Part 19

His constancy and courage were called forth in contest with the Greeks, with that Eastern Empire which was represented by functionaries whose odious exactions had quite as great a share in the despair of the people as the ravages of the Barbarians, and whose malice was more dreadful than the swords of the Lombards. His entire life was a struggle with the patriarch of Constantinople, who aimed at supplanting the Roman pontiff, as well as with the emperor, who would have dominated Italy without defending her, and ruled the Church as if she were a department of the State. Among so many conflicts, we shall dwell only on that one which arose between him and John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople. Relying on the support of most of the Eastern bishops, this patriarch took to himself the title of Universal Bishop. Gregory stood up with vigour against this pretension. He did not draw back before the emperor, who openly sided with the patriarch of his capital, nor before the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, who sided with the Byzantine patriarch. "What!" wrote Gregory to the emperor, "S. Peter, who received the keys of heaven and earth, the power of binding and loosing, the charge and primacy of the whole Church, was never called the Universal Apostle; and yet my pious brother John would name himself Universal Bishop!" For himself he says, "I desire to increase in virtue and not in words. I do not consider myself honoured in that which dishonours my brethren. It is the honour of the universal Church that is my honour. Away with these words which inflate vanity and wound charity. The holy council of Chalcedon and other fathers have offered this title to my predecessors, but none of them have ever used it, that they might guard their own honour in the sight of God, by seeking here below the honour of all the priesthood." This weighty difference, the prohibition addressed by the emperor to soldiers against their becoming monks, and the contest which arose between the pope and the emperor touching the irregular election to the metropolitan see of Salona, contributed to render almost permanent the misunderstanding between them. These perpetual contests with the Byzantine court may explain, without excusing, the conduct of Gregory at the death of the Emperor Maurice. This prince, infected, like all his predecessors, with a mania for interfering in ecclesiastical affairs, was very superior to most of them. Gregory himself has more than once done justice to his faith and piety, to his zeal for the Church, and respect for her canons. After twenty years of an undistinguished reign, a military revolt broke out, which placed Phocas upon the throne. This wretch not only murdered the emperor Maurice, gouty, and incapable of defending himself, but also his six sons, whom he caused to be put to death under the eyes of their father, without even sparing the youngest, who was still at the breast, and whom his nurse would have saved by putting her own child in his place; but Maurice, who was too noble to allow of such a sacrifice, disclosed the pious deception to the murderers. He died like a Christian hero, repeating the words of the psalm, "Thou, O Lord, art just, and all Thy judgments are right." This massacre did not satisfy Phocas, who sacrificed the empress and her three daughters, the brother of Maurice, and a multitude of others in his train. The monster then sent his own image and that of his wife to Rome, where the senate and people received them with rejoicings. Gregory unfortunately joined in these mean acclamations. He carried these images of his new masters, bathed in innocent blood, into the oratory of the Lateran palace. Afterwards, he addressed extraordinary congratulations to Phocas, not in the surprise of the first moment, but seven months after the crime. This is the only stain upon the life of Gregory. We do not attempt either to conceal or to excuse it. It can scarcely be explained by recalling all the vexations he had suffered from Maurice, annoyances of which he always complained energetically, though he did not fail to do justice to the undeniable piety of the old emperor. Perhaps Gregory adopted this means to secure the help of Phocas against the new incursions of the Lombards, or to mollify beforehand the already threatening intentions of the tyrant. It must also be remembered that these flatteries were in some sort the official language of these times; they resulted from the general debasement of public manners, and from the tone of the language invariably used then at each change of reign. His motives were undoubtedly pure. Notwithstanding, a stain remains upon his memory, and a shadow upon the history of the Church, which is so consoling and full of light in this age of storm and darkness. But among the greatest and holiest of mortals, virtue, like human wisdom, always falls short in some respect.

Long crushed between the Lombards and Byzantines, between the unsoftened ferocity of the barbarians and the vexatious decrepitude of despotism, Gregory, with that instinctive perception of future events which God sometimes grants to pure souls, sought elsewhere a support for the Roman Church. His eyes were directed to the new races, who were scarcely less ferocious than the Lombards, but who did not, like them, weigh upon Italy and Rome, and who already exhibited elements of strength and continuance. It is impossible to do more here than touch on these noble enterprises. He entered into correspondence with Childebert, the Gallo-Frank king, and with the French bishops, to obtain the rectification of abuses and the purification of the Gallican church from simony, and the nomination of laymen to the episcopal office, two vices which consumed the vitals of Christianity in France. Spain had become Arian under the Visigoths, but the Catholic faith had triumphed with the accession of Recared, in 587. S. Leander, bishop of Seville, was the principal author of the conversion of the Visigoths. Gregory wrote to him and to other bishops of Spain. They consulted him, and he gave them his advice. He wrote, and gave councils full of wisdom to the king Recared, himself. He brought back to the unity of the Church the schismatical bishops of Istria, and wholly suppressed the Donatist schism in Africa. But one of the most striking points in the life of S. Gregory is his zeal for the conversion of England.

Amid the labours of his exalted position, S. Gregory never remitted his anxiety for the evangelization of that distant isle. In July, A.D. 596, he dispatched S. Augustine (May 26th), with forty companions, on that mission to which we owe so much, that, with every feeling of love and veneration for the remnant of Celtic Christianity which had then escaped the sword of Pagan Saxondom, we may yet say, with the Venerable Bede, "If Gregory be not to others an apostle, he is one to us, for the seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord."

The services which he rendered to the Liturgy are well known. Completing and putting in order the work of his predecessors, he gave its definite form to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, in that celebrated Sacramentary which remains the most august monument of Liturgical science. It may be said also that he created, and, by anticipation, saved, Christian art, by fixing, long before the persecution of the Iconoclasts, the true doctrine respecting the veneration of images, in that fine letter to the bishop of Marseilles, in which he reproves him for having, in the excess of his zeal against idolatry, broken the statues of the saints, and reminds him that through all antiquity the history of the saints has been pictorically represented, and that painting is to the ignorant what letters are to those who can read.

But his name is specially associated, in the history of Catholic worship, with that branch of religious art which is identified with worship itself, and which is of the utmost moment to the piety as to the innocent joy of the Christian people. The name of _Gregorian Chant_ reminds us of his solicitude for collecting the ancient melodies of the Church, in order to subject them to rules of harmony, and to arrange them according to the requirements of divine worship. He had the glory of giving to Ecclesiastical music that sweet and solemn character which has descended through ages, and to which we must always return after the most prolonged aberrations of frivolity and innovation. He made out himself, in his Antiphonary, the collection of ancient and new chants; he composed the text and melodies of several hymns, which are still used in the Church; he established at Rome the celebrated school of sacred music, to which Gaul, Germany, and England came in turns, trying with more or less success to assimilate their voices to the purity of Italian modulations. And when Gregory was too ill to leave his little chamber and his couch, he gathered about him the boys of the choir, and continued their instructions.

The gout made the last years of his life a kind of martyrdom. The cry of pain rings in many of his letters. "For nearly two years," he wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria, "I have been imprisoned to my bed by such pangs of gout, that I can scarcely rise for two or three hours on great holidays to celebrate solemn mass. And the intensity of the pain compels me immediately to lie down again, that I may be able to endure my torture, by giving free course to my groans. My illness will neither leave me nor kill me. I entreat your holiness to pray for me, that I may be soon delivered, and receive that freedom which you know, and which is the glory of the children of God."

Up to his last moments he continued with unwearied activity to dictate his correspondence, and to concern himself with the interests of the Church. He died on the 12th March, 604, aged nearly fifty-five, in the thirteenth year of his pontificate. He was buried in S. Peter's; and in the epitaph engraved on his tomb, it is said that, "after having conformed all his actions to his doctrine, the consul of God went to enjoy eternal triumph."

S. Hildefonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, in the seventh century, writes thus of him--"He surpassed Antony in holiness, Cyprian in eloquence, and Augustine in wisdom." Yet so great was his humility, that he subscribed himself, "Servant of the servants of God"--a style which his successors in the chair of S. Peter have retained till this day. He was buried in the basilica of S. Peter. His pallium, reliquary, and girdle were preserved as precious memorials.

He had, like so many other great hearts, to struggle with ingratitude, not only during his life, but after his death. Rome was afflicted with a great famine under his successor, Sabinian, who put an end to the charities which Gregory had granted to the poor, on the plea that there was nothing remaining in the treasury of the Church. The enemies of the deceased pope then excited the people against him, calling him prodigal and a waster of the Roman patrimony; and that ungrateful people, whom he had loved and helped so much, began to burn his writings, as if to annihilate or dishonour his memory. But one of the monks, who had followed him from the monastery to the palace, his friend the deacon Peter, interposed. He represented to the incendiaries that these writings were already spread through the entire world, and that it was, besides, sacrilege to burn the work of a holy doctor, upon whom he swore he had himself seen the heavenly dove fluttering. And as if to confirm his oath, after having ended his address, he breathed forth his last sigh, a valiant witness of truth and friendship, and is commemorated by the Church on the same day with S. Gregory.

In the year 826, the body of this holy pontiff was brought into France, and placed in the celebrated monastery of S. Medard, in Soissons. The head was given to archbishop Agesil, and deposited in the abbey of S. Pierre-le-Vif, at Sens, and a bone was given to Rome at the request of pope Urban VIII., in 1628.

In art, S. Gregory is represented as a pope, with a dove hovering over him, or at his ear, and with music in his hand: a frequent subject with Mediæval sculptors and painters was his Mass. According to the legend, as he was about to communicate a woman, and said, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto Eternal Life," he saw her smile, wherefore he refused to give her the host, and questioning her, found that she doubted how what her senses told her was bread could be the flesh of Christ. Then S. Gregory prayed that her eyes might be opened, and instantly the Host was visibly changed into Christ enduring His passion.

S. MURAN, AB.

(7TH CENT.)

[Irish Martyrologies. Authority:--Colgan.]

S. Muran was the son of Feradach, of the noble race of the O'Neills, and was abbot of Fathinis, in the peninsula of Inis-coguin, five miles from Derry, in the north of Ulster. He was famous for his sanctity; and was greatly honoured of old in that part of Ireland, where the church of Fathinis was dedicated in his name; but the particulars of his life have not been handed down.

S. FINA, V.

(A.D. 1253.)

[Venerated in Tuscany, especially at S. Geminiani. Authority:--A Life written by the famous preacher, John de S. Geminiani (1310).]

S. Fina was the daughter of very poor parents at S. Geminiani, in Tuscany. Her name was probably Seraphina, but it is only known by its diminutive of endearment, Fina. The young girl was singularly beautiful, and at the same time exceedingly bashful, ever walking abroad with her soft dark eyes modestly lowered. Whilst yet young she was suddenly paralysed through her whole body, with the exception of her head. For six years she lay on one side upon a hard board, and would not suffer her mother or the neighbours to make her a soft bed, desiring rather to be like our Blessed Lord, stretched on His Cross. The father seems to have been dead, and the poor mother begged for subsistence for herself and daughter. The girl's skin broke, and formed terrible sores, but she bore all her sufferings with sweetness. When left alone, the mice and rats, which infested the miserable hut, would often come and attack her, and horribly mangle her sores, and the poor child being paralysed in all her members was unable to protect herself from them. Yet not a murmur escaped her lips, nor did a cloud darken the serenity of her temper. She was always gentle, loving, and considerate of others.

A new misfortune now befel her. Her mother died suddenly whilst crossing the threshold, on her return from begging, and Fina was left wholly unprovided for. She was thus left perfectly helpless, to the mercy of poor neighbours. But their desultory attention was not like that of a mother, and it soon became evident that she would die through partial neglect. In the midst of her sufferings she had been comforted by being told of S. Gregory the Great and his cruel pains, and the young girl had formed a strong attachment and devotion to him. One night, as she lay alone, uncared for in her hut, the great pontiff and doctor of the Church shone out of the darkness by the side of the pauper cripple, and bade her be of good cheer. "Dear child, on my festival Christ will give thee rest." And it was so. On the feast of S. Gregory she died. When the neighbours lifted the poor little body from the board on which it had lain, lo! that board was covered with white violets exhaling a delicious perfume, and to this day, at S. Geminiani, the peasants call these flowers which bloom about the day of her death, S. Fina's flowers.

March 13.

S. EUPHRASIA, _V. in Egypt, after_ A.D. 410. S. MOCHOEMOG, _Ab. of Liathmor, in Ireland, middle of 7th cent._ S. GERALD, _Ab. and B. of Mayo, in Ireland, circ._ A.D. 700. S. NICEPHORUS, _Patr. of Constantinople_, A.D. 828. S. ANSEWIN, _B. of Camerino, in Italy, circ._ A.D. 840. SS. RUDERICK, _P.M._, AND SALOMON, _M. at Cordova_, A.D. 857. S. ELDRAD, _Ab. of Novalese, in Italy_, A.D. 875. S. KENNOCHA, _V. in Scotland, circ._ A.D. 1007. B. ERIC OR HENRICK, _C. at Perugia_, A.D. 1415.

S. EUPHRASIA, V.

(AFTER A.D. 410.)

[Roman Martyrology, on the authority of Usuardus. By the Greeks on July 25th. Authority:--An ancient Greek life, published by Bollandus, quoted by S. John Damascene (730). There are other, more modern, versions of the ancient life.]

In the reign of Theodosius the First, Antigonus, governor of Lycia, and his wife, Euphrasia, were blessed by God with a little daughter, who was named after her mother. Antigonus and his wife feared God, and served Him with all their hearts, and with one consent resolved to bring up their little child as a bride of Christ. Shortly after Antigonus had formed this resolution he was called out of the world. When the child was five years old, the emperor, who had taken the little girl under his protection, proposed to the mother that she should be given in marriage to the son of a wealthy senator, in accordance with the custom of the times, to betroth maidens of high rank from infancy. The mother consented, and received the betrothal presents from the parents of the boy, and the marriage was arranged to take place as soon as the maiden was of a sufficient age. But in the meantime, some changes in the imperial household having thrown Euphrasia, the mother, out of favour, she retired into Egypt with her daughter, under pretext of visiting her relatives, and whilst there she travelled into Upper Egypt, and saw with admiration and respect the holy lives of the solitaries who inhabited the deserts of the Thebaid.

In the Thebaid was a convent of a hundred holy women, and the widow found great delight and exceeding profit in visiting it frequently,[42] taking with her each time her little child, who was then aged seven. The mother superior was warmly attached to the beautiful girl, and one day drawing the child towards her, before her mother, asked Euphrasia if she loved her. "That do I," answered the child, looking up into her face. "Well, will you come and live with us, then?" enquired the superior, playfully. "I would," replied Euphrasia, "if I did not think it would trouble my mother." "And now, my pet," said the superior, "which do you love best, your little husband or us sisters." "I have never seen my little husband, nor has my little husband ever seen me, so we cannot love each other much," answered the child; "but I do love you sisters very much, because I know you. Which do you love best, my little husband or me?" "Oh," said the nun, "I love you much the best; but I love Jesus Christ above all." "So do I," said the child, "I love you very much, but I love Jesus Christ best."

[42] She gave the sisters, we are told, candles and incense for their altar, and oil for their oratory lamp, but gold they would not receive.

The mother, Euphrasia, looked on smiling, and with tears in her eyes, as this simple conversation, which has been blown down to us through more than fifteen centuries, passed between the old nun and the child. Then she took her child's hand to lead her away. But the young Euphrasia implored her mother to let her remain, and she, supposing this was a mere infantine caprice, consented, thinking that she would soon weary of the cloister life. But it was not so. The child clung to the sisters, in spite of every hardship and trial inflicted on her to persuade her to go. She was told she must fast, and learn the Psalter by heart, if she remained, and sleep on the hard ground. She was ready for all, rather than depart. Then the superior said to the mother, "Leave the little girl with us, for the grace of God is working in her heart. Your piety and that of Antigonus have opened to her the most perfect way." Then Euphrasia, the mother, took her child in her arms, and going before an image of our Blessed Lord, she held up the little girl, and said, weeping, "My Lord Jesus Christ, receive this child into Thy protection, since she desires Thee only, and devotes herself to Thy service alone." And she blessed her daughter, saying, "May the Lord, who made the mountains so strong that they cannot be moved, confirm thee in His holy fear." But when the parting came, she burst into a flood of tears, and the whole community wept with her. A few days after, the superior brought the young Euphrasia into the chapel, and vested her in the religious habit, and kneeling down by the tiny novice, she prayed, "O King of ages, finish in this child the work of sanctification that Thou hast begun. Give her grace to follow in all things Thy holy will, and to place in Thee her hope and confidence."

When her mother saw her in her austere habit, she asked her if she were content. "Oh, mother!" cried the child, "It is my marriage garment, given me on my espousals to Jesus." "May He, sweet child, make thee worthy of His love," said the mother.

Years passed away, and the little flower grew up and bloomed in the cool shade of the cloister, and her mother had rejoined Antigonus in bliss, when the emperor wrote to Euphrasia to order her instantly to return to Constantinople and marry the young man to whom he had betrothed her. She was of imperial blood, and Theodosius considered that, on the death of her mother, the charge of Euphrasia, who was now an heiress and very wealthy, devolved on him. She replied, imploring him to allow her to follow her vocation, and requested him to dispose of all her property for the benefit of the poor. Euphrasia was then aged twelve. Theodosius, satisfied that she was in earnest, obeyed her request, and troubled her no more about the marriage. But now arrived a critical time of life, when youthful spirits and passions were in effervesence, and she was cruelly tormented with vain imaginations and temptations to go forth into that wondrous world of which she knew so little, but which, clothed in the rainbow tints of infantine remembrance, allured her fancy. To divert her attention, and at the same time to prove her obedience, the superior one day pointed to a great heap of stones, and bade her carry them to the top of a little sand hill, some distance off. Euphrasia obeyed cheerfully, toiling at removing the stones under the hot sun, one by one, to the place indicated. Then she came joyously to the superior, and signified to her that the task was accomplished. "Bring them all back again," said the mother superior. And the young nun hasted to obey. Next day she presented herself before the superior once more. "I have changed my mind," said the mother; "take the stones back again to the top of the mound." And thirty times did she make Euphrasia carry them back; and each time was she obeyed with cheerfulness.