was provoked and irritated beyond measure by the assumption of his Eastern rival, and strained
every nerve to procure a revocation of that title. He characterized it as a foolish, proud, profane,
wicked, pestiferous, blasphemous, and diabolical usurpation, and compared him who used it to
Lucifer. He wrote first to Sabinianus, his apocrisiarius or ambassador in Constantinople, then
repeatedly to the patriarch, to the emperor Mauricius, and even to the empress; for with all his
monkish contempt for woman, he availed himself on every occasion of the female influence in high
quarters. He threatened to break off communion with the patriarch. He called upon the emperor to
punish such presumption, and reminded him of the contamination of the see of Constantinople by
such arch-heretics as Nestorius.^217
Failing in his efforts to change the mind of his rival in New Rome, he addressed himself to
the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and played upon their jealousy; but they regarded the
title simply as a form of honor, and one of them addressed him as oecumenical pope, a compliment
which Gregory could not consistently accept.^218
After the death of John the Faster in 596 Gregory instructed his ambassador at Constantinople
to demand from the new patriarch, Cyriacus, as a condition of intercommunion, the renunciation
of the wicked title, and in a letter to Maurice he went so far as to declare, that "whosoever calls
himself universal priest, or desires to be called so, was the forerunner of Antichrist."^219
In opposition to these high-sounding epithets, Gregory called himself, in proud humility,
"the servant of the servants of God."^220 This became one of the standing titles of the popes, although
it sounds like irony in conjunction with their astounding claims.
But his remonstrance was of no avail. Neither the patriarch nor the emperor obeyed his
wishes. Hence he hailed a change of government which occurred in 602 by a violent revolution.
When Phocas, an ignorant, red-haired, beardless, vulgar, cruel and deformed upstart, after
the most atrocious murder of Maurice and his whole family (a wife, six sons and three daughters),
ascended the throne, Gregory hastened to congratulate him and his wife Leontia (who was not much
better) in most enthusiastic terms, calling on heaven and earth to rejoice at their accession, and
quaerimus, et alter sibi hanc arripere at non oblatam praesumit?" Strictly speaking, however, the fact assumed by Gregory is
not quite correct. Leo was styledοἰκουμενικὸςἀρχιεπίσκοποςonly in an accusation against Dioscurus, in the third session of
Chalcedon. The papal delegates subscribed: Vicarii apostolici universalisecclesiaePapae, which was translated by the Greeks:
τη̑ςοἰκουμενικη̑ςἐκκλησίαςἐπισκόπου. The popes claimed to be popes (but not bishops) of the universal church. See Hefele,
Conciliengesch. II. 526. Boniface III is said to have openly assumed the title universalis episcopis in 606, when he obtained
from the emperor Phocas a decree styling the see of Peter "caput omnium ecclesiarum." It appears as self-assumed in the Liber
Diurnus, a.d.682-’5, and is frequent after the seventh century. The canonists, however, make a distinction between "universalis
ecclesiae episcopus." and "episcopus universalis" or "oecumenicus," meaning by the latter an immediate jurisdiction in the
diocese of other bishops, which was formerly denied to the pope. But according to the Vatican system of 1870, he is the bishop
of bishops, over every single bishop, and over all bishops put together, and all bishops are simply his vicars, as he himself is
the vicar of Christ. See my Creeds of Christendom, I. 151.(^217) See the letters in Lib. V. 18-21 (Migne III. 738-751). His predecessor, Pelagius II. (578-590), had already strongly
denounced the assumption of the title by John, and at the same time disclaimed it for himself, while yet clearly asserting the
universal primacy of the see of Peter. See Migne, Tom. LXXII. 739, and Baronius, ad ann. 587.
(^218) Ep. V. 43: ad Eulogium et Anastasium episcopos; VI. 60; VII. 34, 40.
(^219) Ep. VII. 13: "Ego autem confidenter dico quia quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in
elatione sua Antichristum praecurrit, quia superbiendo se caeteris praeponit."
(^220) "Servus servorum Dei." See Joa. Diaconus, Vit. Greg. II. 1, and Lib. Diurnus, in Migne, Tom. CV. 23. Augustin
(Epist. 217, ad Vitalem) had before subscribed himself: "Servus Christi, et per ipsum servus servorum ejus." Comp. Matt. xx.
26; xxiii. II. Fulgentius styled himself "Servorum Christi famulus." The popes ostentatiously wash the beggars’ feet at St. Peter’s
in holy week, in imitation of Christ’s example, but expect kings and queens to kiss their toe.