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Gregor der Große
The birth of Western Europe. Separated from the Roman Empire in the East, the West was taking its first steps alone. The idea of a Christian West uniting Romans and Germans, which Gregory had first conceived, was rising like a great arch extending over the Spanish Visigoths, the Angles of the British Isles, the Franks, the Bavarians, and the Lombards. One foot of it rested solidly upon the Eternal City. Out of the ruins of a collapsing old world a new structure was coming into being.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
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August 5, 2015
When the Pope Tamed the Barbarians
Ancient cities had walls, there was so much to defend against, but when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power, when the city was truly the center of the world, it disdained walls. It was the arrogance of power. Nobody would be foolish enough to go against Rome, to try to take from Rome what Rome had taken from the rest of the world.
By the time of Pope Gregory (540-604), the Caesars had long since gone to their tombs, the once mighty Roman legions were shadows of themselves and the city trembled behind walls.
It was a time of hopelessness and doom, many believing it was the prophesied end of the world. The center of the empire had shifted to the East, to Greece, and the Italian Peninsula, glorious Rome, was reduced to the status of a province, and not even a very important province, as Gregory discovered when he went to Constantinople to try to convince the emperor to send an army to rescue Italy from the barbarian hordes. In that mission, Gregory failed. The empire wasn’t going to invest gold and soldiers in rescuing a province from the incursion of the Lombards, the latest Germanic tribe that had come, like so many before it, out of the northern hinterlands.
And it’s not just the barbarians who are besetting Rome. There’s famine and plague and a very potent religious heresy, Arianism. Forgotten now, Arianism was a real threat to the existence of Christianity. Arianism only became a forgotten heresy by losing.
Into this maelstrom is thrown our hero, Gregory, a rich old man from an illustrious and pious family. His people were landowners with estates in Sicily and a big house in Rome. Gregory’s great-great grandfather had been a pope, his mom and two of his dad’s sisters would become saints, Gregory, too. Gregory is a pious man and only wants to give away his wealth and become a cloistered monk, devoting his life to prayer and fasting, and who could blame him, given the problems the pope would have to face. Gregory shrinks from it all but the clamor is overwhelming and he reluctantly takes up his role and spends the last years of his life negotiating (always from a position of weakness) with both the empire and the barbarians.
This is no biography or hagiography; it’s an historical novel putting life into what the historians have told us of Gregory. Gregory can be despondent and angry and mostly, frustrated. It’s not easy being smarter and less-powerful than everybody else in the room and to be pulled from the life he wants to lead into a life he yearns to abandon. It’s the will of God, though, and Gregory does the best he can and if the Greeks are disinclined to save the western half of the Roman Empire, then Gregory must find another way. It’s pretty audacious, what Gregory does, breaking Rome away from the empire of its own creation and joining with the barbarians, not becoming barbarians, but pulling the barbarians closer to civilization. Gregory’s intention is to save Italy, to ensure its survival, and in doing it, he lays the groundwork for the birth of the West, taking it out of ancient times and into the church-dominated Middle Ages, no small achievement.
Ancient cities had walls, there was so much to defend against, but when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power, when the city was truly the center of the world, it disdained walls. It was the arrogance of power. Nobody would be foolish enough to go against Rome, to try to take from Rome what Rome had taken from the rest of the world.
By the time of Pope Gregory (540-604), the Caesars had long since gone to their tombs, the once mighty Roman legions were shadows of themselves and the city trembled behind walls.
It was a time of hopelessness and doom, many believing it was the prophesied end of the world. The center of the empire had shifted to the East, to Greece, and the Italian Peninsula, glorious Rome, was reduced to the status of a province, and not even a very important province, as Gregory discovered when he went to Constantinople to try to convince the emperor to send an army to rescue Italy from the barbarian hordes. In that mission, Gregory failed. The empire wasn’t going to invest gold and soldiers in rescuing a province from the incursion of the Lombards, the latest Germanic tribe that had come, like so many before it, out of the northern hinterlands.
And it’s not just the barbarians who are besetting Rome. There’s famine and plague and a very potent religious heresy, Arianism. Forgotten now, Arianism was a real threat to the existence of Christianity. Arianism only became a forgotten heresy by losing.
Into this maelstrom is thrown our hero, Gregory, a rich old man from an illustrious and pious family. His people were landowners with estates in Sicily and a big house in Rome. Gregory’s great-great grandfather had been a pope, his mom and two of his dad’s sisters would become saints, Gregory, too. Gregory is a pious man and only wants to give away his wealth and become a cloistered monk, devoting his life to prayer and fasting, and who could blame him, given the problems the pope would have to face. Gregory shrinks from it all but the clamor is overwhelming and he reluctantly takes up his role and spends the last years of his life negotiating (always from a position of weakness) with both the empire and the barbarians.
This is no biography or hagiography; it’s an historical novel putting life into what the historians have told us of Gregory. Gregory can be despondent and angry and mostly, frustrated. It’s not easy being smarter and less-powerful than everybody else in the room and to be pulled from the life he wants to lead into a life he yearns to abandon. It’s the will of God, though, and Gregory does the best he can and if the Greeks are disinclined to save the western half of the Roman Empire, then Gregory must find another way. It’s pretty audacious, what Gregory does, breaking Rome away from the empire of its own creation and joining with the barbarians, not becoming barbarians, but pulling the barbarians closer to civilization. Gregory’s intention is to save Italy, to ensure its survival, and in doing it, he lays the groundwork for the birth of the West, taking it out of ancient times and into the church-dominated Middle Ages, no small achievement.
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