More Italian Yesterdays. Mrs. Hugh Fraser
masters on the other, with the great new forces let loose on the world in the increasing vigour and supremacy of the Lombards and other northern nations, more than half barbarous still, but, as Gregory clearly perceived, possessed of an intelligence and vitality which only required training and instruction to grow into great new polities which would replace the already dead Roman Empire.
To appreciate his labours one would have to read that colossal correspondence which has fortunately been preserved entire. Beside the mighty matters of Church and Empire which it sets forth, there shows all through the most tender and minute care for the lower and therefore unprotected classes, as well as for individual souls. Slavery, in every form, excited Gregory’s generous indignation, and his most earnest efforts were devoted to restoring slaves to the rank of human beings. The peasants on the great estates were serfs—practically slaves. He decreed that their marriages should be inviolable, their property their own, their wills valid; that wherever possible the Church revenues should be devoted to buying the freedom of slaves, and that never, on any plea, should Christians be sold to Jews or pagans. At the same time he enacted that neither Jews nor pagans should be baptized by force, and commanded that the synagogues of the Jews should be restored to them and that they should be allowed freedom of worship.
Always humble and diffident about asking anything for himself, it is amusing to find him severely reprimanding a Bishop who had authorized or permitted extortionate exactions to be practised against an obscure farmer in Sardinia, and at the same time writing meekly to the overseer of some ecclesiastical property in Sicily—a stud farm where were kept four hundred stallions: “You have sent me one bad horse and four asses. I cannot ride the horse, because it is bad, nor the asses, because they are asses. If you would assist to sustain me, send me something that I can use!”
But after all the special bond between St. Gregory and English-speaking peoples lies in the memorable act by which England was evangelized, after the Faith first planted there had been annihilated by the pagan Barbarians, Saxons, Angles, Scandinavians, to whom she fell an easy prey when Rome withdrew its protecting legions and abandoned her to her fate.
It is rather sweet to know that it was the fair, innocent beauty of a group of English children, standing, dazed and frightened, in the market to be sold, that first touched his heart to such warm pity for their country. He was then living as the Abbot of the community he had founded on the Cœlian Hill, and enough has been said to show how happy he was in his quiet life there.
It must have been some unusual necessity which took him far down into the town on a certain day and through the noisy crowded slave market. But on seeing the children, with their blue eyes full of tears and their long golden hair shining in the sun, everything else was forgotten; he stopped abruptly to ask who they were.
“Angles, from the isle of Britain,” was the answer, given indifferently enough. The keeper knew that the big, dark-faced monk was not a slave-buyer.
“Angles! They are born to be angels!” cried Gregory, and straightway he flew to the Pope and besought permission to go with some of his monks to Britain, to preach the Gospel. The Pope, taken by surprise, consented; and before he had time to think over the matter, Gregory, with his volunteers, had put three days of travelling between himself and Rome. Then the news leaked out, and the people rose like one man and rushed to the Pope, who was on his way to St. Peter’s, and, arresting his progress, burst into indignant cries: “You have offended St. Peter! You have ruined Rome in allowing Gregory to leave us!”
Pelagius saw his mistake and sent messengers in all haste to call Gregory back. Of course he obeyed; he never forgot England, but it was only in the sixth year of his own pontificate (596) that he could carry out his design, and then he could not himself take part in the expedition. He found a noble substitute in St. Augustine, and it must have been with a glad heart that he sent him forth, and gave him and his forty Benedictines the final blessing, as they knelt (so we are told) on the grassy stretch below the steps of Gregory’s own convent on the Cœlian Hill. The grass grows there still; still the green trees shadow the enclosure called St. Gregory’s park, through which one approaches the church, and still the flowers bloom in Silvia’s garden where he played as a little boy. Even modern Rome has been loath to encroach on the place so dear to him who loved Rome so much.
I have often wondered what became of the little English children he saw, and seeing, loved. Surely he rescued them and placed them with kind people to be cared for. His quick notice of them reminds one of our own Pius IX, who could never pass an English child without stopping to bless it, and, while blessing the child, to pray for England, whom Augustine and his companions made “the Isle of Saints” and the “Dowry of Mary.”
One more picture of St. Gregory must close this humble sketch of his great life. As already related, after he had been elected Pope he sent a letter to the Emperor Maurice, imploring him not to confirm the decision of the people. And just then, as if jealous of all the good work that was going forward, the Powers of Evil let loose a terrible outbreak of the pestilence in Rome. They could not touch the spiritual city—Rome invisible, the Sanctuary of the Faith—but the material one seemed to be delivered into their hands, and terrible were its sufferings. Poverty and neglect, and the ruin of ceaseless wars, had made it vulnerable at every point; the pestilence had swept it again and again, but this was the most frightful visitation of all. Gregory and his monks, and many other charitable persons devoted themselves to the sick and dying; the lazarets and hospitals were crowded—every day with new sufferers as the dead were carried out; but it became impossible to bury the dead fast enough. Neither prayer nor effort seemed of any avail, and dull despair settled on all hearts. Apparently this was to be the end.
Then Gregory instituted the first of those great processions which, in moments of stress, have moved across the pages of history ever since, aweing us a little by the whole-hearted faith and trust of our ancestors in the mercy of Heaven. Gregory decreed that all, clergy and laity, who could stand on their feet should put on the garments of penitence and follow him through the stricken streets to pray at the tomb of St. Peter. And all who could obeyed like one man. What a sight that must have been when the Saint, “the strong, dark-faced man of heavy build,” led his afflicted people from the “Mother of Churches” at the Lateran Gate, down past all the ruined pomp of the Palatine and the Colosseum and the Forum towards the river and the great Basilica of Constantine beyond! How the response of the Major Litanies must have thundered up from all those breaking hearts to the “skies of brass” that hung over Rome! The ever-repeated “Te rogamus, audi nos!” and “Libera nos, Domine,” even now bring tears to one’s eyes with their almost despairing simplicity; then they were the last appeals of a crushed and ruined race for one more chance to repent and atone for its heaped misdeeds.
And the chance was granted. As the endless procession moved along towards St. Peter’s its leader paused before the Mausoleum of Hadrian, that huge monument of pagan ambition, and raised his eyes and heart in supplication, offering we know not what of his own life and destiny for his people’s sins.
Suddenly he stood transfigured. The chanting ceased; all eyes followed Gregory’s gaze, all ears were strained to catch the heavenly melody that floated, high and clear, fresh as the song of birds at dawn, over the sorrowing city.
“Regina Cœli, laetare,
Quia quem meruisti portare,
Resurrexit, sicut, dixit!”
It was the chant of the Resurrection!
“Alleluia, Alleluia!” came the sequel in one burst from that great multitude, as the angels’ voices grew fainter and were lost in the depths overhead. And then, on hearts bursting now with relief and joy there fell the awe that mortals feel in the presence of the Heavenly Ones, for there, on the summit of the towering fortress, stood the radiant archangel—and he was sheathing his flaming sword.
The pestilence was over. Once more God had had mercy on his people. And, since the angels’ song was addressed to the Queen of Heaven, we know that it was she whose prayers had stayed the arm that had clung round her neck in Bethlehem.
St. Gregory passed to his reward on March 12, 604, having reigned nearly fourteen years. The mourning city chose Sabinianus of Volterra