Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/122

100 which they performed effectively in the instances of these two great rhetoricians.

It is needless to say that the entire literary labour of Gregory was religious. His works, as in time, so in quality, are midway between those of Ambrose and Augustine and those of the Carolingian rearrangers of patristic opinion. Gregory, who laboured chiefly as a commentator upon Scripture, was not highly original in his thoughts, yet was no mere excerpter of patristic interpretations, like Rabanus Maurus or Walafrid Strabo, who belong to the ninth century. In studying Scripture, he thought and interpreted in allegories. But he was also a man experienced in life's exigencies, and his religious admonishings were wise and searching. His prodigious Commentary upon Job has with reason been called Gregory's Moralia. And as the moral advice and exhortation sprang from Gregory the bishop, so the allegorical interpretations largely were his own, or at least not borrowed and applied mechanically.

Gregory represents the patristic mind passing into a more barbarous stage. He delighted in miracles, and wrote his famous Dialogues on the Lives and Miracles of the Italian Saints to solace the cares of his pontificate. The work exhibits a naive acceptance of every kind of miracle, and presents the supple mediaeval devil in all his deceitful metamorphoses.