Gregory left Constantinople for Rome in 585, returning to his monastery on the
Caelian Hill. Gregory was elected by
acclamation to succeed Pelagius II in 590, when the latter died of the
plague spreading through the city. In texts of all genres, especially those produced in his first year as pope, Gregory bemoaned the burden of office and mourned the loss of the undisturbed life of prayer he had once enjoyed as a monk. When he became pope in 590, among his first acts was writing a series of letters disavowing any ambition to the throne of Peter and praising the contemplative life of the monks. At that time, for various reasons, the
Holy See had not exerted effective leadership in the West since the pontificate of
Gelasius I. The episcopacy in
Gaul was drawn from the great territorial families, and identified with them: the parochial horizon of Gregory's contemporary,
Gregory of Tours, may be considered typical; in
Visigothic Spain the
bishops had little contact with Rome; in Italy the territories which had
de facto fallen under the administration of the papacy were beset by the violent
Lombard dukes and the rivalry of the Byzantines in the
Exarchate of Ravenna and in the south. Pope Gregory had strong convictions on missions: "Almighty God places
good men in authority that He may impart through them the gifts of
His mercy to their subjects. And this we find to be the case with the
British over whom you have been appointed to rule, that through the blessings bestowed on you the blessings of
heaven might be bestowed on your people also." He is credited with re-energizing the Church's missionary work among the non-Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is most famous for sending a mission, often called the
Gregorian mission, under Augustine of Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew's, where he had possibly succeeded Gregory, to
evangelize the pagan
Anglo-Saxons of Britain. It seems that the pope had never forgotten the Anglo-Saxon
slaves whom he had once seen in the Roman Forum. The mission was successful, and it was from England that missionaries later set out for the
Netherlands and
Germany. The preaching of non-
heretical Christian faith and the elimination of all deviations from it was a key element in Gregory's worldview, and it constituted one of the major continuing policies of his pontificate. Pope Gregory the Great urged his followers on the
value of bathing as a bodily need. Pope Gregory also influenced significantly Catholic teaching on the Jews. Based on the writings of St Paul and
St Augustine of Hippo, but also existing Roman law,
he declared Jews should be protected by Christians and allowed the practise of Judaism unharmed. In his letter to the bishop of Palermo he laid out that just as Jews were not allowed to pursue more freedoms than Roman law allowed their position, so Christians were not allowed to infringe the rights that Jews had. This letter, which started with the phrase
Sicut Judaeis ("Just as the Jews"), became later the template for papal protective letters for the Jews in the later Middle Ages. Importantly, though he also encouraged bishops to convert the Jews, Pope Gregory insisted that Jews should not be forced to convert or physically harmed. "I have frequently charged you ... to act as my representative ... to relieve the poor in their distress" and "I hold the office of steward to the property of the poor". In Gregory's time, the Church in Rome received donations of many different kinds:
consumables such as food and clothing; investment property: real estate and works of art; and
capital goods, or
revenue-generating property, such as the
Sicilian latifundia, or agricultural estates. The Church already had a system for circulating the consumables to the poor: associated with each of the main city churches was a deacon. He was given a building from which the poor could apply for assistance at any time. The circumstances in which Gregory became pope in 590 were of ruination. The Lombards held the greater part of Italy. Their depredations had brought the economy to a standstill. They camped nearly at the gates of Rome. The city itself was crowded with refugees from all walks of life, who lived in the streets and had few of the necessities of life. The seat of government was far from Rome in
Constantinople and appeared unable to undertake the relief of Italy. '', , attributed to Diego de la Cruz, oil and gold on panel (
Philadelphia Museum of Art) In 590, Gregory could not wait for Constantinople any longer. He organized the resources of the church into an administration for general relief. In doing so, he evidenced a talent and intuitive understanding of the principles of
accounting, which was not to be invented for centuries. The church already had basic accounting documents: every
expense was recorded in
journals called
regesta, "lists" of amounts, recipients and circumstances. Revenue was recorded in
polyptici, "
books". Many of these polyptici were
ledgers recording the operating expenses of the church and the
assets, the
patrimonia. A central papal administration, the
notarii, under a chief, the
primicerius notariorum, kept the ledgers and issued
brevia patrimonii, or lists of property for which each
rector was responsible. Gregory began by aggressively requiring his churchmen to seek out and relieve needy persons and reprimanded them if they did not. In a letter to a subordinate in
Sicily he wrote: "I asked you most of all to take care of the poor. And if you knew of people in poverty, you should have pointed them out ... I desire that you give the woman, Pateria, forty
solidi for the children's shoes and forty bushels of grain". Soon he was replacing administrators who would not cooperate with those who would and at the same time adding more in a build-up to a great plan that he had in mind. He understood that expenses must be matched by income. To pay for his increased expenses he liquidated the investment property and paid the expenses in cash according to a budget recorded in the polyptici. The churchmen were paid four times a year and also personally given a golden coin for their trouble. Money, however, was no substitute for food in a city that was on the brink of famine. The church now owned between of revenue-generating farmland divided into large sections called . It produced goods of all kinds, which were sold, but Gregory intervened and had the goods shipped to Rome for distribution in the . He gave orders to step up production, set quotas and put an administrative structure in place to carry it out. At the bottom was the who produced the goods. Some were or owned slaves. He turned over part of his produce to a from whom he leased the land. The latter reported to an , who reported to a , who reported to a . Grain, wine, cheese, meat, fish, and oil began to arrive at Rome in large quantities, where it was given away for nothing as alms. Distributions to qualified persons were monthly. However, a certain proportion of the population lived in the streets or were too ill or infirm to pick up their monthly food supply. Gregory sent out a small army of charitable persons, mainly monks, every morning with prepared food to them. It is said that he would not dine until the
indigent were fed. When he did dine he shared the family table, which he had saved (and which still exists), with 12 indigent guests. To the needy living in wealthy homes he sent meals he had cooked with his own hands as gifts to spare them the indignity of receiving
charity. Hearing of the death of an indigent in a back room, he was depressed for days, entertaining for a time the conceit that he had failed in his duty and was a
murderer. Such charitable deeds were viewed favourably by the Roman people. They now looked to the papacy for government, ignoring the state at Constantinople. The office of urban prefect went without candidates. ==Works==