Gregoire Ier

Gregoire Ier , known as Large the or the Dialog (born towards 540, dead the March 12th 604), becomes Pape in 590. Doctors of the Church, it is one of the four Pères of the Church of Occident, with Saint Ambroise, Saint Augustin and Saint Jerome. Its influence during the Moyen-âge was considerable.

Saint Gregoire is very present in the Iconographie of the manuscripts and the monuments illustrated, where it is, with holy Pierre, the pope par excellence. He is often represented receiving from a dove the inspiration of the Gregorian chant, which bears its name.

He is celebrated the March 12th.

History

Beginnings

He was born with Rome towards 540 from a father senator and Sainte Sylvie, and was the grandson of the pope Felix III.

Informed in all the disciplines, he learned the Greek , the Droit and art to manage. Its civil career was crowned by the load of prefect of the town of Rome which he exerted during two years and at the end which, towards 575, at 35 years, he gave up honors and richnesses to enter the monastery dedicated to Saint Andre that he had founded a few years before, in a family residence located on the Mont Celius. He did not want any more but to request and obey. But a man of its moral and intellectual value was too useful for the Église, especially in this period disturbed by the invasions, this is why the pope Pélage II ordered it Diacre and, since he knew the Greek, sent it to Constantinople like Apocrisiaire (permanent ambassador, or Nonce).

Confrontation with Eutychius

In Constantinople, Gregoire pointed out himself by a Controverse with the Patriarche Eutychius of Constantinople which had published a treaty on the corporality of the imminent resurrection of the bodies, in which the latter would become incorporeal, it to what Gregoire opposed the corporality of Christ ressuscity. The roughness of the debate led the emperor to slice between the two protoganists: the treaty of Eutychius was condemned and burned on the public place. On its return, it took again the monastic life, but for little time. In 590, the pope having died of the Plague, one chooses Gregoire to succeed to him.

Pope

According to the Golden Legend in spite of its protests, it is elected pope the September 3rd 590.

It reorganized the Roman Church, by defending the prerogatives of the seat of Pierre and Paul. Marked by its time (plagues, invasions, bag of Rome,…) and sure of the imminence of the end of the world, it took over failing political authority: it regulated for example the problem of the provisioning of Rome.

It fixed the liturgy, reformed the ecclesiastical discipline, propagated the order Benedictine and sent missionaries in England (lower cf).

In front of the weakening of the Byzantine Empire, it took in hand the defense of the empire against the Lombards, then it decided to make peace with them, attracting itself the hostility of the Roman Emperor of the East. “I await more mercy of Jesus from whom comes justice than from your piety. ” he with the emperor Maurice writes . The pope turned then resolutely to the cruel kingdoms of the Occident, breaking the bond between Christianity and romanity. Thus, it converts Lombards into Italy and Goths in Spain.

The Gaulle mérovingienne felt little its work of reformer and organizer. The August 12th 595, it addressed its letter O quam bona on the Simonie to the Virgile bishop of Arles, to warn it against the misdeeds of this heresy.

Missions in Brittany

The sending on mission of saint Augustin of Canterbury, accompanied by forty monks of the monastery of the Mount-Celius, places it at the origin of the evangelization of the island of Brittany. Indeed, under the empire, the Brittany had been somewhat christianized, but the Saxons had invaded the island and had pushed back towards the west the Breton Christians . The latter did not have any bond with papacy in Rome, because the Celtic Christianisme had developed very early and independently of Rome . Also, in 596, the pope Gregoire Ier sent in the country a monk of the name of Augustin who unloaded close to Ramsgate, in the Kent. He converts soon the king of the place, Ethelbert, and the inhabitants of Kent followed. Similar conversions into mass took place in other parts of England. The creed of the king became the creed of the people according to the principle which was going to become a king, a faith, a law . But the main mission which the pope had assigned in Augustin was to lead the independent Breton Christians to subject itself to Rome. The two meetings which it held with the bishop S of the place were failures.

In a letter addressed to a missionary in departure for pagan Great Britain, in 601 of our era, Gregoire Ier gave this order: “The temples sheltering the idols of the known as country will not be destroyed; only the idols being inside will be it. If the aforementioned temples are in good state, it will be advisable to replace the worship of the demons by the service of true God. ”

Death

Gregoire Ier died the March 12th 604 and was buried on the level of the gantry of the Église Saint-Pierre of Rome. Fifty years later, its remainders were transferred under a furnace bridge, which was dedicated to him, inside the basilica, which officialized its holiness.

Spiritual thinker and theologist

In liturgy, Gregoire is at the origin of a great liturgical reform, which put order in the Missel and fixed the texts of clean (see Histoire of the Roman rite). It is following this reform that the hymn (which was already Plain-chant) was spread and acquired a universal character. The Gregorian chant which bears its name was named in its honor, following a hagiographic legend telling how it composed the clean ones of the Messe (actually, the Gregorian chant results from the reforms of Chrodegang and Charlemagne, which aligned the song Gallican on the Roman practice one century later).

It is devoted simultaneously to teaching. One owes him of many spiritual works of which the Dialogs , independent source on the life of saint Benoît de Nursie of which it is the single hagiographal one.

Its theological works on the other hand will remain until the end of the Moyen-âge one of the authorities most often quoted in preaching and teaching, where it takes seat after saint Augustin d' Hippone, of which it simplifies sometimes the thought, not without enriching it in addition by adapting it to mentality by new times.

One owes him, in a table broad and various of Christian morals and finalities of the mystical life, a humanistic approach enough of personal balance that the Christian must find between the ascetic requirements of contemplation and the social needs for a working life.

Its thought also contributed to a classification of the defects and virtues ( Moralia in Job , Morales on Job ), as well as gifts of the Holy Spirit, classification whose preachers and artists of the Moyen-âge will make great case.

It takes again the classification of the Rêve S of Macrobe and transforms it by distinguishing the dreams due to food and the hunger, those sent by the demons, and those of divine origin.

Regarded as one of the Fathers of the Church, it was also always counted among the Doctorss of the Church.

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