on account of their vocal powers had been ordained deacons had become scandalous; Gregory, with a council, attempted to remedy the evil, not by requiring a greater strictness of behaviour in the singers, but by enacting that the chanting should be performed by subdeacons, or clerks of the inferior orders." He laboured diligently as a preacher, and it was believed that in the composition of his discourses he was aided by a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who appeared in the form of a dove whiter than snow." When Rome was threatened in 595 by the Lombards under Agilulf, the pope expounded Ezekiel from the pulpit, until at length the pressure of distress obliged him to desist, as he found that in such circumstances his mind was too much distracted to penetrate into the mysteries of the prophetic book." "Let no one blame me," he says in the last homily of the series, "if after this discourse I cease, since, as you all see, our tribulations are multiplied: on every side we are surrounded with swords, on every side we fear the imminent peril of death. Some come back to us maimed of their hands, others are reported to be prisoners or slain. I am forced to withhold my tongue from exposition, for that my soul is weary of my life." In his last years, when compelled by sickness to withdraw from preaching in person, he dictated sermons which were delivered by others." The wealth of his see enabled the pope to exercise extensive charities, which were administered according to a regular scheme. On the first day of every month he distributed large quantities of provisions, and many members of the nobility were so reduced by the calamities of the age that they were glad to share in his bounty. Every day he sent alms to a number of needy persons, in all quarters of the city. When a poor man had been found dead in the street, Gregory abstained for some time from the celebration of the eucharist, as considering himself to be the cause of his death. He was in the habit of sending dishes from his own table to persons whom he knew to be in want, but ashamed to ask relief. He entertained strangers and wanderers as his guests; and his biographers tell us that on one occasion he was rewarded by a vision, in which he was be omitted here, although it has been partly quoted by Gibbon : Alpina siquidem corpora, vocum suarum tonitruis altisone perstrepentia, susceptæ modulationis dulcedinem proprie non resultant, quia bibuli gutturis barbara feritas, dum inflexionibus et repercussionibus mitem nititur edere cantilenam, naturali quodam fragore, quasi plaustra per gradus confuse sonantia, rigidas voces jactat, sicque audientium animos, quos mulcere debuerat, exasperando magis ac obstrependo con turbat." "Hard. iii. 496. n Paul. 28; Joh. Diac. iv. 70. 1 Joh. Diac. iv. 74. informed that among the objects of his hospitality had been his guardian angel. At another time, it is related, the Saviour appeared to him by night, and said to him, "On other days thou hast relieved Me in my members, but yesterday in Myself." " r Gregory found himself obliged to take an active part in political affairs. He desired peace, not only for its own sake, but as necessary for the reform and extension of the Church. He laboured for it notwithstanding many discouragements, and notwithstanding repeated disappointments by the breach of truces which had been concluded. He took it upon himself to negotiate with the Lombards; and, although slighted and ridiculed by the court of Constantinople for his endeavours, he found his recompense in their success, and in the gratitude of the people whom he had rescued from the miseries of war.t The property of the Roman see, which had come to be designated as the "patrimony of St. Peter," included estates not only in Italy and the adjacent islands, but in Gaul, Illyria, Dalmatia, Africa, and even in Asia." These estates were managed by commissioners chosen from the orders of deacons and subdeacons, or by laymen who had the title of Defensors. By agents of this class Gregory carried on much of the administration of his own patriarchate and of his communications with other churches; and, in addition to these, he was represented by vicars-bishops on whom, either for the eminence of their sees or for their personal merits, he bestowed certain prerogatives and jurisdiction, of which the pall was the distinctive badge. His more especial care was limited to the "suburbicarian " provinces, and beyond these he did not venture to interfere in the internal concerns of churches." In Gaul and in Spain he had vicars: his influence over the churches of these countries was undefined as to extent, and was chiefly exercised in the shape of exhortations to their sovereigns; but he succeeded in establishing by this means a closer connexion with the Frankish kingdom than that which had before existed; and by thus strengthening his interest in the West, he provided for his church a support independent of the power of Constantinople." Joh. Diac. ii. 22-30; Lau, 303. Baron. 591. 30; Giannone, 1. IV. xi. 1; Lau, 50. * See Epp. iii. 56-7; v. 11, 15, 53; vi. 34, 62, &c. The emperor's consent was necessary before the pall could be conferred on any bishops who were not his subjects. (Vigil. Ep. 6, in Patrol. Ixix.; Greg. Ep. ix. 11; Giesel. I. ii. 416. Lau, 95.) On its form see n. on Ep. i. 28; De Marca, 1. vi. c. 6; Lau, 54. There is an essay by Garnier on the pall. Dissert. iii. in Lib. Diurn. (Patrol. cv.). y Fleury, xxxv. 19; Dupin, v. 103. z Lau, 89, 179; Neand. v. 162; Rettberg, ii. 583. By the aid of Gennadius, governor of Africa, the pope acquired a degree of authority before unknown over the Church of that country." In his dealings with the bishops of the west, he upheld the authority of St. Peter's chair as the source of all ecclesiastical privileges the centre of jurisdiction, to which all spiritual causes ought to be referred as the highest tribunal. His agents, although belonging to the lower grades of the ministry, were virtually the chief ecclesiastical authorities within their spheres; we find that subdeacons are in this character empowered not only to admonish individual bishops, but even to convoke those of a whole province, to administer the papal rebuke to them, and to report them to the apostolical chair in case of neglect. When, however, the agents exceeded their general authority, and allowed causes to be carried before them without reference to the diocesan, Gregory admonished them to respect the rights of the episcopate. With this lofty conception of the authority of his see, it would appear that he was unfeignedly free from personal pride and assumption; but he must be reckoned among those of the popes who have most effectively contributed to the extension of the papal dominion. Gregory always treated the eastern patriarchs as independent. He spoke of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch as his equals— as being, like himself, successors of St. Peter, and sharers with him in the one chair of the same founder; and, although he was involved in serious differences with the bishops of the eastern capital, these differences did not arise from any claim on the Roman side, but from a supposed assumption on the part of Constantinople. John, styled for his ascetic life "the Faster," was raised to the patriarchate in 585, after having struggled to escape the elevation with an appearance of resolute humility, which Gregory at the time admired, although he afterwards came to regard it as the mask of pride. In 587 a great synod of eastern bishops and senators was held at Constantinople for the trial of certain charges against Gregory, patriarch of Antioch.h Over this assembly John presided, in virtue of the position assigned to his see by the second and fourth General Councils; and in the acts he assumed, like some of his predecessors,' the title of "Ecumenical (which the Latins rendered by Universal) Bishop." The meaning of this term, in Byzantine usage, was indefinite; there was certainly no intention of claiming by it a jurisdiction over the whole Church; but Pelagius II., viewing with jealousy the power of Constantinople, and apprehensive of the additional importance which its bishops might derive from the presidency of a council assembled for so important a purpose, laid hold on the title as a pretext for disallowing the acts of the assembly, although these had been confirmed by the emperor, and forbade his envoy to communicate with John.m A.D. 594. Gregory, on succeeding Pelagius, took up the question with much earnestness. After repeated, but ineffectual, remonstrances through his apocrisiary," he wrote to the patriarch himself, to the emperor Maurice, and to the empress. To Maurice he urged that the title assumed by the patriarch interfered with the honour of the sovereign. He declared that John was drawn by his flatterers into the use of the "proud and foolish" word; that the assumption was an imitation of the devil, who exalted himself above his brother angels; that it was unlike the conduct of St. Peter, who, although the first of the apostles, was but a member of the same class with the rest; that bishops ought to learn from the calamities of the time to employ themselves better than in claiming lofty designations; that, appearing now when the end of the world was at hand, the claim was a token of Antichrist's approach. The council of Chalcedon, he said, had indeed given the title to the bishops of Rome; but these had never adopted it, lest they should seem to deny the pontificate to others. Gregory also wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria, and to Anastasius of Antioch, endeavouring to enlist them in his cause. To allow the title to John, he said, would be to derogate from their own rights, and an injury to their whole order. "Ecumenical bishop" must mean sole bishop; if, therefore, the ecumenical bishop should err, the whole Church would fail; and for a patriarch of Constantinople to assume the proud and superstitious name, which was an invention of the first apostate, was alarming, since among the occupants of that see there had been not only heretics, but heresiarchs. These applications were of little effect, for both the Egyptian and the Syrian patriarchs had special reasons to deprecate a rupture of the Church's peace, and to avoid any step which might provoke the emperor.s Anastasius had been expelled from his see by the younger Justin, and had not recovered it until after an exclusion of thirteen years (A.D. 582-595), when he was restored on the death of Gregory;" Eulogius was struggling with the difficulties of the Monophysite schism while to both of them, as orientals, the title of ecumenical appeared neither a novelty nor so objectionable as the Roman bishop considered it. Eulogius, however, reported that he had ceased to use it in writing to John, as Gregory had directed (sicut jussistis), and in his letter he addressed the bishop of Rome himself as "universal pope." "I beg," replied Gregory, "that you would not speak of directing, since I know who I am, and who you are. dignity you are my brother; in character, my father. I pray your most sweet holiness to address me no more with the proud appellation of 'universal pope,' since that which is given to another beyond what reason requires is subtracted from yourself. If you style me universal pope, you deny that you are at all that which you own me to be universally. Away with words which puff up vanity and wound charity!" u In John of Constantinople died in 595, leaving no other property than a small wooden bedstead, a shabby woollen coverlet, and a ragged cloak,—relics which were removed to the imperial palace in reverence of the patriarch's sanctity. His successor, Cyriac, continued to use the obnoxious title; but Gregory persevered in Ep. viii. 30. Baronius, after quoting some very insufficient cases of Gregory's interference in countries beyond his own patriarchate, exclaims--"Sic vides Gregorium, cum refugit dici universalis, universalis tamen ecclesiæ curam subire !" (595. 34-5; cf. 50.) The Benedictine biographer (III. i. 16-7) says that Gregory objected to the title of ecumenical only as meaning sole bishop, and not in the sense in which later popes have used it. The truth is, however, that he objected to it in the later Roman sense rather than in that which the patriarchs of Constantinople intended. (See Dupin, v. 110; Laud against Fisher, p. 198, ed. Ang. Cath. Lib.) Schröckh (xvii. 69-72) is unfair to Gregory in this as in other points. Gregory, in tacit reproof of John, styled himself "servant of God's servants;' but this title was not (as has sometimes been said) invented by him. It was as old as St. Augustine's time, was used by other bishops, and even by kings, and did not become peculiar to the popes of Rome until the eleventh century. Ducange, s. vv. Servus servorum Dei; Schröckh, xvii. 78-9; Giesel. I. ii. 414. Theoph. Simocatta, vii. 6. X |