He secured his throne by the murder of Mauricius, whose six sons had been first cruelly executed before their father's eyes. He afterwards put to death the empress Constantina and her three daughters, who had been lured out of the asylum of a church under a promise of safety. Numerous persons of all ranks and in various parts of the empire are also said to have been put to death with unusual cruelty. To Phocas and his consort Leontia, who is spoken of as little better than her husband, Gregory wrote congratulatory letters in a style of flattery beyond even what was usual with him in addressing great potentates (Ep. xi. ind. vi. 38, 45. 46). His motive was doubtless largely the hope of obtaining from the new powers the support which Mauricius had not accorded him in his dispute with the Eastern patriarch. This motive appears plainly in one of his letters to Leontia, to whom, rather than to the emperor, with characteristic tact, he intimates his hopes of support to the church of St. Peter, endeavouring to work upon her religious fears.
Gregory lived only 16 months after the accession of Phocas, dying after protracted suffering from gout on Mar. 12, 604. He was buried in the basilica of St. Peter.
Immediately after his death a famine occurred, which the starving multitude attributed to his prodigal expenditure, and his library was only saved from destruction by the interposition of the archdeacon Peter.
The pontificate of Gregory the Great is rightly regarded as second to none in its influence on the future form of Western Christianity. He lived in the period of transition from Christendom under imperial rule to the medieval papacy, and he laid or consolidated the foundation of the latter. He advanced, indeed, no claims to authority beyond what had been asserted by his predecessors; yet the consistency, firmness, conscientious zeal, as well as address and judgment, with which he maintained it, and the waning of the power of the Eastern empire, left him virtual ruler of Rome and the sole power to whom the Western church turned for support, and whom the Christianized barbarians, founders of the new kingdom of Europe, regarded with reverence. Thus he paved the way for the system of papal absolutism that culminated under Gregory VII. and Innocent III.
As a writer he was intellectually eminent; and deserves his place among the doctors of the church, though his learning and mental attitude were those of his age. As a critic, an expositor, an original thinker, he may not stand high; he knew neither Greek nor Hebrew, and had no deep acquaintance with the Christian Fathers; literature for its own sake he set little store by; classical literature, as being heathen, he repudiated. Yet as a clear and powerful exponent of the received orthodox doctrine, especially in its practical aspect, as well as of the system of hagiology, demonology, and monastic asceticism, which then formed part of the religion of Christendom, he spoke with a loud and influential voice to many ages after his own, and contributed more than any one person to fix the form and tone of medieval religious thought.
He was also influential as a preacher, and no less famous for his influence on the music and liturgy of the church; whence he is called "magister caeremoniarum." To cultivate church singing he instituted a song-school in Rome, called Orphanotrophium, the name of which implies also a charitable purpose. Of it, John the deacon, after speaking of the cento of antiphons which Gregory had carefully compiled, says: "He founded a school of singers, endowed it with some farms, and built for it two habitations, one under the steps of the basilica of St. Peter the Apostle, the other under the houses of the Lateran Palace. There to the present day his couch on which he used to recline when singing, and his whip with which he menaced the boys, together with his original antiphonary, are preserved with fitting reverence" (Vit. Greg. ii. 6). It is generally alleged that, whereas St. Ambrose had in the latter part of the 4th cent. introduced at Milan the four authentic modes or scales, called, after those of the ancient Greek music, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixo-Lydian, St. Gregory added to them the four plagal, or subsidiary, modes called Hypo-Dorian, Hypo-Phrygian, Hypo-Lydian, and Hypo-Mixo-Lydian, thus enlarging the allowed range of ecclesiastical melody.
His Septiform litany was so called from being appointed by him to be sung by the inhabitants of Rome divided into seven companies, viz. of clergy, laymen, monks, virgins, matrons, widows, and of poor people and children. These, starting from 7 different churches, were to chant through the streets of Rome, and meet for common supplication in the church of the Blessed Virgin. He also appointed "the stations"—churches at which were to be held solemn services in Lent and at the four great festivals; visiting the churches in person, and being received with stately ceremonial.
His extant works of undoubted genuineness are: (1) Expositio in beatum Job, seu Moralium lib. xxxv. In this celebrated work (begun at Constantinople before he was pope and finished afterwards) "the book of Job is expounded in a threefold manner, according to its historic, its moral, and its allegorical meaning. The moral interpretation may still be read with profit, though rather for the loftiness and purity of its tone than for the justness of the exposition." As to the allegorical interpretation, "names of persons, numbers, words, even syllables, are made pregnant with all kinds of mysterious meanings" (Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity). (2) Libri duo in Exechielem: viz. 22 homilies on Ezekiel, delivered at Rome during its siege by Agilulph. (3) Libri duo in Evangelia: viz. 40 homilies on the gospels for the day, preached at various times. (4) Liber Regulae Pastoralis, in 4 parts; a treatise on the pastoral office, addressed to a bp. John to explain and justify the writer's former reluctance to undertake the burden of the popedom. This work was long held in the highest esteem. Leander of Seville circulated it in Spain; the emperor Mauricius had it translated into Greek; Alfred the Great translated it into English; a succession of synods in Gaul enjoined a knowledge of it on all bishops; and Hincmar, archbp. of Rheims in the 9th cent.,
