Introduction: a contemplative in a troubled world

Abstract

THE SOURCES Although Gregory left us no autobiography, he is known to us almost entirely through his own writings. For the last thirteen and a half years of his life, the period of his pontificate (September 590 to March 604), over 850 surviving letters (see below, pp. 14–15) give us a fairly full picture of his work. His writings also contain occasional hints about his earlier life. A handful of other sources add little more than scraps of information. One of the earliest of these is the entry in the Liber pontificalis . Since the early sixth century various materials had been combined into a collection of papal biographies, known as the Liber pontificalis . By Gregory's time it had taken its shape as a collection of brief biographies, a new entry being added soon after each pope's death, by papal clerks with access to the papal archives. At this period, however, they are short and uninformative. The entry for Gregory adds to what we know from his own writings only the little he did in the way of adorning, furnishing and reconstructing the interiors of some Roman churches. Its mention of some liturgical innovations hardly merit description as ‘reforms’: they do not go beyond what would have been regarded as the normal role of the president of the liturgical assembly. Within months of his becoming bishop of Rome, his contemporary, Gregory of Tours, included in his History of the Franks (x.I) a report of Gregory's accession and its circumstances, brought back by one of his deacons just returned from Rome.