sufficiently astounding results. As Milman has remarked, “It may safely be said that, according to Gregory's licence of interpretation, there is nothing which might not be found in any book ever written.” In practical homiletics, however, he is very often just and profound as well as high-toned; but it would be too much to say that he was superior to the prejudices of his time; in particular his preference for the monastic and ascetic forms of the Christian life is carried to a height which a wider observation of the conditions of human usefulness and happiness will never cease to regard as excessive. His Dialogues, which have been translated into Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and even Arabic, describe the most astonishing miracles with an artless simplicity which, as suggestive of entire belief, is certainly interesting to the student; yet it is difficult (as Gibbon has pointed out) to free the lavish dispenser of miraculous filings from the chains of St Peter from the suspicion of some degree of pious insincerity. The Letters are, as might be expected, of great importance from the light they throw upon the history of those times.
The complete editions of the works of this great father of the Latin Church have been, as was to be expected, numerous. The earliest was that of Lyons (1516), which was rapidly followed by those of Paris (1518–39), Basel (1551), and Rome (1588). The best edition is the Benedictine (Paris, 1705), in 4 vols. fol., reprinted at Venice (1768–76), in 17 vols. 4to, and in Migne's Patrology, vol. Ixxv.–lxxix. See Wiggers, De Gregorio Magno (1838–40); Marggraf, De Greg. M. Vita (1844); Lau, Gregor. d. Grosse nach s. Leben u. Lehre dargestellt (1845); Pfahler, Gregor der Grosse u. seine Zeit (1852); and Baxmann, Politik der Päpste von Gregor I. bis Gregor VII. (1868–69). There is a convenient edition of the Cura Pastoralis by Westhoff (1860).
GREGORY II., St, pope from 715 or 716 to 731, succeeded Constantine I., his election being variously dated May 19, 715, and March 21, 716. Having, it is said, bought off the Lombards for thirty pounds of gold, he used the tranquillity thus obtained for vigorous missionary effort in Germany, and for strengthening the papal authority in the churches of England and Ireland. By excommunicating Leo the Isaurian, he prepared the way for a long series of revolts and civil wars, which tended greatly to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes. He died in 731, and subsequently attained the honour of canonization, February 13th being the day consecrated to his memory in the Martyrology.
GREGORY III., St, pope from 731 to 741, a Syrian by birth, succeeded Gregory II. in March 731. His pontificate, like that of his predecessor, was disturbed by the iconoclastic controversy, in which he vainly invoked the intervention of Charles Martel. During his reign also it was that Boniface in Germany, on whom he conferred the pallium, Wilibald in Bohemia, and Bede in England carried on their most successful missionary labours. He died 29th November 741, and was succeeded by Zacharias I.
GREGORY IV., pope from 827 to 844, was chosen to succeed Valentinus in December 827, on which occasion he recognized the supremacy of the Frankish emperor in the most unequivocal manner. His name is chiefly associated with the quarrels between Lothaire and Louis the Debonaire, in which he espoused the cause of the former, for whom, in the Campus Mendacii, as it is usually called (833), he secured by his treachery a temporary advantage. The institution of the feast of All Saints is usually attributed to this pope. He died January 25, 844, and was succeeded by Sergius II.
GREGORY V., pope from 996 to 999, a grandson of the emperor Otho the Great, succeeded John XV. when only twenty-four years of age, and until the council of Pavia (997) had a rival in the person of the antipope John XVI., whom the people of Rome in revolt against the will of the youthful emperor Otho III., Gregory's cousin, had chosen. The most memorable acts of his pontificate were those arising out of the contumacy of the French king, Robert, who was ultimately brought to submission by the rigorous infliction of a sentence of excommunication. He died suddenly, and not without suspicion of foul play, 18th February 999. His successor was Silvester II.
GREGORY VI., pope from 1044 to 1046, who as Johannes Gratianus had earned a high reputation for learning and probity, succeeded Benedict IX., having bought off the antipopes Sylvester III. and John XX. In a council held by the emperor Henry III. at Sutri, in 1046, he was accused of simony, and his election was found to have been informal. This led to his degradation, and was followed by his withdrawal into Germany, where he died in the following year (1047). He was succeeded by Clement II.