9. POPE GREGORY SENDS MORE LABORERS (A.D. 601)

Bk. 1, chap. 29

Moreover, the same Pope Gregory, hearing from Bishop Augustine that he had a great harvest and but few laborers, sent to him, together with his aforesaid messengers, several fellow-laborers and ministers of the word, of whom the first and principal were Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus, and by them all things in general that were necessary for the worship and service of the church namely, sacred vessels and cloths for the altars, ornaments for the churches, and vestments for the priests and clerks, as likewise relics of the holy apostles and martyrs; besides many books. He also sent a letter, wherein he signified that he had transmitted the pall to him, and at the same time directed how he should constitute bishops in Britain.

10. THE LIFE OF POPE GREGORY

Bk. 2, chap. 1

591 1343

At this time, that is, in the year of our Lord 605,1 the A.D. 6c4d.

blessed Pope Gregory, after having most gloriously governed the Roman and apostolic see thirteen years, six months, and ten days, died, and was translated to the eternal see of the heavenly kingdom. Of whom, in regard that he by his zeal converted our nation, the English, from the power of Satan 2 to the faith of Christ, it behooves us to discourse more at large in our Ecclesiastical History, for we may and ought rightly to call him our apostle; because, whereas he bore the pontifical power over all the world,

1 An error for 604.

2 Acts 26. 18.

and was placed over the churches already converted to the faith of truth, he made our nation, till then given up to idols, the church of Christ, so that we may be allowed thus to attribute to him the character of an apostle; for though he is not an apostle to others, yet he is so to us; for we are the seal of his apostleship in the Lord.1

He was by nation a Roman, son of Gordian, deducing his race from ancestors that were not only noble, but religious. And Felix2 once bishop of the same apostolical see, a man of great honor in Christ and his church, was an ancestor of his. Nor did he exercise the nobility of religion with less virtue of devotion than his parents and kindred. But that worldly nobility which he seemed to have, he entirely used, by the help of the divine grace, to gain the honor of eternal dignity; for soon quitting his secular habit, he repaired to a monastery, wherein he began to behave himself with so much grace of perfection that as he was afterwards wont with tears to testify his mind was above all transitory things; that he rose beyond all that is subject to change; that he used to think of nothing but what was heavenly; that, while detained by the body, he by contemplation broke through the bonds of flesh; and that he loved death, which to almost all men is a punishment, as the entrance into life, and the reward of his labors. This he said of himself, not to boast of his progress in virtue, but rather to bewail the decay which, as he was wont to aver, he imagined he sustained through the pastoral care. In short, when he was one day in private discoursing with Peter, his deacon, after having enumerated the former virtues of his mind, he with grief added: But now, on account of the pastoral

11 Cor. 9. 2.

2 Bishop of Rome, 483-492

3 Gregory's Dialogues, Bk. 1, Prol.

care, it is entangled with the affairs of laymen, and, after so beautiful an appearance of repose, is defiled with the dust of earthly action. And after having wasted itself by condescending to many things that are without, when it desires the inward things, it returns to them less qualified to enjoy them. I therefore consider what I endure, I consider what I have lost, and when I behold that loss, what I bear appears the more grievous.'

This the holy man said out of the excess of his humility. But it becomes us to believe that he lost nothing of his monastic perfection by his pastoral care, but rather that he improved the more through the labor of converting many than he had by the repose of his former tranquil life, and chiefly because, while exercising the pontifical function, he provided to have his house made a monastery. And when first drawn from the monastery, ordained to the ministry of the altar, and sent as nuncio to Constantinople from the apostolic see, though he now mixed with the people of the palace, yet he intermitted not his former heavenly life; for, some of the brethren of his monastery having out of brotherly charity followed him to the royal city, he kept them for the better following of regular observances in order, namely, that at all times, by their example, as he writes himself,1 he might be held fast to the calm shore of prayer, as it were with the cable of an anchor, while he was tossed up and down by the continual waves of worldly affairs; and daily among them, by the solace of studious reading, strengthen his mind when it was shaken with temporal concerns. By their company he was not only fortified against earthly assaults, but more and more inflamed to the exercises of the heavenly life.

1 Epistle to Leander, Bishop of Seville.

For they persuaded him to give a mystical exposition

of the book of holy Job, which is involved in great

Inorakie obscurity; nor could he refuse to undertake that work, which brotherly affection imposed on him for the future benefit of many; but in a wonderful manner, in five and thirty books of exposition, taught how that same book is to be understood literally; how to be referred to the mysteries of Christ and the church; and in what sense it is to be adapted to every one of the faithful. This work he began when legate in the royal city, but finished it at Rome after being made pope. Whilst he was still in the royal city, he, by the assistance of the divine grace of catholic truth, crushed in its first rise a heresy newly started, concerning the state of our resurrection. . . .

He likewise composed another notable book, called the Pastoral, wherein he manifestly showed what sort of Pastoral persons ought to be preferred to govern the church, how such rulers ought to live, with how much discretion to instruct every one of their hearers, and how seriously to reflect every day on their own frailty. He also wrote forty homilies on the Gospel, which he divided equally into two volumes; and composed four books of dialogues,3 into which, at the request of Peter, his deacon, he collected the miracles of the saints whom he either knew or had heard to be most renowned in Italy, for an example to posterity to lead their lives; to the end that, as he taught in his books of expositions what virtues ought to be labored for, so, by describing the miracles of saints, he might make known the glory of those virtues. He further, in twenty-two homilies, discovered how much light there is concealed in the first and last parts of the

416

1 Known as the Moralia.

8 Translated into Old English, and recently published.

2 See pp. 100 ff.

Synodical
Book

prophet Ezekiel, which seemed the most obscure. Besides Book which, he wrote the Book of Answers to the questions of ausweis Augustine, the first bishop of the English nation, as we have shown above, inserting the same book entire in this history; besides the useful little Synodical Book, which he composed with the bishops of Italy on the necessary affairs of the church; and also familiar letters to certain persons. And it is the more wonderful that he could write so many and such large volumes, considering that almost all the time of his youth, to use his own words, he was often tormented with pains in his bowels and a weakness of his stomach, while he was continually suffering from slow fever. But whereas at the same time he carefully reflected that, as the Scripture testifies,1 every son that is received is scourged, the more he labored and was depressed under those present evils, the more he assured himself of his eternal salvation.

Thus much may be said of his immortal genius, which could not be quenched by such severe bodily pains; for other popes applied themselves to building or adorning churches with gold and silver, but Gregory was entirely intent upon gaining souls. Whatsoever money he had, he diligently took care to distribute and give to the poor, that his righteousness might endure for ever, and his horn be exalted with honor;2 so that what blessed Job said might be truly said of him: When the ear heard me, then it blessed me,' etc.

6

To these works of piety and righteousness this also may be added, that he saved our nation, by the preachers he sent hither, from the teeth of the old enemy, and made it partaker of eternal liberty; in whose faith and salvation

1 Cf. Heb. 12. 6.

8 Job 29. 11-17; 31. 16-18.

2 Ps. 112. 9.