Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/758

GRE the incursions of the barbarians. At Constantinople he gained the friendship of St. Leander of Seville and other eminent men, with whom he afterwards kept up a regular correspondence. He was recalled to Rome in 584, and resumed the government of his monastery. Upon the death of Pelagius II. in 590, Gregory was fixed upon by the unanimous choice of the clergy and people as his successor. His endeavours to evade a charge, of which none knew better the immense responsibilities, were all frustrated; and if ever man had greatness "thrust upon him," it was the humble Gregory. Yet no sooner had he been consecrated, than it appeared that the saintly monk of St. Andrew's possessed an unparalleled genius for government. In the weakness or treachery of the Byzantine court, the Roman pontiff found both the necessity and the justification for the extension of his pastoral care over the temporal as well as spiritual interests of the Italians; and the temporal sovereignty of the popes is rightly dated from the pontificate of Gregory I. His own firmness and prudence were a more effectual protection to his country than the imperial legions; and his timely gifts and mild yet forcible representations delivered Rome from the destruction with which the Lombards had visited so many of the Italian cities. His letters attest the ability and equity with which he administered the patrimony of the church. The revenues derived from a vigilant and skilful management were again dispersed abroad in a spirit of the widest charity.

Under this pontiff, the king and people of Spain renounced heresy and embraced the catholic faith; among the Arian Lombards, with whose queen, Theodelinda, he corresponded, much progress was made in the same direction. Nestorianism was checked in the East; and our own pagan forefathers first received the light of faith by the preaching of Augustine in 596, accompanied by forty monks. Worn out with labours and infirmities, the pope died on the 12th March, 604, on which day his memory is honoured by the church. His principal writings are—the "Liber Pastoralis," which Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon, his "Dialogues," his homilies on the gospel, and his exposition of the Book of Job.—T. A.  [The name of Gregory is very important in the history of music, as associated with the chant of the Roman church, with the modes or tones upon which this is constructed, and with the notation in which it is now written—in the last case, however, erroneously, since the so-called Gregorian notation is of much later invention than the time of this pontiff, and is only thus designated because it is now solely employed for the notation of the Gregorian chant. Gregory's improvement of musical notation was a philosophical one, and was not without its influence on the progress of the art. It consisted in the reduction of the number of the alphabetical letters by which the notes are named, to the seven now in use, and the rejection of the following nine letters which had been previously employed. The letters themselves served to indicate the sounds that are named after them, and Gregory's system illustrated the phenomenon of the octave, by noting the lowest seven with capital letters, the next seven with small letters, and the sounds above these with double letters, instead of having an unrepealed series of names for all the sixteen notes then recognized. Some writers ascribe to Gregory, also, the introduction of signs indicative of the length of the notes, but this assertion is very doubtful. Since the importation by Ambrose of the system of chanting from the Eastern into the Western church, great corruptions had arisen in the music and the method of performing it, and many hymns had come into use of which the words were unworthy of ecclesiastical purposes. Damasus had, with more or less success, endeavoured to purify the church service of these licentious fabrications, but it seems to have been Gregory who first compiled an antiphonarium containing all the offices that were allowed to be sung. He also reformed the music of the church by doubling the number of modes adopted by Ambrose, appropriating, for this purpose, four more than Ambrose had employed of the ancient Greek system. The four modes added by Gregory were each a fourth below one of the Ambrosian modes, with which it had also the same final, or, in modern terminology, key-note. The original four modes of Ambrose were then distinguished, as such, by the name Authentic; while those added by Gregory were called Plagal, as being collateral with the others; the melodies or chants in the authentic modes are known by having their dominant, or chiefly-prevailing note, a fifth above the final—those in the plagal modes by having their dominant a fourth below the final. It became now necessary to discard the names of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, employed by Ambrose to distinguish his modes, since Gregory's were alternate with them, and must have been defined by the four even numbers, while the authentic modes must have been called 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. Gregory restored, therefore, the Greek names to the modes, which Ambrose, probably on account of the pagan associations connected with them, had rejected; and called the authentic, the Dorian, Phrygian, Eolian or Lydian, and Mixolydian; and the plagal, the Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, &c. All these modes are composed of the notes of our modern scale of C, admitting of no inflection whatever, except only a flat to B; and the disposition of tones and semitones is therefore different in each. To every one of them was assigned a distinctive expression, and each mode was therefore appropriated to a distinct class of subjects. Gregory selected, from the remnants of Greek music, some chants in each of the modes, restricting his choice, as had been the case with Ambrose, to those of the diatonic genus only, obviously because this was the most simple, and therefore the most practicable, of the three ancient genera. Another of Gregory's reforms was the abolition of the use in the church of the Cantus Figuratus, or metrical song, in which long and short notes were variously mixed; this he deemed too trivial in character for devotional purposes, and he allowed only the more solemn Cantus Fermus, consisting entirely of notes of equal length, which is still preserved in the church of Italy, although it has been more or less corrupted in other countries by the interpolation of ornamental notes. Lastly, Gregory instituted two colleges for the cultivation of singing, and endowed each with lands—one situated near the church of St. Peter, the other near that of St. John Lateran, and these continued in operation for three centuries after he re-established them. Such importance did he attach to music as an element of divine service, and so zealous was he in promoting its study, that he was wont to preside over the daily practice of these schools. The bed on which he used to recline when decreasing strength disabled him from standing or sitting during the hours of study, and a whip with which he used to threaten the recusant pupils, were long treasured as relics of the sainted founder in one or other of Gregory's colleges.—G. A. M.]   II., a Roman, had been educated from childhood under the care of Pope Sergius. Pope Constantine had chosen him, on account of his learning and virtue, to accompany him in his visit to Constantinople in 710. Upon the death of Constantine in 715, Gregory was elected to succeed him. The Lombards, under their king, Luitprand, were an unceasing source of trouble to the pope; and the emperor, Leo the Isaurian, repeatedly laid plots against his life. In 727 Leo commenced his iconoclastic movement. The pope warmly supported the patriarch Germanus in his opposition to the emperor; and upon his ejection from the see of Constantinople, refused to recognize his successor Anastasius. Yet when the Italians, provoked by the rabid zeal of Leo, were preparing to revolt, Gregory moderated their vehemence, and dissuaded them from the transfer of their allegiance. The pope sent legates to carry on the conversion of the heathen in Bavaria, and ordained St. Corbinian bishop of Frisingen. In 718 he gave to the English Winfrid the apostle of northern Germany, whose name he changed to Boniface, his commission to preach the gospel in Thuringia. He encouraged him by his letters, and in 723, upon his return to Rome, ordained him bishop. He founded or re-established several churches and monasteries in Rome; and in 718 rebuilt the famous monastery of Monte Cassino. Gregory died in 731, and was succeeded by—

III., upon whom, though a Syrian by birth, fell the unanimous choice of the Roman clergy and people. With a courage and perseverance equal to that of his predecessor, he carried on the contest against the emperors on the subject of images, and convened a council at Rome in 732, in which all those who were engaged in the iconoclastic enterprise were declared excommunicated. He sent to Charles Martel, whom he offered the title of Patrician of Rome and the government of the city. Charles Martel hesitated to break openly with Luitprand, the Lombard king, but he sent to the pope rich presents, and by his remonstrances induced Luitprand to abstain from further violence. Gregory died in 741.—T. A.   IV. succeeded Pope Valentine in 825. He was a Roman, and of noble family. He rebuilt Ostia, giving it the name of Gregoriopolis, and fortified it on a grand scale, and 