Gregory

Gregory the Great (Gregory I), born into a wealthy Roman senatorial family around 540 AD, served as prefect of Rome before renouncing public life to found monasteries and become a monk; he later acted as papal apocrisiarius (envoy) to Constantinople under Pope Pelagius II, whom he succeeded as pope in 590. As pope until his death in 604, he reorganized papal administration and Church estates, defended Rome amid the Lombard invasions and the collapse of imperial authority in Italy, dispatched the mission of Augustine to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and produced enormously influential writings (the Moralia in Job, the Pastoral Rule, the Dialogues, and a vast register of letters). One of the four traditional Latin Doctors of the Church, he stands as a pivotal figure bridging the late Roman and early medieval worlds. In this corpus he appears as a recipient within the Pelagius II correspondence and as an addressee of Venantius Fortunatus, the contemporary Latin poet of Gaul.