The Papal Envoy to the East

Around 579 Pope Pelagius II sent Gregory to Constantinople as apocrisiarius, the standing papal representative at the imperial court, where he remained for some six years. He went not alone but with a community of monks from St. Andrew’s, keeping the monastic life amid the business of the capital; there he wrote his vast commentary on Job, the Moralia, at the urging of his friend Leander of Seville; and there he formed the Eastern friendships — with Anastasius of Antioch and others — that lasted his life. The puzzle of these years is his Greek: he lived for years in the Greek capital, yet later claimed not to know the language well, a claim scholars still weigh.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Pope of Rome; Great Hierarch)

The Office of Apocrisiarius

The apocrisiarius (from the Greek apokrisis, “answer, response”; Latin responsalis) was the permanent diplomatic agent maintained at the imperial court at Constantinople by the great sees — Rome among them — to transact their business with the emperor and the patriarch. It was a normal and important institution of the Byzantine Church: the envoy conveyed his see’s communications, pleaded its causes, represented it at synods, and reported home on affairs at the centre of the empire. Because Italy was now a Byzantine province governed through Ravenna and the emperor at Constantinople (see Rome After the Gothic Wars), Rome’s relations with the empire ran through this office, and to hold it was to stand at the junction of the two great sees of Christendom (Markus 1997, 12–13; Richards 1980, 33–43).

Pope Pelagius II (pope 579–590) summoned Gregory out of his monastery, ordained him one of the seven deacons (regional deacons) of the Roman Church, and dispatched him as apocrisiarius to Constantinople around 579. Gregory’s central charge was urgent and practical: to press the imperial government for military help against the Lombards, who were tightening their grip on Italy and threatening Rome itself. In this he largely failed — the empire, hard-pressed on its eastern frontier by Persia and in the Balkans, had little to spare for Italy — and the experience left Gregory with a sober sense of how little Rome could expect from a distant and overstretched emperor (Markus 1997, 12–13; Richards 1980, 33–43; Moorhead 2005, 11–17).

A Monastery in the Capital

Gregory did not abandon his monastic vocation when he went east. He took with him a group of his brethren from St. Andrew’s, and in Constantinople they lived together as a community, keeping the rhythm of prayer and study in the midst of the imperial city’s diplomacy. It was in this setting that Gregory undertook his largest work. At the request of Leander, bishop of Seville in Visigothic Spain — who was also in Constantinople on church business and became Gregory’s lifelong friend and correspondent — Gregory began the series of expositions of the Book of Job that grew into the Moralia in Job (also called the Magna Moralia), a sprawling moral and allegorical commentary that became one of the most influential works of medieval spirituality. He delivered it first as talks to his monastic circle and revised it for years afterward; its dedicatory letter to Leander records its origin in the Constantinopolitan community (Gregory, Moralia, dedicatory letter to Leander; Straw 1988, 8–27; Markus 1997, 15–16).

The Question of His Greek

One of the enduring puzzles of Gregory’s biography is his relationship to the Greek language. He lived in the Greek-speaking capital for roughly six years, conducted the business of his see there, debated a patriarch on a fine point of theology (see The Dispute with Eutychius), and maintained warm correspondence with Eastern churchmen. Yet in his own writings, as pope, he more than once disclaims a real command of Greek. In a letter he states that “we neither know Greek nor have we composed anything in the Greek tongue,” and elsewhere he speaks of lacking Greek-speakers competent to make good translations at Rome (Gregory, Register 7.29 and 11.55; trans. Martyn 2004) [Disputed: scholars divide on how to read these disclaimers — some take them at face value, holding that Gregory worked through interpreters at Constantinople and had little real Greek (Markus 1997, 14–15, with the older view of Joan Petersen); others treat the statements as conventional modesty or as meaning that he could not write polished literary Greek though he could function in the language, since his years in the East and his theological exchanges seem to presuppose more than a beginner's competence; the matter remains unresolved]. What is clear is that Gregory’s theological formation and instincts were thoroughly Latin: he read and thought in the tradition of Augustine and the Western fathers, and he made no use of the technical Greek theology of his contemporaries.

Eastern Friendships

Whatever the state of his Greek, Gregory’s years in the East left him with a network of friends and correspondents across the Greek-speaking Church that he kept up for the rest of his life through his Register. Foremost among them was Anastasius I of Antioch, the deposed and later restored patriarch, whom Gregory revered and to whom he wrote with deep affection. He knew Cyriacus, who would later become patriarch of Constantinople (and Gregory’s opponent in the “Ecumenical Patriarch” affair — see The Ecumenical Patriarch Dispute), and a wide circle of Eastern bishops and officials. These relationships gave Gregory’s papacy an Eastern dimension that few Western bishops of any age have possessed: he governed Rome with a working knowledge of Constantinople, its court, and its Church (Markus 1997, 12–16, 83–96; Moorhead 2005, 11–17). It is part of why the Orthodox East has been able to receive him so fully — he was a pope who knew and loved the East from the inside.

Recall to Rome

Around 585 or 586 Gregory was recalled from Constantinople to Rome, where he became abbot of his own monastery of St. Andrew’s, the contemplative life he had longed for restored to him for a few years. He also served as a close adviser and secretary to Pope Pelagius II — it is generally thought that Gregory drafted some of Pelagius’s letters in the controversy over the schism of the “Three Chapters” in northern Italy. This return to the cloister was the calm before the storm: when plague carried off Pelagius in 590, the Roman Church turned to the former prefect, envoy, and abbot, and the contemplative was dragged into the chair of Peter (see Election 590).

References

Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. (The apocrisiarius, the Greek question, the Eastern friendships, the Moralia’s origin.)
Richards, Jeffrey. Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. (The Constantinopolitan mission and its political aim.)
Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2005. (The envoy years and the recall.)
Straw, Carole. Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. (The Moralia and Gregory’s spirituality.)
Gregory the Great. The Letters of Gregory the Great. Trans. John R. C. Martyn. 3 vols. Toronto: PIMS, 2004. (The disclaimers of Greek at Reg. 7.29, 11.55; the Eastern correspondence.)
Gregory the Great. Moralia in Job, dedicatory letter to Leander. Library of the Fathers, Oxford, 1844–1850.