let the same criterion apply to the two others. Hence we have judged that they should be inserted in this place, at least in part.
In these years, when the obstinate schismatics could not be overcome, the patrician Smaragdus, coming from Ravenna to Grado, with his own hands dragged Severus, the bishop of Aquileia (or of Grado), out of the basilica, and led him with insult to Ravenna, together with three other bishops (these are the words of Paul Warnefrid in his History of the Lombards); threatening them with exile and using violence, he compelled them to communicate with John of Ravenna... But when the year was ended they returned from Ravenna to Grado, and neither would the people commune with them, nor did the other bishops receive them. That Severus had been incorporated into the unity of the Church, which he afterwards forsook, St. Gregory testifies in Book I, letter 16, written to this same man.
At that time, when he was enjoying a little more freedom of leisure, he brought back his Exposition on Job to the file, adding much and taking away little, as he himself says in the prefatory letter to those books, where one may read the rest of what he accomplished in this, as it were, second edition of the Moralia. But that dear tranquillity was disturbed by a most grievous plague, which laid waste Rome and Italy, and carried off Pelagius the supreme pontiff; in whose place Gregory was elected. Of these things we must now treat more at length.