Pope Gregory I

Life events

1. Born — 540

   Gregory was born c. 540 in Rome into a wealthy noble senatorial family with close church connections; his father Gordianus served as Prefect of Rome and held the position of Regionarius in the church, and his great-great-grandfather was Pope Felix III.

2. Other — 573

   At approximately thirty-three years of age Gregory was appointed Prefect of Rome — the highest civil office in the city — after advancing rapidly through government ranks following a broad education in grammar, rhetoric, law, and the sciences.

3. Tonsured — 574

   After his father's death Gregory converted the family villa on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to Andrew the Apostle, abandoning his government career to enter monastic life there.

4. Ordained — 579

   Pope Pelagius II ordained Gregory as a deacon and appointed him apocrisiarius (papal ambassador) to the imperial court in Constantinople, a post he held until 586; Gregory lobbied in vain for Byzantine military relief against the Lombard threat to Rome.

5. Council — 582

   In Constantinople Gregory engaged Patriarch Eutychius in a public theological dispute over the nature of the resurrected body; according to Western sources the debate before Emperor Tiberius II resulted in Eutychius's treatise being ordered burned, though the Eastern account is disputed and Eutychius recanted on his deathbed.

6. Consecrated — 590

   Gregory was elected by acclamation as the 64th Bishop of Rome on 3 September 590, succeeding Pelagius II who had died of plague; he received the required imperial iussio from Constantinople and was consecrated as pope.

7. Other — 596

   Gregory dispatched Augustine of Canterbury — prior of Saint Andrew's monastery — to lead the Gregorian mission to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons of Britain; the mission succeeded and subsequently served as the launching point for further missionary work into the Netherlands and Germany.

8. Died — 604

   Gregory died on 12 March 604 in Rome after thirteen years as Bishop of Rome; he was canonized by popular acclamation immediately after his death, the standard mode before formal papal canonization processes were established.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Gregory is recognized in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches as the de facto author of the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, used throughout Great Lent in the Byzantine Rite — the only papal liturgical composition still in regular use in Eastern Christianity. (likely)
• The mainstream form of Western plainchant bears Gregory's name, but the earliest attribution connecting him to Gregorian chant appears in John the Deacon's 873 biography — nearly three centuries after Gregory's death — and the chant itself fuses Roman and Frankish elements from the Carolingian era. (disputed)
• Gregory's letter to the bishop of Palermo, opening with the phrase Sicut Judaeis ('Just as the Jews'), declared that Jews must be protected and allowed to practice Judaism unharmed; it became the template for papal protective letters for Jews throughout the later Middle Ages. (likely)
• 854 of Gregory's letters survive from his thirteen-year papacy; the largest single batch of 686 copies was made by order of Pope Adrian I (772–795), and the majority of extant manuscripts — ranging from the 10th to the 15th century — are held in the Vatican Library. (likely)
• Orthodox and Western iconography depicts a dove seated on Gregory's head as he dictated his homilies on Ezekiel; the story is attributed to his friend Peter the Deacon, who claimed to have seen it through a hole he made in the curtain separating them. (legendary)