BOOK I. CHAPTER VIII.

THE ABBAT

 

SOME time after his return to Rome in 586, Gregory was elected Abbat of St. Andrew's Monastery. His predecessor, the Maximianus of the stormy voyage, doubtless resigned in his favour, feeling himself unfit to be the superior of one who in knowledge, practical ability, and personal sanctity was so far beyond him. At all events, Gregory undertook the government of the community, and his rule, though popular, was characterized by extreme severity. An authentic anecdote illustrates the conscientious strictness of the abbat, and at the same time gives us an insight into the beliefs entertained by Gregory and his contemporaries concerning the state of purgatory and the efficacy of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The story is as follows.

There was in the monastery a certain monk named Justus, who was skilled in medicine, and had often kindly ministered to Gregory during his frequent illnesses. This man, having fallen grievously ill, and believing himself to be on the point of death, confessed to his natural brother, Copiosus, that he possessed three golden crowns hidden away in the medicine-chest. Gregory was horrified when he heard of this, for he considered that to possess money, in contempt of the monastic law of poverty, was a grave sin. He therefore determined to make a signal example of the culprit, and sending for Pretiosus the prior, he said to him, "Go and provide that none of the brethren visit Justus on his death-bed, nor let any give him a word of comfort. But when his hour is come, and he asks for the brethren, let his carnal brother tell him that all the monks detest him for the money which he hid, that so at least in the hour of death he may have sorrow for his deed, and his sorrow may cleanse his heart from sin. When he is dead, his body must not be buried with the rest of the monks, but you must make a grave for him in some dung-hill, and cast in the body there, and throw on the top the three crowns he left behind him, crying all together, 'Thy money perish with thee!' and so put earth upon him." Gregory's orders were obeyed. Justus died in great agony of mind, and was buried in the way prescribed. And all the good monks were so excessively scared by his dreadful fate, that they began to turn out from their cells all manner of worthless little trifles which the Rule permitted them to keep, fearing lest inadvertently they might be retaining something which would bring upon them a similar punishment.

Thirty days after the death of Justus the stern abbat began to relent a little. So he sent for Prior Pretiosus, and said to him, It is some time now since our departed brother has been in fiery torment, and therefore we ought to show him some charity and try if we can procure his deliverance. Go, then, and for the next thirty days offer the Sacrifice for him, so that no day pass on which the Saving Victim be not offered for his forgiveness." The prior, as before, carried out the abbat’s orders, and meanwhile Gregory, amid his other cares, forgot about the matter. One night, however, the spirit of Justus appeared to his brother Copiosus, and being questioned as to his state, replied, "Hitherto I have been in sore case, but now it is well with me, for today I received the communion." Copiosus ran to Gregory in great joy, and told him what he had seen and heard; and when they compared dates they discovered that the vision occurred on the thirtieth day on which mass had been said for the repose of the dead man's soul. "Thus," says Gregory, "it was clearly evident that the deceased was delivered from his punishment by means of the Saving Oblation."

To those who do not bear in mind Gregory's belief respecting future punishment, his conduct on this occasion may well appear savage and inhuman. But probably none of his contemporaries who heard the story would have regarded it in this light. For a monk to hoard up money was not merely a violation of a monastic regulation; it was a violation of a fundamental principle of monasticism, and showed that the offender had never truly adopted the spirit of the life he was supposed to lead, and was therefore deserving of condign punishment both in this world and the next. The energetic measures taken by Gregory—so men would argue—awakened the remorse of the culprit, and the sorrow of his dying hours saved him from a sorrow which would have been eternal. Hence the remarkable comment on the story, attributed in the Dialogues to Peter, would probably have represented the opinion of most sixth-century churchmen: "This is indeed a wonderful and extremely pleasant tale!"

Under Gregory's rule the Monastery of St. Andrew became renowned as a school of saints. Many men who afterwards became distinguished were domiciled within its walls; among them Maximianus the future bishop of Syracuse and Papal Vicar in Sicily, Marinianus who was made archbishop of Ravenna, Sabinus who became bishop of Gallipoli, and Augustine the Apostle of England. Of the less important monks the names of two are preserved to us by Gregory himself, who relates some remarkable visions with which they were favoured. "There was living with me in my monastery," he writes in the Dialogues, "a certain brother named Antonius, who daily with many tears longed for the joys of the heavenly fatherland. While he meditated upon the Holy Scriptures with the utmost earnestness and with strong fervour of desire, he sought to gain from them not words of knowledge, but tears of penitence, that his soul, roused and inflamed by their holy influence, might leave the things of earth and soar in contemplation to the heavenly country. To him it was said in a vision of the night: Make ready and depart, for the Lord hath commanded thee. And when he answered that he had no means wherewith to make the journey, he heard at once the reply, 'If thou art thinking of thy sins, they are forgiven thee.' This he heard once, and while he still trembled with great awe, on another night he was again admonished in the same words. Then five days later he was attacked with fever and died, while all the brethren wept and prayed around him." A similar story is related of a young monk named John, who, falling sick, beheld in a vision an old man come to him and touch him with a wand, saying, "Rise up, for thou shalt not die of this sickness; but prepare thyself, for thou art not long for this world." Though the physicians had given him up, John recovered, and for two years served God with great devotion. Then one day, after he had been assisting at the funeral of one of the brethren, he fancied that he heard his name called from the newly filled grave. Ten days afterwards he sickened of a fever and departed this life.

The biographer John the Deacon has several stories of miraculous events which occurred in St. Andrew’s—how a monk who had committed a theft was tormented by a demon until he confessed; how another, who meditated flight, was checked by a vision of an old man who set a black dog at him; how a third, who entertained a similar design, was vexed by a demon whenever he attempted to enter the oratory; how two monks, who escaped and hid in some crypts near the Flaminian Gate, were discovered by means of the horses of the pursuers, who could not be induced to pass the spot. But these events, however we explain them, did not take place during the period of Gregory's residence; for the same stories are related by Gregory himself when Pope, and he gives them on the authority of the abbat of the monastery.

While Gregory occupied himself with matters of discipline and religious observance, he did not neglect, or allow his monks to neglect, the study of sacred learning. Much of his own spare time was spent in meditating on the Holy Scriptures, and he endeavoured to educate his brethren in divine knowledge by delivering a series of informal lectures, in the course of which he expounded the greater portion of the Old Testament, viz. the Heptateuch, the Books of Kings, the Prophets, the Book of Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon. A diligent young student named Claudius took shorthand notes of these lectures, which he afterwards transcribed in full, with a view to publication. Gregory, however, finding that his words had been greatly misrepresented, requested that all the copies should be sent to him for correction. But if, as seems probable, he intended to revise and publish them, he never found time to execute his purpose. The extant Commentaries on the First Book of Kings and on the Song of Solomon can scarcely be by his hand. The former, at any rate, probably belongs to a much later date, though it is just possible that the latter was based on the notes of Gregory's lectures taken by Claudius.

One important literary undertaking, however, Gregory completed at this time. This was the editing of the lectures on the Book of Job, which he had delivered in Constantinople. In the dedication, addressed to his friend Leander of Seville, Gregory gives an interesting account of the origin and composition of the book. "When I was in Constantinople," he writes, "it seemed good to the brethren and to you, my friend, to urge me to explain the Book of the blessed Job, and to lay open the deep mysteries it contains, so far as the Truth should inspire me with the power of doing so. And you laid this additional charge upon me, that I should not only unravel the words of the history in their allegorical sense, but that I should also turn the allegorical sense into a moral exercise, and (what was still harder) crown the several meanings with testimonies, and when those testimonies were difficult to understand, that I should disentangle them also by an additional explanation. At first I despaired, owing to the difficulty of the work. But then I raised my hopes to Him who made the tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent, and who hath marked the undistinguishable brute brayings of an ass with the intelligible measures of human speech. So I took courage, and though the life of those to whom I was compelled to give my interpretation was far beyond me, yet I thought it no harm that the leaden pipe should supply streams of water for the service of men. Whereupon without delay I delivered the former parts of the book in the presence of the brethren assembled to hear me, and in the latter part, finding that I had time then at my disposal, I used dictation. Finally, when I had more time, I corrected and arranged in books all that had been taken down as I delivered it in lecture, adding much, omitting a little and leaving some as it was. For when I was giving the second part by dictation I at the same time carefully considered the style of the first part, harmonizing the two styles into a consistent whole. I must admit, however, that I have left the third portion of the work for the most part as I delivered it by word of mouth, because the brethren, by drawing away my attention to other things, prevented my correcting it with any degree of exactness."

Respecting the method of his exposition, Gregory further writes: "You must know that there are some parts which we explain historically, others we search out by allegory, investigating the symbolical meaning, in others we open out only moral lessons, allegorically conveyed, while there are some few which we discuss with special care in all these ways together, exploring them by a threefold method. For first we lay the foundations in history; then, by pursuing a symbolical sense, we erect an intellectual edifice to be a stronghold of faith; and lastly, by the grace of moral instruction, we as it were paint the fabric with fair colours ... For the Word of God both exercises the understanding of the wise by its deeper mysteries, and also by its superficial lessons nurses the simple-minded. It presents openly that wherewith the little ones may be fed; it keeps in secret that whereby men of loftier range may be wrapped in admiration. It is, as it were, a kind of river both shallow and deep, in which the lamb may find a footing and the elephant float at large."

Gregory concludes his dedicatory epistle with an apology for the style. He pleads that the book was composed when he was labouring under illness. "For many a long year I have been afflicted with frequent pains in the bowels, and the powers of my stomach are so broken that I am always in bad health. I also suffer from a constant succession of slow fevers." These bodily ailments have affected to some extent his intellectual powers. "For what is the body but the organ of the mind? However proficient a musician may be, he cannot extract melody from an instrument which is out of order. Only grating sounds proceed from a cracked pipe." Not that Gregory troubled himself about an ornate and polished style. He writes: "I beg that in going through this work you will not look for the foliage of eloquence, for by the Sacred Oracles commentators are expressly debarred from the vanity of empty wordiness, in that it is forbidden to plant a grove in the temple of God. And we all know that when a rank crop shows stalks that abound in leaves, the grains of the ears are least filled and swelling. Therefore I have not condescended to observe that art of speaking, which is conveyed by rules of worldly training, for, as the tenour of this epistle will show, I do not avoid collisions of metacism or confusion of barbarisms, and I despise the observance of the position, force, or government of prepositions. For I account it very unseemly to submit the words of the Divine Oracle to the rules of Donatus." With this frank repudiation of literary elegancies, the austere commentator concludes his dedication.

The Magna Moralia, or Exposition of the Book of Job, is a very remarkable work, and a veritable treasure-house of sixth-century theology and ethic. It is divided into thirty-five books, and was originally edited in six volumes. The theology therein expounded will be dealt with at length in the Third Book of the present biography. Here it is sufficient to say that, as a Commentary in the modern sense of the term, the Magna Moralia is well-nigh worthless. Gregory read the Book of Job in Latin, partly according to the older and partly according to the later version. Of the original language he knew nothing; of Oriental manners and modes of thought he had no conception. He never seems to have realized that the book was a poem, or to have made the slightest allowance for poetical expressions, images, and metaphors. He understood it all with gross literalness. And yet at the same time beneath the letter he discovered, or fancied that he discovered, a wealth of esoteric meaning. As Milman says: "The Book of Job, according to Gregory, comprehended in itself all natural, all Christian theology, and all morals. It was at once a true and wonderful history, an allegory containing in its secret sense the whole theory of the Christian Church and Christian sacraments, and a moral philosophy applicable to all mankind." In other words, each paragraph of the book was to Gregory merely a peg on which to hang disquisitions on all manner of subjects—theological, philosophical, and moral. The poem was the running text of a series of sermons, many of them very much off the point.

The form of the book disgusts the modern reader. It is not the style of writing—the rudeness of which was perhaps exaggerated by Gregory in his dedication—so much as the endless allegorizing, the twisting of every word and phrase into a symbol of hidden truth, that is so inexpressibly wearisome. At the commencement, perhaps, we are interested in the author's ingenuity of interpretation, as, for example, when he informs us that Job's seven sons typify the twelve apostles, because expresses the perfection of spiritual gifts, and is obtained by adding 3 to 4, which numbers when multiplied make 12; or when we hear that the three daughters represent the weaker multitudes of the faithful who believe in the Trinity, or the three orders of the Church (the clergy, the continent, and the married); or when we read that seven thousand sheep typify the Jews who have been led from the Law to the pastures of Grace. But when this system is consistently applied through thirty-five books, it soon becomes intolerable. Hence from the eighth century onwards many attempts have been made to edit the Morals in the form of Compendia or Epitomes, which should preserve the most valuable portions of the Commentary in a handy and readable form. The most celebrated of these epitomes was compiled by Odo of Cluny. Such compilations, however, have invariably been found more or less unsatisfactory.

But whatever opinion modern students may form of Gregory's masterpiece, there cannot be the slightest question of its great popularity from Gregory's time onwards through the Middle Ages. So soon as it was published it was received with immense enthusiasm. The archbishop of Ravenna, Marinianus, ordered that portions of it should be publicly read at Vigils—a proceeding of which Gregory disapproved. "I am not pleased to hear it," he wrote; "for the book is not a popular one, and with an uninstructed audience is likely to do more harm than good. Tell Marinianus to have read instead the Commentaries on the Psalms, which are best adapted for moulding the minds of secular persons to good habits. I do not wish that in my lifetime anything I may happen to have composed should become generally known." After Gregory's death, however, this practice was resumed. The Magna Moralia became a favourite text-book of Christian doctrine. Manuscripts were multiplied, epitomes compiled; by the twelfth century numerous translations had been made and circulated, and for the next five or six hundred years the commentary was regarded as indispensable for every well-furnished theological library. Nor can we wonder at the success of the work. The Magna Moralia is a mine of theology, and the unambiguous matter-of-fact way in which the dogmas are dealt with commended it to many who were unable to follow the subtle reasonings of Augustine. Hence it soon became a standard authority, and throughout the Middle Ages there was perhaps no work on theology more generally esteemed or more diligently studied.

It is probably to this period of Gregory's life that we must refer the celebrated incident of the meeting with the English slave-boys in the Roman market-place. In our remote island of the northern sea much fighting had been going on. Aella, king of Northumbrian Deira, had been struggling successfully to establish his supremacy over the neighbouring Bernicians. In these wars many captives had been taken on both sides, who, according to the usage of the country, were either killed or sold into slavery. Thus it chanced that sometime between the years 586 and 588, some English boys, subjects of Aella—three in number, according to the Canterbury tradition—were publicly offered for sale by some Jew merchant in the market-place at Rome. It happened that on that day Abbat Gregory, with a few of his monks, was passing through the Forum, and was struck with admiration on beholding the white skin and golden hair of the handsome slaves. He stopped and asked the slave-dealer whence they came. The Jew replied that they had been brought from Britain, where all the people had fair complexions like them. On further interrogation he added that they were pagans. Gregory sighed deeply and exclaimed, “Alas alas! that beings with such bright faces should be slaves of the prince of darkness! that with outward form so lovely the mind should be sick and void of inward grace!”. Then followed the famous dialogue.

“What is the name of their nation?”

“Angles”.

“Good”, quoth the abbat, “they have the faces of angels, and should be co-heirs with the angels in heaven. From what province do they come?”

 “From Deira”.

“Deira I Yea, verily; they shall be saved from God's ire, and called to the mercy of Christ. How call you the king of that country?”

 “Aella”.

 “Then must Alleluia be sung in Aella's land”.

The punning abbat returned to his monastery. But the affair did not end in mere word-play. The bright faces of the English lads haunted him, and at length he formed the resolution of leading a mission himself into their distant unknown country. He went, therefore, to Pelagius, and earnestly entreated him to sanction the undertaking. The Pope was reluctant, but gave his consent; and so one morning, with the utmost secrecy, Gregory, accompanied by a few monks, stole out of the gate of Rome and set forward on his long journey to the north. It was not fated, however, that Gregory should himself set foot in Britain. On the third day after his departure the little band halted for a rest. The monks disposed themselves for a quiet siesta, and Gregory, withdrawing a little apart, took out a roll of the Scriptures and began to read. Suddenly a grasshopper alighted on the open page, and this trifling incident appeared to the abbat to be a Heaven-sent omen. "Ecce locusta!" he exclaimed. "That means, ‘Loco sta’. Know, my friends, that we shall not be allowed to proceed on this journey." Almost as he spoke messengers arrived in hot haste from Pope Pelagius, with imperative orders to Gregory to return without delay. It seems that the people of Rome had taken the departure of their favourite very ill. As soon as they heard of it they flocked in great excitement to the Lateran, and began to upbraid the Pope with terrible cries: "Ah, Apostolic, what hast thou done? Thou hast offended Peter. Thou hast destroyed Rome." Terrified, Pelagius at once despatched messengers to recall the people's idol, ordering them, if necessary, even to use force to bring him back. But Gregory, when he read the Pope's letter, made no attempt to rebel, and returned quietly to the city which was to be henceforth his home. Nevertheless, he did not forget the English. He treasured up his missionary design until he could put it into execution at a later date and by other hands.

 

THE QUESTION OF THE THREE CHAPTERS

 

During these years Gregory was occupied with many things besides the care of his monastery. He was the right-hand man of Pope Pelagius, who had frequent occasion to consult him on ecclesiastical matters. He seems also to have served his master in the capacity of secretary, just as Jerome and Prosper served respectively Damasus and Leo. At any rate, we have Paul's authority for stating that he was the writer of an important letter sent in Pelagius's name to the Istrian schismatics; and it seems fairly certain that, in this controversy at any rate, Gregory took a considerable share.

This Schism of the Three Chapters had been for some years a source of trouble to the Roman Church, and it continued to be a thorn in the side of the Papacy during the greater part of Gregory's own pontificate. Its origin is somewhat obscure, but if we may believe Liberatus, it was a development of an Origenistic dispute, complicated by the personal jealousies of rival churchmen. Its formal commencement, however, was with an edict published by Justinian in 543 or 544, which, in the last three sections or chapters, condemned the person and writings of Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, "which he published in defence of the heretic Nestorius against the holy faith and the first holy synod of Ephesus and St. Cyril and his twelve chapters," and lastly "the impious letter which Ibas is alleged to have written to Maris, the Persian heretic." This edict, intended to conciliate the Monophysites by anathematizing those who seemed tainted with Nestorian opinions, greatly scandalized the orthodox. For although the opinions of Theodore were notoriously erroneous, and although the writings of Theodoret and Ibas unquestionably bore a Nestorian complexion, yet the Fathers of Chalcedon had restored Theodoret to his see without exacting from him a retractation of his writings against Cyril, and had actually accepted the letter of Ibas as a proof of the writer's orthodoxy, and caused it to be formally entered in the minutes of the Council. Hence Justinian's unprovoked attack upon these bishops appeared to many to be nothing less than an assault on the authority of the Fourth General Council itself.

(It must be remembered that in the West the Fourth Council was held in peculiar honour, as being the one Ecumenical Council in which Western influence, as represented by the Pope, had been distinctly predominant. At Nicaea the Pope had been hardly named, at Constantinople he was not even represented, at Ephesus the vehemence and ability of Cyril threw all others into the shade. But at Chalcedon the legates of Leo were prominent in the discussions, and his Tome was received with enthusiastic acclamation as the exposition of the orthodox creed. "Such," cried all the bishops, "was the teaching of the Apostles; Peter hath spoken by Leo." The attack on the Fourth Council -implied in the condemnation of Theodoret and Ibas, who had been then received as orthodox- naturally was particularly objectionable to the bishops of the West, especially as, through their general ignorance of Greek, they were unable to appreciate the subtle points of doctrine which were brought into dispute).

I need not trace in detail the history of the miserable controversy which ensued on the publication of this unfortunate edict. A mere outline will be sufficient. The West rose in revolt. In Italy, Gaul, Illyricum, and particularly in Africa, the cry was raised that the Fourth Council was being over­thrown. The clamour and excitement were tremendous. Even Pope Vigilius, great as were his obligations to the Emperor, dared not append his signature to the odious document, which was regarded in Rome as an outrage upon the Catholic Faith. Justinian was for the moment baffled: then he determined to carry through his purpose in another way, and summoned the Pope to Constantinople.

Vigilius arrived in the Imperial city in January, 547. He was met at the gate by the Emperor, who kissed him with great demonstration of affection, and even melted into tears. A great concourse escorted the Pope through the colonnaded streets, chanting the antiphon, “Ecce advenit dominator dominus”; and in the great Church of St. Sophia the Patriarch Mennas celebrated in his presence the sacred service of the mass. Vigilius, despite these compliments, remained firm for a while, refused to sign the anathemas, and even dared to excommunicate Mennas. But he could not long resist the pressure put upon him, and so, after deliberating with some Western bishops who were in the capital, he published, in April, 548, a Iudicatum, in which, while declaring his adhesion to the Fourth General Council, he nevertheless launched a solemn anathema against the person and writings of Theodore, and the writings of Theodoret and Ibas. This was the first recantation of Vigilius.

The effect of this document was startling. The Western Church was thrown into convulsions. Datius of Milan, whom Vigilius had consulted on the case, openly expressed his indignation. Facundus, bishop of Hermiana in Africa, posted home from Constantinople with the news, which was everywhere received with horror. Two even of Vigilius's own clergy named Rusticus and Sebastian, who had at first welcomed the Pope's decision, now joined in the general outcry. Illyricum mutinied, and a synod at Carthage in 549 formally excommunicated the renegade Pontiff. Vigilius, and even Justinian, recognized that in the excited state of feeling throughout the West, it was imperative that some concessions should be made. A secret treaty was accordingly arranged between the Pope and the Emperor, by which the former was permitted to withdraw his declaration on condition of promising to do all in his power in future to procure the condemnation of the Three Chapters.

A Council was now summoned to deliberate further on the matter, but the Western bishops refused to attend. The unhappy Vigilius was more than ever embarrassed; for he could scarcely resist by himself the combined authority of Emperor and synod, whereas, if he joined with the Easterns in condemning the Three Chapters, he would inevitably lose the allegiance of the West. For the moment, however, he was rescued from his difficult position by the impatience of Justinian, who, wearied out with delays and objections, issued in 551, on his own plenary authority, a second edict, condemning in strong terms the Three Chapters and all their upholders.

Such an edict was, of course, a flagrant infringement of the rights of the Church to determine matters of faith, and even the Eastern bishops appear to have been indignant. Vigilius, summoning all his courage, called a synod in the Palace of Placidia, at which the assembled bishops protested against the Emperor's action, condemned the edict and all who received it, and ordered its removal from all churches and public places where it might be posted. Immediately afterwards Vigilius deposed Theodore Ascidas, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, for venturing to celebrate mass in a church where the edict was exhibited, and temporarily excommunicated the Patriarch Mennas and certain other bishops, because they countenanced Theodore and imitated his contumacy. These sentences, however, were not published for the present, but were held in reserve. After this, Vigilius, feeling that he had offended the Emperor beyond hope of pardon, fled for asylum to the Basilica of St. Peter. Nor had he miscalculated the extent of Justinian's resentment. In a short time the Praetor arrived at the church with orders to arrest him; but Vigilius, who was a corpulent man, refused to leave, and wound his arms tightly round a pillar of the altar. Then ensued a disgraceful scene.

The soldiers entered the church with drawn swords, and those whose business it was to make the arrest endeavoured to drag away the suppliant by brute force. Some seized his hair and beard, others pulled at his legs. Vigilius, in an agony of fear, clung desperately to the pillar, which broke in the struggle, and the heavy altar would have fallen and crushed him had not some clergy run forward and held it up. Finally the Pope's pertinacity triumphed, and the Praetor retired to get further instructions.

Justinian now sent to Vigilius a deputation of nobles, who were commissioned to assure him of his personal safety if he would quit the basilica, but who threatened to drag him away by violence in case he refused. The humiliated Pontiff thought it best to accept the terms offered. After exacting from the envoys a solemn oath both by word of mouth and in writing that no evil should befall him, he left his sanctuary and took up his residence in the Palace of Placidia. Very soon, however, he again had reason to tremble for his safety. The palace was filled with men-at-arms, sentries were placed at all the doors, and the shouts of soldiers patrolling the passages terrified the Pope even in his bed-chamber. Again and again he reminded the ambassadors of their safe conduct, and bound them by fresh oaths of protection, but in spite of the fair assurances he received, his situation grew daily more alarming. The Pope was in deadly terror of assassination, and at last his fears became so intolerable that he determined to flee once more into asylum. On the 23rd of December, 551, he managed to squeeze his great body through a little hole in the palace wall, and, under cover of darkness, got safe away to the sacred and inviolable sanctuary of St. Euphemia in Chalcedon.

Here Vigilius was in comparative safety. Even Justinian dared not offer violence in that celebrated shrine. About a month later, however, on the 28th of January, he sent again the former envoys, to persuade the Pope to accept a safe conduct and leave the building. But Vigilius repelled their overtures, saying, "I have fled to this basilica for no pecuniary or private reason, but only to end a scandal to the Church, which for our sins was known to the whole world. If, therefore, that peace which our Most Religious Emperor in his uncle's time granted to the Church be now restored, I need no oaths, but will come forth at once. If it be not, I still require no oaths, for I am determined never to leave this basilica unless the scandal be cut off from God's Church." He reminded the ambassadors of what had been done by the synod in the Palace of Placidia at the time of the publication of the edict of 551, and he hinted that if any violence was offered to himself, the sentences passed on Theodore and the rest would at once be made public. Finally he sent a message to the Emperor, warning him not to communicate with the persons under the ban. The ambassadors then departed.

Three days afterwards Peter the Referendarius carried to Vigilius an unsigned letter, "so full of outrageous falsehoods and insults" that the Pope refused to believe the messenger's assurance that it came from Justinian himself. He replied to it, however, in an “Encyclica” addressed to the whole Church, in which he professed to give a simple and straightforward account of the controversy, and of the events which induced him to take refuge in the Church of St. Euphemia.

The dispute now languished for some months. Vigilius remained secluded in his asylum. Some of the leaders died, among them Datius of Milan and the Patriarch Mennas. The edict remained posted, and the West continued in sullen opposition. At last Justinian, weary of the deadlock, came to terms with the Pope. He withdrew the edict, and consented to reserve the whole question of the Three Chapters for the decision of a General Council, which was immediately summoned.

On the 5th of May, in the year 553, the Fifth General Council met in the south gallery of the Church of St. Sophia. Unfortunately, the bishops of the West, awed by the fate of Vigilius, were afraid to put in an appearance; so that of the hundred and sixty-five prelates assembled there were only twenty-six who occupied Western sees. This numerical minority alarmed Vigilius, who clearly perceived that he would be outvoted in the Council. Hence, although he had promised to be present at the deliberations, he now excused himself, first pleading illness and afterwards alleging as his reason the immense majority of the Easterners. He promised, however, to set down his views in writing, and send them to the Emperor. After several attempts had been made to persuade the Pope to change his purpose, and much time had been wasted in futile negotiations, the Council proceeded to business without him. The result of its deliberations was, of course, a foregone conclusion. The edict of Justinian was adopted, the three disputed articles were approved, and the soul of Theodore, together with the writings of Theodoret and Ibas, were anathematized amid the acclamations of the assembled Fathers. Meanwhile Vigilius issued a manifesto of his own. Conjointly with sixteen Western bishops, he published a “Constitutum”, in which he made a formal protest against the Council, condemned the supporters of the disputed articles, and anathematized all who should in future agitate the question, or publish or teach anything contrary to the opinions expressed in the Constitutum. In short, the Papal decision was that the entire subject should be dropped, and the three suspected heretics left in peace. This was the second recantation of Vigilius, or, more strictly, the recantation of the recantation embodied in the Iudicatum.

This insult was more than Justinian could endure. Vigilius was seized and banished to Proconnessus, a dreary rock near the western end of the Sea of Marmora; and here the unfortunate Pope, abandoned by all his friends, fell a prey to the horrors of despair. He heard alarming rumours that they were preparing to elect a new bishop in Rome, and that his own name was to be struck out of the diptychs. His friends, one and all, seemed to have deserted him, and his physical health was shattered by the painful disease of the stone. After six months of extreme misery he felt that he could suffer thus no longer. On the 8th of December, 553, he sent a letter of submission to the Patriarch Eutychius. Hitherto, he wrote, he had been deluded by the devil's arts, but now "Christ our God, who is the True Light which the darkness comprehendeth not, has removed all confusion from our mind, and recalled the whole world and the Church to peace." He had gone more carefully than before into the question of the Three Chapters, and a close study of the Fathers had convinced him that his former opinions were mistaken. He was therefore ready to retract those opinions, following the example of Augustine, who was not ashamed to recant his errors. He now condemned Theodore and his writings, the writings of Theodoret and Ibas, together with all such persons as should hereafter venture to defend them, and he pronounced his own previous definitions in favour of the heretics to be null and void, and the decrees of the Fifth General Council to be true and binding. This informal submission was followed by another document—the third and last recantation of Vigilius. In this last Constitutum the vacillating Pope retracted his previous pronouncements, confirmed the decrees of the Fifth General Council, and finally condemned the Three Chapters. In reward for his complacence he was recalled to Constantinople, and after a while permitted to leave for Italy. He died, however, at Syracuse, on the 7th of June, 555.

Unfortunately, the submission of Vigilius did not end the dispute. The bishops of the West still hesitated to accept the decrees of the Fifth General Council. Even in Italy itself, in the provinces of Tuscany, Liguria, Venetia, and Istria, there was much disaffection. The Archbishop of Milan and the Patriarch of Aquileia openly withdrew from communion with the Roman See.

Pope Pelagius the First, as we have elsewhere noticed, made a strenuous effort to restore the broken unity. He wrote a joint letter to seven bishops of Tuscany, reproving them for their disloyalty to the See of St. Peter, and quoting Augustine's dictum that "Such as are out of communion with the bishops of the Apostolical Sees are in a state of schism." He emphatically asserted his personal adherence to the decrees of the Four General Councils and to the Tome of Leo; and, without direct allusion to the Fifth Council, he urged his correspondents to return into unity with the Roman Church, and invited them, if they still had scruples, to come to Rome and satisfy themselves as to his orthodoxy in a personal interview. A similar letter was published, addressed "to the whole People of God," and a third and more explicit statement was sent to Childebert, king of the Franks. Nor did Pelagius disdain to call in the help of the secular arm. He wrote in pressing terms to Narses, maintaining the lawfulness of coercing schismatics, and praying him to employ force to bring the recalcitrant bishops to obedience. But there is no evidence that the Patrician made any attempt to act upon the Pope's exhortation.

In Northern Italy the Lombard invasion did more than the letters of Pelagius to abate the schism. The conquered part of the country passed, to a great extent, beyond the sphere of Papal influence, while in the unconquered part a common hatred of the Arian invaders drew the Catholic clergy together. Thus in Tuscany and Liguria, though there was still some smouldering discontent, yet the bitterness of the schism died away. In the peninsula of Istria, however, which, together with the coast-line of Venetia, was still reckoned an Imperial province, the feud continued. For a time, indeed, it slumbered. Paulinus, the Patriarch of Aquileia, on the coming of the Lombards, removed to the island of Grado, at the mouth of the Isonzo, where he died about 570. His successor, Probinus, occupied the see only for some months. Elias, who followed him, may possibly have begun by courting the friendship of the Bishop of Rome. At any rate, there is some documentary evidence (though its authenticity is open to suspicion) that in 579 Pelagius the Second gave his sanction to the transference of the metropolis of the province from Aquileia to Grado, now called "New Aquileia"; and this he would certainly not have done had the Patriarch maintained to the full towards him his former animosity.

A mere cessation of hostilities, however—even granting that it occurred—did not satisfy this Pope. He was determined, if possible, to reduce the Istrians to complete submission, and to wrest from them a formal condemnation of the Three Chapters. Accordingly—probably in 585—Pelagius addressed an earnest letter, gentle and persuasive in tone, to Elias and the bishops of Istria, entreating them not to sever themselves any longer from the unity of the Holy Church. Not a word was said about the Fifth Council, the real cause of the dispute; but the Pope protested in strong and explicit language his complete adherence to the decrees of the Four General Councils and the Tome of Leo, and then argued that, as the schismatical bishops had no reason to doubt the sincerity or purity of his faith, they were bound to return to the bosom of the Church, knowing that those who were severed from the peace and unity of the Church were severed from Christ Himself. They were reminded that the faith of Peter can never be shaken or changed. If they still entertained any doubts as to the Pope's real views, they should send some of their number to Rome, and those who came would be received with kindness and permitted to return whenever they liked.

Elias and the Istrian bishops sent back neither submission nor defence. They replied merely with a formal definition of their position and a sharp attack on the Papal policy respecting the Three Chapters, going so far as to hint at an anathema against the Pope himself. Pelagius, notwithstanding this provocation, did not lose his temper. In a second letter, written in the same mild strain as the former, he dwelt still more strongly on the evils of schism, replied to some of their objections, sent them the genuine records of the Councils copied from the archives of the Roman See, and entreated them not to incur any longer the danger of separation from the Universal Church on account of disputes of such trifling importance, but to send instructed persons as deputies to Rome, or, if they feared the length and danger of such a journey, to Ravenna, whither he offered to send representatives of his own to meet them.

This second letter had no better effect than the former. The Istrian bishops refused to meet Pelagius either at Rome or at Ravenna. They clung obstinately to their position that the condemnation of the Three Chapters was a condemnation of the Council of Chalcedon, and this deliberate opinion they laid before the Pope, with scarcely any attempt, so he complains, either to justify their own view or to meet his arguments. Meanwhile Gregory the Apocrisiarius had returned from Constantinople, and to him Pelagius now entrusted the further conduct of the dispute. The stern deacon, with his immense veneration for the Roman See and his detestation of schism, strengthened by his observation of ecclesiastical conditions in the East, was not disposed to treat leniently what he regarded as nothing less than sinful contumacy. The tone of the "very useful letter" which he composed and sent in the name of Pelagius to the Istrian bishops, is very different from that of the two former epistles. As mildness had been found ineffectual, Gregory endeavoured to bring his opponents to a better disposition by severity. He sternly upbraided them for their self-opinionated obstinacy, and then proceeded to deal at considerable length with the old arguments.

The main object of the treatise is to show that the condemnation of the Three Chapters in no way impugned the authority of Leo or of the Council of Chalcedon. First, in the case of Leo, this is proved by a series of extracts from the letters of that Pope, which show that he only confirmed by his authority the decrees of the Council on points of doctrine. Everything else, even if approved by his representatives at the Council, might (according to Leo himself) still be called in question at a future time, and indeed he had actually annulled several decrees referring to private or personal matters. By doing this, he restricted the authority of the Council to the definition of the Faith: to that alone the assent of the Apostolic See was pledged. But, Gregory went on to argue, the case of Theodoret and Ibas received into communion by the Council, clearly belonged to the category of private and personal concerns; and such matters, according to Leo himself, might at any time be reconsidered. With reference to this argument, we may observe that Leo's limitation of his assent to the decrees on doctrine was made in view of the canon in honour of the see of Constantinople. Gregory's attempt to apply this reservation to the case in hand is a piece of somewhat doubtful casuistry.

Secondly, Gregory tried to show that the condemnation of the Three Chapters was in strict accordance with the Definition of Faith promulgated by the Council of Chalcedon. If that Council had really approved all the writings of Theodoret and Ibas, and consequently of Theodore, with whom the two others were in agreement, it would have set itself in opposition to the Council of Ephesus. But the Fathers of Chalcedon and the schismatical bishops themselves accepted the Council of Ephesus, and therefore implicitly condemned all that was in opposition to it. Moreover, the Fifth Council did not condemn all Theodoret's writings, but only such as were tainted with Nestorianism and directed against Cyril; and these Theodoret himself had implicitly condemned when he anathematized Nestorius.

The argument that it is wrong to condemn the person of a dead man (Theodore) who had died in the communion of the Church, is met by quotations from Augustine and from the acts of the First Council of Ephesus. The unwillingness of Vigilius to condemn the Three Chapters, and the ill treatment he suffered before consenting to it, are skillfully urged as proofs of his earnestness and sincerity. Vigilius and the Western bishops, from their ignorance of Greek, were at first unacquainted with the errors contained in the suspected writings, and they would condemn nothing till they were really convinced that it ought to be condemned. Their very hesitation was, therefore, a reason for accepting more readily their ultimate decision. The Latin bishops never varied in their adherence to the right faith; the only point on which for a time they were doubtful was whether certain writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas were in opposition to that faith or not. There was, consequently, on their part a change of language, but never of principle—a change with regard to persons, but never with regard to doctrines. Hence there was no reason at all for bringing a charge of inconsistency against that Holy See, which the whole Church humbly venerated in the person of St. Peter, its founder.

It would have been difficult to draw up a more skillful defence of Roman orthodoxy, or a clearer statement of the arguments for reunion. To impartial people, no doubt, it might have seemed clear that no one who sincerely adopted the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, could with any show of reason defend all the writings of Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas. At the same time, such persons might easily have been convinced that the question in dispute was far too petty to fight about when the unity of the Church was at stake. But in the case of the Istrian bishops, a feeling of personal bitterness hindered a settlement. Gregory's arguments made no impression. The bishops continued staunch in their belief that Pope Vigilius and the Emperor Justinian had alike behaved badly, that the decrees of the Fifth Council were intended to impair the authority of the Fourth, and that the Latin bishops were only induced to give their assent to them by violence. Hence the schism continued.

The argument of violence which had formerly proved so successful in the case of Vigilius was now in turn resorted to by the champions of orthodoxy. About 588 the Exarch Smaragdus sailed to Grado, seized Severus (who had succeeded Elias as patriarch) and three other bishops, John of Parenzo, Severus of Trieste, and Vindemius of Cissa, and carried them off to Ravenna. After being detained there for a year, exposed the while to every kind of insult and ill treatment, they were at last induced to communicate with John, bishop of Ravenna, who acknowledged the authority of the Fifth Council and was in communion with the Pope. They were then permitted to return home; but when they arrived they found that neither the people nor the other bishops of the province would hold communion with them. After a short interval, however, a synod was held at Marano, and there the Patriarch publicly confessed that he had done wrong in communicating with the bishop of Ravenna. Perhaps he did this the more readily since his persecutor, Smaragdus, had become insane and been removed from his government. At any rate, after his confession, Severus was restored to communion, and became once more the leader of a schism which seemed as far off as ever from any termination. Gregory's subsequent dealings with the schismatics in the time of his pontificate will be described in a later chapter.

 

THE PESTILENCE OF THE YEAR 589 AD

 

The year 589 was signalized by great disasters and calamities throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. In the East the Persians defeated the Roman troops and captured Martyropolis, while the Slaves, who had been quiet for a while, made a devastating raid into Thrace. A great portion of the city of Antioch was laid in ruins by a terrific earthquake, and sixty thousand lives were lost. The venerable sanctuary of the Mother of God was destroyed, together with the bishop's palace, the bishop himself escaping death by a miracle. In Italy there was an extraordinary inundation. Throughout Venetia, Liguria, and the north, the streams and mountain-torrents overflowed. Houses and farms were washed away by the tumultuous waters, and thousands of men and animals were drowned. The great post-roads were badly injured by the floods, while many of the lesser tracks were entirely obliterated. In Verona the river Adige rose, and threw down a portion of the city walls. The Church of San Zenone was surrounded by the water, which swelled up as high as the topmost line of windows just below the roof; but it is said that, though the doors were open, and the flood blocked them on the outside like a solid wall, not a drop penetrated the basilica. This miracle of the flood took place in October. Two months later a large part of Verona was destroyed by fire.

In Rome the Tiber overflowed its banks, and a portion of the city was inundated: several ancient buildings—situated presumably on the Campus Martius—were thrown down, and the granaries of the Church were destroyed, with all their store of corn. In the channel of the river, it is recorded, an innumerable multitude of serpents and a dragon of great size were borne past the city to the sea, where they were choked in the salt waves, and polluted all the shores with their putrefying bodies.

One consequence of this inundation was that the pestilence, which during the last fifty years had been devastating Europe at intervals, now broke out in Italy with exceptional fury. This dreadful scourge appears to have originated in Egypt, to have passed thence eastwards over Syria and Persia, and so to have entered Europe, spreading from the coast-line inland. It was remarkable alike for the rapidity of its working, the great mortality it produced, and the utter inability of the physicians to cope with it. Its main characteristics are known to us from the classical descriptions of Thucydides, Procopius, and Boccaccio, from which it appears to have combined "the features of several modern diseases in one," having, for instance, "symptoms in common with typhus fever and with the more malignant forms of measles and small-pox." Gibbon's account of the malady, based on that of Procopius, is worth repeating. The majority of the sufferers, he says, "in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupations, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the colour of the patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin, of the arm-pits, and under the ear; and when these buboes or tumours were opened, they were found to contain a coal, or black substance, of the size of a lentil. If they came to a just swelling and suppuration, the patient was saved by this kind and natural discharge of the morbid humour. But if they continued hard and dry, a mortification quickly ensued, and the fifth day was commonly the term of his life. The fever was often accompanied with lethargy or delirium; the bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules or carbuncles, the symptoms of immediate death; and in constitutions too feeble to produce an eruption, the vomiting of blood was followed by a mortification of the bowels. To pregnant women the plague was generally mortal; yet one infant was drawn alive from his dead mother, and three mothers survived the loss of their infected foetuses. Youth was the most perilous season, and the female sex was less susceptible than the male; but every rank and profession were attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder."

Among the most distressing features of the malady were the visions and hallucinations which distracted the frenzied imagination of the sufferers. Men fancied that they saw ghastly spectres stalking through the streets and striking with their hands those who were destined to die. Ineffaceable marks appeared upon the houses or the clothes of the doomed persons, and the arrows of divine wrath were seen visibly darting down on them from heaven. The air resounded with the braying of unseen trumpets, and the voices of the dead were heard calling their friends to join them. Those who experienced these phantasms sickened and died, not always immediately but generally within three or four days. Certain who had been brought to the point of death, but had subsequently recovered, related strange visions which they had witnessed in their sickness. A soldier, for instance, who had lain for some time to all appearance lifeless, imagined that his soul left the body and came to a black, smoky river, which emitted an intolerable stench, and which was spanned by the bridge of the dead. On the further side of the stream were pleasant meadows fragrant with flowers, amid which were companies of men apparelled in white. Many separate mansions were also there, all shining with brightness and light, and there was one house being built especially magnificent, the bricks whereof appeared to be of gold; but whose it was he knew not. On the banks of the river also were certain houses, but some of them were touched by the noisome vapour which rose from the ditch. Now, the dead who desired to cross the bridge were subject to the following trial. If a wicked man attempted to go over, he fell down into the dark and foul-smelling waters; but those who were just and unhindered by sin passed over easily to the pleasant places beyond. As the dreamer watched he beheld Peter, the merciless steward of the Pope, thrust into the most filthy place, where he was bound down by a great weight of iron in punishment for his former cruelty; a certain presbyter whom he knew, however, crossed the bridge with great security, inasmuch as his life had been good and upright. After the presbyter, one Stephen, a smith, assayed to go over, but his foot slipped and he hung half on, half off the bridge. Then certain frightful men rose out of the river and tried to drag him downwards by the legs, but somo others in white robes and with beautiful faces strove to carry him up by the arms. And while the good and evil spirits contended together over Stephen, the soul of the dreaming soldier returned to his body, so that he never knew the end of the matter.

Again, in Gregory's own monastery there was a boy named Theodore, who had always been incorrigibly bad. "He could not bear that any one should speak a word to him for the welfare of his soul. He would neither do nor listen to anything that was good. With oaths, with angry words, with scornful laughter, he used to protest that he would never adopt the habit of the holy life." This youth, being stricken with the plague, and being seemingly at the last gasp, called out suddenly to the brethren who were praying round his bed, "Depart, depart! I am given over to a dragon to be devoured, and he cannot devour me because you are here. He has already swallowed my head; let him alone, that he may not torture me longer, but may do what he has to do. If I am given up to be devoured by him, why should you cause me the suffering of this delay?" The frightened monks said, "What meanest thou, brother? Sign thyself with the sign of the cross." But he with terrible cries replied, "I wish to sign myself, but cannot. I am fettered by the coils of the dragon." The monks thereupon threw themselves on the ground, and redoubled their prayers; and in a little while the sick boy suddenly cried out, "Thank God, the dragon to whom I was given up has fled, for he could not abide your prayers. Pray now for my sins, because I am ready to be converted and to quit the secular life entirely." In the end the youth recovered, and thenceforward, says Gregory, "with his whole heart he turned to God."

The mortality in Rome was appalling, and the state of the city, which doubtless resembled that of Constantinople during the visitation of 542, must have been terrible. Men lay dying and dead in their deserted houses, without a friend to soothe their last moments or to attend to their burial. To inter each body separately was impossible. Waggon-loads of corpses were conveyed from the city night by night, and flung promiscuously into deep pits outside the walls. All business was of course at a standstill, traffic ceased, and in the streets and piazzas the few passengers slunk along furtively, avoiding one another. The churches alone were crammed with dense throngs of panic-stricken citizens, and thus became centres from which infection spread. Some persons went insane with terror, and performed strange antics in their madness; a few in despair flung themselves into wild orges of vice; many shut themselves up in their houses and refused to hold communication with any, until the plague pushed in behind the barricaded doors, and they fled out headlong, they knew not whither. A heavy stillness brooded over the city, broken only by the groans and shrieks of the dying, the subdued chant of Misereres, and the rumble of the death-waggons. All the skill of the physicians could do nothing to abate the malady.

To add to the general consternation, Pope Pelagius sickened of the plague and died on the 8th of February, in the year 590. The choice of his successor lay with the clergy and people of Rome, the confirmation of their choice with the Emperor. Without any hesitation, the Romans elected the popular Abbat of St. Andrew's.

In peaceful times the supreme dignity in the Western Church, with its magnificence and wealth and influence, had often been the object of long intrigues and fierce struggles even to bloodshed, but in the hour of suffering and danger there were few men who were willing to undertake the office, and fewer still who were capable of administering it. At a crisis like the present it was generally felt that a man of no ordinary abilities was needed. The Pope who was to pilot the Roman Church through the gathering difficulties and perils must be a man of high character and attainments, a spiritual guide in whom the people could trust, a resolute defender of the rights and pretensions of the Roman See against the encroachments of the Imperial Government and the rivalry of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. He must be a skillful administrator, to manage the vast revenues of the Papacy, on which a large part of the Roman people depended for subsistence. He must be a courageous patriot, to watch with unsleeping vigilance over the safety of the city, to infuse some spirit of resistance into the scanty band of soldiers half mutinous for want of pay, and into the frightened populace who cowered behind the walls. He must be a statesman, finally, who could understand the policy and command the respect both of the Exarch and of the Lombard princes, and one whose personal influence and authority might even induce the Emperor to pay attention to the necessities of the ancient capital of his Empire. Of all the Roman ecclesiastics only one at this time seemed to possess these qualifications. By his high character and noble birth, by the reputation he had acquired among all classes as administrator, as monk, as ambassador, as confidential adviser to the late Pope, Gregory, in the opinion of all but himself, was marked out for the post of supreme honour and peril. Clergy and people—a poverty-stricken, plague-stricken throng—flocked to the monastery on the Caelian, and with loud cries commanded him to ascend the chair of Peter.

In spite of the unanimity and enthusiasm of the Romans, Gregory shrank from the proposed honour. He knew that, when once engaged in the anxious work of the pontificate, he would lose forever the blessings of the secluded life which he so highly prized. He feared, moreover, that he would prove unequal to the task that was laid upon him, and that he would even suffer in personal character from the distracting influence of worldly cares and anxieties. He therefore resisted the importunities of his fellow-citizens, and actually wrote to the Emperor Maurice, earnestly entreating him not to confirm the election. This letter, however, was intercepted by Germanus, Prefect of the City, who substituted in its stead the formal document of the election. Meanwhile, until a reply should be brought from Constantinople, Gregory—probably in conjunction with the Archpresbyter, the Archdeacon, and the Chief of the Notaries—was entrusted with the administration of the vacant see.

The plague continued to rage. Gregory worked indefatigably to check its progress, but without result. At length he determined to appeal to the people to make a special act of contrition, that the wrath of God, signified by this awful pestilence, might be turned away. He ascended the ambo in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and there, amid a breathless silence of the people, he preached a sermon, which has fortunately been preserved:

“We ought, my beloved brethren, to have feared the chastisements of God before they came, but let us at all events fear them now that they have come and we have felt them. Let sorrow open the way for us to conversion. Let the punishments we already suffer break up the hardness of our hearts, for as the prophet bears us witness: The sword reacheth unto the soul. Behold, all the people are smitten with the sword of God's wrath, and men are laid low in sudden destruction. There is no interval of weakness before death; death leaves no time for the slow process of decay. Before the sufferer can turn to penitential mourning, he is gone. Think in what plight that man appears before the strict Judge who has had no time to bewail his evil deeds. The inhabitants are taken away; they fall, not one by one, but all together. Houses are left empty, parents see their children buried, their heirs go before them to the grave. Let us then, each one of us, flee for refuge to penitential mourning, while we have time to weep, before the blow falls. Let us summon up before the eyes of the mind the sins we have committed, let us bewail whatever we have done amiss, let us come before His face with confession, and as the prophet admonisheth us, let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God. To lift up our hearts with our hands to God is to heighten the earnestness of our prayers by the merit of good works. He gives, He surely gives us confidence in our fear, who cries to us by His prophet: I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but that the wicked turn, from his way and live. Let no one despair for the greatness of his iniquities. The inveterate sins of the Ninevites were purged away by three days of penitence, and the converted robber earned the reward of life in the very moment of his death. Therefore let us change our hearts, and let us feel sure that we have already received what we ask for. The Judge is more quickly swayed by prayer, if the suppliant corrects his evil life. While, then, the stroke of such grievous punishment is still impending, let us persist in importunate prayers. That importunity which displeases men is pleasing in the judgment of the Truth; for the good and merciful God desires that pardon should be claimed from Him by prayer, because He desires not to be angry with us according to our deserts; for so He saith by the Psalmist: Call upon Me in the time of trouble; so will I hear thee, and thou shalt praise Me. He who thus urges men to call upon Him is a witness unto Himself that He will have mercy upon those who call upon Him. Therefore, my beloved brethren, with contrite hearts and amended lives, with devout minds and with tears, let us assemble at early dawn on the fourth day of the week in a sevenfold litany, in the order to be hereafter given, so that when the strict Judge sees that we punish our faults ourselves, He may refrain from passing the sentence of condemnation, now ready to be pronounced against us”.

The order of the procession is then indicated. “Let the clergy set out from the Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian the Martyrs, with the priests of the Sixth Region. Let all the abbats with their monks set out from the Church of SS. Gervasius and Protasius the Martyrs, with the priests of the Fourth Region. Let all the abbesses with their congregations set out from the Church of SS. Marcellinus and Peter the Martyrs, with the priests of the First Region; the children from the Church of SS. John and Paul the Martyrs, with the priests of the Second Region ; the laymen from the Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, with the priests of the Seventh Region; the widows from the Church of St. Euphemia, with the priests of the Fifth Region; the married women from the Church of St. Clement the Martyr, with the priests of the Third Region. Let us go forth from each of these churches with prayers and tears; let us meet together at the Basilica of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Mother of our Lord God Jesus Christ; and let us there persevere in supplications to the Lord, with weeping and groaning, that we may be deemed worthy to receive pardon for our sins”.

So in the dim twilight of the spring morning—it was the 25th of April, according to a tradition which dates back to the seventh century—the great procession started. Pale-faced, emaciated, and clad in deepest mourning, the people moved slowly through the desolate streets towards the great basilica on the Esquiline. As the seven trains of priests and mourners wound through the city scarcely a sound was heard save the tramp of feet, and sobs and cries for mercy, and over all the doleful chant of the Kyrie Eleison, deepening in fervour as one person after another dropped plague-stricken from the ranks. For Death kept step with the moving crowds, and, according to the report of a deacon of Tours, who was an eye-witness, in the space of a single hour no less than eighty men fell down and died. Thus at length the Church of the Mother of God was reached, and here again Gregory addressed to the people an earnest exhortation to prayer and penitence, promising that if they would have faith the pestilence should cease.

With this famous procession is connected a beautiful legend, which, though traced back to a date earlier than the tenth century, is not found in writing till the thirteenth. According to the tradition, Gregory is represented at the head of a great train of penitents, crossing the Bridge of Hadrian on his way to St. Peter's. Before his eyes, about a bowshot beyond the Aurelian Gate, rose dazzling in the sunshine the Mausoleum of Hadrian—a high square structure of Parian marble, surmounted by two circular buildings with colonnades, and crowned with a conical cupola and the famous bronze fircone, now in the garden of the Vatican. Though the Tomb of Hadrian had been sadly battered during the Gothic wars, and had lost those master­works of Pheidias and Praxiteles which had once adorned its colonnades, it was still, as in Procopius’s time, “a memorable sight” and a splendid monument of the nation’s history. As Gregory and his penitents paused before it, they beheld on the summit the Archangel Michael, in the act of restoring to its sheath a flaming sword, in token that the plague was about to cease. From this legend the mausoleum, since the tenth century, has been called by the name of the Castle of the Angel, and for many hundreds of years a figure of an angel has crowned its summit. Four of these statues have at different times been destroyed, the fifth and present one, cast in bronze by Wenschefeld, was set in position during the pontificate of Benedict the Fourteenth. It should be added that one curious relic connected with this legend is still to be seen in the Capitoline Museum. This is an altar dedicated to Isis by someone who had returned safely from a journey, which accordingly bears the conventional emblem of two footprints. The altar at one time stood in the Church of the Aracoeli, and the footprints—described by Philip de Winghe as those of a “puer quinquennis”—were long believed by Roman Christians to be those of the angel seen by Gregory on the summit of Hadrian's Tomb.

Another story of the procession, but less ancient, is found in the notice of Gregory in the Legenda Aurea. Caxton thus quaintly translates the words of the original: “And because the mortality ceased not, he (i.e. Gregory) ordained a procession, in which he did do bear an image of our Lady, which, as is said, St. Luke the Evangelist made, which was a good painter, he had carved it and painted after the likeness of the glorious Virgin Mary. And anon the mortality ceased, and the air became pure and clear, and above the image was heard a voice that sung this anthem: ‘Regina coeli laetare’, etc., and St. Gregory put thereto, ‘Ora pro nobis, deum rogamus, alleluia’.” In memory of this alleged event the great processions from S. Marco were always accustomed to strike up the antiphon “Regina coeli” when they came to the Bridge of Hadrian.

At length, towards the end of August, after the Roman See had been vacant for more than six months, the ratification of Gregory's election came from Constantinople. The long delay must probably be attributed to the difficulties of communication in the disturbed state of Italy. At any rate, it was not due to any unwillingness on the Emperor's part to sanction the elevation of the celebrated deacon, whose election seems to have given the greatest satisfaction at the Byzantine court. Gregory himself, however, was panic-stricken at the news. He sought to hide himself, and, according to a legend which grew up soon after his death, he actually succeeded in escaping from the city, though the gates were guarded, being conveyed out secretly in a basket of merchandise. For three days he remained concealed in a forest cave, but on the third night, in answer to the prayer and fasting of the people, his retreat was revealed by a column of light from heaven. This story, however, can scarcely be historical. It is certainly true, as we know from Gregory himself, that he wished to avoid the dignity thus thrust upon him, and even meditated going into hiding. But his project of flight was never carried out. “While he was preparing for flight and concealment”, so writes his contemporary, Gregory of Tours, “he was seized and carried off and dragged to the Basilica of St. Peter, and there, having been consecrated to the Pontifical office, was given as a Pope to the city”. The event took place on the 3rd day of September, in the year of our Lord 590.

I may close this chapter with the confession of faith which Gregory made in public at the Fisherman's tomb on the day of his consecration.

“I believe in One God, Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three Persons, one Substance: the Father un­begotten, the Son begotten, but the Holy Spirit, neither begotten nor unbegotten, but coeternal with and proceeding from the Father and the Son. I acknowledge the only-begotten Son, consubstantial with the Father, and born of the Father without time; Maker of all things visible and invisible, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, the Brightness of His glory, the Image of His Substance: Who remaining the Word before all ages was made perfect Man at the end of the ages, and was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, and took upon Him our nature without sin: and He was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried, and on the third day He rose again from the dead, and on the fortieth day He ascended into heaven, and He sitteth at the right hand of the Father. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead, and He shall set before all eyes all the secrets of every heart, and He shall give to the righteous the eternal rewards of the heavenly kingdom, but to the wicked the punishment of everlasting fire, and He shall renew the world by fire at the resurrection of the flesh. I acknowledge one Faith, one Baptism, one Apostolic and Universal Church in which alone sins can be forgiven in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”.