Gregory I

64th Bishop of Rome, Head of the Roman Catholic Church from 590 to 604

b. c. 540 · d. 12 Mar 604

64th Bishop of Rome (Pope) · 3 Sep 590–12 Mar 604

Offices

Pope Gregory I, commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the 64th Bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 until his death on 12 March 604.

Recorded as a historical figure.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People 1 claim — The Gregorian mission lands in Kent
Liber Pontificalis 1 claim — Liber Pontificalis, the life of Gregory I

No one presumes to teach an art till he has first, with intent meditation, learnt it. What rashness is it, then, for the unskilful to assume pastoral… Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — Ars est artium regimen animarum. The opening of the book every medieval bishop was handed at his consecration, and the tag that became the West’s standard name for the cure of…
The ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech; lest he either utter what ought to be suppressed or suppress what he ought to utter… Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — Written by the bishop of Rome about bishops who, fearing to lose human favour, shrink from saying what is right. He goes on to call them the dumb dogs of Isaiah that cannot bark…
With kind and humble intent thou reprovest me, dearest brother, for having wished by hiding myself to fly from the burdens of pastoral care Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — The first sentence of the dedicatory letter, and the reason the book exists. Gregory had tried to avoid consecration in 590; John of Ravenna wrote reproving him for it, and the…

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I have been as an ill-favoured painter pourtraying a handsome man; and how I direct others to the shore of perfection, while myself still tossed among the… Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — The last movement of the book, addressed back to the bishop whose reproof provoked it. The pope who wrote the manual for bishops ends it by saying he has painted a portrait he…
For, as long before us Gregory Nazianzen of reverend memory has taught, one and the same exhortation does not suit all, inasmuch as neither are all bound… Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — The principle the longest Part of the book is built on, and the one that made it a manual rather than a treatise: forty chapters of paired opposites — the poor and the rich, the…

The three Marys Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the unnamed sinner who anoints Jesus in Luke 7 are three people in the Greek fathers and one person in the Latin West, and the fusion is datable: Gregory the Great preached it in…