CRISTO RAUL. READING HALL THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE HISTORY OF THE POPES

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF POPE GREGORY I THE GREAT. A.D. 540 – 604

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

GREGORY’S FAMILY AND HOME

GREGORY was born in Rome about the year 540. The precise date cannot, indeed, be determined. It appears that he was alive in the year 546, and there are good reasons why we should not carry back his advent into the world earlier than the year 540. But within these limits, 540-545, we are unable, through lack of information, to fix a date with certainty. A vague sentence in the Dialogues might possibly imply that his birth was later than 542. On the whole, however, the date which seems best to harmonize with the known facts and chronology of Gregory's life is the generally accepted one, i.e. 540—the thirteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Justinian, and the third of the pontificate of Vigilius.

All our authorities agree that Gregory was sprung from an ancient senatorial family, renowned alike for its nobility and its piety; and a conjecture has identified this family with the celebrated "gens Anicia," a house which traced back its origin to the palmy days of the Republic, and which rose to influence and enormous wealth under the Empire, reaching the zenith of its prosperity towards the close of the fourth century. This great family was panegyrized by Claudian. Of its sons, Jerome remarks that there was hardly one who did not obtain consular honours; and Augustine adds that it gave virgins to the Church in even greater number than consuls to the State. From this family Rome received her first Christian senator. One of its most famous members was the erudite, unfortunate Boethius, "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully would have acknowledged for their countryman." Another, if tradition may be believed, was the great St. Benedict; though Gregory, in his Life of the monastic founder, simply states that he was “of honourable parentage”. It is, of course, tempting to a biographer to claim for Gregory a connection with so distinguished a house. Unfortunately, however, of such connection there is no satisfactory proof. It is neither asserted by Gregory himself, nor is there a hint of it in Gregory of Tours, Bede, or the early Lives. Yet if the theory referred to be true, this consentient silence is surely inexplicable. We shall therefore, perhaps, be wiser if we pass over the conjecture, and refrain from associating our saint with any particular line of ancestry.

However this may be, we know at least that Gregory was of aristocratic origin. The name of one of his ancestors is recorded. This was Pope Felix the Fourth, the nominee of the Gothic king, Theodoric—a shrewd, calculating man, who strengthened the Papacy not a little by obtaining from the Gothic court a decree conferring on the Roman Bishop jurisdiction in all disputes between the clergy and the laity. Towards the end of his life he caused an ecclesiastical scandal by a monstrous attempt to appoint his own successor. Beyond this his name is remembered only in connection with the foundation of the remarkable church, in the neighbourhood of the Forum, in honour of the twin Arabian physicians and martyrs, SS. Cosmas and Damian.

This church is noteworthy for several reasons. Constructed out of three ancient buildings—the temple of Romulus son of Maxentius, the Templum Sacrae Urbis, and another—and situated on the Via Sacra, close to the Forum, it was the first Christian edifice that was planted in the very heart of pagan Rome. It was, moreover, the first church in Rome erected to local martyrs who were unconnected with Italy and the Eternal City. Why the Eastern physicians were singled out for the special honour is not apparent. Possibly Pope Felix wished to pay a kind of religious compliment to the Eastern Emperor, who held the saints in veneration; possibly he hoped to secure the aid of the martyred doctors to avert or allay some plague which threatened from the East. But in either case the dedication is noteworthy as a distinct departure from the older Roman usage, and may be considered perhaps as an expression of the growing feeling of the universality of the Roman Church. Once more, SS. Cosma e Damiano appears to be the first example in Rome of a church named after the representatives of a distinct profession, and thus marks a step towards the introduction of a principle, according to which, in after-times, every trade and profession in Christendom had its peculiar patron saints, and its appropriate religious services. Lastly, the church was, and still is, interesting for its magnificent ancient mosaics, perhaps the last specimens of original and independent Roman art. These mosaics may yet be seen. Those on the arch represent the Lamb of the Apocalypse with the Book of the Seven Seals; and, at the sides, the seven candlesticks, seraphs, and Evangelists with their proper symbols. Below, the four and twenty elders, offering their crowns, were formerly visible; but of these two defaced forms alone remain. In the tribune Christ is exhibited—a noble and colossal figure standing upon clouds of glory, with the right hand uplifted to bless; and to Him St. Peter and St. Paul are presenting Cosmas and Damian in their jewelled crowns of triumphant martyrdom. On the right is St. Theodore; on the left (a modern figure of) Pope Felix himself, offering the model of his church. Beneath flows the river Jordan; and, in the lowest division of all, the twelve Apostles, symbolized as lambs, emerge from Jerusalem and Bethlehem to adore the Lamb of God. On these mosaics, then in their first lustre, Gregory must have often gazed, when he visited the church of Felix to hear a mass, and to pray, perhaps, for the repose of the soul of his pious ancestor.

Gregory's father bore the Imperial name of Gordianus. He is styled “Regionarius”, but what his office was is far from clear. Baronius held that Gordianus was one of the seven Cardinal-Deacons, called Regionarii from their presidency over the seven ecclesiastical Regions of Rome. There is, however, no indication in the “Lives” that Gordianus was in sacred orders. It seems more probable, on the contrary, that he was a secular official, charged with the administration of the secular business of one of the ecclesiastical Regions, where he may have relieved the Regionary Deacon in matters of mere business and routine. He was, perhaps, the Deacon's official representative, his legal adviser, and the president of his bureau of charity. Such a post was undoubtedly one of great responsibility, and would be entrusted only to men of tried probity and capacity. That it was also one of dignity may be inferred from the fact that a rich and aristocratic senator did not disdain to undertake its duties. But of Gordianus and his work we know practically nothing. We gather from the Lives that he was wealthy, the owner of large estates in Sicily, and of a stately mansion on the Caelian Hill in Rome. He was not, however, a personage of sufficient eminence to attract the attention of history.

Of Gregory’s mother, Silvia, we have again but scanty information. Like her husband, she appears to have been of good family, and in later life she became famous for ascetic piety. After the death of Gordianus she embraced a life of seclusion, and went into retreat at a place called Cella Nova, close by the great door of the Basilica of St. Paul. Here, in after-ages, stood an oratory dedicated to the blessed Silvia; and the patrician lady herself is still commemorated as a saint on the third of November.

Through a fortunate circumstance we are able to form a tolerable notion of the outward appearance of the Regionary and his wife, for Gregory had the pair painted in the atrium of St. Andrew's Monastery, and three hundred years later the portraits were inspected by John the Deacon, whose interesting description of them is still extant. In the first painting the Apostle Peter was represented sitting, with his right hand clasping the hand of Gordianus, who was standing near. The Regionary was clad in a chestnut-coloured planeta or chasuble, over a dalmatic, and wore shoes. He was a tall man, with a long face, light eyes, a short beard, bushy hair, and a grave expression of countenance. The second picture showed Silvia seated, robed in white—a lady of full height, with a round, fair face, wrinkled with age, yet still bearing traces of great beauty. Her eyes were large and blue, with delicate eyebrows, her lips were well-formed, her expression cheerful. With two fingers of her right hand she was in the act of making the sign of the cross. In her left was a Psalter, on the open page of which was inscribed the verse: “Let my soul live, and it shall praise Thee; and let Thy judgments help me”.

John’s description leaves us with a pleasant impression of Gregory’s parents, and the word-sketch of the aged mother has a special charm. But the whole account is valuable inasmuch as it helps us to understand some of the characteristics of Gregory’s mind and character. For it cannot be doubted that Gregory inherited certain traits from each of the parents whose portraits he had painted in St. Andrew’s. Some physical resemblances to each are noticed by John. And it is not to be questioned that many also of Gregory's moral and intellectual peculiarities may be accounted for by means of the principle of heredity. From his mother he doubtless derived his almost feminine tenderness and power of sympathy, his innate bent towards asceticism, his religious mysticism, his self-sacrificing, self-effacing disposition. From his father, no less certainly, he inherited his administrative capacity, his legal acumen, his unswerving love of justice, and that inexorable severity towards hardened offenders which caused him to be feared, in some degree, even by those who loved him best. Thus the nature of the parents is reproduced in the offspring, and in the transactions of Gregory's life we are again and again reminded, now of the grave-faced man of business, the administrator of the Region, now of the lovable, ascetic woman who crosses herself as she ponders over her Psalter.

Gordianus and Silvia had two sons; one they called Gregory—“the Watchful”— while of the other we have no record. That he existed is proved by two passages in Pope Gregory's correspondences. But we know nothing about him, not even his name.

The remaining members of Gregory’s family may be dismissed with a brief notice. Gordianus had three sisters, Tarsilla, Aemiliana, and Gordiana, whose history is related by Gregory himself in the thirty-eighth of his Homilies on the Gospels. These ladies, it appears, at one and the same time, fired with enthusiasm for the monastic life, dedicated themselves to virginity. Following a custom not unusual in this period, they did not retire into a nunnery, but lived together in their own house, subjecting themselves to all the severities of the monastic rule. Soon the sanctity of Tarsilla and Aemiliana became renowned, but Gordiana's love of solitary holiness rapidly grew cool. Pious conversation bored her, and she began to cultivate the society of girls who were still in the world. Daily therefore the frivolous maiden was visited with the rebukes of her elder sisters. While these interviews lasted she would dutifully assume a look of seriousness, and listen with attention to the strictures on her conduct. But the moment they were ended all her gravity was cast aside, and the incorrigible Gordiana would return light-heartedly to her carnal occupations. One night Tarsilla—the saintliest of the sisters—beheld in a vision her ancestor, Pope Felix, who showed her “a mansion of perpetual brightness”, and said, “Come, for I receive thee into this mansion of light”. Soon afterwards she fell ill of a fever, which eventually proved fatal. When her last hour drew near, and the crowd of relatives and friends “that usually assemble for the death of well-born persons” stood about her bed, she saw a second vision of the Lord Himself, and cried out to the bystanders, “Back, back! Jesus comes”. And while they stood looking in bewilderment, her soul left the body amid an odour of such wonderful fragrance “that it was clear to all that the Author of Sweetness had been there”. Had these occurrences been insufficient to attest the saintliness of this noble lady, a discovery that was made after her death would, at least in the opinion of her contemporaries, have placed the matter beyond the region of doubt. For, when the corpse was being prepared for burial, it was found that, through constant prayer, the skin of the knees had become as hard as a camel’s. The saint is now commemorated on Christmas Eve.

The death of Tarsilla occurred shortly before Christmas. Some days afterwards, Aemiliana, in her turn, was vouchsafed a vision. She thought that her dead sister came to her and said: “Come: I have kept the Lord’s birthday without thee, but I will keep with thee the day of the holy Epiphany”. Aemiliana replied: “But if I come alone, to whom am I to leave our sister?”. But the other answered, with a look of sadness: “Come, for our sister Gordiana is reckoned among the women of the world”. This vision, like the former, was followed by illness and death; and by the festival of the Epiphany Aemiliana had joined Tarsilla in the “mansion of light”. Thus Gordiana was at last left alone, and Gregory’s relation of her godless end concludes, with a touch of comedy, the history of the three sisters. For, freed now from all restraints, the “wickedness” of this young woman so increased, that she actually permitted herself to carry out what she had before secretly desired, and, “forgetful of the fear of God, forgetful of shame and reverence, forgetful of her consecration, she married after a time the steward of her estates”. The monastic, aristocratic Pope sighs over the double scandal of a broken vow and a family misalliance, and sums up the story of backsliding with the moral, “Many are called, but few are chosen”.

Besides these three aunts, Gregory had one other, named Pateria, the sister probably of Silvia. From the single notice we have of her it appears that Pateria was married and had children, that she suffered from straitened circumstances, and that she resided somewhere in Campania.

The home of Gregory’s childhood was a handsome palace on the slope of the Caelian, abutting on a street named Clivus Scauri, which nearly corresponds to the modern Via di SS. Giovanni e Paolo. It appears to have been a spacious dwelling, containing an atrium, with a fountain of elaborate design. The waters of this spring—doubtless the “spring of Mercury” of classical times—were later believed to possess a miraculous healing potency, and flocks of suffering pilgrims came to test their virtue. It was near the fountain, after the house had been turned into a monastery and dedicated to St. Andrew, that Gregory placed the pictures of the Regionary and his wife which have been described above. In the present day the palace of Gordianus is no longer visible. Centuries have raised the level of the soil, and the church and monastery of San Gregorio, which occupy the site, are entirely modern. In 1890, however, a search in the cellars of the monastery revealed the fact that deep beneath the modern buildings the old house still exists in a marvellous state of preservation, and might easily be excavated without impairing the stability of the church above. Unfortunately, the projected excavation has not been carried out.

The mansion of Gordianus stood in the centre of Imperial Rome. Straight before it rose that “arx imperii”, the Palatine Hill, covered with its thickly clustering palaces, and haunted by strange memories of many Emperors. Viewed from without, the stately buildings of the Palatine were still magnificent. Valentinian the Third had put them in repair, and the havoc of Goths and Vandals had made but slight impression on their solid structures. Within, however, was one vast desolation—a wilderness of empty courts and closed apartments, choked with rubbish and strewn with the fragments of broken ornament and statuary. It is true that portions of these buildings were still in use. Theodoric stayed in the Imperial palace in the year 500; and after Rome was restored to the Empire a few officials had their residence here. But a mere corner of the Palatine must have sufficed to house the handful of Imperial agents, and to provide an official Roman residence for the Governor at Ravenna. The rest of the buildings, with their halls, baths, galleries, stairways, and innumerable apartments, were abandoned to decay, and in their fading splendour served but to remind men of the brilliant life that had for ever passed away.

On either side of the palace of Gordianus rose stupendous monuments of Roman wealth and luxury. Let us imagine a friend of Gregory's family approaching the Regionary’s house about the year 540, from the direction of the Porta Appia, the modern Porta di San Sebastiano. Passing along the Appian Way, the “queen of long roads”, the smooth and perfectly fitting stones of which provoked about this time the admiration of Procopius, he would reach before long the Thermae Antoninianae, the magnificent Baths of Caracalla. These huge baths, which could accommodate, it is calculated, no less than sixteen hundred bathers at once, were still in good preservation, for here the hand of the spoiler seems to have been withheld. Had our traveller seen fit to enter, he would have found undimmed as yet the splendour of mosaic pavements and painted ceilings. Here still stood the massive sculptured columns, the seats of polished marble, the huge porphyry vases. Here, above all, remained the masterpieces of art, of which some specimens—the Flora of Naples, the Farnese Hercules, the Farnese Bull, the Venus Callipyge—are the glory and pride of latter-day museums. And yet, for all its beauty, the place had lost its use. The vast swimming-bath, once filled with clear water by a branch aqueduct of the Marcia, had been dry since 537. The motley throngs of bathers that used to assemble here—the chattering gangs of philosophers, the swarms of pickpockets, the spouting poets who had to be driven away with showers of stones, the debauchees in quest of a new intrigue, the great lords, the lackeys, the officials of the Government—came now no more. The Baths of Caracalla were deserted—save for a few loungers who found therein a shady refuge from the blazing sunshine, or for some homeless vagrant, glad to spend a summer night on the carven benches. Had our traveller been a moralist or a pious Churchman, he would, no doubt, have exulted in the change; for morality was scandalized at the disorders which occurred amid those nude, promiscuous crowds, where sex was not separated from sex, and the Church had ever shown itself the enemy of that luxurious form of cleanliness which was the great delight of the pagan sons of Rome. But whether for good or for ill, it is certain that since 537 the Baths of Caracalla were unused and empty; and already, doubtless, the weeds were pushing through the untrodden floors, and the spiders were weaving thick veils about the sculptured faces of the heroes and the gods.

Leaving the Thermae behind him, the guest of Gordianus would now skirt, on the left, the slopes of the Aventine—once an aristocratic quarter, crowded with sumptuous palaces of nobles and millionaires, but, since the three days' sack in August, 410, a mere unsightly, complicated ruin. Beyond, between this dreary hill and the south-west rise of the Palatine, be would find still standing a gigantic, weather-beaten mass of stone and marble, the far-famed Circus Maximus. But already the vast building was beginning to decay, and portions of its masonry had fallen to the ground. Here, too, was void and silence. The frantic mob, drunk with excitement, no longer screamed and elbowed through the corridors and seats. In former days, as Aramianus tells us, the Circus was for the Roman populace at once “their temple, dwelling, meeting-place—in short, their whole hope and desire”. He describes how they quarrelled on the highways over the Blues and the Greens, how grey-beards would swear that the State would certainly be lost unless their favourite colour won, how on the night before the contest many were sleepless through anxiety, and how, when the great day came, they rushed away, before the sun was risen, to secure good places. Even the misfortunes of the State did not, for a long time, quench the popular enthusiasm; and Salvian has recorded his horror of their levity in an often-quoted sentence. “You would suppose”, he wrote, “that the whole people of Rome has become glutted with the sardonic herb; it laughs even as it dies”. But in Gregory’s birth-year things were changed. The games had become rarer and rarer, and only one more chariot-race was destined to be held,—under the auspices of Totila, in the year 549. After that the Circus was abandoned, until time, the weather, and the irreverent hands of thievish builders brought about its final downfall.

The traveller whose footsteps we are following would now pass along the Via Triumphalis, which divides the Palatine and the Caelian. And if, instead of turning aside on the right into Gordianus's house, he were to extend his walk beyond the Arch of Constantine, he would come upon another monument, the most impressive, if not the most beautiful, of all that dignified the neighbourhood of Gregory's home. This was the Flavian Amphitheatre, the symbol of Rome's greatness, and, according to the famous proverb given in Bede, the pledge of her existence.

“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls, with her shall fall the world”.

Certainly in the year 540 the Flavian Amphitheatre showed no signs of dissolution. Less than half a century before it had been thoroughly restored by the City Prefect, Decius Marius Venantius Basilius. The monster walls were thus as firm as ever; the tiers of benches, the arcades, the staircases, the porticoes remained unbroken. Nevertheless, like the Circus and the Thermae, the Flavian Amphitheatre was no longer used. The bloody gladiatorial combats had been stopped soon after 404, thanks to the heroism of Telemachus—“the only monk”, sneers Gibbon, “who died a martyr in the cause of humanity”. The beast-baitings and hunting spectacles continued longer, but the last recorded venationes are those of Anicius Maximus in the year 523. It is possible indeed that, as late as 540, certain less harmful amusements were occasionally here provided for the people—exhibitions of gymnastic, dancing and rope-walking, of performing animals, and the like—but it is scarcely probable. The Gothic monarchy, which had been liberal in this respect, was falling; and the Byzantine Government had little inclination to court the Roman mob. Hence we may imagine that at this time all the spectacles had ceased. The Coliseum was deserted, and the degenerate Romans had no longer the opportunity of applauding indescribable indecencies on the very spot where their forefathers had been martyred for the faith.

I have lingered amid the surroundings of the house of Gordianus because I feel that this majestic scenery cannot have failed to create a deep impression on the mind of his thoughtful child. Even now, when on some mild spring evening we take our stand on the steps of San Gregorio and gaze across St. Gregory's Avenue towards the grassy ruins of the Palatine, the spell of antiquity is strong upon us, and the soul is stirred with a wondering admiration of vanished things. What then must have been Gregory's feelings when, in the last years of the classical age, he raised his eyes to the yet abiding mansions of the Caesars, or rambled through the ample spaces of the Circus, or watched from some gallery of the Flavian Amphitheatre the sunshine playing on the bronze of Nero’s colossal statue? It cannot be doubted that amid these historic places there was engendered in him that ardent patriotism and pride in his Roman race and name for which throughout his later life he was distinguished. And may we not conjecture, further, that the fading glories of the abandoned monuments may have touched his spirit with the gentle melancholy and gravity which appears to have cast a shadow even over his childhood? Growing up amid the relics of a greatness that had passed, daily reminded by the beautiful broken marbles of the vanity of things, he was accustomed to look on the world with sorrowful eyes. The thrill, the vigour, and the joy of life were not for him. Rather he saw a symbol of the world in that vast, desolated palace of the Caesars—a place once re-echoing with the sound of music and the laughter of breathing throngs, but now a sombre, spirit-haunted realm of silence and decay. Beneath this saddening shadow Gregory grew up. He never attained a perfect sanity of view. From his birth he was sick—a victim of the malady of the Middle Ages.