Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/55

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 33 as the palladium of Christian Rome, The pilgrims of the East and West resorted to the holy threshold ; but the shrines of the apostles were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors ; and it was not without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the saints ; and those who from the purest motives presumed to disturb the repose of the sanctuary were affrighted by visions or punished with sudden death. The un- reasonable request of an empress, who wished to deprive the Romans of their sacred treasure, the head of St. Paul, was rejected with the deepest abhorrence ; and the pope asserted, most probably with truth, that a linen which had been sancti- fied in the neighbourhood of his body, or the filings of his chain, which it was sometimes easy and sometimes impossible to obtain, possessed an equal degree of miraculous virtue. ~- But the power as well as virtue of the apostles resided with living energy in the breast of their successors ; and the chair of St. Peter was filled under the reign of Maurice by the first and greatest of the name of Gregory."^ His grandfather Felix had ^irth^ana himself been pope, and, as the bishops were already bound by "JfRomim the law of celibacy, his consecration must have been preceded by the death of his wife. The parents of Gregory, Sylvia and Gordian, were the noblest of the senate and the most pious of the church of Rome ; his female relations were numbered among the saints and virgins ; and his own figure with those of his father and mother were represented near three hundred years in a family portrait,'* which he offered to the monastery '^'^ Gregor. 1. iii. epist. 24, indict. 12, &c. From the epistles of Gregory, and the viiith volume of the Annals of Baronius, the pious reader may collect the particles of holy iron which were inserted in keys or crosses of gold and distributed in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Constantinople, and Egypt. The pontifical smith who handled the file must have understood the miracles which it was in his own power to operate or withhold : a circumstance which abates the superstition of Gregory at the expense of his veracity. ^ Besides the epistles of Gregory himself which are methodized by Dupin (Bibliotheque EccWs. tom. v. p. 103-126), we have three Lives of the pope : the two first written in the viiith and ixth centuries (de Triplici Vita St. Greg. Preface to the ivth volume of the Benedictine edition) by the deacons Paul (p. i-i8) and John (p. 19-188), and containing much original, though doubtful, evidence; the third, a long and laboured compilation by the Benedictine editors (p. 199-305). The Annals of Baronius are a copious but partial history. His papal prejudices are tempered by the good sense of Fleury (Hist. Eccl^s. tom. viii.), and his chronology has been rectified by the criticism of Pagi and Muratori. [Paul's life of Gregory is a compilation from the Hist. Eccles. of Bede and Gregory's own works. For the methodization of Gregory's Epistles see Appendix i.] * John the deacon has described them like an eye-witness (1. iv. c. 83, 84) ; and his description is illustrated by Angelo Rocca, a Roman antiquary (St. Greg. VOL. V. 3