Pope Gregory the Great and saving civilisation

The monk and Pope, Saint Gregory the Great, who died in 604 AD, was one of the more remarkable men in European history. In fact it is not an understatement that Gregory in many ways, inaugurated the true beginning of Western Civilisation. It was under Gregory's leadership that the Church began the long project of restoration within Europe; once the Roman empire, corrupt and rotten, disintegrated and became subsumed into 3 Germanic kingdoms. Without the Church and its active involvement in providing leadership during 2 centuries of change and reconstitution; society might well have slid into a dark age. It didn't and the Church is responsible for that.

Gregory is always portrayed as someone who was not an 'intellectual' [a word that a smart man would find insulting anyways]; or not a deep philosopher [ibid]. This is a positive. He was a monk and a man of the world – practical, realistic, sober, faithful, active, incisive, detailed. Yet in spite of illness, travails, duties and sundry activities, he possessed the skills to complete Augustine's theoretical Christianization of Plato, and give it to the public in a series of writings they could comprehend. Thus the ancient world became a part of the new.

Gregory's other achievements include:

-Author of 850 letters, preserved in 14 books on a wide range of topics from the theological to the secular.

-Initiated the custom of saying “God bless you”. This goes back to Gregory and the horrific plagues of Rome during the late 6^th century. The plague always ended in a spasm of sneezing or yawning, so Pope Gregory ordered that “God bless you” should be said to those who sneeze, and the blessing of the Sign of the Cross should be put on the mouths of those who yawned.

-Gregory fought and defeated the heresy of Nestorius in the East, Monophysitism in Egypt, Arianism in Spain, and converted the pagan Lombards in Italy. He also sent Augustine to England and had the British isles converted before he died, mainly through the conversion of the English King Ethelbert of Kent.

-He persuaded Queen Brunhilde of Austrasia to reform the French clergy along Papal-Benedictine lines [Gregory was a Benedictine monk]. This did much to restore and enhance Church prestige and productivity within Gaul and the Lowlands.

-Gregory sent out Church aid, food, money and support throughout southern Italy, Sicily, Africa, France and Illyricum supporting and indeed saving Christendom in those areas.

-He compiled a volume of the prayers, or collects, said in the Mass, and this he called the Sacramentary.

-Gregory created a school of chanters, the famous schola cantorum, and the still sung polyphonic Gregorian chant – a musical innovation found nowhere else.

He was an active, intelligent, committed, honest man of great faith, practicality, reason and common sense intellect. He is certainly one of the founding fathers of the basis of modern European civilisation.

More detail can be found at: http://catholicism.org/gregory-great.html