The pastoral care of the church was evidently the main object and delight of Gregory's heart. This he believed to be his work, and fain would he have devoted himself entirely to it; for according to the superstitious credulity of the times, he had the deepest conviction that the care and government of the whole church belonged to him as the successor of St. Peter; and also, that he was bound to uphold the special dignity of the See of Rome. But he was compelled, from the disturbed state of Italy, and for the safety of his people—his dear flock—to undertake many troublesome kinds of business, altogether foreign to his spiritual calling. The Lombard invaders were at that moment the terror of the Italians. The Goths had been to a great degree civilized and Romanized; but these new invaders were remorseless and pitiless barbarians; though, strange to say, they were the avowed champions of Arianism. And the imperial power, instead of protecting its Italian subjects, acted only as a hindrance to their exerting themselves for their own defense. War, famine, and pestilence, had so wasted and depopulated the country, that all hearts failed, and all turned to the bishop as the only man for the emergency of the times; so firmly was the opinion of his integrity and ability established among men.
Thus we see that temporal power, in the first instance, was forced upon the Pope. It does not appear that he sought the position—a position so eagerly grasped by many of his successors; but rather that he entered with reluctance upon duties so little in accordance with the great object of his life. He unwillingly threw off the quiet contemplative life of the monk, and entered into the affairs of state as a duty to God and to his country. The direction of the political interests of Rome devolved for the most part upon Gregory. He was guardian of the city, and the protector of the population in Italy against the Lombards. All history bears witness to his great ability, his incessant activity, and the multiplicity of his occupations as the virtual sovereign of Rome.
But however unconscious Gregory may have been of what the effects would be of his great reputation, it nevertheless contributed much to the ecclesiastical and secular domination of Rome. The pre-eminence in his case, however sorrowful for a Christian, was disinterested and beneficially exerted; but not so with his successors. The infallibility of the Pope, spiritual tyranny, persecution for a difference of opinion, idolatry, the doctrine of the merit of works, purgatory and masses for the relief of the dead, which became the discriminating marks of the papacy, had not, as yet, a settled establishment at Rome; but, we may say, they were all in sight.
We must not, however, pursue this subject farther at present; we turn to one more interesting, and more congenial to our minds.