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The West was certainly wounded badly by the fall of the Roman Empire. Civilization collapsed almost completely. Literacy, once common, was now a rare accomplishment. Culture itself was in danger of dying.
Only the Church had the structure and the resources to shore up the walls of civilization. And one man in particular made that his life’s work.
Cassiodorus was a sixth-century nobleman who had a long career as a top minister in the court of Italy’s barbarian king. But in his old age he went back to his hometown and set up a monastery—a monastery with a very specific purpose.
Throughout Italy, Cassiodorus saw civilization dying. A century and a half of invasions and wars had made books rare and educated readers rarer. The noblemen who had once kept large private libraries—and supported a profitable publishing industry—had largely been replaced by illiterate barbarian chieftains.
So Cassiodorus scooped up every book he could find from the ruined and abandoned libraries of Italy, and set his monks to work copying them. “Of all the fruits of manual labor,” he said, “nothing pleases me as much as the work of the copyists—as long as they copy right.”1
It was Cassiodorus who made copying books one of the monks’ most important duties. “Every time you write one of the Lord’s words, Satan is wounded,”2 he used to say. After Cassiodorus, monasteries replaced the old private publishers all over western Europe. Monks continued to copy books through the darkest times of the Dark Ages and into the High Middle Ages, right up past the invention of the printing press. Cassiodorus had discovered the one sure way of preserving and safeguarding the wisdom of the past.
St. Benedict, Founder of Western Monasticism
The world was in chaos after the Roman Empire collapsed, so it’s hardly surprising that many Christians decided to withdraw from it. Holy men had already been living as hermits in the East for some time, and the first monasteries also grew up in the East. The concept spread to the West, especially under the influence of St. Augustine. And as we just saw, Cassiodorus made monasteries into centers of learning. But the man who made monasticism a Western institution was Benedict of Nursia.
Benedict spent some time in Rome getting an education, but in about 500 he decided to get away from the world. He lived in a cave, but he wasn’t alone for long. His example attracted others, and after a while there were a dozen monasteries surrounding his cave, each with a leader appointed by Benedict.
Benedict himself moved to Monte Cassino, where he founded the famous monastery there and established a rule for the communal life that became the model for all of western monasticism.
Benedict’s rule was simple and reasonable. It didn’t demand impossible feats of self-denial from the monks. Instead, the monks were to live simple and virtuous lives, and they were to give their time to devotion and useful work. Monasteries that followed this rule called themselves “Benedictine,” and within a few years of St. Benedict’s death in about 550, the Benedictine monks were spread all over western Christendom.
St. Benedict’s sister, St. Scholastica, was also famous in her day as a leader of the monastic movement. She entered a convent near Monte Cassino, and once every year she and her brother would meet to talk about their work. In spite of the fact that they met so rarely, they must have been very close spiritually. St. Scholastica died a few years before St. Benedict; when he died, he was buried in the same grave as his sister.
Gregory and the Angels
Britain, too, had been overrun by foreign invaders. The island had held out longer than most of the West, probably because of its strong leadership. Legend says that a Christian king named Arthur fought off the pagans, and there is good reason to believe that the legends were based on a real person.
But even Arthur could not put off the destruction forever. The people we know today as the English poured into Britain from northern Germany and the peninsula of Denmark, pushing the Christians back into the western mountains, into Wales. In the rest of Britain, the English takeover was so successful that the Latin and British languages disappeared completely. Pockets of Roman-British peasants still remained, and they may have been allowed to practice their Christian religion—but only because they were slaves, and the English conquerors didn’t care about the religion of slaves.
The British Christians did not try to bring the good news to the pagan English. Instead, it was left for the Church of Rome to send missionaries. One day—so the story goes—an enthusiastic and popular Benedictine abbot named Gregory was walking through the Forum in Rome when he happened to see three light-haired slaves for sale. He was struck right away by their beauty.
“Where do those people come from?” he asked.
“They’re Angles from Britain,” the answer came back. The Angles were the barbarian tribe for whom England—Angleland—was named.
Gregory looked again at the beautiful slaves. “Not Angles, but angels,” he remarked. When he heard that they were pagans, he thought it was a great pity that “people so graceful on the outside should not have grace on the inside.”3 At once he was seized by the idea of converting the English.
So he went to Pope Pelagius II and begged permission to make an expedition to England. The pope was very reluctant to let him go: Gregory had become one of the most popular men in Rome, and he was a natural leader. But it was hard to say no to such enthusiasm. The pope reluctantly gave his permission, and Gregory set off for Britain.
But Gregory never got there. When the people of Rome heard that he had left them, the pope had no peace. Everywhere he went, the pope was surrounded by crowds begging him to bring Gregory back. There were near riots in the streets. Worn down and unable to accomplish anything, the pope sent messengers running after Gregory and ordered him to come back to Rome.
So Gregory lost his chance to become a missionary. But he never forgot his plan to convert the English.
In 590, Pope Pelagius died of the plague that was ravaging Rome that year. The clergy and people of the city quickly chose Gregory as their new pope.
When Gregory heard that he had been elected, he was dismayed. It would be hard to imagine a more difficult time to be pope. The savage and heretical Lombards were doing their best to turn Italy into a wasteland, and the emperor’s exarch (the Greek term for a governor) at Ravenna had given up and admitted that he could do nothing to protect Rome. The river Tiber had overflowed into the granaries and ruined Rome’s food supply. The unsanitary conditions after the flood bred the epidemic that had killed Pope Pelagius. With all these disasters facing them at once, the people of Rome expected more than leadership from their new pope—they expected miracles. No wonder Gregory tried to run away!
For that was exactly what he did. He wanted to slip out of the city undetected, but the gates were all heavily guarded, and everyone knew what Gregory looked like. So he donned a disguise and persuaded some traveling salesmen to take him to a deserted forest. The disguise did him no good at all. Legend has it that wherever he tried to hide, a pillar of light hung over his head and gave him away. The people found him, seized him, and dragged him by force to St. Peter’s, where—much against his will—he was consecrated bishop of Rome.
Gregory the Emperor-Pope
Gregory was a monk, the first monk ever chosen as pope. He had grown up in one of the few remaining old aristocratic families in Rome. Before taking his vows, he had been an important politician in the city, so he had some experience with administration. Nevertheless, he had never intended to become the most important politician of his age. Things just turned out that way. There was work to be done, and only Gregory could do it.
The invading Lombards were particularly vicious, at least to their enemies. They massacred everyone in their path, except for the few who might be useful as slaves. The Lombards who weren’t pagans were Arians, so they had no qualms about plundering orthodox churches and slaughtering the clergy. Cities emptied as they approached, and soon Rome and Ravenna were the only substantial cities left in the northern half of Italy.
In theory, Italy was governed by the Roman emperor in Constantinople, through his exarch in Ravenna. In practice, the exarch was nearly powerless, and the empire in the East had enough of its own problems to worry about without defending Rome or Ravenna. With its naturally impenetrable defenses, the exarch might be able to hold on to Ravenna, but Rome was another matter. When the Lombards decided to march on Rome, no one was left to defend the once-proud city but Gregory.
It was fortunate for Rome that Gregory had experience in government as well as a deep and sincere faith. It took both qualities to save the city.
He led the people in prayers to end the plague; thousands joined him in a solemn procession. When they reached the tomb of Hadrian (one of the early Roman emperors), Gregory and many of the people saw a vision of the archangel Michael sheathing a flaming sword, indicating that the scourge was over. From that time on, the place has been known as the Castle of the Holy Angel—Castel Sant’Angelo in Italian.
The hapless exarch at Ravenna had declared that negotiating with the Lombards was impossible, but Gregory made peace with them when they reached the gates of Rome. In Constantinople, Emperor Maurice was angry at Gregory for behaving as if he were emperor. But, in fact, Maurice had been perfectly content to let Rome be wiped off the face of the earth. Every time Gregory had asked for his help, Maurice had been too busy with other important matters.
Having given Rome at least a temporary peace, Gregory had time to pursue his favorite dream: spreading the gospel to the barbarians. We’ll hear more about his missions in a moment. For now, all we need to say is that thousands of pagans accepted the Catholic faith in Gregory’s time.
Gregory the Reformer
Gregory was not content to rest on his achievements, however. There was still work to be done.
The Mass was one of his most important concerns. Under Gregory it was revised and standardized, and Gregory himself wrote many of the hymns that have become part of our liturgical heritage. The form of music called “Gregorian chant” is probably named for him, because he set the standards for liturgical music for the next thousand years. (Gregory himself taught the chants to church choirs, beating out the time with a stick like a modern conductor.) Even today, much of our worship owes its shape to Gregory’s reformed liturgy.
The finances of the Church also came under Gregory’s eye. At the time, the Church owned huge estates. Gregory wanted the peasants who worked on these estates to be treated fairly, so he did his best to make legal guarantees that his successors would have to honor. When the Church spent money, Gregory wanted to make sure that everyone knew how it was being spent.
Finally, there was the clergy itself to keep in line. Many of the bishops were talented men from the old upper classes who had entered the Church because no other outlets for their ambition existed. Some thought they could act like irresponsible princes, living immoral lives and using their positions to get rich. Gregory wouldn’t tolerate such abuses. He himself lived like a monk, and while he didn’t try to force that lifestyle on all the clergy, he did at least insist on their living like Christians.
Gregory set the example for the popes who followed. Although few were as talented as Gregory, they all built on what he had accomplished. By default, they were the secular leaders in the city of Rome and the surrounding country, and they became more and more independent of the emperor in far-off Constantinople.
Augustine, the Reluctant Apostle
Pope Gregory had never forgotten his hope of converting the English. Now that he was pope, he was in a position to do something about it. He gathered a group of monks to be his missionaries. One of them, who was named Augustine, was chosen as their leader; he would become bishop if the missionaries managed to establish a Christian community among the English. Gregory sent the missionaries off with his blessing and waited for news of the expedition.
Some time later, he was very surprised to see Augustine back in Rome. The monks had set off, but the closer they got to England, the more the mission had seemed like a very bad idea. The English were fierce and barbaric. And none of the monks even knew how to speak English. Wouldn’t it be safer just to turn around and go home? So they stopped traveling and sent Augustine back to Rome to beg the pope for permission to come home.
Gregory had every right to be angry. Perhaps he was, but he didn’t show it. Instead of a stern lecture, he gave Augustine encouragement. He wrote a letter for Augustine to take back to the group:
Since it is better not to begin a good thing than to give up on it after you’ve begun, you really ought, my very dear sons, to finish the good work that, with the help of God, you’ve already begun. So don’t let the hardship of the journey or the bad things people say deter you, but with all enthusiasm and all fervor complete what you’ve begun under God’s direction—knowing that after great hardship comes a greater eternal reward.4
Either Pope Gregory’s letter was really encouraging or the missionaries were too obedient to go home without permission. In 597, they reached Thanet, an island at the southeastern corner of England. It was the same island from which the English had launched their invasion of Britain about 150 years before. Now Augustine and his band of missionaries prepared a different kind of invasion.
Winning by Persuasion
The idea that conversions could not be forced was the cardinal rule of Gregory’s evangelism. He would do everything in his power to make Christianity attractive. For example, he told Augustine not to destroy the pagan temples in Britain; rather, he should set up Christian altars in the same places so that the people wouldn’t have to change their habits to attend Christian worship. Any traditional pagan celebrations could be converted into Christian celebrations.
“The idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them.” Gregory told the missionaries to encourage the locals to continue slaughtering their animals, but not for sacrifice, for celebration and praise of God instead. “Thus while some outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be able more easily to share in inward rejoicings.”
“It is doubtless impossible to cut out everything at once from their stubborn minds,” Gregory said. “Just as the man who is attempting to climb to the highest place, rises by steps and degrees and not by leaps.”5
Pope Gregory also made it clear that he would not tolerate persecution of the Jews. When he heard from some traveling Jewish merchants that Jews in southern Gaul had been forcibly baptized, he immediately sent a sharp condemnation to the bishops there for allowing it to happen. He censured the bishop of Terracina for banning the Jews there from a place where they usually held their festivals. When the bishop of Cagliari allowed a convert from Judaism to seize the local synagogue and turn it into a church, Gregory stepped in and ordered the building to be given back to the Jews.
For Gregory, the principle was always the same: only by peaceable persuasion can hearts be won for Christ. Even Gregory sometimes forgot that principle when he was dealing with the few pagans still left in Italy, and he had trouble applying it to heretics anywhere. But on the whole he set an example of tolerance and charity that won converts far more easily than any attempt at forced conversions.
From the Ruins of Rome
Gregory, Cassiodorus, Benedict, Augustine—the Church venerates their memory. They are a diverse group, representing different personalities, different concerns, and different approaches to the problems of their time. But history allows us to turn the lens as we look backward and see how each of their lives complemented the others. Together, these men succeeded, against all odds, in preserving and even developing the heritage of antiquity. If not for them, the fall of Rome would have brought far more dissolution than it did. Their network of monasteries and bishoprics proved quite hardy and kept working when many other governmental, military, and economic systems were breaking down.
When so many Christians could only lament the ruins and fallen stones of Rome’s former glory, Gregory, Cassiodorus, Benedict, and Augustine had faith in the God who could “from these stones … raise up children to Abraham” (Luke 3:8). In a time of declining civic leadership and vanishing culture, God did indeed raise up Christians who could take those stones and build bridges so that Christians could carry the faith—and civilization—forward from one age to the next.
A Closer Look …
The Slave Who Civilized Ireland
Roman civilization never had much impact in Ireland. The empire had conquered the southern half of Britain, then stopped. The Irish were only barbarians as far as the Romans were concerned—simple natives to trade with or to fight off, depending on their mood.
By about the year 400, it was getting more difficult for the Romans to defend their far-off province of Britain. Taking advantage of the lax defenses, a band of Irish raiders made a sudden attack on northern Britain and carried off several people as slaves.
One of those slaves was a sixteen-year-old boy who would later be known as Patrick. The son of upper-class Romans, he had been raised as a Christian, but not a very sincere one. Now he found himself sold as a slave to a Druid priest in Ireland, where he spent his days tending sheep.
Shepherding is hard work, but it gave the youth long periods of time alone to think. “Every day I had to tend sheep,” Patrick remembered later, “and I prayed many times a day. Love and fear of God gradually grew on me, and my faith got stronger and stronger. My spirit was so moved that I might say as many as a hundred prayers a day.”6
Eventually he escaped from his Druid master and made his way back to his family in Britain. But then Patrick started to have dreams. He heard the voice of the Irish people calling him back. In spite of his years of slavery, he wanted only to bring the good news back to Ireland. And so he left his family once more, this time to be trained as a missionary by some of the greatest figures of the Church.
In 433, Patrick landed once again in Ireland. He knew he had a tough job ahead of him. One great saint, Palladius, had already given up on the Irish. But Patrick did not give up. In spite of constant danger to his own life, he made one convert after another. Soon there were Irish kings among his converts, and almost immediately men and women were attracted by Patrick’s example to the monastic life. Monasteries sprouted up all over Ireland.
Today, St. Patrick is the patron of Ireland, remembered as the heroic missionary who brought Christianity to the island. But he brought more than Christianity—he brought civilization.
In most of the western Roman Empire, ordinary people could understand some form of Latin. But it was a foreign language to the Irish. Monks in the rest of Europe could be illiterate and ignorant and still, at least, understand the gospels in Latin. But Irish monks first had to learn to read and write a foreign language before they could read or hear the important texts of their faith.
Soon the Irish monks were the best-educated men in Europe. As the Dark Ages fell across the continent, Ireland kept the light of learning alive. Irish monks became the teachers of Europe, preserving the fragile flame of Roman civilization and spreading their knowledge all over the new barbarian kingdoms. When at last the darkness began to lift, Irish monks went to monasteries throughout Europe to teach the monks the wisdom that everyone but the Irish had almost forgotten.