Servus Servorum Dei

The title Gregory chose for himself — servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God” — was a deliberate act of monastic humility, and it became the permanent style of the popes. But it was also a true description of his pontificate, which was above all a ministry of material and spiritual service to a devastated people. Gregory governed the vast landed estates of the Roman Church — the “patrimony of St. Peter” stretched across Sicily, Italy, Sardinia, Gaul, and beyond — as a single great instrument of relief: feeding the starving of Rome from the granaries of Sicily, ransoming captives from the Lombards, paying soldiers, and supporting the poor, the sick, and the monasteries. His Register of Letters shows in extraordinary detail a bishop who had become, by default, the governor of a city the empire could no longer sustain.

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

“Servant of the Servants of God”

Gregory adopted as his style the phrase servus servorum Dei — “servant of the servants of God” — and it is generally traced to him as the first pope to use it habitually in this way (Markus 1997, 17; Moorhead 2005, 22). The phrase was pointed. Gregory used it in conscious contrast to the grandiose titles being claimed at Constantinople, above all the patriarch’s style “Ecumenical Patriarch,” which Gregory regarded as a dangerous assertion of universal pre-eminence (see The Ecumenical Patriarch Dispute). Against any title of mastery over the Church, Gregory set the title of service, drawing on the Lord’s own teaching that “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:27) and that the Son of Man “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Matthew 20:28). That this title of humility became the abiding signature of the very office whose later claims the Orthodox East would most strongly contest is one of the ironies an Orthodox reader will note (see Veneration as a Great Hierarch).

The Patrimony of St. Peter

The chief instrument of Gregory’s service was the patrimonium Petri, the patrimony of St. Peter — the immense complex of landed estates that the Roman Church had accumulated over centuries through donation and bequest. These estates lay across Italy and the islands, with the richest and most important block in Sicily, and others in Sardinia, southern Gaul, Dalmatia, North Africa, and elsewhere. They were the economic foundation on which everything else rested, and Gregory administered them with the skill of the former prefect he was (Markus 1997, 112–124; Richards 1980, 88–98, 126–141; Moorhead 2005, 47–62).

Gregory’s Register is full of his administration of the patrimony. He appointed and minutely instructed the rectores patrimonii, the rectors who managed each region’s estates; the most important was the rector of Sicily, to whom Gregory wrote a stream of detailed directives. He insisted on just treatment of the peasant cultivators (the coloni) who worked the lands, forbidding their oppression by his own agents and regulating their rents and marriage-fees; he pressed for honest accounting and the suppression of corruption among the managers; and he directed the revenues, above all the Sicilian grain, to the relief of Rome and the poor (Gregory, Register, e.g. 1.42, 2.38, 5.7, 9.20, and passim; trans. Martyn 2004; Markus 1997, 112–124). The patrimony under Gregory was not a private fortune but, in his own understanding, the property of the poor held in trust by the Church — the “wealth of the poor” (res pauperum) — and to be administered for their sake.

Feeding Rome

The most pressing use of the patrimony was the feeding of Rome itself. With the old imperial grain-supply broken down and the city dependent on whatever the Church could bring in, Gregory organized the import of grain — above all from Sicily — and its distribution to the population. The Register and the early Lives describe a careful regimen of charity: registers of the poor were kept, food and money distributed, and the destitute of the city fed from the papal stores; John the Deacon reports that Gregory kept lists of the poor of Rome and sent them provisions, and that he would not dine until portions had first been sent out to the hungry (John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 2.26–30; Gregory, Register passim; Markus 1997, 112–124; Richards 1980, 88–98). Whatever the embellishments of later piety, the documentary core in Gregory’s own letters is solid: the bishop of Rome had become the city’s quartermaster, and the survival of its people ran through his administration.

Ransoming Captives and Dealing with the Lombards

The Lombard wars produced a steady stream of captives — Romans seized and held for ransom by Lombard raiders — and Gregory regarded their redemption as a first duty of the Church’s wealth. His letters repeatedly authorize the use of church funds, and even of sacred vessels where necessary, to ransom prisoners, following a principle long established in the canons and fathers that the redemption of captives is a supreme work of mercy (Gregory, Register, e.g. 7.13, 7.35; Markus 1997, 97–111). He also took on, of necessity, the political and military burdens the empire had abandoned: he negotiated directly with Lombard dukes and with their king, arranged truces, paid for the defence of the city, and even directed the disposition of troops — acting, in all but name, as the civil governor of Rome. In 592–593, when the imperial authorities failed to protect the city, Gregory made his own peace with the Lombard duke Ariulf and with King Agilulf, a step that drew the displeasure of the emperor but kept Rome from being sacked (Gregory, Register 5.36, 5.39, 9.44; Markus 1997, 97–111; Richards 1980, 99–125).

The Bishop as Governor

The cumulative effect of all this was that Gregory’s papacy became the effective government of Rome and its duchy. The man who had once been urban prefect now did, as bishop, much of what the secular state had done and could no longer do: he fed the city, paid and directed its soldiers, ransomed its captives, negotiated with its enemies, administered justice, and kept its institutions alive. This was not a theory of papal power but a fact forced on him by the collapse of the imperial order in Italy (see Rome After the Gothic Wars). It is important for an Orthodox reading to see the difference between this and the later papal claims to a divinely instituted temporal sovereignty: Gregory took up the burdens of government reluctantly and as a stopgap, never as a right, and he remained throughout the loyal subject of the emperor at Constantinople (Markus 1997, 83–96, 206–212). The “servant of the servants of God” served, in the end, by carrying the whole weight of a stricken city — and it was this practical sanctity, as much as his writings, that made his memory great in both East and West (see The Gregorian Legacy).

References

Gregory the Great. The Letters of Gregory the Great (Register). Trans. John R. C. Martyn. 3 vols. Toronto: PIMS, 2004. (The administration of the patrimony, famine relief, the ransoming of captives, and the dealings with the Lombards, throughout the Register.)
Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 83–124, 206–212. (The patrimony, relief work, the Lombards, and the title.)
Richards, Jeffrey. Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, 88–141. (The estates, the grain dole, and the government of Rome.)
Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2005, 22, 47–62.
John the Deacon. Vita Gregorii Magni 2.26–30. (The poor-lists and the charity of Rome, as later tradition recorded it.)
Scripture: Matthew 20:27–28.