GREGORY I., TIIE GREAT, a father and saint of the Roman Catholic church, was born in Rome about the middle of the 6th c. of an illustrious Roman family. Ilis father, Gordianus, was a senator, and one of the earlier pontiffs; Felix III. had belonged to the same family. At a comparatively early age Gregory was named by the emperor Justin IL to the important charge of praetor of Home; but he voluntarily relinquished this office, and withdrew altogether from the world into the monastery which he had founded in Rome, under the title of St. Andrew's. This'was but one of many such acts of religious munificence. " He founded and endowed," says Dean 31ilman, " six monas teries in Sicily." Before entering the Roman convent, equally founded by himself, which he chose for his own retreat, " Ire lavished on the poor all his costly robes, his silk, his gold, Iris jewels, his furniture, and not even assuming to himself the abbacy of his convent, but beginning with the lowest monastic duties, he devoted himself altogether to God." This was probably about 573. He was elected abbot of his monastery, and it was while he was still in this office that the well-known incident befell of his meeting the Anglo-Saxon youths in the slave-market, and on being struck by their beauty, and learning that they came from a pagan land, resolving to deVote himself to tire conver sion of that land to Christianity. set forth on his journey, but the clamor of the Romans at his loss led the pope Benedict to compel his return, and eventually to enroll him in the secular ministry by ordaining him one of the seven regiouary deacons of Rome. Benedict's successor, Pelagius II., sent Gregory as nuncio to Constantinople, to implore the emperor's aid against the Lombards. He resided three years in Constanti nople, during which time lie commenced, and perhaps completed, his great work, the ErPosition of Job. On his return to Rome he resumed his place as abbot, and on the death of Pelagius, in a plague which laid waste the city, Gregory was unanimously called by the clergy, the senate, and the people to succeed him. He used every means even to a petition to the emperor Maurice to withhold his consent, to evade the dignity; but he was forced to yield, and was consecrated Sept. 3, 500. Few pontiffs have equaled, hardly one has surpassed, Gregory as the administrator of the multiplied con cerns of the vast charge thus assigned to him. "Nothing," says Dean Milman, " seems too great, nothing too insignificant for his earnest personal solicitude; from the most minute point in the ritual, or regulations about the papal farms in Sicily, he passes to the con version of Britain, tire extirpation of simony among the clergy of Gaul, negotiations with the armed conquerors of Italy, tire revolutions of the eastern empire, the title of universal bishop usurped by John of Constantinople" (Latin Christianity, i. 489).
There is no department of ecclesiastical administration in which he has not left marks of his energy and his greatness. To him the Roman church is indebted for the com plete and consistent organization of her public services and the details of her ritual, for the regulation and systematization of her sacred chants. The mission to England, which he was not permitted to undertake in person, was intrusted by him, with all the zeal of a personal obligation, to Augustine; and, under his auspices, Britain was brought within the pale of Christian Europe. Under him the Gothic kingdom of Spain, long Arian, was united to the church. Nor was his zeal for the reformation of the clergy, and in purifying of the morality of the church, inferior to his ardor for its diffusion. His letters. which are numerous and most interesting, are full of evidences of the univer sality of his vigilance. On occasion of the threatened invasion of Rome by the Lom bards, Gregory is declared by Mihnan to have "exercised the real power by performing the protecting part of a sovereign ; " and in his general administration, to have been "in act and in influence, if not as yet in avowed authority, a temporal sovereign." Against tire memory of his administration of Rome a charge was formerly made, that in his zeal se•ainst paganism he destroyed the ancient temples and other buildings of the pagan ertv; but Gibbon confesses that the evidence "is recent and uncertain:" and, indeed, tire only authority to which Gibbon himself refers, Platina, simply mentions the charge in order to repudiate it. The same, according to Milman, may be said of "tire fable of his burned the Palatine library in his hatred of pagan literature, which is now rejected." As regards the general government of the church, Gregory reprobates very strongly tire 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 Iris own patriarchate. In his writings, too, the details of the whole dogmatical system of the modern church. are very fully developed. His works fill four folio volumes. His Letters, and, still more, his Dialogues. abound with miraculous and legendary narratives, which, however uncritical in their character, are most interesting as illustrating tire manners and habits of thought of that age. Gregory, with all his zeal for the diffusion of Christianity, was most gentle in his treatinent,of heathens and Jews, and be used all.his efforts to repress slave-dealing, and I igsgalet he severity Of slavery. He.dicd,Xarelt 12, 604.