Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/188

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.

GREGORY VII., St, one of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs, was born about the year 1015 at Soana or Saona, a small town in Tuscany, where his father, Bonic or Bonizon, is said to have followed the trade of a carpenter. His own name, Hildebrand or Hellebrand, is suggestive of a German extraction; but of his remoter ancestry nothing is recorded. His youth was passed at Rome in the monastery of St Mary on the Aventine, where a relative was at that time prior; here the archpriest Johannes Gratianus (afterwards Gregory VI.) was one of his instructors, and the youthful scholar early attracted the attention of such visitors as Laurentius of Amalfi and Odilon of Clugny. There is some reason to believe that, after passing his novitiate in Rome, Hildebrand removed for some years to the great Burgundian cloister, at that time under the charge of the last-named ecclesiastic; but all the earlier years of his life are involved in considerable obscurity. In 1046 he became one of the chaplains of the newly elected pope, Gregory VI., whom he shortly afterwards accompanied into his German exile; and on the death of that pontiff, some two years later, he retired to Clugny, where his learning and sanctity made a deep impression, and where, according to some accounts, he was ultimately promoted to the office of prior. As a monk of Clugny he appears to have oftener than once visited the imperial court for the transaction of ecclesiastical business; and in 1049 he is said in a very special way to have come under the notice of Bruno, bishop of Toul, then on his way to Rome to take possession of the chair of St Peter, which he occupied for some years under the title of Leo IX. It was at Hildebrand's instance that Bruno, who had been nominated by the emperor merely, consented to refrain from assuming the pontifical vestments, and to present himself to the Romans in the garb of a simple pilgrim, until he should have been elected in a more regular manner. The ascendency which Hildebrand had thus acquired over this pope he never afterwards lost; in 1050 he became cardinal subdeacon, and in following years he was entrusted with various missions of great importance, taking also a prominent part in the important synods of Rheims and Mainz, as well as in those of Rome. On the death of Leo IX. in 1054 the Roman people had signified a desire that the subdeacon should succeed him; this honour and responsibility however Hildebrand declined; but he was one of three legates who went to Germany to consult with the emperor about the choice of a successor. The negotiations, which lasted eleven months, ultimately issued in the election of Gebhard of Eichstadt, a relative of the emperor, who up to that time had followed a distinctly antipapal policy, but who, immediately after his reception and consecration at Rome as Victor II. (13th April 1055), became as entirely a tool in the hand of Hildebrand as Leo had been. It was during this pontificate that Hildebrand, as papal legate, attended the French synods held for the purpose of repressing the heresy of Berengarius. On the election of Pope Stephen IX. (X.), Hildebrand was again sent to Germany to defend the choice before the empress Agnes; in this mission, which was ultimately successful, several months were spent. Again, in 1058, he succeeded in defeating the hostile party of Benedict X. and in securing the tiara for Nicholas II.; and once more, in 1061, he successfully laboured for the election of Alexander II. to the papal