The Regula Pastoralis

Gregory wrote the Pastoral Rule (Regula Pastoralis, also Liber Regulae Pastoralis or Pastoral Care) at the very beginning of his pontificate, around 591, addressing it to John, bishop of Ravenna, who had reproached him for having tried to evade the episcopate. It is a treatise in four parts on the office of the pastor: how heavy and perilous it is and who should dare to undertake it; how the man who rightly comes to it ought to live; how he ought to teach, adapting his words to every kind of hearer; and how, having taught others, he must daily recall his own frailty. The book became the West’s classic on pastoral office, and its diffusion was extraordinary — translated into Greek in Gregory’s lifetime, revered in England, and rendered into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred.

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

Occasion and Composition

The Pastoral Rule belongs to the first months of Gregory’s papacy, written about 591 (Markus 1997, 17–34; Davis 1950, introduction). Its immediate occasion was personal. Gregory had tried hard to escape the burden of the episcopate (see Election 590), and John, bishop of Ravenna, had taken him to task for it. The Pastoral Rule is, in part, Gregory’s considered answer to that reproach: not a defence of fleeing office, but an explanation of why the office is so to be feared — and therefore why it must be undertaken, if at all, only with the gravest sense of its dangers and the most careful preparation of the soul. The book is dedicated to John, and in it Gregory turns his own dread of pastoral rule into a universal teaching for all who hold the cure of souls (Gregory, Pastoral Rule, prologue; trans. Davis 1950).

The Four Parts

The Pastoral Rule is built in four parts of unequal length.

Part I asks who may rightly undertake the government of souls. Gregory insists that “the government of souls is the art of arts” (ars est artium regimen animarum) — the most demanding of all skills, since the soul is harder to heal than the body — and that no one should presume to it who is unprepared (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 1.1; trans. Davis 1950). He warns against those who seek office for the wrong reasons — ambition, vainglory, the love of being praised — and against those who, gifted for the work, refuse it out of love of their own ease, for the gifts given for others’ sake may not be selfishly hoarded. The pastorate is a charge to be neither grasped at nor fled from, but received in fear (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 1.1–11).

Part II treats the life the pastor must lead. He must be a man whose conduct matches his words, “pure in thought,” exemplary in action, discreet in silence and profitable in speech, a near neighbour to everyone in compassion yet lifted above all in contemplation (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 2.1–4). Here Gregory works out his characteristic teaching on the union of the active and contemplative lives in the pastor: the ruler must not let the press of external duties extinguish the inner life of prayer, nor let the sweetness of contemplation make him neglect the needs of his people. He must, like the Lord, descend to serve and ascend to pray, holding the two together (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 2.5–7; Straw 1988, 66–89, 190–235). This balance — action without loss of contemplation — is the heart of Gregory’s spirituality and the resolution of the tension that had torn his own life (see From Prefect to Monk).

Part III, by far the longest, is the great catalogue of how the pastor must vary his teaching according to the character and condition of his hearers — the cura animarum in its detail. Because it is the most distinctive and influential portion of the work, it is treated in its own file (see The Art of Souls).

Part IV, very brief, is the necessary counterweight to all the rest: having taught the pastor how to instruct others, Gregory ends by warning him to take heed to himself, lest in caring for others he forget his own soul, and lest the very success of his preaching breed pride. “When abundance of virtues flatters us, it is fitting that the eye of the soul should return to its own weakness” (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 4; trans. Davis 1950). The book closes, as Gregory’s works so often do, on the note of human frailty and the fear of God.

The Theology of Pastoral Office

Underlying the Rule is a definite vision of what a pastor is. For Gregory the pastor is a physician of souls and a ruler (rector) whose whole authority exists for the healing and salvation of those entrusted to him. The famous tag — ars artium regimen animarum, “the rule of souls is the art of arts” — captures it: pastoral care is not administration but a healing art requiring discernment, self-knowledge, and the readiness to suffer for others (Gregory, Pastoral Rule 1.1; Straw 1988, 190–235). Gregory’s pastor leads by example before he leads by word, descends in compassion before he commands, and never ceases to fear for his own soul even as he saves others. This is recognizably the same ideal of spiritual fatherhood that the Christian East cherishes, and it is one reason the Rule travelled so easily across the language-frontier into the Greek world.

The Diffusion of the Rule

The Pastoral Rule enjoyed an almost unparalleled diffusion, East and West. Most strikingly for an Orthodox reading, it was translated into Greek in Gregory’s own lifetime: the patriarch Anastasius II of Antioch made (or commissioned) a Greek version, and the Emperor Maurice received it — a Latin pastoral treatise carried across into the Greek-speaking Church while its author still lived, a sign of the esteem in which the Eastern Church held him (Markus 1997, 17–34; Moorhead 2005, 142–146) [Disputed: the early sources (including a later notice) attribute a Greek translation to Anastasius of Antioch in Gregory's lifetime; the precise circumstances are not fully documented, but the existence of an early Greek version and Maurice's reception of the work are generally accepted (Markus 1997, 33–34; Moorhead 2005, 142–146)].

In the West its influence was foundational. It became the standard manual of the episcopate; it was repeatedly cited and copied through the Middle Ages; it was, with the Bible and the canons, the book a bishop was expected to know. In England — the land of Gregory’s mission — it was especially treasured, and at the end of the ninth century King Alfred the Great chose it as one of the books “most needful for men to know” and had it translated into Old English, sending copies to the bishoprics of his realm (Markus 1997, 33–34; Mayr-Harting 1991). Few books of the early medieval Church were so widely read or so deeply formative. Through it, Gregory taught the Latin and Greek Churches alike how to think about the cure of souls.

See Also

References

  • Gregory the Great. Pastoral Care (Regula Pastoralis), prologue and Parts 1–4. Trans. Henry Davis. Ancient Christian Writers 11. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1950. (The text; “art of arts” at 1.1; the active/contemplative balance in Part 2; the closing self-examination in Part 4.) Also NPNF II/12.
  • Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 17–34. (Composition, structure, and diffusion, including the Greek translation.)
  • Straw, Carole. Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 66–89, 190–235. (The theology of pastoral office and the union of action and contemplation.)
  • Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2005, 142–146. (The Rule and its reception.)