Bishop Bossuet (as quoted by Montalembert, II. 173) thus tersely sums up the public life
of Gregory: "This great pope ... subdued the Lombards; saved Rome and Italy, though the emperors
could give him no assistance; repressed the new-born pride of the patriarchs of Constantinople;
enlightened the whole church by his doctrine; governed the East and the West with as much vigor
as humility; and gave to the world a perfect model of ecclesiastical government."
To this Count Montalembert (likewise a Roman Catholic) adds: "It was the Benedictine
order which gave to the church him whom no one would have hesitated to call the greatest of the
popes, had not the same order, five centuries later, produced St. Gregory VII .... He is truly Gregory
the Great, because he issued irreproachable from numberless and boundless difficulties; because
he gave as a foundation to the increasing grandeur of the Holy See, the renown of his virtue, the
candor of his innocence, the humble and inexhaustible tenderness of his heart."
"The pontificate of Gregory the Great," says Gibbon (ch. 45), "which lasted thirteen years,
six months, and ten days, is one of the most edifying periods of the history of the church. His virtues,
and even his faults, a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense
and superstition, were happily suited to his station and to the temper of the times."
Lau says (in his excellent monograph, pp. 302, 306): "The spiritual qualities of Gregory’s
character are strikingly apparent in his actions. With a clear, practical understanding, he combined
a kind and mild heart; but he was never weak. Fearful to the obstinate transgressor of the laws, on
account of his inflexible justice, he was lenient to the repentant and a warm friend to his friends,
though, holding, as he did, righteousness and the weal of the church higher than friendship, he was
severe upon any neglect of theirs. With a great prudence in managing the most different
circumstances, and a great sagacity in treating the most different characters, he combined a moral
firmness which never yielded an inch of what he had recognized as right; but he never became
stubborn. The rights of the church and the privileges of the apostolical see he fought for with the
greatest pertinacity; but for himself personally, he wanted no honors. As much as he thought of the
church and the Roman chair, so modestly he esteemed himself. More than once his acts gave witness
to the humility of his heart: humility was, indeed, to him the most important and the most sublime
virtue. His activity was prodigious, encompassing great objects and small ones with equal zeal.
Nothing ever became too great for his energy or too small for his attention. He was a warm patriot,
and cared incessantly for the material as well as for the spiritual welfare of his countrymen. More
than once he saved Rome from the Lombards, and relieved her from famine .... He was a great
character with grand plans, in the realization of which he showed as much insight as firmness, as
much prudent calculation of circumstances as sagacious judgment of men. The influence he has
exercised is immense, and when this influence is not in every respect for the good, his time is to
blame, not he. His goal was always that which he acknowledged as the best. Among all the popes
of the sixth and following centuries, he shines as a star of the very first magnitude."
Rud. Baxmann (l.c., I. 45 sq.): "Amidst the general commotion which the invasion of the
Lombards caused in Italy, one man stood fast on his post in the eternal city, no matter how high
the surges swept over it. As Luther, in his last will, calls himself an advocate of God, whose name
was well known in heaven and on earth and in hell, the epitaph says of Gregory I. that he ruled as
the consul Dei. He was the chief bishop of the republic of the church, the fourth doctor ecclesiae,
beside the three other powerful theologians and columns of the Latin church: Ambrose, Augustine,
and Jerome. He is justly called the pater ceremoniarum, the pater monachorum, and the Great. What
the preceding centuries had produced in the Latin church for church government and dogmatics,
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(Rick Simeone)
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