St. Gregory the Great

St. Gregory the Great was born around 540 in Rome to a wealthy patrician family with a tradition of both civic and ecclesial service; two earlier popes were among his ancestors. Trained in law and administration, he rose to become prefect of the city of Rome while still in his early thirties. Yet the world's highest honors could not hold him: upon his father's death he turned the family mansion on the Caelian Hill into the monastery of St. Andrew, gave his fortune to the poor and to founding six monasteries in Sicily, and became a simple monk, a period he ever after remembered as the happiest of his life. The Church soon drew him from the cloister. Ordained a deacon of Rome, he served for years as papal representative to the imperial court at Constantinople before returning to his monastery. In 590, as plague ravaged Rome, he was elected pope by the acclamation of clergy and people, the first monk ever raised to the Chair of Peter, and accepted only under obedience. His fourteen-year pontificate shaped the Church for a millennium. With imperial authority in Italy collapsing before the Lombards, Gregory fed the starving from the Church's estates, negotiated peace, and governed Rome in all but name. He reformed the liturgy, and his name became attached to the Church's treasury of plainsong, Gregorian chant, though scholars regard his personal role in its composition as a matter of later tradition. In 596 he sent Augustine and forty monks of his own monastery to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons, the mission that made him beloved as the apostle of England. He styled himself 'servant of the servants of God,' a title his successors bear to this day. Gregory was also a Doctor of the Church and one of the four great Latin Fathers. His Pastoral Rule became the handbook of bishops for centuries; his Dialogues, Moralia on Job, and homilies fed the prayer of the medieval West. Worn out by illness, he died on March 12, 604, and was acclaimed a saint immediately, venerated from a time long before formal canonization processes. His tomb is in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. His feast is kept on September 3, the anniversary of his episcopal ordination, and he is honored as a patron of musicians, teachers, and students.