Читать книгу Crises in the History of the Papacy. Lives and Legacy of the Most Influential Popes Who Shaped the Development & History of Church онлайн

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To compress his work into a chapter is impossible; one can only give imperfect summaries and a few significant details. He had secretaries, of course, and we are apt to forget that the art of shorthand writing, which was perfectly developed by the Romans, had not yet been lost in the night of the Middle Ages. Yet every letter has the stamp of Gregory's personality, and we recognize a mind of wonderful range and power.

His episcopal work in Rome alone might have contented another man. Soon after his election he wrote a long letter on the duties and qualifications of a bishop, which, in the shape of a treatise entitled The Book of Pastoral Rule, inspired for centuries the better bishops of Europe. His palace was monastic in its severity. He discharged from his service, in Rome and abroad, the hosts of laymen his predecessors had employed, and replaced them with monks and clerics: incidentally turning into monks and clerics many men who did not adorn the holy state. He said mass daily, and used at times to go on horseback to some appointed chapel in the city, where the people gathered to hear his sermons on the gospels or on Ezekiel. Every shade of simony, every pretext for ordination, except religious zeal, he sternly suppressed. When he found that men were made deacons for their fine voices, he forbade deacons to sing any part of the mass except the Gospel, and he made other changes in the liturgy and encouraged the improvement of the chant. Modern criticism does not admit the Sacramentary and the Antiphonary which later ages ascribed to him, but he seems to have given such impulse to reform that the perfected liturgy and chant of a later date were attributed to him.80