Pope St. Gregory I (540 – 604) is better known in English as Gregory the Great. He was pope from 590 until his death, and is well-known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors.
First and foremost, Gregory was a monk. Although Gregory was resolved to retire into the monastic lifestyle of contemplation, he was forced back into a world that, although he loved, he no longer wanted to be a part of. In texts of all genres, especially those produced in his first year as pope, Gregory bemoaned the burden of office and mourned the loss of the undisturbed life of prayer he had once enjoyed as monk.
It is beyond the scope of a short article to attempt any elaborate estimate of the work, influence, and character of Pope Gregory the Great, so I’d prefer to dwell on one area: the theologically spiritual.
Pope Gregory impressed upon men’s minds to a degree unprecedented the fact that the See of Peter was the one supreme, decisive authority in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, he established close relations between the Church of Rome and all those of Spain, Gaul, Africa, and Illyricum. In Britain he is justly called the Apostle of the English. In the Eastern Churches, too, the papal authority was exercised with a frequency unusual before his time, and we find no less an authority than the Patriarch of Alexandria submitting himself humbly to the pope’s “commands.” The system of appeals to Rome was firmly established, and the pope is found to veto or confirm the decrees of synods, to annul the decisions of patriarchs, and inflict punishment on error.
Gregory’s work as a theologian and Doctor of the Church is notable primarily for summing up the teaching of the earlier Fathers and consolidating it into a harmonious whole, rather than as introducing new developments, new methods, new solutions of difficult questions. It was precisely because of this that his writings became to a great extent the compendium theologiae or textbook of the Middle Ages, a position for which his work in popularizing his great predecessors fitted him well. Achievements so varied have won for Gregory the title of Magnus or “the Great.”
The modern-day papacy, although greatly reduced in any sort of “temporal” power has much to be grateful to Pope Gregory. His was not a papacy of grasping for power; his papacy was that of a simple monk with no desire for power seeking to understand the instructions that Jesus had given to Peter.
Reproduced in part from the open source Catholic Encyclopedia online.
