Pope Gregory the Great
Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604) must be counted among the most outstanding successors of Saint Peter. As a former Roman prefect and hence the city’s highest-ranking civilian official, and subsequently permanent papal nuncio to the Byzantine court in Constantinople, Gregory, who came from the most distinguished Roman aristocratic family of the period, was the last pontiff to display the full panoply of ancient learning. After him, vulgarization and barbarity were the order of the day-comparable intellectual heights were only attained again several centuries later, without the immediate help of Antiquity. Repeatedly, Gregory’s extensive theological works, comprising biblical exegeses, sermons, and letters, held the faithful in thrall. Yet the form of liturgical music that nowadays bears his name is from a later date, despite the fact that the very oldest books of liturgy do indeed date back to his time… He exhorted Christians to keep in mind the power of the soul, to keep their eyes firmly fixed on the Eternal Life-albeit without in the process preaching escapism and called for them to focus on the contemplative life and the practice of monastic spirituality. Consistently applying these principles to his private life, the wealthy Gregory vested all his family fortune in the church and urban monastic orders. Gregory followed the doctrine, well-established since the time of Saint Jerome, of interpreting different layers of textual meaning in the Bible; according to this approach, the written word was not simply to be understood literally, but also in various metaphorical senses. In particular, the allegorical-typological and moral forms of exegesis were honed to perfection at this time. In these, Christ was seen as the bridegroom, while the church and the individual believer’s soul were the bride… He organized resistance and defense of Rome to the Lombards, enhancing his role as a political leader and Rome did remain free. (Fried, 2015)