Detail of a Miniature of Gregory the Great writing,
inspired by The Holy Ghost, represented as a Dove.
The miniature is between Books three and four of Gregory
the Great’s “Dialogi”. From the British Library, London.
Date: First quarter of the 12th-Century.
Source: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/
This file is made available under the Creative Commons
Author: British Library.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Pope Gregory I.
Pope And Doctor Of The Church.
(540 A.D. - 604 A.D.)
unless stated otherwise.
Pope Gregory I (Latin: Gregorius I; circa 540 A.D. – 12 March 604 A.D.), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the 64th Bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 A.D., to his death.[1][a]
Pope Gregory I (Latin: Gregorius I; circa 540 A.D. – 12 March 604 A.D.), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the 64th Bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 A.D., to his death.[1][a]
He is known for instituting the first recorded large-scale Mission from Rome, the Gregorian Mission to Britain, to convert the then largely pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.[2]
Gregory is also well-known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors as Pope.[3]
The epithet Saint Gregory the Dialogist has been attached to him in Eastern Christianity because of his Dialogues.
He is the second of the three Popes listed in the Annuario Pontificio with the title “the Great”,[5] alongside Popes Leo I and Nicholas I.
The following Text is from “The Liturgical Year”,
Glass inlay mosaic — Saints Augustine and Gregory,
“Non Angli sed Angeli si Christiani . . .” At the Chapel
of Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine, Westminster
Cathedral — London.
[Editor: “Non Angli sed Angeli”, as stated by Pope Gregory the Great when viewing the English captives in Rome, translates as “Not Angles (English), but Angels”.]
Date: June 2011.
Source: Own work.
Author: User:FA2010
(Wikimedia Commons)
The following Text is from “The Liturgical Year”,
by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 5.
Lent.
Among all the Pastors whom Our Lord Jesus Christ has placed, as His Vice-Regents, over the Universal Church, there is not one whose merits and renown have surpassed those of the holy Pope, whose Feast we keep today.
His name is Gregory, which signifies “watchfulness”; his surname is “the Great”, and he was in possession of that title, when God sent the Seventh Gregory, the glorious Hildebrand, to govern His Church. [Editor: Pope Gregory VII reigned 1073 - 1085.]
In recounting the glories of this illustrious Pontiff, it is but natural we should begin with his zeal for the services of The Church. The Roman Liturgy, which owes to him some of its finest Hymns, may be considered as his work, at least in this sense, that it is he who collected together and classified the Prayers and Rites drawn up by his predecessors, and reduced them to the form in which we now have them.
Pope Saint Gregory The Great.
Available on YouTube
He collected also the ancient Chants of The Church, and arranged them in accordance with the rules and requirements of the Divine Service.
Hence it is, that our Sacred Music, which gives such Solemnity to the Liturgy, and inspires the Soul with respect and devotion during the Celebration of the great Mysteries of our Faith, is known as the Gregorian Chant.
He is, then, the Apostle of the Liturgy, and this alone would have immortalised his name; but we must look for far greater things from such a Pontiff as Gregory. His name was added to the three, who had hitherto been honoured as the great Doctors of the Latin Church.
These three are Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome; who else could be the fourth but Gregory ? The Church found in his writings such evidence of his having been guided by The Holy Ghost, such a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, such a clear appreciation of the Mysteries of Faith, and such unction and authority in his teachings, that she gladly welcomed him as a new guide for her children.
Such was the respect wherewith everything he wrote was treated, that his very Letters were preserved as so many precious treasures. This immense correspondence shows us that there was not a Country, scarcely even a City, of the Christian world, on which the Pontiff had not his watchful eye steadily fixed; that there was not a question, however local or personal, which, if it interested Religion, did not excite his zeal and arbitration as the Bishop of the Universal Church.
If certain writers of modern times had but taken the pains to glance at these Letters, written by a Pope of the 6th-Century A.D., they would never have asserted, as they have, that the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff are based on documents fabricated, as they say, two hundred years after the death of Gregory.
Throned on the Apostolic See, our Saint proved himself to be a rightful heir of the Apostles, not only as the representative and depositary of their authority, but as a fellow-sharer in their Mission of calling Nations to the True Faith.
To whom does England owe her having been, for so many ages “the Island of Saints” ? To Gregory, who, touched with compassion for those “Angli”, of whom, as he playfully said, he would fain make “Angeli”, sent to their Island the Monk Augustine with forty companions, all of them, as was Gregory himself, children of Saint Benedict.
The Faith had been sown in this Land as early as the 2nd-Century A.D., but it had been trodden down by the invasion of an infidel race. This time, the seed fructified, and so rapidly that Gregory lived to see a plentiful harvest.
It is beautiful to hear the aged Pontiff speaking with enthusiasm about the results of his English Mission. He thus speaks in the twenty-seventh Book of his “Morals”: “Lo !, the language of Britain, which could once mutter naught save barbarous sounds, has long since begun to sing, in the Divine Praises, the Hebrew “Alleluia !” Lo !, that swelling sea is now calm, and Saints walk on its waves. The tide of barbarians, which the sword of Earthly Princes could not keep back, is now hemmed in at the simple bidding of God’s Priests”.
During the fourteen years that this holy Pope held the place of Peter, he was the object of the admiration of the Christian world, both in the East and in the West. His profound learning, his talent for administration, his position, all tended to make him beloved and respected.
But who could describe the virtue of his great Soul ? That contempt for the World and its riches, which led him to seek obscurity in the Cloister; that humility, which made him flee the honours of the Papacy, and hide himself in a cave, where, at length, he was miraculously discovered, and God, Himself, put into his hands the Keys of Heaven, which he was evidently worthy to hold, because he feared the responsibility ; that zeal for the whole flock, of which he considered himself not the master, but the servant, so much so indeed that he assumed the title, which the Popes have ever since retained, of “Servant of the Servants of God”; that Charity which took care of the Poor throughout the whole World; that ceaseless solicitude, which provided for every calamity, whether public or private; that unruffled sweetness of manner, which he showed to all around him, in spite of the bodily sufferings which never left him during the whole period of his laborious Pontificate; that firmness in defending the deposit of the Faith, and crushing error wheresoever it showed itself; in a word, that vigilance with regard to discipline, which made itself felt for long ages after in the whole Church ?
All these services and glorious examples of virtue have endeared our Saint to the whole World, and will cause his name to be Blessed by all future generations, even to the end of time.
