The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great
Rome · 604
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Pope Gregory the Great
Pope Gregory the Great
540 CE–604 CE · Rome
Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) was born into a wealthy Roman senatorial family and served as prefect of Rome before renouncing his fortune to found a monastery and embrace monastic life. Ordained a deacon and dispatched to Constantinople as papal legate (apocrisiarius) from c. 579 to 585/586, he returned to Rome to lead his monastery before being elected pope in 590. As Bishop of Rome he reorganized Church administration, negotiated with the Lombard invaders, composed influential theological works including the Moralia in Job and Pastoral Rule, and dispatched Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the Anglo-Saxons. He died in Rome on 12 March 604. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic, Orthodox (as Gregory the Dialogist) and Anglican traditions, and the Catholic Church counts him among the four great Latin Doctors of the Church.
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Stop 1 of 3540–579Birthplace, Prefect, Monastic Founder
RomeרומאItaly
What they did here
Born c. 540 into a Roman senatorial family; served as prefect of the city (c. 573), then turned his family house on the Caelian Hill into the monastery of St Andrew and was ordained deacon (c. 578–579).
Rome in this era
Rome passed from weakened Western emperors into Ostrogothic hands under Theodoric (493) and then was bitterly contested during the Byzantine reconquest (535–554), yet its bishop — Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) — steered the church, organized missions, and preserved classical learning through the turmoil.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Pope Boniface III, Pope Pelagius II, Pope Benedict I, Pope John III, Pope Pelagius I, Pope Vigilius
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory the Great’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Maximus the Confessor, Pope Boniface III, Pope Pelagius II, Pope Benedict I, Pope John III, Pope Pelagius I, Pope Vigilius, Pope Severinus, Pope Sabinian
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Gregory the Great’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works(2)
Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great
Rome · 604