St. Gregory the Great

Gregory, called "the Great" in the West and "the Dialogist" in the East, was born around the year 540 in Rome to a distinguished senatorial family with deep Christian roots — his great-great-grandfather was Pope Felix III. After classical studies he entered the civil service and became prefect of Rome — the highest civic office in the city — before he was thirty. But at the height of his worldly career a conversion came in its depths: upon his father's death he gave away his fortune, converted the family mansion on the Caelian Hill into a monastery, and became a monk.

He was called from the monastery by Pope Pelagius II to serve seven years as papal representative at the imperial court in Constantinople, then returned to his monastery to labor on a commentary on the book of Job — what would become the longest patristic commentary on any single book of Scripture, the Moralia. He was deep in that work when the plague that had killed Pelagius swept through Rome in 590 and the clergy elected Gregory, to his genuine horror, as the next bishop. He accepted and bore the burden until his death fourteen years later in the exhausted wreck of a body his asceticism and illnesses had reduced.

His pontificate transformed the mission of the Western Church. He sent Augustine of Canterbury to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons in 597, beginning the conversion of England. He negotiated treaties with the Lombards who besieged Italy and administered relief for Rome from his own resources when the empire could not. He reformed the liturgical music of the Roman rite — the repertoire of chant that still bears his name. The Pastoral Rule became the manual of episcopal governance across the medieval West, and the Dialogues preserved the life of Benedict of Nursia for all posterity, holding his rule up as the summit of the ascetic tradition. He signed his letters "servant of the servants of God" — and meant it. He reposed on March 12, 604, and is kept on that same day in both Eastern and Western calendars.