to use the title of oecumenical bishop, and before a century had passed the popes followed their example.
Gregory saw that the patriarchs of Constantinople were in danger of sinking into mere officials of the State, for with all their lofty position they were in the power of the imperial Court. But the tone in which he addressed them was always distinct from that which he employed towards the lay officials of the Empire. From the beginning of his pontificate he had carefully cultivated relations with the exarchs of Ravenna and of Africa, the praetor of Sicily, the dukes of Naples and Sardinia, the praefect of Illyria, the proconsul of Dalmatia, and with lesser officials rural and urban. His constant letters shew how closely he mingled in their concerns, watched their conduct, approved their industry, advised on their political action, intervened on their behalf or against them at Constantinople. Many of the officials were his close friends; and the Emperor, in spite of the divergence between them, did not cease to give heed to the counsels of one whom he knew to be a wise and honest man.
The maintenance of the imperial power in Italy indeed depended not a little on the great pope, who yet by his incessant and widespread activity was preparing the way of the ecclesiastical power which should succeed it in the rule of the peninsula. The subdeacon who was his agent at Ravenna, and those who administered the property of the Church in the Campagna or in Sicily, the bishops themselves all over the Empire, reported to Rome, and their words were not without effect, and in all the advice which issued from this information Gregory pressed without faltering the authority of the Church: the pope was above the exarch, the Church above the State: if the civil law was invoked to protect the weak, to guide the rulers, to secure the rights of all Christian men, there was behind it the supreme sanction of the law of the Church. It was natural indeed that they should not be distinguished: a wrong against man was a wrong against God. It did not matter whether it was the oppression of a peasant or the pillage of a monastery: iniquity, it was the perpetual cry of the great pontiff, should not go unpunished. And, in a corresponding view to his attitude towards civil justice, Gregory insisted on the privileges of clergy in the law courts; and in the civil courts he is found placing representatives of his own beside the lay judges. Outside the law there were still a wide sphere in which the aid of the State was demanded on behalf of the Church. Governors would bring back schismatics, was congratulated on their victories over heathen, were urged to act against heretics, and to protect and support those who had returned to the faith.
On the other hand he no doubt set plain limits, in his own mind, to his sphere of action and that of the bishops. He constantly told the Italian bishops to observe the rights of the lay courts, not to interfere in the things of the world save when the interests of the poor demanded
