Music As We Know It

Pope Saint Gregory I or Gregory the Great is also known as Gregory Dialogus in Eastern Orthodoxy because of the dialogues he wrote. He was the first of the Popes from a monastic background. Gregory is a Doctor of the Church and one of the four great Latin Fathers of the Church. Of all popes, Gregory I had the most influence on the early medieval church. He is seen as a patron of England. Gregory was famous for his charity works. He had a hospital built next to his house to host poor people for dinner, at his expense. He also built a monastery and several oratories on the site. Gregory is also credited with increasing the power of the papacy. He was declared a saint immediately after his death on March 12, 604 by popular acclamation.

Gregory is the only Pope between the 5th and the 11th centuries whose correspondence and writings have survived enough to form a comprehensive corpus. He was an ambiguous and enigmatic character. And at the same time he was an able and determined administrator, a skilled and clever diplomat, a leader of the greatest sophistication and vision. Gregory’s pontificate saw the development of the notion of private penance as parallel to public penance. He explicitly taught a doctrine of Purgatory where a soul destined to undergo purification after death because of certain sins, could begin its purification in this earthly life, through good works, obedience and Christian conduct.

Gregory was born around 540 into a wealthy noble Roman family at the time when the city of Rome was facing a serious decline in population, wealth, and influence. Gregory’s ancestor had been Pope Felix III. Gregory’s father, Gordianus, worked for the Roman Church and his father’s three sisters were nuns. Gregory’s mother Silvia herself is a saint. Gregory even took part in Roman political life and at one point was Prefect of Rome. On his father’s death, he converted his family home into a monastery. Gregory himself entered this new monastery as a monk.

Eventually, Pope Pelagius II ordained Gregory a deacon and chose him as his ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople. There Gregory gained attention by starting a controversy with Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople. The heat of argument drew the emperor in as judge. Eutychius’ treatise was condemned, and it was publicly burnt. On his return to Rome, Gregory acted as first secretary to Pelagius, and was elected Pope to succeed him.

When he became Pope in 590, he wrote a series of letters disavowing any ambition to the throne of Peter and praising the contemplative life of the monks. Gregory’s relations with the Emperor in the East were a cautious diplomatic stand-off. He concentrated his energies in the West, where many of his letters are concerned with the management of papal estates. His relations with the Merovingian kings laid the foundations for the papal alliance with the Franks that would transform the Germanic kingship into an agency for the Christianization of the heart of Europe — consequences that remained in the future. Gregory also undertook the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Sending Augustine of Canterbury to convert the Kingdom of Kent was prepared for by the marriage of the king to a Merovingian princess who had brought her chaplains with her. By the time of Gregory’s death, the conversion of the king and the Kentish nobles and the establishment of a Christian toehold at Canterbury were established.

Gregory moved the Pater Noster to immediately after the Roman Canon and immediately before the Fraction. This position is still maintained today in the Roman Liturgy. Gregory added material to the Hanc Igitur of the Roman Canon and established the nine Kyries at the beginning of Mass. He also reduced the role of deacons in the Roman Liturgy. This is when the Western liturgy begins to show a characteristic that distinguishes it from Eastern Orthodox liturgical traditions. In contrast to the mostly invariable Eastern liturgical texts, Roman and other Western liturgies since this era have a number of prayers that change to reflect the feast or liturgical season; These variations are visible in the collects and prefaces as well as in the Roman Canon itself.

A system of writing down reminders of chant melodies was probably devised by monks around 800 to aid in unifying the church service throughout the Frankish empire. Charlemagne brought cantors from the Papal chapel in Rome to instruct his clerics in the “authentic” liturgy. A program of propaganda spread the idea that the chant used in Rome came directly from Gregory the Great, who had died two centuries earlier and was universally venerated. Pictures were made to depict the dove of the Holy Spirit perched on Gregory’s shoulder, singing God’s authentic form of chant into his ear. This gave rise to calling the music “Gregorian chant”.

The Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches continue to commemorate St. Gregory on the traditional date of March 12th, which intentionally falls during Great Lent, appropriate because of his traditional association with the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which is celebrated only during that liturgical season. Saint Gregory is also honored by other churches: the Church of England commemorates him on September 3, while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America remembers him on March 12.

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