Lecture 27: Evangelization of Western Europe
o Sixty years after Damasus, Leo I (440–461) opposed
Pelagianism—the teaching that God’s grace was not necessary
to live a moral life—and was the critical player in forming
the orthodox position in the monophysite controversy, with
his “Tome of Leo” anticipating the dogma established by
the Council of Chalcedon in 451. He believed in the divine
and scriptural basis for the primacy of Rome and exercised
it vigorously.• By far the most important pope in this sequence is Gregory I (“the
Great”), who lived from 540 to 604 and was pope from 590 to 604.
o The son of a senator, Gregory was prefect of the city of Rome in
573; abandoning his municipal role, he sold all his possessions
and founded six Benedictine monasteries in Sicily and one in
Rome (St. Andrew), which he then entered as a simple monk.o But Gregory was too capable to live a secluded life entirely.
Pope Pelagius II appointed him as delegate to the Byzantine
court in 579, and he asserted the primacy of Rome over
Constantinople; in 585, he returned to the monastery and was
elected abbot.o In 590, he was elected pope. Facing the challenges of
Ostrogoth/Byzantine wars and the aftereffects of the Justinian
plague, he struck a separate treaty with the Lombards in 592–
593, asserting independence from the Byzantine presence
in Ravenna.o In 596, Gregory sent Augustine and 40 other monks to England,
thus establishing the monastic character of Catholicism there
and a basis for further evangelization. He gave privileges
to monks, which made them more directly dependent on
the papacy.o Gregory made significant contributions to the shape of the
Roman Mass (the signs of which remain in the so-called
Gregorian Sacramentary). His voluminous writings (Book of