Pope Gregory the Great

St Gregory the Great

From Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum

c. 1170

Illuminated manuscript

Latin 2287, folio 1v

Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Bibliothèque nationale de France

St Gregory the Great inspired by the Holy Spirit

From Sacramentarium

9th century (c 870)

Illuminated manuscript

Latin 1141, folio 3

Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Bibliothèque nationale de France

St Gregory writing inspired by the Holy Spirit with two copyists acting under the dictation of the Pope

From St Gregory, Epistulae

Early 12th century

Dijon - BM - ms. 0180, folio 001

Abbaye Notre-Dame, Cîteaux

Mass of St Gregory

From Missel de Philippe de Luxembourg

1495 - 1503

Mans (Le) - BM - ms. 0254, folio 057

Mass of St Gregory

From Heures à l'usage de Paris

c. 1490

Moulins - BM - ms. 0079, folio 098

Giacomo Cavedone 1577-1660

St Gregory the Great

about 1640

Oil on canvas

114.3 x 95.3 cm

English Heritage, Chiswick House, Chiswick, London

John Rogers Herbert 1810–1890

Saint Gregory Teaching His Chant

1845

Oil on canvas

83.5 x 119 cm

The Royal Academy of Arts, London 

"Rather than Augustine, the true father of medieval European eschatology was Pope Gregory the Great, the second most-quoted author in Julian’s Prognosticon.  

Gregory set the eschatological tone for the entire period, through his Dialogues, homilies, and biblical exegesis. Presented in an accessible question-and-answer format, enriched with homely anecdotes, his Dialogues were especially popular.  

They were translated into Greek in the eighth century and Old English in the late ninth century, with a personal preface written by King Alfred himself. Book 4 of the Dialogues, which provided a summa on the afterlife and the end times, was particularly influential.  

Its imagery and doctrine permeate the Merovingian Vision of Barontus. When Wetti, a monk at Reichenau in the early ninth century, sensed the approach of death, he asked his fellow monks to read to him from the Dialogues.  

Gregory also guided Byzantine contemplation of the Last Things, especially as the seventh most frequently cited author in the Synagoge of Paul of Evergetis (d. 1054),a widely-influential florilegium on the ascetic life which has shaped the consciousness of many generations of Orthodox Christians. 

Part of the appeal of Gregory’s Dialogues lay in its transmission of “tales useful for the soul.” Such edifying tales originated in ascetic circles, but circulated broadly, and tales in early medieval collections began to reflect the everyday concerns of lay Christians living in the world, as well as those of monastic men and women.  

The stories run the gamut of eschatological anxieties, including the efficacy of almsgiving and prayers for the dead, resuscitation of the dead, the particular judgment of the soul, the struggle for the soul between angels and demons, interim afterlife zones, and the particulars of otherworld punishment and reward. 

Written in simple language, they impressed their teachings on sin, repentance, judgment, and the afterlife on the minds of hearers in concrete, unforgettable terms. 

Like the monk Wetti on his deathbed, Christians throughout the ages have derived both compunction and consolation from these short, homely tales of the death and afterlife fate of both ordinary and extraordinary people." 

Jane Baun, Last Things in The Cambridge History of Christianity; volume 3, Early medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100,  pages 610 - 611

As well as theology the contribution of St Gregory to liturgy especially  the proper celebration of the Eucharist. was also immense

Of Music and Chant he wrote:

"For the voice of melody, whenever it is moved by the intention of the heart, is made thereby to return again to the heart by the agency of Almighty God, so that it pours the mysteries of prophecy or the grace of compunction into the intent mind. Whence it is written:

“The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me: and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God” (Ps 49:23). 

As in the Latin salutare, so in Hebrew Jesus is meant. 

Furthermore, the way of revelation of Christ is in the sacrifice of praise, because while compunction is poured out through the melody, a way is opened in our hearts whereby we can finally approach Christ, as He speaks of the revelation of Himself." (In Ez. hom. I, 15)

Saint Benedict of Nursia by El Greco

El Greco (1541 – 7 April 1614)

Saint Benedict of Nursia

1577 - 1579

Oil on canvas

116 cm x 81 cm

Museo del Prado, Madrid

This work was part of a triptych

It was paired with another similar work showing St Bernard of Clairvaux, the other great founder

Both flanked the depiction of the Assumption

The picture of St Bernard is in the Hermitage. The Assumption is in the Art Institute of Chicago

It was part of an altarpiece commissioned for the Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, a Cistercian monastery

The founder of the Benedictine order carries a silver crozier 

His hand gestures towards something but we now do not know what it was

He stares out at the viewer but his gaze is soft and benign

The work appears to be a portrait rather than an icon

The Assumption was crowned by a depiction of the Trinity and was surrounded by images of the saints

The work was one of a series of works commissioned by Don Diego de Castilla, Dean of the Cathedral of Toledo

In AD 592, St Gregory the Great wrote of St Benedict:

"The man of God who shone on this earth among so many miracles was just as brilliant in the eloquent exposition of his teaching" (cf. Dialogues II, 36)

In regard to his Rule, St Gregory wrote:

"the holy man could not teach otherwise than as he himself lived" (cf. Dialogues II, 36)

El Greco depicts him as a  man in his fifties, which Gregory described as the time when 

"the heat of the body waxes cold, and the souls of faithful people become holy vessels; because they then are made the doctors of men's souls. " (Dialogues II, 2)

In 1964, Pope Paul VI reconsecrated the Abbey of Monte Cassino and in his homily recalled the description of St Gregory about St Benedict:

"in superni Spectatoris oculis habitavit secum" 

"He dwelt alone with himself, in the sight of his Creator"

Thus in Dialogues II, 3:

"GREGORY: [H]e returned to the wilderness which so much he loved, and dwelt alone with himself, in the sight of his Creator, who beholds the hearts of all men. 

PETER: I do not understand very well what you mean, when you say that he dwelt with himself. 

GREGORY: If the holy man had longer, contrary to his own mind, continued his government over those monks, who had all conspired against him, and were far unlike him in life and conversation, perhaps he should have diminished his own devotion, and somewhat withdrawn the eyes of his soul from the light of contemplation. Being wearied daily with correcting of their faults, he would have had the less care of himself, and so it might have fallen out  that he should  have both lost himself, and yet not found them. 

For so often as by infectious motion we are carried too far from ourselves, we remain the same men that we were before, and yet not with ourselves as we were before: because we are wandering about other men's affairs, little considering and looking into the state of our own soul. 

For shall we say that he was with himself, who went into a far country, and after he had, as we read in the Gospel, prodigally spent that portion which he received of his father, was glad to serve a citizen, to keep his hogs, and would willingly have filled his hungry belly with the husks which they ate? When he remembered those goods which he had lost, it is written that, returning into himself, he said: "How many hired men in my father's house do abound with bread?" [Luke 15] 

If then, before he was with himself, from where did he return home to himself? 

Therefore I said that this venerable man dwelt with himself, because carrying himself circumspectly and carefully in the sight of his Creator, always considering his own actions, always examining himself, he never turned the eyes of his soul from himself, to behold whatsoever else"

According to Pope Paul VI, the return into the wilderness was motivated by the saint`s desire to escape

 "the decadence of society,  the moral and cultural vacuum of a world that no longer offered to the spirit of possibility of consciousness, development, conversion; it was necessary to find a shelter for safety, calm, study, prayer, work, friendship, trust."