Detailed notices of Gregory in the writings of Gregory of Tours, Bede, Isidorus Hispal., Paul
Warnefried (730).
(2) Modern biographies:
G. Lau: Gregor I. nach seinem Leben und nach seiner Lehre. Leipz., 1845.
Böhringer: Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen. Bd. I., Abth. IV. Zurich, 1846.
G. Pfahler: Gregor der Gr. und seine Zeit. Frkf a. M., 1852.
James Barmby: Gregory the Great. London, 1879. Also his art. "Gregorius I." in Smith & Wace,
"Dict. of Christ. Biogr.," II. 779 (1880).
Comp. Jaffé, Neander, Milman (Book III., ch. 7, vol. II., 39 sqq.); Greenwood (Book III., chs. 6
and 7); Montalembert (Les moines d’Occident, bk. V., Engl. transl., vol. II., 69 sqq.); Baxmann
(Politik der Päpste, I. 44 sqq.); Zöpffel (art. Gregor I. in the, new ed. of Herzog).
Whatever may be thought of the popes of earlier times," says Ranke,^213 "they always had great
interests in view: the care of oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the spread of
Christianity among the northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchy. It belongs to
the dignity of human existence to aim at and to execute something great; this tendency the popes
kept in upward motion."
This commendation of the earlier popes, though by no means applicable to all, is eminently
true of the one who stands at the beginning of our period.
Gregory the First, or the Great, the last of the Latin fathers and the first of the popes, connects
the ancient with the mediaeval church, the Graeco-Roman with the Romano-Germanic type of
Christianity. He is one of the best representatives of mediaeval Catholicism: monastic, ascetic,
devout and superstitious; hierarchical, haughty, and ambitious, yet humble before God; indifferent,
if not hostile, to classical and secular culture, but friendly to sacred and ecclesiastical learning; just,
humane, and liberal to ostentation; full of missionary zeal in the interest of Christianity, and the
Roman see, which to his mind were inseparably connected. He combined great executive ability
with untiring industry, and amid all his official cares he never forgot the claims of personal piety.
In genius he was surpassed by Leo I., Gregory VII., Innocent III.; but as a man and as a Christian,
he ranks with the purest and most useful of the popes. Goodness is the highest kind of greatness,
and the church has done right in according the title of the Great to him rather than to other popes
of superior intellectual power.
The times of his pontificate (a.d. Sept. 3, 590 to March 12, 604) were full of trouble, and
required just a man of his training and character. Italy, from a Gothic kingdom, had become a
province of the Byzantine empire, but was exhausted by war and overrun by the savage Lombards,
who were still heathen or Arian heretics, and burned churches, slew ecclesiastics, robbed monasteries,
violated nuns, reduced cultivated fields into a wilderness. Rome was constantly exposed to plunder,
and wasted by pestilence and famine. All Europe was in a chaotic state, and bordering on anarchy.
Serious men, and Gregory himself, thought that the end of the world was near at hand. "What is
it," says he in one of his sermons, "that can at this time delight us in this world? Everywhere we
see tribulation, everywhere we hear lamentation. The cities are destroyed, the castles torn down,
the fields laid waste the land made desolate. Villages are empty, few inhabitants remain in the
cities, and even these poor remnants of humanity are daily cut down. The scourge of celestial justice
(^213) Die Römischen Paepste des 16 und 17 ten Jahrhunderts, Th. I., p. 44 (2nd ed.).