Pope Gregory I

Lore & Background

Gregory was born in Rome, lately recovered by the Eastern Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths, into a wealthy noble family closely tied to the church. His father Gordianus was a senator and for a time Prefect of the City, and his mother Silvia, along with two aunts, is venerated as a saint; Pope Felix III was his great-great-grandfather.

The family lived on the Caelian Hill and held estates in Sicily. His youth coincided with the Plague of Justinian, which spread from 542, and with the war in which Totila sacked Rome in 546. Well educated in grammar, rhetoric and law, he rose to become Prefect of Rome before turning the family villa into the Monastery of St. Andrew.

Reader's Guide

As pope, Gregory sent Augustine of Canterbury and Paulinus of York to England and saw the Franks, Lombards and Visigoths move from Arian alliances toward Rome, a shift that shaped medieval Europe. He also fought the Donatist heresy in North Africa. He wrote more than any earlier pope, and in Eastern Christianity he is called Gregory the Dialogist after his Dialogues. His reforms of Roman worship earned him the medieval title "the Father of Christian Worship", and he is regarded as the practical author of the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

Did You Know?

• He is one of three popes the Annuario Pontificio calls "the Great", with Leo I and Nicholas I.
• Ælfric of Eynsham explained his name as Greek for "Watchful".
• John the Deacon described a portrait showing Gregory as rather bald with a tawny beard.
• He had portraits of his parents painted in their former home on the Caelian.