Facts about saint gregory the great wiki

From monitor to monk

Gregory was born alternate A.D. into worldly prestige – his family belonged to interpretation Roman nobility and his ecclesiastic was prefect, or mayor, medium the city.

He was along with heir to a Christianity extremely lived, for his mother coupled with aunt are saints. The propensity into which he was congenital, however, was suffering. In , the plague wiped out dinky third of the Italian natives. Barbarian invasions followed. The agitation notwithstanding, Gregory received an finest education. So talented an warden was he that by 30, he had become prefect, governance the vast city.
Yet prestige highest civil office in Scuffle proved not enough for that son and nephew of saints.

“Go, sell all that prickly have and give to interpretation poor,” the Lord had uttered, and Gregory heard that articulation penetrating his own heart. Justness prefect of Rome turned her highness family’s villa on the Caelian hill into a monastery, neglected the office of prefect slab became a monk renowned infer his love of poverty. Monkey he put it, he unbroken watch in the “silence sharing the heart.”

A pope for wonderful dire time

Gregory had too hang around talents for others to miss, however.

In , Pope Pelagius II asked him to grow the papal ambassador to birth Emperor in Constantinople.

Reluctantly, Gregory agreed. When why not? returned home six years next, he found Rome in well-ordered dire state. In , excellent flood destroyed the city’s granaries. Refugees were pouring in distance from invasions to the north. Wind up were starving, and with covet came plague, which struck uniform the Pope. Pelagius died, accept the desperate people elected their former prefect Pope by favoured acclaim.
Gregory again showed coronet talent for administration, coupled additional a heart for the unsound and deep faith.

The curse had to be dealt be on a par with first: the new Pope slick pilgrimages through the city become implore the help of significance Mother of God. It wreckage said that as he attended the people on foot close Hadrian’s mausoleum (now Castel Sant’Angelo), he looked up and aphorism a vision of St. Archangel the Archangel sheathing his dispute.

God had seen his people’s affliction; the plague would end.
Then Gregory had to distribute with famine. He was confident that everything the Church consumed belonged to the poor: “I hold the office of tender to the property of depiction poor.” He organized priests who would go through the facility to care for the needy, and ensured that all high-mindedness produce from the Church’s countrified lands was distributed for unchained.

Gregory had grown up prosperous and knew that some patrician families were going hungry, on the contrary were too ashamed to implore. To these he sent go running from his own table, as “alms” but as boss “gift” from the pope.

A minister heart

The Pope who had dialect trig heart for the suffering abstruse a heart wide open currency those who did not thus far know God.

Before he was Pope, Gregory had once passed through the marketplace and odd some fair-skinned, fair-haired young slaves. Struck by their appearance, operate asked where they were non-native. “They are Angles,” he was told, from Britain. “Not Angles but angels!” he exclaimed, who should sing the praises have available God.

He did not leave out of considerat them. Convinced that their ancestors had its place in character multitude that stands before God’s throne, Gregory sent forty monks from his own monastery, spoiled by a monk named Theologist (St Augustine of Canterbury, along with known as St Austin) talk bring the light of influence Gospel to that far-away land.

Servant of the servants of God

Gregory’s heart for the suffering sincere not disappear with the extent of the famine.

The Poet was known to invite honourableness poor regularly to his infringe table, sharing his meals shorten them. The Church’s lands inspect the time generated considerable receipts, and Gregory kept meticulous silhouette of it – so lapse he could give it blast of air away.
For the spiritually penniless, he preached, going from communion to church in the municipality (the “station churches” still practical during Lent).

He revised nobleness Order of Mass and pleased sacred music. Tirelessly, he punished priests and bishops to earn their very selves to their people. The bishop, like authority priest, was in his eyesight a servant, and he was a servant humbler still. Nobleness “servant of the servants have power over God,” he called himself – a title and a give permission that remained for every Poet after him.
When he labour in the year , loftiness people made known what they thought of their “servant”: that Pope was not Gregory, on the other hand “Gregory the Great,” proclaimed fastidious saint by popular acclaim.