No wonder, therefore that the successors of Gregory, less humble and more consistent than
he, had no scruple to use equivalent and even more arrogant titles than the one against which he
so solemnly protested with the warning: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble."^227
But it is a very remarkable fact, that at the beginning of the unfolding of the greatest power of the
papacy one of the best of popes should have protested against the antichristian pride and usurpation
of the system.
§ 52. The Writings of Gregory.
Comp. the second part of Lau’s biography, pp. 311 sqq., and Adolf Ebert: Geschichte der
Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur, bis zum Zeitalter Karls der Grossen. Leipzig, 1874 sqq., vol.
I. 516 sqq.
With all the multiplicity of his cares, Gregory found time for literary labor. His books are not
of great literary merit, but were eminently popular and useful for the clergy of the middle ages.
His theology was based upon the four oecumenical councils and the four Gospels, which
he regarded as the immovable pillars of orthodoxy; he also accepted the condemnation of the three
chapters by the fifth oecumenical council. He was a moderate Augustinian, but with an entirely
practical, unspeculative, uncritical, traditional and superstitious bent of mind. His destruction of
the Palatine Library, if it ever existed, is now rejected as a fable; but it reflects his contempt for
secular and classical studies as beneath the dignity of a Christian bishop. Yet in ecclesiastical
learning and pulpit eloquence he had no superior in his age.
Gregory is one of the great doctors or authoritative fathers of the church. His views on sin
and grace are almost semi-Pelagian. He makes predestination depend on fore-knowledge; represents
the fallen nature as sick only, not as dead; lays great stress on the meritoriousness of good works,
and is chiefly responsible for the doctrine of a purgatorial fire, and masses for the benefit of the
souls in purgatory.
His Latin style is not classical, but ecclesiastical and monkish; it abounds in barbarisms; it
is prolix and chatty, but occasionally sententious and rising to a rhetorical pathos, which he borrowed
from the prophets of the Old Testament.
The following are his works:
- Magna Moralia, in thirty-five books. This large work was begun in Constantinople at the
instigation of Leander, bishop of Seville, and finished in Rome. It is a three-fold exposition of the
book of Job according to its historic or literal, its allegorical, and its moral meaning.^228
Being ignorant of the Hebrew and Greek languages, and of Oriental history and customs
(although for some time a resident of Constantinople), Gregory lacked the first qualifications for
a grammatical and historical interpretation.
(^227) Such titles as Universalis Episcopus (used by Boniface III., a year after Gregory’s death), Pontifex Maximus, Summus
Pontifex, Virarius Christi, and even "ipsius Dei in terris Virarius" (Conc. Trid. VI. De reform., c. 1). First Vicar of Peter, then
Vicar of Christ, at last Vicar of God Almighty!
(^228) Ep. missoria, cap. 3 (ed. Migne I. 513): "Primum quidem fundamenta historice ponimus; deinde per significatinem
typicam in artem fidei fabricam mentis erigimus; ad extremum per moralitatus gratiam, quasi superducto aedificium colore
vestimus."