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596-599] help. But his own keen sense of justice, his political training, his knowledge of affairs, forbade him to hold his tongue. The Empire, like the Church, was to him a splendid power of holy and heroic tradition: there was ever, he said to an imperial official, this difference between the Roman emperors and the barbarian kings that while the latter governed slaves the former were rulers of free men. To keep this always in the mind of the governing class must have been his aim, and his consolation, when, as he said, the cares of the world pressed so heavily upon him that he was often doubtful whether he was discharging the duties of an earthly official or those of a shepherd of men's souls.

In both capacities his work was continuous and engrossing. Invasion, rapine, insecurity of life and property, made clerk as well as lay lax livers, negligent stewards, cruel and faithless, luxurious and slothful. Against all such Gregory was the perpetual witness.

When Romanus the exarch died, probably in 596, his successor at Ravenna, Callinicus, received a warm welcome from the pope. For a time there was a lull in the tempest, but still Gregory preached vigilance, to bishop and governor alike, for Italy had not shaken off the terror even if Rome was for the moment outside the area of the storm. Writing in 598 to a lady in Constantinople the pope was able to assure her that so great was the protection given by St Peter to the city that, without the aid of soldiers, he had "by God's help been preserved for these many years among the swords of the enemy." A truce was made with Agilulf, it seems, in 598: in 599 this became a general peace in which the Empire through the exarch, and with the active support, though not the signature, of the pope, came to agreement with Agilulf the Lombard king and with the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento. His letters shew how much this was due to the tact, the wisdom, the patient persistence of Gregory; and it is certain also that Theodelinda, the Catholic wife of Agilulf, had played no unimportant part in the work of pacification. At Monza remain the relics of this wise queen; fitly beside the iron crown of the Lombards is the image of the protection that was given by the peace of Church and State, a hen that gathers her chickens under her wings.

The year 599 which dates this peace between the "Christian Republic" and the Lombards marks a definite epoch in the history of Italy. Paul the Deacon in his History of the Lombards shews that it was a time of crisis, conquest, and resettlement for Agilulf the king. The letters of Gregory shew that it was for him a period of incessant activity and reassertion of papal authority, while at Rome the city was "so reduced by the languor of various diseases that there are scarce left men enough to guard the walls" and the pope himself was in the clutch of increasing sickness, often unable to leave his bed for days together. Italy was still swept by pestilence; and exhaustion as well as political peace gave quiet for some two years.