Conditions and Terms of Use FOREWORD Copyright © Heritage History 2010 Some rights reserved BY THE ABBOT OF BUCKFAST This text was produced and distributed by Heritage History, an The distinction between intellectual Catholicism and organization dedicated to the preservation of classical juvenile history books, and to the promotion of the works of traditional history authors. popular Catholicism has been made more than once in an invidious spirit of destructive criticism. The books which Heritage History republishes are in the public domain and are no longer protected by the original copyright. They may It has been said that the Catholicism of the crowd is therefore be reproduced within the United States without paying a royalty something very different from the Catholicism offered to the to the author. intellectual elite. 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It has always seemed to me that St. Gregory the Great is the most perfect embodiment of that happy union of 4. This text is intended to be a faithful and complete copy of the original document. However, typos, omissions, and other errors may have intellectual and popular Christianity. St. Gregory is truly one occurred during preparation, and Heritage History does not guarantee a of the Church's great Doctors, a worthy successor of St. perfectly reliable reproduction. Augustine of Hippo in the supremacy of mind. Permission to use Heritage History documents or images for St. Gregory's contribution to Christian theology is commercial purposes, or more information about our collection of immense. But St. Gregory is also the author of the book of the traditional history resources can be obtained by contacting us at Dialogues, that wonderful and fascinating compilation of the [email protected] pious legends of his period. St. Gregory is the great administrator whose genius for ruling no man has ever doubted, yet he is best known to us as the teacher of sacred Original Copyright 1921 by A Sister of Notre Dame 2 Distributed by Heritage History 2010 music, surrounded by juvenile choristers whom he initiates Christianity is the monumental assertion of the intellectual into the mysteries of ecclesiastical psalmody. The Holy Ghost, truths of our Faith. under the figure of a Dove, is perched on his shoulder in order Anyone who makes us love St. Gregory the Great does to keep him from erring, not only in matters of Faith but also our Faith a great service. The present well-written volume in matters of musical harmony. cannot fail to endear the great Pope to every reader. But we The voluminous writings of St. Gregory, his vast ought not to stop there: we ought to read St. Gregory himself. epistolary activities, reveal to us a Catholicism both There are good English translations of large portions of his intellectual and popular, which has not changed since his day. works. The Dialogues, for instance, are accessible to In every page of the Dialogues, for instance, you find everyone. St. Gregory's charm is contagious. You seem to be anecdotes which fit to a nicety into the Catholic life of an living in the sixth century, and you feel that you have met in Italian village of our own day. We act, we pray, we believe, your own lifetime the very class of people whom St. Gregory we fear, we hope, as did the Catholics all over the world in the describes so well. days of St. Gregory. We say Masses for the dead, we expect The great Pope was surrounded on all sides by the the deliverance of souls from Purgatory, we believe in the ruins of the Roman Empire; the Roman Eagle had lost "all its miraculous, in small things and in great, as did the people who feathers." Gregory felt this great downfall most keenly, as he figure in St. Gregory's Dialogues. Our infidelities to grace and was a Roman of the Romans. Yet there is a constant vein of our shortcomings are the infidelities and shortcomings of optimism in his view of things. There is a kind of playfulness monks and nuns and other good people who tried their best for of divine mercies which gives a charm even to such reprobate the love of Christ in the Italian towns and villages, of which barbarians as Totila, king of the Goths. The heathen St. Gregory makes such an elaborate and accurate Barbarians were putting Catholic Italy to fire and sword; and enumeration. Many go straight to Heaven at death, in the days Catholic Italy, full of faith in God's mercies, smiled at the of St. Gregory, perhaps oftener than we dare to hope in our Barbarians and converted them to the Faith of Gregory, the own days. Many there are who are seen in the flames of successor of Peter. Purgatory asking for Masses and confessing the peccadilloes AUSCAR VONIER, O.S.B. that made them unworthy of a speedy ascent to Heaven. St. Abbot of Buckfast. Peter is seen assisting at the death bed of some favourite client of his, whilst on the other hand, some careless Catholic is frightened out of his wits by the presence of the old enemy when the last hour approaches. There are haunted houses, and houses full of angelic influences; there are miracles of the first magnitude, and there is divine intervention in favour of the Christian housewife whose hens are being stolen by a wily fox. In a word, St. Gregory's fertile pen portrays for us a complete, all-round, healthy Catholic life, such as the Middle Ages have known it, such as we love it ourselves. The background of all that multitudinous life of intensely practical Original Copyright 1921 by A Sister of Notre Dame 3 Distributed by Heritage History 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS ROME IN HIS BOYHOOD ..................................................... 5 A GOODLY INHERITANCE ................................................ 11 MONK AND BUSINESS MAN .............................................. 16 AT CONSTANTINOPLE ...................................................... 22 ABBOT OF ST. ANDREWS .................................................. 27 THE PROCESSION ON ST. MARK'S DAY ........................... 33 PASTORAL RULE ............................................................... 37 WITH THE BISHOPS OF THE WEST ................................... 43 TAMING THE TEUTONS ..................................................... 50 MISSIONARY MONKS ........................................................ 57 AN ABSENTEE LANDLORD ................................................ 63 THE THINGS THAT ARE CAESAR'S ................................... 71 THE EMPEROR'S BISHOP .................................................. 77 SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD .............................. 82 SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT. Original Copyright 1921 by A Sister of Notre Dame 4 Distributed by Heritage History 2010 CHAPTER I tribes, singling out what was best in their feudalism, and breathing into it the spirit of the Gospel. We cannot read aright his life, unless we have a clear idea of the world into which he ROME IN HIS BOYHOOD was born. Saints are always an interesting study. We ourselves Rome had long out-lived her palmy days. To the eyes are groping upward in the darkness towards the heights which of Gregory she sat on her Seven Hills a discrowned queen they have scaled and kept; and we are fain to help our steps dying of old age. "In former years vigorous with youth, strong along the slippery crags by the footholds which their hands to multiply the race of men, but now, weighed down by the have carved. The interest intensifies when the saint we study is very weight of years, and hurried on by increasing maladies to a man of action whom the world cannot even affect to despise, the very brink of the grave." Elsewhere he applies to Rome the a man who has stamped his impress upon his time and upon words of the prophet to Judea: Enlarge thy baldness as doth our time, a man in whose writings we may read the story of his the eagle. "Rome enlarges her baldness like the eagle, since in own soul, and learn things worth knowing of the men with losing her people she has lost, as it were, all her plumage. The whom he dealt.