The Greatness of the First St. Gregory

By Stephen P. White
Today the Church marks the feast of St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church. He was born around 540, just a few years before the death of another great European saint (and co-patron of Europe) Benedict of Nursia. The lives of these two men are similar in interesting ways. But the ways in which their lives ultimately diverge also reveal something about how the Lord provides for his Church.
Gregory was born into one of the great families of Rome. Among its members were many senators, consuls, and more than one emperor. Gregory's father was a senator and his great-great-grandfather was Pope St. Felix III.
Rome, in Gregory's day, was a shell of its former self. The sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 (which spurred Augustine to write The City of God) had been followed by an even more devastating invasion at the hands of the Vandals in 455. The Western Empire collapsed in 476.
Rome itself, which at its imperial peak boasted a population of more than 1 million, had shriveled to just 30-40,000 inhabitants by the middle of the sixth century. War, plague, and the other miseries of imperial collapse had transformed Rome terribly.
At the time Gregory was born, much of the Italian peninsula had been under barbarian control for nearly a century and the forces of the Emperor Justinian (who still ruled in Constantinople) were in the midst of a two-decade long campaign to wrest the remains of the Western Empire back from the Goths. It was an effort that would never fully succeed.
That was Gregory's Rome: plague-ridden, hollowed out, poorly defended.
Gregory served in his youth in the administration of the city, rising to the rank of Prefect of the City, but he longed to retreat into the monastic life of prayer and care for the poor. After the death of his father, he did just that, establishing (and entering) a monastery on the site of his family villa on the Caelian Hill. He spent his inheritance serving the poor and lived with such strict asceticism that he suffered from poor health for most of the rest of his life.
If Gregory's story had ended there, we might still be telling the story of a saint: at a time when civilization was crumbling around him, a rich young man left a promising career and retreated to a monastery to focus on prayer and service to the poor.
That, in rough strokes, is the story of Benedict of Nursia who wrote his Rule and founded his first monasteries in the decades preceding Gregory's birth and who died when Gregory was a young child.

Much of what we know of the life of St. Benedict comes from the pen of Gregory himself, who dedicated a lengthy section of his Dialogues to recounting stories of Benedict's own holiness, miracles, and way of life.
These two men, Gregory and Benedict, thus provide an interesting pair for comparison and study. Benedict, we know, transformed Europe through his revival and reform of Western monasticism. The monasteries he founded grew and spread into some of the greatest and most enduring institutions of the medieval world.
Gregory, for his part, understood the essential value and importance of the monastic project. But God had a different path for Gregory.
Gregory was plucked from the monastic life he loved so dearly and sent as a papal representative to the imperial court in Constantinople. The pope needed a reliable advocate to plead for the military protection of the empire, but he needed someone who could handle ecclesial disputes as well. The confusion in the empire was exacerbated and complicated by confusion and division within the Church. The Second Council of Constantinople had led to a great controversy and even led to schism.
Gregory, the pope decided, was his man.
Whereas Benedict was allowed his monasticism, Gregory was deprived of it and shipped East to deal with politics and administration. He returned to Rome only to be once again deprived of his monastery.
Gregory was elected Bishop of Rome in 590. His administration of alms and the good...