# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/St Gregory the Great

See also Pope Gregory I on Wikipedia; works by Gregory I, Gregory the Great on Wikipedia, Saint Gregory the Great in the 11th edition, Pope St. Gregory I in the Catholic Encyclopedia; and the disclaimer.
Of the numerous extant works attributed to Gregory the Groat the following are undisputed: the Moralia, in thirty-five books, being an exposition of the book of Job, composed between 580 and 590; the twenty-two Homilies on Ezekiel (about 595), and the forty Homilies on the Gospels (about 592); the Regula (or Cura) Fastoralis, dedicated to John, archbishop of Ravenna (about 590) ; the Dialogues with Peter the deacon, in four books, on the lives and miracles of the Italian saints (593 or 594); and the Letters, in four teen "registers," arranged according to the years of his pontificate. He was also the author of various rhymed hymns, nine of which are still extant and appear in the collected editions of his works. They are characterized more by simplicity of language than by depth of feeling. The Concordia quorundam testimoniorum sacrarum scripturarum, and also the Commentaries on 1 Kings, Canticles, and the seven penitential psalms usually ascribed to him, are spurious. His liturgical works, the Sacramcntarium and Antipnonarium, have been considerably tampered with by medifeval collectors and revisers ; and even the Letters are not wholly free from interpolations. Of Gregory s merits as an expositor little need be said ; he avowedly adopts in all cases the allegorical method, which in his hands is unflinchingly carried out, with, in many cases,
sufficiently astounding results. As Milman has remarked, “It may safely be said that, according to Gregory's licence of interpretation, there is nothing which might not be found in any book ever written.” In practical homiletics, however, he is very often just and profound as well as high-toned; but it would be too much to say that he was superior to the prejudices of his time; in particular his preference for the monastic and ascetic forms of the Christian life is carried to a height which a wider observation of the conditions of human usefulness and happiness will never cease to regard as excessive. His Dialogues, which have been translated into Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and even Arabic, describe the most astonishing miracles with an artless simplicity which, as suggestive of entire belief, is certainly interesting to the student; yet it is difficult (as Gibbon has pointed out) to free the lavish dispenser of miraculous filings from the chains of St Peter from the suspicion of some degree of pious insincerity. The Letters are, as might be expected, of great importance from the light they throw upon the history of those times.
The complete editions of the works of this great father of the Latin Church have been, as was to be expected, numerous. The earliest was that of Lyons (1516), which was rapidly followed by those of Paris (1518–39), Basel (1551), and Rome (1588). The best edition is the Benedictine (Paris, 1705), in 4 vols. fol., reprinted at Venice (1768–76), in 17 vols. 4to, and in Migne's Patrology, vol. Ixxv.–lxxix. See Wiggers, De Gregorio Magno (1838–40); Marggraf, De Greg. M. Vita (1844); Lau, Gregor. d. Grosse nach s. Leben u. Lehre dargestellt (1845); Pfahler, Gregor der Grosse u. seine Zeit (1852); and Baxmann, Politik der Päpste von Gregor I. bis Gregor VII. (1868–69). There is a convenient edition of the Cura Pastoralis by Westhoff (1860).