A Goodly Inheritance

Gordianis, our saint's father, was a grave, tall, long-faced man with short beard and bushy hair. He wears in his picture a bright brown planeta, suggestive somewhat of a chasuble, and stands clasping the hand of the Apostle, St. Peter, in token that he held office under the pope. Indeed, he was responsible for the law business, upkeep of churches and care of the poor in one of the seven regions of Rome.

He came of an ancient and respected line, the Gens Anicia which was famous, says St. Austin of Hippo, for the many consuls it gave the State, for the many virgins it gave the Church. To this family belonged the first Christian senator, the pope St. Felix III, Boethius, "the last of the Romans whom Cato and Cicero could acknowledge as their fellow-citizen," and St. Benedict, the great patriarch of the monks of the west.

Gordianus was a wealthy man. He owned large estates in Sicily and may often have taken his family there for the summer months. But the formative years of Gregory's boyhood were mostly spent in Rome.

Of this interesting period there is little on record. His talents, like his father's, seem to have been of a. practical order. Natural eloquence and will power gave promise of a distinguished career. Paul the Deacon, his earliest biographer, speaks of his sound judgment, as a boy, of his reverence for his teachers, of his tenacious memory.

"If he chanced to hear what was worth remembering, he did not sluggishly let it pass into oblivion. In those days he drew into a thirsty breast streams of learning, which, afterwards, at the fitting time he poured forth in honeyed words."

From his mother, Sylvia, he learned to be tender as well as strong. Her portrait shows a dignified, pleasant-looking matron, still comely albeit wrinkled with age. Her right hand is uplifted to make the sign of the cross. In her left hand she holds a psalter open at her favourite text: "Let my soul live and it shall please Thee, and let Thy judgment help me."

Sylvia inspired her son with her own love for Holy Scripture. He mastered the sacred text so thoroughly in youth that afterwards he could quote it readily, and bring it to bear on whatsoever topic he treated.

St. Gregory has been blamed for using words unknown to classic writers. Be it remembered that when he wrote, Latin was a living language, subject to change. He could not find in Cicero's vocabulary words to express ideas that were far above Cicero's plane. He certainly did not write the Latin of Cicero or even of Tacitus. But he contributed as much as any Father of the Church to form the new Latin, the Christian Latin which was to become the language of the pulpit and of the schools.

He could always clothe his thought in words which made his meaning unmistakable, but he was at no pains to cultivate elegance of diction. He says himself that his letters abound in uncouth phrases, that his too frequent use of words ending in m  grates upon the ear, that his faults are flagrant as regards prepositions. He ends his list of shortcomings with the jesting avowal:

"I consider it extremely unbecoming to hamper the flow of heavenly utterance by too rigid attention to the rules of grammarians."

He was prone to deride the preacher "wordy in superfluities, mute in necessaries."

In his Dialogues, and still more fully in his homilies, St. Gregory tells the story of his father's three sisters, Tarsilla, Emiliana and Gordiana, who had consecrated their virginity to God, and lived at home, as much apart from the world as in a convent, dividing their time between prayer and good works, and exhorting one another to virtue by word and by example.

Sometimes Tarsilla said sadly to Emiliana: "Methinks our sister, Gordiana, is not as we are. I fear that in her heart she does not keep to what she has promised."

Then would they sweetly chide Gordiana. And she would listen gravely and with downcast eyes, but soon again returned to trifling jests, and sought the company of worldly girls. And the time not given to diversions seemed to her tedious.

Tarsilla died on Christmas Eve. St. Gregory tells us the manner of her death.

"To this holy woman, my great grandfather, Felix, sometime Bishop of Rome, appeared in vision. 'Come' said he, 'I will entertain thee in my home of light." Soon afterwards she fell ill of an ague, and many friends stood round her bed, as is the custom when noble folk lie dying. Suddenly she fixed her gaze on high. 'Away, away!' she cried, 'Make room, my Saviour Jesus comes!' And as she leaned forward to meet the Bridegroom, her holy soul was freed from the flesh and a wonderful fragrance filled the room, so that my mother and the others present knew that the Author of all sweetness had been there."

A few nights later, Tarsilla appeared to Emiliana in her sleep.

"Come," she said joyfully, "I have kept our Lord's Birthday without thee, but we shall be together for the Epiphany."

"If I come," said Emiliana, "who will take care of our sister?"

"Come thou," Tarsilla repeated, "our sister Gordiana is reckoned among the women of the world."

"My aunt Gordiana increased her waywardness," St. Gregory goes on, "and what before was hidden in the desire of her mind she now translated into evil act. Unmindful of the fear of God, unmindful of modesty and reverence, unmindful of her vow of virginity, she married, after a time, the steward of her estates."

Could this be the "Aunt Pateria" who was living in the Campagna in straitened circumstances when Gregory became pope? In the first year of his pontificate he orders his local agent to give her forty measures of wheat, as well as money "to buy boots for her boys." Pateria may well be a clerical slip for paterna, "on the father's side."

Gordianus destined his son for the bar, so Gregory naturally focused his studies on Roman and Canon Law. "In the city he was second to none for skill in grammar, dialectics and rhetoric." And despite keen competition on the part of state-aided Constantinople, the Rome of that era still attracted students in theology, law and medicine. Cassiodorus, the cultured statesman turned monk, could write:

"Whereas other districts trade in oil and balm and in aromatics, Rome still distributes to the world the gift of eloquence; and we find it inexpressibly sweet to listen to the men whom she has trained."

Strange to say St. Gregory never troubled to learn Greek, even when in manhood he spent six years in Constantinople, with plenty of leisure on his hands. And thus the wealth of sacred learning in the writings of the Eastern Fathers remained for him locked and sealed. One wonders how Gordianus could have let him grow up ignorant of a language as indispensable to a Roman gentleman in the sixth century as French is to an English one nowadays. It may well be that both father and son resented the secondary position which Rome now held in politics. This neglect of Greek, moreover, points to a lack of worldly ambition. The boy's aim, as he grew to manhood, was to serve his fellow-citizens, as his father served them, in the pope's employ.

The pope was undoubtedly the great man in Rome, his political position in Italy strengthened by the Emperor Justinian's Pragmatic Sanction of the Ides of August, 554. "Let produce be furnished," thus ran the decree, "let money be received in taxes, according to those weights and measures which Our Piety now entrusteth to the safe keeping of the Most Blessed Pope and the Most Honourable Senate."

Like other Italian bishops, the pope was allowed due weight in the selection of "fit and proper persons to carry on the local government." The Viceroy (exarch) stationed at Ravenna usually allowed him a free hand. The few subordinates in the Government offices on the Palatine did not seriously interfere with his arrangements for the good administration of Rome.

The popes accepted the circumstances and rendered faithfully to Caesar the things he claimed, when this claim did not clash with the higher duty owed to God. Each pope at his accession paid in coin of tribute three thousand gold pieces, just six times as much as an ordinary bishop; and the emperor, as chief patrician, was asked to ratify the choice of the clergy and people of Rome.

Vigilius, who was pope when St. Gregory was born, had represented the Holy See at the court of Justinian during five consecutive pontificates. He had a difficult course to steer at Constantinople, amid simony, intrigue and heresy under a plausible mask. Justinian, himself, was orthodox in faith. But his wife, the Empress Theodora, would fain have men forget her past lapses in the days when she was known as Athenals, the star of the Byzantine comic stage. And so she dabbled and domineered in church affairs and "clung to the Monophysite creed as if it were some new form of sensual gratification."

The Monophysites, who denied Our Lord's Human Nature, had been formally condemned at the fourth General Council of the Church, held at Chalcedon in 451. Three of the bishops at Chalcedon had written formally on the side of Nestorius, and the Monophysites fastened on this fact as a pretext for questioning the validity of the decrees of the Council. Thus began the schism known in history as The Three Chapters, a schism long drawn out, which St. Gregory's best efforts failed to heal.

Justinian's Edict of Comprehension forbade the topic to be discussed, and Theodora intruded Anthymus, a dissembling Monophysite, into the See of Constantinople. Pope St. Agapetus, when business brought him to court, unmasked the heretic, deposed and excommunicated him. And Justinian, a moment led astray by anger, knelt spontaneously to ask the pope's forgiveness.

But Theodora hardened her heart. On the death of St. Agapetus she wrote imperiously to the new pope:

"Delay not to come to us; or at least restore Anthymus to his see."

Pope St. Silverius groaned aloud when he read this letter, "I know this affair will be my death."

Nevertheless, putting his trust in God and St. Peter, he refused point blank to hold communion with Anthymus. And the empress set up Vigilius as anti-pope, imprisoned Silverius, and starved him to death, before Justinian could intervene.

Vigilius went to Rome and was canonically elected pope. He wrote immediately to Theodora:

"We have spoken wrongly, senselessly. Now we will not do what you require. We will not recall an anathematized heretic."

Summoned in his turn to Constantinople, he went. He condemned The Three Chapters "without prejudice to the Council of Chalcedon." He refused to preside at a council to which the Western bishops were not summoned. He would not admit that the emperor had a right to dictate to the Church. After eight years struggle he was allowed to return to Rome, but died in Sicily on the homeward journey (555).

Gregory, at that date, was a boy of fifteen, old enough to take a keen interest in the riots which took place in Rome, when Pelagius came before the electors as the emperor's nominee.

Pelagius was an able and a holy man, and Roman to the core. As archdeacon of St. Peter's he had endeared himself to the citizens by open-handed almsgiving in the lean years of famine, he had earned the gratitude of the senators by his bold front against Totila in 546. But these things had slipped from memory during the years of absence which he spent, safeguarding the interests of the Romans as papal agent (apocrisarius)  at the court of Justinian. Calumny made itself busy with his name. He had bought his appointment, it was whispered, he had had a hand in the death of Vigilius.

However, the memory of his bygone benevolence stirred enough hearts among the notables to secure him the number of votes required by Canon Law. But only two bishops were found willing to officiate at his consecration, the Archpriest of Ostia had to do duty as the third.

Narses, the exarch, came up from Ravenna with his troops to keep order in the city, and rode with the new Pope to the Church of St. Pancras, whom the Romans regarded as the avenger of perjury. Here, his hand on the martyr's relics, Pelagius swore he was innocent of the charges brought against him. Then the procession passed on to St. Peter's and seated on his throne, the new Pope preached to the people on the sin of simony, and proclaimed his intention of cleansing the Church from its foulness. He kept his word.

In 565 the Emperor Justinian died. A little later Narses was recalled in disgrace. Then the Lombards gained a footing in Italy and all was frightfulness again. In 572 Monte Cassino was raided and the monks dispersed. The marauders infested the Campagna and brought the Romans to the brink of starvation.

We have no details as to the part played by Gregory amid these stirring events. He helped his father in his regionary duties, and succeeded him in office when the death of Gordianus left him one of the wealthiest men in Rome. His widowed mother retired to a hermitage near St. Paul's Without-the-Walls, to spend the remainder of her life in prayer, good works and pious reading. Her son endowed the basilica to which she attached herself with a yearly grant of oil and wax.

We know he was chief magistrate in Rome at the age of thirty-three. His signature, in this capacity, heads the list of Romans who pledged themselves in 574 to uphold the Fifth General Council of Constantinople. For the Popes recognised this Council as ecumenical, with the proviso "that the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon might in no wise be impugned."

This was Gregory's first contribution to the controversy of The Three Chapters, a fight over nothing, so it seems to us now, nevertheless it proved an irritating thorn to St. Gregory all through his career. We shall not refer again to the "very useful letters "which as papal secretary and as pope he wrote to hinder schism from hardening in the Churches of Milan and Istria. The verdict of history has long ago approved the sensible attitude which the Holy See adopted from first to last.

As Prefect of Rome Gregory could now wear the trabea  of the Consuls, a rich robe of silk, magnificently embroidered and sparkling with gems. Impartial, gracious, open-handed, he soon won his way into the hearts of the citizens, who vented their enthusiasm in cheers whenever he appeared in the streets.

But Gregory shrank from plaudits. The responsibilities outweighed, in his mind, the dignity of his position. He made time to spend long hours in prayer. He courted the friendship of holy monks. There were about twenty monasteries in Rome at the time, and many homeless monks sought refuge within the circuit of the city walls when the Lombards laid waste the Campagna.

Gregory had already founded six monasteries on his lands in Sicily. He now turned his house at Rome into a seventh in honour of the Apostle St. Andrew. Here he, himself, took the habit in the year 575.

The atrium—the great windowless hall with its colonnaded portico and its fountain—remained much as he remembered it in childhood., Here were the portraits of his beloved parents. And here in a small apse within a a ring of stucco, as John the Deacon tells us, our saint after he became Pope, "wisely wished his own likeness to be painted, that he might be frequently seen by his monks as a reminder of his known severity."

John's description of this picture may fitly close this chapter. We cannot better Dudden's translation of it in his Gregory the Great.

"His face was well proportioned, combining the length of his father's and the roundness of his mother's countenance; his heard, like his father's, was somewhat tawny and sparse. His head was large and bald, surrounded with dark hair hanging down below the middle of the ear; two little curls bending towards the right crowned a forehead broad and high. The eyes were of a yellow-brown colour, small but open; the eyebrows arched, long and thin; the under eye-lids full. The nose was aquiline with open nostrils. The lips were red and thick, the cheeks shapely, the chin prominent and well formed. His complexion, swarthy and high-coloured, became flushed in later life. The expression was gentle. He was of medium height and good figure; his hands were beautiful, with tapering fingers well adapted to handle the pen of a ready writer. In the picture he was represented as standing, clad in a chestnut coloured chasuble over a dalmatic, and wearing a small pallium which fell over his shoulders, breast and side. His left hand grasped a book of the Gospels, his right was raised to make the sign of the Cross. A square frame, not the round nimbus, surrounded his head, proving that the portrait was executed during his life time. Beneath the picture was the following distich of his own composing:

"Christe, potens Domine, nostri largitor honoris, Indultum officium solita pietate guberna."