which they performed effectively in the instances of these two great rhetoricians.[1]
It is needless to say that the entire literary labour of Gregory was religious. His works, as in time, so in quality, are midway between those of Ambrose and Augustine and those of the Carolingian rearrangers of patristic opinion. Gregory, who laboured chiefly as a commentator upon Scripture, was not highly original in his thoughts, yet was no mere excerpter of patristic interpretations, like Rabanus Maurus or Walafrid Strabo, who belong to the ninth century.[2] In studying Scripture, he thought and interpreted in allegories. But he was also a man experienced in life's exigencies, and his religious admonishings were wise and searching. His prodigious Commentary upon Job has with reason been called Gregory's Moralia.[3] And as the moral advice and exhortation sprang from Gregory the bishop, so the allegorical interpretations largely were his own, or at least not borrowed and applied mechanically.
Gregory represents the patristic mind passing into a more barbarous stage. He delighted in miracles, and wrote his famous Dialogues on the Lives and Miracles of the Italian Saints[4] to solace the cares of his pontificate. The work exhibits a naive acceptance of every kind of miracle, and presents the supple mediaeval devil in all his deceitful metamorphoses.[5]
- ↑ This is the view expressed in the Commentary on Kings ascribed to Gregory, but perhaps the work of a later hand. Thus, in the allegorical interpretation of I Kings (l Sam.) xiii. 20, "But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe." Says the commentator (Migne, Pat. Lat. 79, col. 356): We go down to the Philistines when we incline the mind to secular studies; Christian simplicity is upon a height. Secular books are said to be in the plane since they have no celestial truths. God put secular knowledge in a plane before us that we should use it as a step to ascend to the heights of Scripture. So Moses first learned the wisdom of the Egyptians that he might be able to understand and expound the divine precepts; Isaiah, most eloquent of the prophets, was nobiliter instructus et urbanus; and Paul had sat at Gamaliel's feet before he was lifted to the height of the third heaven. One goes to the Philistines to sharpen his plow, because secular learning is needed as a training for Christian preaching.
- ↑ See post, Chapter X.
- ↑ Migne 75, 76.
- ↑ Migne 77, col. 149–430. The second book is devoted to Benedict of Nursia.
- ↑ For illustrations see Dudden, o.c. i. 321-366, and ii. 367-68. Gregory's interest in the miraculous shows also in his letters. The Empress Constantine had written requesting him to send her the head of St. Paul! He replies (Ep.
