The bishop of Antioch is instructed as to the heretical synod of Ephesus, and informed that «it has come to our ears that in the Churches of the East no one attains to a sacred order except by giving of bribes»—a matter which the bishop is to rectify wherever it is in his power to do so. The bishop of Marseilles is reproached for breaking certain images which were being adored: it is true that adoration of images is wrong, but images nevertheless are useful and should be treated with respect. Two bishops of Gaul are reproached because a lady who had become a nun was afterwards forced to marry. «If
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this be so, . . . you shall have the office of hirelings, and not the merit of shepherds.»
The above are a few of the letters of a single year. It is no wonder that he found no time for contemplation, as he laments in one of the letters of this year ( CXXI).
Gregory was no friend to secular learning. To Desiderius, bishop of Vienne in France, he writes:
«It came to our ears, what we cannot mention without shame, that thy Fraternity is [i.e., thou art] in the habit of expounding grammar to certain persons. This thing we took so much amiss, and so strongly disapproved it, that we changed what had been said before into groaning and sadness, since the praises of Christ cannot find room in one mouth with the praises of Jupiter. . . . In proportion as it is execrable for such a thing to be related of a priest, it ought to be ascertained by strict and veracious evidence whether or not it be so.»
This hostility to pagan learning survived in the Church for at least four centuries, till the time of Gerbert (Sylvester II). It was only from the eleventh century onward that the Church became friendly to learning.
Gregory’s attitude to the emperor is much more deferential than his attitude to barbarian kings. Writing to a correspondent in Constantinople he says: «What pleases the most pious emperor, whatever he commands to be done, is in his power. As he determines, so let him provide. Only let him not cause us to be mixed up in the deposition [of an orthodox bishop]. Still, what he does, if it is canonical, we will follow. But, if it is not canonical, we will bear it, so far as we can without sin of our own.» When the Emperor Maurice was dethroned by a mutiny, of which the leader was an obscure centurion named Phocas, this upstart acquired the throne, and proceeded to massacre the five sons of Maurice in their father’s presence, after which he put to death the aged Emperor himself. Phocas was of course crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople, who had no alternative but death. What is more surprising is that Gregory, from the comparatively safe distance of Rome, wrote letters of fulsome adulation to the usurper and his wife. «There is this difference,» he writes, «between the kings of the nations and the emperors of the republic, that the kings of the nations are lords of slaves, but the emperors of the republic lords of freemen. . . . May Almighty God in every thought and deed keep
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the heart of your Piety [i.e., you] in the hand of His grace; and whatsoever things should be done justly, whatsoever things with clemency, may the Holy Spirit who dwells in your breast direct.» And to the wife of Phocas, the Empress Leontia, he writes: «What tongue may suffice to speak, what mind to think, what great thanks we owe to Almighty God for the serenity of your empire, in that such hard burdens of long duration have been removed from our necks, and the gentle yoke of imperial supremacy has returned.» One might suppose Maurice to have been a monster; in fact, he was a good old man. Apologists excuse Gregory on the plea that he did not know what atrocities had been committed by Phocas; but he certainly knew the customary behaviour of Byzantine usurpers, and he did not wait to ascertain whether Phocas was an exception.
The conversion of the heathen was an important part of the increasing influence of the Church. The Goths had been converted before the end of the fourth century by Ulphilas, or Ulfila—unfortunately to Arianism, which was also the creed of the Vandals. After the death of Theodoric, however, the Goths became gradually Catholic: the king of the Visigoths, as we have seen, adopted the orthodox faith in the time of Gregory. The Franks were Catholic from the time of Clovis. The Irish were converted before the fall of the Western Empire by Saint Patrick, a Somersetshire country gentleman * who lived among them from 432 till his death in 461. The Irish in turn did much to evangelize Scotland and the North of England. In this work the greatest missionary was Saint Columba; another was Saint Columban, who wrote long letters to Gregory on the date of Easter and other important questions. The conversion of England, apart from Northumbria, was Gregory’s special care. Every one knows how, before he was Pope, he saw two fair-haired blue-eyed boys in the slave market in Rome, and on being told they were Angles replied, «No, angels.» When he became Pope he sent Saint Augustine to Kent to convert them. There are many letters in his correspondence to Saint Augustine, to Edilbert, king of the Angeli, and to others, about the mission. Gregory decrees that heathen temples in England are not to be destroyed, but the idols are to be destroyed and the temples then consecrated as churches. Saint Augustine puts a number of queries to the
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* So at least Bury says in his life of the Saint.
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Pope, such as whether cousins may marry, whether spouses who have had intercourse the previous night may come to church (yes, if they have washed, says Gregory), and so on. The mission, as we know, prospered, and that is why we are all Christians at this day.
The period we have been considering is peculiar in the fact that, though its great men are inferior to those of many other epochs, their influence on future ages has been greater. Roman law, monasticism, and the papacy owe their long and profound influence very largely to Justinian, Benedict, and Gregory. The men of the sixth century, though less civilized than their predecessors, were much more civilized than the men of the next four centuries, and they succeeded in framing institutions that ultimately tamed the barbarians. It is noteworthy that, of the above three men, two were aristocratic natives of Rome, and the third was Roman Emperor. Gregory is in a very real sense the last of the Romans. His tone of command, while justified by his office, has its instinctive basis in Roman aristocratic pride. After him, for many ages, the city of Rome ceased to produce great men. But in its downfall it succeeded in fettering the souls of its conquerors: the reverence which they felt for the Chair of Peter was an outcome of the awe which they felt for the throne of the Caesars.
In the East, the course of history was different. Mahomet was born when Gregory was about thirty years old.
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Part II. The Schoolmen
CHAPTER VII The Papacy in the Dark Ages
DURING the four centuries from Gregory the Great to Sylvester II, the papacy underwent astonishing vicissitudes. It subject, at times, to the Greek Emperor, at other times to the Western Emperor, and at yet other times to the local Roman aristocracy; nevertheless, vigorous popes in the eighth and ninth centuries, seizing propitious moments, built up the tradition of papal power. The period from A.D. 600 to 1000 is of vital importance for the understanding of the medieval Church and its relation to the State.
The popes achieved independence of the Greek emperors, not so much by their own efforts, as by the arms of the Lombards, to whom, however,
