"I am tossed with the waves of this wicked world" ~ Pope Saint Gregory the Great and Christian endurance during times of worldly distress

Pope St. Gregory the Great in marble as executed by Nicholas Cordier in AD 1602.
This work resides in the Oratory of Saint Barbara which is part of the church of Saint Gregory
on the Caelian Hill in Rome. This church was built on the site of Gregory's boyhood home
and also contains a statue by the same artist of Gregory's mother, Saint Silvia. 

September 3 is the feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great. This most significant of popes lived during a time of societal dissolution, when the Roman Empire in the West was in its final death agony. Though the Eastern Empire had re-established dominion in Africa and Italy in the 550s AD under Justinian, the invasion of the brutal Lombards in AD 568 proved unstoppable, leaving Italy in a state of perpetual fracture and chaos that would last centuries.

Following is the opening to Gregory's work, The Dialogues. This great work was written during a period of brief respite, when Gregory had the opportunity to look back on the decades of tumult, death and destruction that he and all of Italy had managed to endure. Even over 1,400 years later, the Dialogues continue to resonate with modern readers, offering a glimpse into a period when it seemed to many that everything good in the world was going to pieces, while cruelty and brutality reigned supreme.

In the Dialogues, Gregory begins by setting a gloomy tone, lamenting that his life of spiritual contemplation had been interrupted and overwhelmed with the care of temporal affairs:

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Being upon a certain day too much over-charged with the troubles of worldly business, in which oftentimes men are enforced to do more than of duty they are bound, I retired myself into a solitary place, very fit for a sad and melancholy disposition—where each discontentment and dislike concerning such secular affairs might plainly show themselves, and all things that usually bring grief, mustered together, might freely be presented before mine eyes. In which place after that I had sat a long while, in much silence and great sorrow of soul, at length Peter, my dear son and deacon, came unto me—a man whom, from his younger years, I had always loved most entirely, and used him for my companion in the study of sacred scripture: who, seeing me drowned in such a dump of sorrow, spake unto me in this manner:

"What is the matter? Or what bad news have you heard? For certain I am, that some extraordinary sadness doth now afflict your mind."

To whom I returned this answer: "O Peter, the grief which continually 1 endure is unto me both old and new: old through common use, and new by daily increasing. For mine unhappy soul, wounded with worldly business, doth now call to mind in what state it was, when I lived in mine Abbey, and how then it was superior to all earthly matters, far above all transitory and corruptible pelf, how it did usually think upon nothing but heavenly things....For do you not behold at this present, how I am tossed with the waves of this wicked world, and see the ship of my soul beaten with the storms of a terrible tempest? and therefore, when I remember my former state of life, I cannot but sigh to look back, and cast mine eyes upon the forsaken shore.

But Gregory doesn't remain in this state of gloom, and instead suggests that Peter ask him questions. Peter gamely takes up the challenge. When Peter relates that he's never heard of anyone in Italy famous for living virtuously, Gregory sets him straight, offering a series of tales meant to demonstrate how even during times of severe tribulation, the hope of Christ shines forth through the works of the virtuous. He tells numerous stories of saints, heroes and villains from his own lifetime, the most substantial among them is the longest extant biography of the famous Saint Benedict of Nursia. 

Though occasionally considered folk-history similar to the stories in the Golden Legend, the Dialogues served a higher function than simple history—they were meant to be a spiritual exhortation to Gregory’s worn and weary countrymen. To modern readers, these tales of visions, miracles, virtue rewarded and wickedness punished paint a vivid portrait of daily life amid the wreckage of once-prosperous Roman Italy as the region lurched painfully into the so-called Dark Ages. 

Many of the stories in the Dialogues have been featured on this blog, including the following:

• Saint Maurus Walks on Water ~ As told by Pope Saint Gregory the Great
• The curious tale of Florentius and the bear ~ early 6th century Italy
• "Now, leave if you can" ~ Saint Scholastica and her brother, Saint Benedict
• "Fiery lances and armies appearing from the north." ~ Gregory the Great and the devastation of Roman Italy by the Lombards
• Saint Benedict Chases the Devil off a Boulder
• When Saint Benedict met Totila, King of the Goths
• "I beseech you to pray unto our Lord for me" ~ Ancient Roots of the Doctrine of Purgatory, Part II
• The Rebel Usurper who Became a Saint ~ Saint Hermengild, prince of Visigothic Spain
• "Cut off a thong of his skin" ~ The martyrdom of Saint Herculanus AD 549
• "The blessed pope John, worn by illness, gave up the ghost and died in prison" ~ Pope Saint John I, a political martyr of the 6th century AD
• "The fire marvelous strangely turned back" ~ Saint Marcellinus of Ancona
• Paulinus of Nola ~ A Roman plutocrat who became a Christian saint