GREGORIAN 



c, i: !:<;< >uv 



411 



rxtreme republicanism was highly distasteful to 

 lt..n.i|>aitc, and it was only after a third attempt 

 that he was appointed member of the senate. (In 

 the conclusion of the concordat between I'ius VII. 



and llonaparte he ceased to exercis -clesiastical 



function-, iK'ing unable conscientiously to give the 



lations required by the church, and he died 



without reconciliation at Auteuil, near Paris, 28th 



is:: I. His Memoires were edited by H. 



ot, with a life (1831). Of his numerous writ- 



inu'- may be named J/istoire des Sectes Religienses 



\^\ () \ Kssai hittoriqiie sur les Libertes de I'lZglise 



i;,</r;,-<nf (ISIS). See the studies by Kruger 



il.cip. [vSs, and BOhringer ( Basel, 1878). 



<.rruori:iii Calendar. See (CALENDAR. 



4.n uori.-m Tones See PLAIN ;-S>N ( ;. 



l.reKoroviiiK, FKKDINAND, a distinguished 

 Jerman historian, born in East Prussia, 19th 

 January 1821. He studied theology at Konigs- 

 berg, but soon devoted himself to poetry and litera- 

 ture. In 1852 he went to Rome, where he subse- 

 quently spent most of his time. His great work 

 is the History of the City of Rome in the Middle 

 Ages (8 vols.' 1859-72 ; 3d ed. 1875). He wrote also 

 on Italian geography and history, on Corsica (1854), 

 Capri, and Corfu, on the graves of the popes (1857 ; 

 2d ed. 1881), on Lucrezia Borgia (1874), on Urban 

 \ III. (1879), on Athens (1881), and on the Byzan- 

 tine empress, Athenais (1882); also a tragedy on 

 the deat h of Tiberius (1851), and an epic, Euphorion 

 (4th ed. 1880). Died May 2 k 1891. 



father (iordiamis was a senator of the same family 

 as that to which Pope Felix III. had belonged, and 

 his mother Sylvia was famed for her surpassing 

 virtues. At a comparatively early age Gregory 

 was appointed by the Emperor Justin II. to the 

 important charge of prsptor of Rome ; but he 

 voluntarily relinquished this office, and withdrew 

 altogether from the world into a monastery at 

 Rome, one of seven he had founded. ' He lavished 

 on the poor all his costly robes, his silk, his gold, 

 his jewels, his furniture, and not even assuming 

 to himself the abbacy of his convent, but begin- 

 ning with the lowest monastic duties, he devoted 

 himself altogether to God.' This was probably 

 about 575. It was while here that he saw one day 

 some fair-haired Anglo-Saxon youths in the slave- 

 market 'non Anqli sed angeli' and was seized 

 with a longing to devote himself to the conversion 

 of their country to Christ. He set forth on his 



J'ourney, but the clamour of the Romans at his 

 oss led the pope Benedict to apmpel his return, 

 and eventually to enrol him in t^ secular ministry 

 by ordaining him one of the seven Regionary 

 Deacons of Rome. Benedict's successor, Pelagius 

 II., sent (in-gory as nuncio to Constantinople, to 

 implore the emperor's aid against the Lombards. 

 He resided three years in Constantinople, during 

 which time he commenced, and perhaps completed, 

 hi- V,,nilin, an exposition of Job. On his return 

 to Rome he resumed his place as ahtot of his 

 monastery, and on the death of Pelagius, in a 

 plague which laid waste the city, was unani- 

 mously called by the clergy, the senate, and the 

 people to succeed him. He used every means to 

 evade the dignity, even petitioning the Emperor 

 Maurice to withhold his consent, but was forced to 

 yield, and was consecrated September 3, 590. 



Few pon tilt'-; have equalled, hardly one has sur- 

 passed, Gregory I. as the administrator of the mul- 

 tiplied concerns of the vast charge thus assigned 

 to him. 'Nothing,' says l>can Milman, 'seems too 



great, nothing too insignificant, for bin earnest 

 pei-onal solicitude ; from tin- mont minute point in 

 the ritual, or regulations about the papal faun- in 

 Sicily, he pauses to the convention of Britain, the 

 extirpation of simony among the clergy of Gaul, 

 negotiations with the armed conquerors of Italy, 

 and the revolutions of the Eastern Kmiiiie. 

 There is no department of ecclesiastical admin 

 istration in which he has not left marks of lux 

 energy and his greatness. To him the Roman 

 < 'lunch is indebted for the complete and consistent 

 organisation of her public services and the details 

 of her ritual, for the regulation and systematisa- 

 tion of her sacred chant-. The mission to England, 

 which he was not permitted to undertake in person, 

 was entrusted by him, with all the zeal of a per- 

 sonal obligation, to Augustine ; and, under his 

 auspices, Britain was brought within the pale of 

 Christendom. Under him also the Gothic king- 

 dom of Spain, long Arian, was reconciled with 

 the church. Nor was his zeal for the reformation 

 of the clergy, and the purifying of the morality 

 of the church, inferior to his ardour for its diffu- 

 sion. His letters, which are numerous and most 

 interesting, are full of evidences of the univer- 

 sality of his vigilance. On the occasion of the 

 threatened invasion of Rome by the Lombards 

 he showed himself in act and in influence, if not 

 as yet in avowed authority, a temporal sovereign. 

 Against the memory of his administration of 

 Rome a charge was formerly made, that in his 

 zeal against paganism he destroyed the ancient 

 temples and other buildings of the pagan city. 

 But Gibbon confesses that the evidence is ' recent 

 and uncertain;' and, indeed, the only authority 

 to which Gibbon himself refers, Platina, simply 

 mentions the charge in order to repudiate it. 

 Though Gregory had a contempt for mere letters, 

 and thought the oracles of God were above the 

 rules of grammar, it is not true that he burned 

 the Palatine Library in his hatred of pagan litera- 

 ture. As regards the general government of the 

 church, Gregory reprobated very strongly the 

 assumption by John, patriarch of Constantinople, 

 of the title of Ecumenical or Universal Bishop, 

 the more especially as the object of John in 

 assuming this title was to justify an exercise of 

 jurisdiction outside of the limits of his own patri- 

 archate. In his writings, too, the details of the 

 whole dogmatical system of the modern church 

 are very fully developed. His Letters, and, still 

 more, his Dialogues abound with miraculous and 

 legendary narratives, which, however uncritical in 

 their character, are most interesting as illustrating 

 the manners and habits of thought of that age. 

 With all his zeal for the diffusion of Christianity, 

 Gregory was most gentle in his treatment of 

 heathens and Jews, and he used all his efforts to 

 repress slave-dealing and to mitigate the severity 

 of slavery. He died March 12, 604. Besides his 

 Moralia he left homilies on Ezekiel and on the 

 Gospels, the Regiila (or Cttra Pastoralis), and the 

 Sacramentarium and Antiphonaritim. In exi-ge-i- 

 he is a fearless allegorist. The best editions of bis 

 works are the Benedictine (4 vols. folio, 1705) and 

 that in Migne's Patrologia (vols. Ixxv.-lxxix.). 



See the studies by Lau (1845) and Pfahler (1852); 

 Rev. J. Barmby's little book in the ' Fathers for English 

 Readers ' ( 1879) ; Kellett, Gregory the Great (1889) ; the 

 monograph by Abbot Snow, O.S.B. (1892) ; and Zopffel's 

 article in Herz-og-Plitt's Rtal-Kiictiklopadie. 



GREGORY II., by birth a Roman, was elected 

 pope in 715. His* pontificate is specially notice- 

 able as forming an epoch in the progress of 

 the territorial pre-eminence of the Roman see 

 in Italy. The eastern emperors having almost 

 entirely abandoned the government and, still 

 more, the defence of Italy, and the aggressiorw 



