Early Life and Monastic Foundation
Gregory was born around 540 in Rome to the patrician Gordianus and to Silvia, who is herself venerated as a saint, in a family that already counted a pope, Felix, among its forebears. He received an excellent education in grammar, rhetoric, and law and advanced rapidly in public service, holding the office of Prefect of Rome, the city's highest civil position.
After his father's death Gregory devoted his inheritance to religious foundations. Accounts credit him with establishing six monasteries and with converting the family villa on the Caelian Hill into a monastery dedicated to the Apostle Andrew, where he himself received monastic tonsure and lived as a monk.
Service in Constantinople and Election as Pope
Pope Pelagius II appointed Gregory apocrisiarius, or papal representative, to the imperial court at Constantinople, where he served for several years and engaged in the theological and diplomatic questions of the day. When Pelagius II died of plague, Gregory was chosen to succeed him in 590. According to the tradition, he resisted the office for a time before accepting consecration, and he then governed the Roman Church for some thirteen years until his death.
The Mission to England and Pastoral Work
Among the enduring acts of Gregory's pontificate was the mission he dispatched under Augustine of Canterbury to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons of England, an undertaking that established the Church among the English. He is also credited with drawing peoples of the West, including Arian Goths, into the Orthodox faith, and with opposing the Donatist heresy. Within Rome he organized large-scale relief for the poor and maintained an immense correspondence, of which hundreds of letters survive.
Writings
Gregory was a prolific author whose works became classics of Christian teaching. His Dialogues, recounting the lives and miracles of the holy men of Italy, gave him his Orthodox epithet 'the Dialogist.' His Pastoral Rule sets out the model of the true shepherd of souls and became a standard guide for clergy, and his Moralia on the Book of Job is an extended commentary on the spiritual life. A large body of his letters, numbering in the hundreds, also survives.
Repose and Veneration
Gregory died on March 12, 604, and his relics are kept at St. Peter's in the Vatican. He is honored throughout the Church as one of the great fathers of the Latin tradition and, in the East, is venerated as a hierarch and remembered above all for the Presanctified Liturgy that bears his name.
