A Roman prefect turned monk became Gregory the Great
Gregory I, born about 540, served as Rome's 64th bishop from 3 September 590 until 12 March 604. Son of a senator and city prefect at thirty, he turned his family estate into a monastery before papal service. Medieval writers dubbed him Father of Christian Worship; East and West still call him Great.
His administrative care for Romans allegedly outstripped emperors Maurice and Theodosius in practical welfare. Writings exceeded any earlier pope's output; Eastern Christians know him as the Dialogist for his Dialogues. With Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose he ranks among the four Great Latin Fathers and was canonized by popular acclaim right after death.
Born in a Rome newly retaken from Ostrogoths by the Eastern Empire, he carried the Greek-rooted name Gregorius—vigilant, in later English glosses. Only Leo I and Nicholas I share the Annuario Pontificio's Great title with him among listed popes.
Monk, ambassador, and reformer of liturgy and charity, Gregory shows how late antique Rome could reinvent imperial managers as pastoral rulers when imperial power frayed.
He was born about 540 into a rich noble family; his father Gordianus, a senator, had served as Prefect of the City, and the household lived in a villa on the Caelian Hill facing the old imperial palaces. His childhood coincided with the Plague of Justinian, which spread from 542 and in places killed more than a third of the population. Thoroughly schooled in grammar, rhetoric, science, literature and law, he turned the family house into a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew after his father died. Pope Pelagius II ordained him deacon and in 579 sent him as papal envoy to Constantinople, a post he held until 586. There he clashed with Patriarch Eutychius, who taught that resurrected bodies would be finer than air and impossible to touch, a quarrel that left Gregory wary of Eastern speculation. His monks later painted him as rather bald, with a tawny beard.
Source: Pope Gregory I
