The whole of the fifth chapter, beginning at the third verse, is explained first in a spiritual sense, a few parts in an allegorical, and a great many He explains part of the sixth chapter, from verse 27, and the whole of the seventh and eighth chapters. In the course of this exposition, from verse 11, to the end of the eighth chapter, he speaks at length on the 1 THE BOOKS OF THE MORALS OF ST. GREGORY THE POPE, OR AN EXPOSITION ON THE BOOK OF BLESSED JOB. THE EPISTLE, Wherein he explains the time, occasion, division, plan, and the method of discourse and of interpretation pursued in his work. To the Most Devout and Holy Brother, my fellow Bishop 1. WHEN I knew you long since at Constantinople, my most blessed brother, at the time that I was kept there by the • Leander, who is honoured as a Saint and Doctor in Spain, was a native of Carthagena; his father Severianus was brother in law to Theodoric king of the Ostrogoths. He early deveted himself to a monastic life, and after a long continuance in it he was made Bishop of Seville, where he maintained the Faith against the Arianism which then prevailed, and received Herminigild, who reigned there under his father Liuvigild, into the Church. He went on an embassy to the Emperor Tiberius as presently stated, after which he returned to Spain, but was banished for a time by Liuvigild, who, however, on his deathbed appointed him tutor to his son Recared, whom he converted from Arianism, and with bis assistance established the Catholic Faith amongst the Wisigoths and Suevi. He took part (and perhaps presided, see Baronius An. 689. A. ix. and xliv. Boll. Act. Sanct. Ap. xiii. p. 277.) in the third Council of Toledo, in which the Goths were united B to the Catbolic Church, A.D. 589. He died in 595. He wrote a rule for Virgins to his sister Florentina, which is extant in Holstein's Codex Regularum, a Homily of his, on the conversion of the Goths, accompanies the acts of the Synod of Toledo, and the Mozarabic Missal is said by some to be founded on one arranged by him; his other works are lost. See Cave, Hist. Lit. an. 585. also the Isidoriana of Arevalus in his edition of St. Isidore, Rome 1797. There are three epistles of St. Gregory to Leander. Lib. i. Ep. 43. Lib. v. Ep. 49. and Lib. ix. 121. accompanying the Pallium. His brother Fulgentius, Bp. of Carthagena and Eceja, Bolland. Jan. xiv. p. 971. and his sister Florentina, Ap. xiv. and Jun xx. who devoted herself to a life of Virginity, are locally honoured as Saints. He was succeeded in the See of Seville (then called Hispalis,) by his younger brother St. Isidore. 2 Secular life of St. Gregory. His retirement. EP. To affairs of the Apostolical See, and that you had been brought thither by an embassage, with which you were charged, on counts touching the faith of the Wisigoths, I then detailed in your cars all that displeased me in myself, since for late and long I declined the grace of conversion, and after that I had been inspired with an heavenly affection I thought it better to be still shrouded in the secular habit. For though I had now disclosed to me what I should seek of the love of things eternal, yet long-established custom had so cast its chains upon me, that I could not change my outward habit: I animus and while my purpose' still compelled me to engage in the service of this world as it were in semblance only, many influences began to spring up against me from caring for this same world, so that the tie which kept me to it was now no longer in semblance only, but what is more serious, in my own mind. At length being anxious to avoid all these inconveniences, I sought the haven of the monastery, and having left all that is of the world, as at that time I vainly Responsa, these were all matters concerning the Roman See, that were brought under the notice of the Emperor, and the person intrusted with them was entitled Apocrisiarius. He was the Pope's Ambassador at the Imperial Court with varying powers. He was one of the Cardinal Deacons, for which reason S. Greg. on being appointed to this office, was ordained Deacon, vide Du Cange in Voce Apocrisiarius; also Bingham Antiq. b. iii. c. xiii. s. 6. where the office is correctly described. vide Baronius Ann. tom. x. p. 378. (an. 683. xii. xiii.) Gibbon speaks of St. Gregory's services at the Imperial Court thus; "As soon as he had received the character of Deacon, Gregory was sent to reside at the Imperial Court, and he boldly assumed in the name of St. Peter a tone of independent dignity which would have been criminal and dangerous in the most illustrious layman of the Empire." See his history o.xlv.Lond. 1813. t. viii. p.164. also p.143. Herminigild was deposed by Liuvi. gild, chiefly, it seems, for embracing the Catholic Faith. The contemporary writers however, both St. Gregory of Tours and St. Isidore, consider him to have acted wrongly toward his father. Baronius indeed says that Leander went on an embassy to ask help for him from the Emperor, which he obtained, but the Greek officers betrayed his cause, An ancient Roman Breviary however says he went to Constantinople to attend a Council, 'Pro confirmandis capitulis Sanctæ Trinitatis,'to confirm the articles on the Holy Trinity. This he may have dore previously, the fifth General Council being A.D. 553. Herminigild was unsuccessful, and obliged to leave bis kingdom. He found means however to return into Spain, and maintained himself by the help of the Greeks against his father, and it is at this time that his conduct in attempting a surprise is severely blamed by St. Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. vi. 43. He was at last overpowered, and taken prisoner. St. Gregory of Rome, Dial. iii. 31. says, that he was then urged by his father to communicate with an rian Bishop, and, after resisting alike promises and threats, was put to death. He also mentions a supernatural light that surrounded his body. These circumstances are not noticed by St. Isidote or St. Greg. of Tours. Liuvigild however very soon after acknowledged privately the true faith, and recalled Leander, and placed his son and successor Recared under his direction. Herminigild is honoured as a Martyr by the Latin Church, Apr. 13. See Isidoriana caps. xviii. and lxxxix. S. Isid. Hist. Goth. c. 49. The account of Mariana is more circumstantial, but seemspartly imaginary. His Ordination, Legation, and Pastoral Charge. 3 believed, I came out naked from the shipwreck of human LEAND. life. For as the vessel that is negligently moored, is very often (when the storm waxes violent) tossed by the water out of its shelter on the safest shore, so under the cloak of the Ecclesiastical office, I found myself plunged on a sudden in a sea of secular matters, and because I had not held fast the tranquillity of the monastery when in possession, I learnt by losing it, how closely it should have been held. For whereas the virtue of obedience was set against my own inclination to make me take the charge of ministering at the holy Altar, I was led to undertake that upon the grounds of the Church requiring it', which, if it might be done with impunity, sub EeI should get quit of by a second time withdrawing myself; colore and subsequently notwithstanding my unwillingness and reluctance, at the very time when the ministry of the Altar was a heavy weight, the further burden of the Pastoral charge was fastened on me, which I now find so much the more difficulty in bearing, as I feel myself to be unequal to it, and as I cannot take breath in any comfortable assurance in myself. For because, now that the end of the world is at hand', the times are disturbed by reason of the multiplied He was sent to Constantinople as Apocrisiarius immediately upon his ordination, Rar. an. 583. The Benedictive Biographer places the event earlier, in 578. or 579. life. 1. i. c. 5. op. t. iv. p.211. There is an allusion to this in the 'Pastoral Rule' which begins thus,“ You blame me, most dear brother, with kind and lowly purpose, that I would have escaped the burthens of the Pastoral charge by keeping myself concealed, which lest any should take to be light, I set forth in the writing of this present work all that reflection has impressed on me concerning their weightiness." In speaking again of the responsibility of the office be says, "It is hence that the very Mediator between God and man shunned to take a kingdom upon earth, Who, surpassing the knowledge and faculties even of spirits above, rules in the heavens before the world began. For who could have exercised authority over man so entirely without blame as He Who would only be governing those, He had Himself formed? But cause He had for this reason come in the flesh that He might not only redeem man by His Passion, but also instruct him by His conversation, to give an fAmidst the arms of the Lombards "Of all which (viz. the signs described by our Lord,) some we see already accomplished, others we dread to be upon us nigh at hand. For we see already that nation rises up against nation and that the push and press of them has settled upon the lands worse in our own times than we read in records. That earthquakes overwhelm countless cities, ye know how often we have heard from other parts of clesiæ tius ex na 4 St. Gregory accompanied on his Legation by Monks. EP. To evils thereof, and we ourselves, who are supposed to be devoted to the inner mysteries, are thus become involved in outward cares; just as it happened then also when I was brought to the ministry of the Altar, this was brought about for me without my knowledge, viz. that I should receive the mighty charge of the Holy Order, to the end that I might be 1 licen- quartered under less restraint' in an earthly palace, whither cubarem indeed I was followed by many of my brethren from 'germa- the monastery, who were attached to me by a kindred' affection. 'Which happened, I perceive, by Divine dispensation, in order that by their example, as by an anchored cable, I might ever be kept fast to the tranquil shore of prayer, whenever I should be tossed by the ceaseless waves of secular affairs. For to their society I fled as to the bosom of the safest port from the rolling swell, and from the waves of earthly occupation; and though that office which withdrew me from the monastery had with the point of its employments stabbed me to death as to my former tranquillity of life, yet in Reg. S. their society, by means of the appeals of diligent reading, I was animated with the yearnings of daily renewed compuncand 42. tion. It was then that it seemed good to those sarne brethren, you too adding your influence, as you yourself remember, to oblige me by the importunity of their requests i.e. our to set forth the book of blessed Job; and as far as the Truth' Lord. should inspire me with powers, to lay open to them those mysteries of such depth; and they made this too an additional burden which their petition laid upon me, that I would not the world. We endure pestilences without pause, but signs in the sun and moon, and stars, we do not at all as yet see manifestly; but that even these things are not far off, we collect from the mere change of the atmosphere already, though before Italy was given up to be smitten by the sword of a Gentile foe, we beheld fiery ranks in the heavens, the very blood itself of the buman race, which was afterwards spilt, streaming. Further the confounding of the waves and of the sea has not as yet sprung up in new sort, &c." Hom. i. in Ev. §. i. see also sects. 3, 5. Bened. c. 38. "But because I being unworthy and weak have taken upon me the old and much battered vessel, for the waves make a way in on all sides, and the rotten planks shattered by a daily and vebement tempest tell of shipwreck, I beseech you by Almighty God, to stretch the hand of your prayers in this my peril, since you may implore mercy even so much the more earnestly, in proportion as you also stand the further removed from the agitated state of calamity which we undergo in this land." Ep. iv. 6. 1. written soon after he had succeeded to the Pontificate. This was probably the appearance of the Aurora Borealis, which Sneed describes as " fiery dragons.' Hist. p. 300. and Matthew of Westmins appearances of lances and fiery spears.' Matth. of West. p. 101. Sp. speaks also of a shower of blood, and bloody crosses falling on men's garments." |