During Justinian’s Gothic War, a future pope is born, Gregory the Great, who would lay the foundation for the Papal States as well as the civil authority to govern both them and western Europe. Gregory, through his mission of monks sent abroad, was also instrumental in establishing Christian traditions that are infused with barbarian heathenism, such as Halloween, Easter, and Christmas, to which he turned a blind eye.
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 14: Gregory the Great
During the time of the Gothic War in Italy, a future pope would be born. The land was being ravaged by opposing forces, but this future pope was a child of wealth, born in Rome, the ancient city now stripped of its glory. His name was Gregory, and …
“He was born around 540 into an aristocratic family.”
Says Thomas F. Madden, professor of medieval history at Saint Louis University.
“And he had an excellent classical education, and then eventually took a civil position in the government. But at the age of 35 he gave it all up and retreated into a monastery, which was essentially, this monastery was his family house in Rome. He and a bunch of like-minded companions went into the monastery, or to the house, to pray.”
Gregory had become a monk, and he established seven monasteries based on the pattern of Monte Cassino which was founded by Benedict of Nursia, who we covered in episode 10. Gregory even turned his father’s palace (which he inherited) into a monastery that was named for a supposed saint, Andrew. Shortly after turning to monastic life, the pope, Benedict I (a different Benedict) made Gregory a deacon, or member of his administrative council. By 579, Pope Benedict would be dead, and the next pope, Pelagius II, would elevate Gregory yet more, appointing him as ambassador to the court in Constantinople.
He served as ambassador from 579 to 586, during which he witnessed many theological conflicts and political schemes that often filled the imperial city. Pelagius appointed another ambassador to Constantinople in 586, so Gregory was able to return to Rome, and to his quiet life as a monk, wherein he was made abbot of his monastery. But soon, the city was suffering new crises. Another plague was sweeping through Rome, leaving many dead in its wake, and the Tiber river burst over the walls of the city and flooded the streets.
Pope Pelagius, aided by Gregory and other monks, saw to the burial of the dead and the feeding of the hungry. Pelagius even managed the organization of city sanitation during this time, but the plague eventually clung to him as well, taking his life. None seemed to want the office of pope during this bitter time, but the clergy, as well as the people of Rome, longed for a new pope. Gregory was content with monastic life, but he was elected, and so the matter went all the way to Constantinople, as was the proper channel at the time. Of this, Professor Philip Daileader says:
“Around 550, or, in other words, during the period when the Byzantines are wresting control of Rome from the Ostrogoths, it appears that Byzantine emperors assumed a power that had been held by local secular authorities in Italy before them: the right to veto consecrations. The way it worked was that after election, the pope would have to notify either the Byzantine emperor, or a Byzantine official in Italy known as the exarch of Ravenna that you had been elected as pope. And then you had to await approval, from either a Byzantine official or from the emperor himself before you undergo consecration. If the exarch doesn’t want you to be pope, or if the emperor doesn’t want you to be pope, then you’re not supposed to be consecrated, and whoever elected you has to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.”
Gregory tried to have his election annulled by writing directly to the emperor in Constantinople requesting that he not be confirmed as bishop of Rome. But the letter was intercepted and so the confirmation went through, to the slight dismay of a reluctant Gregory. Regardless, he took on the office with great enthusiasm thereafter and set about continuing the distribution of food to the poor in Rome. He also oversaw the smooth delivery of wheat shipments from Sicily, and supervised the rebuilding of public works, like the ruined aqueducts on which the city depended. Rome’s defenses were also shored up on his watch, and the garrison was trained anew. With little to no help coming from Constantinople at this time, Gregory negotiated peace with the Lombards, who overran Italy’s north. This firmly established Pope Gregory as the ruler of Rome and its surrounding region, which was later called the patrimony of Peter, based on a counterfeit eighth-century document …
“… known as the Donation of Constantine …”
Writes Thomas Cahill.
“… in which the first Christian emperor had supposedly made donations of vast tracts of land in central Italy to the papacy and had awarded to the pope ‘the privileges of our supreme station as emperor and all the glory of our authority.’ ”
But of course, again quoting from Cahill’s Mysteries of the Middle Ages …
“… the so-called Donation of Constantine was a forgery, used by the papacy to prop up its legitimacy in Europe.”
Not all the lands in the so-called patrimony of Peter were based on forgery, however, only those lands that were part of the Donation of Constantine. Other landed properties had been legitimately bequeathed to the Roman church by elite and wealthy Christian citizens. Those estates were scattered beyond Rome itself, and could be found throughout Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and even parts of North Africa. When he needed a means to fund the expensive distribution of food to needy Roman citizens and thousands of hungry refugees from the north who had descended on Rome, Gregory looked to the lands within the patrimony.
“For these purposes, Gregory possessed a pearl of great price, the so-called ‘Patrimony of St. Peter …’ ”
Writes Kevin Madigan, in his book Medieval Christianity.
“… organized by Gregory into what historians would eventually call ‘the Papal States.’ These were parcels of lands that the apostolic see had received as legacies from grateful and generous Christians over the first Christian centuries. They were, fortunately, scattered far and wide in the West; not only could they be found in central and southern Italy, as well as its offshore islands, but also in North Africa, Gaul, and the Balkans. The military consequence of this scattering was that it was unlikely in the extreme that they could be conquered simultaneously. Economically speaking, they generated substantial income and produce, which Gregory used for refugee aid and defense.”
All of these lands and holdings of course made Gregory—and anyone who sat in the papal seat for that matter—the wealthiest Roman, partly through the collection of taxes on them. More than that, however, Gregory was also seen as Rome’s civil leader in a way. He acted as both ecclesiastical and secular head, in that he administered both Rome’s relief and defense in a time of crisis. But this was viewed by many as both his right and duty, since there was a clear vacuum of power at the time. Constantinople was of no help, and the exarch of Ravenna was now less powerful and less respected than Gregory himself. To create some sense of order he even appointed governors to various cities in Italy. Future medieval popes would follow in Gregory’s steps and seize this kind of civic authority for centuries to come, and that authority would expand to western Europe, well beyond what would become the Papal States.
After Pope Gregory negotiated peace with the Lombards, which cost him five hundred pounds of gold from the church treasury to cause them to withdraw, the citizens were afforded some comfort. The plague had died away, the flooding had subsided, the poor were fed, and the territory secured. Nearly everyone, Roman prefects and officials included, looked to Gregory for guidance. He was lauded for saving Rome from Lombard pillaging and domination and was considered a capable leader. But in light of his invaluable administrative skills during times of crisis, he felt restricted to Rome. He wrote to a colleague, “I am now detained in the city of Rome, tied by the chains of this dignity.”
In the year 596, a new exarch was appointed in Ravenna, and he signed his own peace treaty with the Lombards, allowing for even greater peace between the feared barbarians and those who inhabited Byzantine lands in Italy. Thus, Gregory was finally able to devote his attention to matters of his papal office. While Gregory was respected as a civil leader, he considered himself a religious leader above all, and he seized upon this personal view by his constant preaching in various established churches in Rome. He called on the laity to renew their faith, and he urged the clergy to practice celibacy, according to monastic beliefs. This was a practice that Augustine of Hippo promoted heavily, and being a theologian that Gregory greatly respected, it was not the only point of argument that he borrowed from Augustine.
Of note, Gregory was the first monk to be made pope, and his devotion to monasticism led him to infuse the papacy with monastic practices and beliefs. In fact, as Professor Thomas F. Madden points out, when Gregory was elected pope …
“… He brought his monastery with him into the papal residence.”
Essentially, he also brought his monastic brothers along with him, even using his power and influence to elevate some to the priesthood and calling on others to lead missions abroad. One such important mission was the one sent to England.
“He was also eager to see Christianity expand, or to be replaced into England.”
Says Professor Thomas F. Madden.
“When the Roman Empire was collapsing, and Roman troops had evacuated England, the new Germanic groups, the Anglo-Saxons, had come in—were pagans—and therefore, virtually all vestiges of Christianity had left. And so, in 596, he sent a mission there led by one of his fellow monks to Kent to evangelize. And it was a remarkably successful mission.”
Well, it was eventually successful. This fellow monk was Augustine—not Augustine of Hippo who was long dead, and who was the subject of episode 8, but another Augustine. Professor Thomas F. Madden goes on to say:
“During Gregory’s pontificate he was able to set up new metropolitan sees (archbishoprics) at the old Roman provincial capitals of Canterbury and York. And these archbishops received their pallium, which is the symbol of their office, directly from Gregory in Rome. And therefore, as the church grew, these direct connections between Rome and these far away dioceses would continue to be forged and to grow, and this is something we’ll see right up into the modern era.”
It is apparent that Gregory did not recognize the missionary efforts of Irish monks who had labored in the same region to which he dispatched Augustine (later called Augustine of Canterbury) and the forty or so monks who accompanied him to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. While a few churches had been established in Britain, following the events of 476—which led to the fall of Rome—Britain was abandoned, and the remaining churches there were cut off from the Roman sphere of influence and support. Over a hundred years later, Roman missionaries were sent back to what were now Saxon kingdoms, created by the barbarian mercenaries the Romans appointed to defend the island in their absence. There were Saxons in Sussex, a kingdom in the southern part of England; there were Saxons in Wessex, the western kingdom; in fact, Angles, Saxons, and even Jutes were scattered all across the island.
Expected to bring all these Anglo-Saxon barbarians into the Christian fold was the monk, Augustine, who was acquainted with Gregory through his former monastery. Augustine began his mission with a large company of monks and a good deal of supplies that were meant to last them a while, but we are told by the English monk, Bede, that when they reached the coast of the kingdom of the Franks, Augustine withered, “seized with craven terror.” Augustine returned to Rome that same year, 596, without success, and he asked Pope Gregory to allow him to abandon the mission. Of course, Gregory refused and sent him back to England with a letter exhorting him to: “Let neither the toil of the journey nor the tongues of evil-speaking men deter you.”
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
Following Pope Gregory’s exhortation, Susan Wise Bauer writes that “Augustine’s party took heart …”
“… crossed the channel, and in early 597 landed on Thanet Island, a tiny isle just off the coast of Kent that fell under the rule of Kent’s king, Ethelbert.”
Most likely, Augustine targeted Ethelbert from the beginning.
“[H]is wife, Bertha, granddaughter of the Frankish king Chlothar I, was already a Christian. When Ethelbert heard of the party’s arrival, he sent a message telling the missionaries to stay put on the island until he could decide what to do with them. Finally, he decided to go and see them, rather than inviting them into his kingdom: he was suspicious, not knowing whether this was a political or spiritual mission. Talking to them, he was reassured and decided that they were harmless.…”
After hearing all that Augustine had to say, the king replied:
“ ‘I cannot forsake the beliefs I have observed, along with the whole English nation, but I will not harm you; and I do not forbid you to preach and convert as many as you can.’ Eventually Ethelbert did agree to be baptized.…”
Toward the end of that year, Gregory wrote a letter to the bishop of Alexandria reporting of Augustine’s success. “For while the nation of the Angli, placed in a corner of the world, remained up to this time misbelieving in the worship of stocks and stones, a monk of my monastery … proceeded … to the end of the world to the aforesaid nation; and already letters having reached us telling us of his safety and his work…. [M]ore than ten thousand Angli are reported to have been baptized.”
Gregory referred to the barbarian inhabitants of England as, Angli, or Angles, lumping them together with Saxons and Jutes. And England itself (Angle-land; “land of the Angles”) as well as the English language is also named for the Angli. But while the seemingly exaggerated figure of 10,000 Anglo-Saxons being baptized might be a stretch of the truth, what is evident is that the missionary efforts were an overall success for Rome. It also established a few things that would continue to develop according to Pope Gregory’s leading: the pope would be the principle party to initiate missionary efforts, which would see the Christianization of northern Europe in the centuries to come; and monks, who were never expected to do missionary or pastoral work would be the main drivers of these missionary efforts, moving according to the pope’s authority, and being guided by his counsel via correspondence.
Seeing how successful Augustine’s missionary efforts had been, Gregory sent more missionaries, and, in time, Roman practices would dominate Anglo-Saxon society in England. But the leaven at the heart of Christianity did not diminish even during Gregory’s missions to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, for while the current tainted form of the Messianic belief spread among the barbarians, the heathen custom of the barbarians was also absorbed into the Christian movement.
“By the standards of the day …”
Writes Kevin Madigan.
“… Gregory showed remarkable pastoral sensitivity to the Saxons and their native religious traditions, which he was, in the end, determined to eradicate. He urged his Italian monks not to destroy the Saxon temples but the idols in them.”
Didn’t the Creator deal similarly with the Israelites in Egypt? was Gregory’s argument. The Anglo-Saxon temples, if well built, should instead be consecrated and converted to the worship of the Christian deity.
“… [T]hey would more likely worship Him if they could ‘resort to the places to which they had been accustomed.’ There they would substitute solemnities like veneration of … martyrs in place of their diabolic practice of slaughtering oxen in pagan sacrifice. Gregory’s advice represents some of the earliest Christian thinking on how the newly converted would assimilate to a novel religious culture.…”
This early Christian practice, which was greatly encouraged by Pope Gregory—as well as those who preceded and succeeded him—would see ancient pagan temples that were dedicated to the worship of Roman deities turned into Christian temples. Professor Thomas F.X. Noble of the University of Notre Dame expounds on this idea.
“The basic Greek and Roman public building was the rectangular basilica. The word means ‘a royal hall,’ from the Greek basileus, the word for ‘king,’ or ‘ruler.’ The basilica had been used for all sorts of things: for temples, for law courts, for assembly halls, for grain storage; a basilica is a very useful building. The basilica sometimes had multiple aisles, occasionally had apses, an apse is a semicircular extension at one or both ends of the aisle of a church.
“Numerous Christian churches adapted the basilican plan. In Rome for example, St. Peter, with its five aisles. Whereas the apse of a secular basilica might have held an imperial statue, and the apse of a temple a cult statue, in the Christian basilica, the apsidal region was given over to the altar and clergy. Whereas in a classical basilica, dignitaries might have made a long, solemn walk down the nave to meet with a ruler, in a Christian basilica, clergy and people processed down those naves to celebrate their liturgies and to bring forward their offerings.”
The basilica is just one example of how the Roman Empire, and western Europe for that matter, was physically Christianized. But, as was pointed out, the Anglo-Saxons, being allowed to have their temples stand, and many of their abominable practices continue, in fact infused Christianity and the even wider secular world with their heathen customs. This is why we have Germanic deities as the names for some of the days of the week: Woden, Thor, and Frigga, for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We covered this topic in our documentary, Understanding the Sabbath. Upon Pope Gregory’s encouragement, certain Anglo-Saxon customs crept into the church over time, and the world at large now celebrates many of them, along with a spate of other Germanic and Celtic traditions. It all began with Augustine, the monk who was but a timid librarian, and his mission to England—ordered by Gregory—to convert the barbarians there. As was stated, Augustine initially did not want to go.
“[H]e had every expectation that the savages would eat him when he arrived.”
Writes Thomas Cahill in Mysteries of the Middle Ages.
“Once he landed and was accepted by the English, however, he found himself raised to the office of bishop and soon began to administer his diocese of Canterbury with rigid Romanitas.”
Because of his extreme partiality for Roman tradition, Gregory was forced to write letter after letter cautioning Augustine not to prefer Roman customs to English ones.
“ ‘My brother, customs are not to be cherished for the sake of a place, but places are to be cherished for the sake of what is good about them.’ There was no need, advised Gregory, the practical Roman, to tear down the pagan temples—just remove the idols and replace them with decent Christian images. Nor was there any need to outlaw the old festivals or the customs that accompanied them. Just baptize them a bit.
“By such encouragement were the customs of the northern barbarians allowed to enter the European mainstream. The masks and ghosts of Hallowe’en, the vernal and venereal tomfooleries of May Day, as well as the lustral bathings and lantern-hung forests of Midsummer Night, taken from the Celts; the toasted cheese, toasts of warm ale, and rich desserts of northern winters and the ritual of sweetening with pine branches the claustral air in houses sealed against the cold, taken from the Germanic tribes; the word Easter, originally the goddess of spring accompanied by her fertility symbols of rabbits and decorated eggs, taken from the Saxons; the word Yule and the burning Yule log, taken from the Vikings—these and a thousand other customs of the savage heathens (which men like Clement of Alexandria would only have looked down their noses at) rolled into the former empire and were christened and absorbed. For this we have Gregory and many of his now nameless brother bishops to thank.”
Gregory—later designated “the Great”—was known for many things, and among these were his prolific writings, which were influential in the Middle Ages. He was not concerned with being original or creative, however, he merely sought to reiterate and substantiate many of the positions of church fathers before him, particularly Augustine of Hippo, who he admired most. Gregory was a disciple of Augustine in a way, and taught what Augustine had already taught, only Gregory made doctrine what Augustine had not intended to be taken beyond the level of mere speculation. A case in point would be the place of purification Augustine had suggested, by way of conjecture, might exist for those who died in sin, where they would stay for a time before being made worthy enough to head off to heaven. Both men misinterpreted Scripture in believing the dead go to heaven at death, but the place of purgatory went from being speculation on the part of Augustine, to certainty on the part of Gregory. Gregory’s insistence on such a place being in existence led to the doctrine of purgatory.
Gregory also pushed Augustine’s views on the eucharist farther by teaching that the Catholic mass or communion saw the Messiah sacrificed anew each time it was celebrated. This became a standard doctrine of the Western church thereafter, but it was later rejected by Protestants in the sixteenth century.
To many, Gregory portrayed himself as a man not given to pomp. In monkish fashion he fasted often, so much that it weakened his body and many times left him confined to bed. In 601 he wrote to a friend saying, “For a long time I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of gout; a kind of fire seems to pervade my whole body; to live is pain; and I look forward to death as the only remedy.” Neither did he appear to be in favor of grandiose titles. In his book, A History of the Middle Ages: 300 to 1500, John M. Riddle writes:
“[Gregory] asserted not only the pope’s supremacy over the western church but also, much to the consternation of the Byzantine patriarch, the eastern churches as well. Once in correspondence, when Gregory received a letter from the patriarch addressed with a long list of superlative titles including ‘Bishop of Bishops,’ Gregory replied by referring to himself as the ‘Servant of the Servants of [the deity, meaning Yah],’ now a title used by all popes.”
The “Servant of the Servants of [Yah].” It sounds humble on the face of it, till one considers where Gregory was coming from. Yeshua, in Luke 9:48, established the order of greatness in the Kingdom, stating that he who is least will actually be the greatest. By this account, we see that Gregory, and every pope who succeeded him, expected to be the greatest in the Kingdom by using this lowly title.
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: monte cassino, papal states, patrimony of peter, peter’s patrimony, donation of Constantine, exarch of Ravenna, churchianity, Anglo-Saxons, Saxon kingdoms, Angli, Angle-land, Englaland, Jutes, Ethelbert, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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