Michael Dubruiel has posted Pope Benedict’s Angelus address on the feast of his predecessor, Pope Gregory the Great.

St. Gregory the Great, whose feast is today, Sept. 3, was 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 hadn’t 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.

Rome was in bad shape when Gregory became her bishop. The plague that had killed Pope Pelagius was still raging. The city had been kicked around like a football between Goths and Vandals, with Greeks from the Eastern Roman Empire periodically stepping in to inflict even more damage. Fires and disastrously bad weather added to the catastrophes. And the constant threat of invasion from the north by the horrible Lombards kept the survivors in terror.

These Lombards were a particularly vicious sort of barbarian, 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 the 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 Eastern Empire had enough problems of its own to worry about. The exarch might be able to hold onto Ravenna, with its naturally impenetrable defenses, but he couldn’t do much about it when the Lombards decided to march on Rome. No one was left to defend the once-proud city but Gregory.
It was lucky for Rome that Gregory had both experience in government and 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 Hadrian’s tomb, 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.

Then there were the Lombards to be taken care of. The useless exarch at Ravenna had declared that negotiating with those people was impossible, but Gregory made peace with them when they had reached the very gates of Rome. In Constantinople, the Emperor Maurice was angry: who did Gregory think he was, acting like an emperor? But 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.

Any other pope might have been content with saving Rome from invasion and converting thousands of barbarians. But Gregory was never content. While any part of the Church was imperfect, there was work to be done.

The Mass was one of his most important concerns. Under Gregory it was revised and standardized, and Gregory himself wrote 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 Church music for a 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. The Church by this time owned huge estates; Gregory not only treated the peasants who worked them fairly, but also did his best to make legal guarantees that his successors would have to honor. When the Church spent money, Gregory made 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 appeared. Some of them thought they could act like irresponsible princes, living immoral lives and using their positions to get rich. Gregory wouldn’t stand for that. He himself lived like a monk, and while he didn’t try to force that life 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 done. 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. And Constantinople, for its part, would soon have worries much closer to home.

Gregory’s tomb is in St. Peter’s, and I stop to pray there whenever I’m in Rome. Won’t you join me on my next visit? We can walk together in the footsteps of the Apostles, the Fathers, the martyrs, and the great popes. We can visit Gregory’s tomb and the spot where he sighted the Archangel Michael. With my colleagues at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology — Scott and Kimberly Hahn and others — I’ll be leading a pilgrimage to Rome in May of 2007. We’ll have guided tours, classes and talks, daily Mass, and lots of slack-jawed, awestruck moments in the city of so many great Fathers. If you’re interested in joining us, contact Wendt Tours at 877-565-8687.

Tomorrow, September 3, is the feast of St. Gregory the Great. We’ll post plenty on him, of course. But first it would be good to get to know the “barbarians,” whom he took care to convert to Catholic Christianity.

Modern readers often misunderstand the term “barbarian.” They imagine an unruly horde of hairy guys, all wearing skins and holding spears, and occasionally grunting. But, to the ancients, the word denoted the peoples who lived beyond the empire’s borders. They were the tribes that were non-Roman and that resisted assimilation into the Roman world. Their civilizations developed along different, non-Roman lines. Some tribes were pagan; others were Christian. But those that were Christian were solidly in the camp of the Arian heretics.

As Rome weakened, the barbarians shifted from defensive fighting to offensive, and from the late fourth through the fifth century various tribes advanced on the city: Gauls, Visigoth, and Vandals all succeeded in sacking Rome. In 476 the last Roman emperor was toppled, and the German chief Odovacer ruled Italy as king.

Adrian Murdoch, who blogs at Bread and Circuses, has chronicled those Roman-barbarian encounters in a number of popular books. Earlier this week, he linked to evidence of “civic continuity” in Rome after the barbarian victory. The barbarians, it seems, paid handsome sums for the upkeep of public buildings. So it’s quite possible that, for the average plebs in the street, the “Fall of Rome” wasn’t all that catastrophic.

What lessons can we learn from all that history? I’m glad you asked.

Mr. Murdoch is a business journalist as well as a scholar of ancient history. (Stateside, his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal.) For all of us who have gotten nowhere on the professional secrets of Sun Tzu and Attila the Hun, he’s amassed a treasury of business lessons from all the barbarian tribes. He’s summarized it tidily in a very entertaining essay, and the advice seems sound enough (though this non-millionaire is hardly a qualified judge). It’s in PDF format, as images of the original newspaper pages.

Get to know the tribes, then, and call me when you’ve made your first million. We’ll search out some lessons from antiquity on spending fortunes wisely.

Pope St. Gregory must have learned his lessons well. He was able to keep the fierce Lombards at a distance by buying them off. And he found gentle ways to win many of the barbarian tribes over to the Church. Stay tuned for more on this guy.

Phil at hyperekperisou has posted a review of The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, by Darell L. Bock. A while back, I posted a Boston Globe review of the same title. I haven’t read the book yet, but it does sound promising.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a good, long conversation with Chuck Neff and his listeners on Relevant Radio’s “Searching the Word.” We talked about the new, expanded edition of my book The Fathers of the Church. The show is now posted in Relevant Radio’s audio archive. You have to register first to get it, but all the content’s free.

Phil Harland at Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean gives us a roundup of pagan rumors about what “really” went on behind the closed doors of the Christian liturgy. A sample: “An infant, cased in dough to deceive the unsuspecting, is placed beside the person to be initiated. The novice is thereupon induced to inflict what seems to be harmless blows upon the dough, and unintentionally the infant is killed by his unsuspecting blows; the blood — oh, horrible — they lap up greedily…” You can see how these stories of cannibalism got started: “My flesh is real food, My blood real drink.” The problem, for Christians, was that such rumors could lead to mob violence or even official persecutions.

I included several of these urban legends in my book The Mass of the Early Christians.

Go, read the whole post. Mr. Harland also gives us Tertullian’s tactful-as-ever response to the rumors: “Come on, plunge the knife into the baby!”

Hat tip: The other Phil at hyperekperisou.

St. Augustine explains Harry Potter.

Yesterday I paid brief homage to Maureen (aka Suburban Banshee), who runs two of my favorite blogs, Maria Lectrix and Aliens in This World. On the first site Maureen posts audio recordings of hard-to-find and out-of-print books, including many patristic titles. On the second site she’s begun to post actual text of hard-to-find and out-of-print books.

I quadruple my homage because she is now posting, in installments, a book that’s been on my wish list for many years. It’s called The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries, an 1893 book that I borrowed from Scott Hahn way back when. Since then I have not seen a copy on sale for under $300! It’s easily worth that much. My problem is that my entire estate’s probably not worth that much. But Maureen is toiling so that we can all live like kings. Stop by to thank her for all she does to bring us great books, absolutely free. Her blogs are an incredible service to the world and the Church.

UPDATE: She’s also, as of tonight, posted links to other public-domain Catholic books available online. Just give yourself time to browse the stacks of this Banshee’s sites. You’ll find medieval Irish poetry, her musings on science fiction, her own musical compositions, and other odd lots. Never a dull moment, it seems, in this particular mind.

Seminarians, get happy.

I’m lifting this directly from Fr. Z’s blog, because it’s that important. Fr. Z tells us that the U.S. bishops have “issued a program for formation for US seminaries. Inter alia the conference has codified that Patristics (study of the theology of the Fathers of the Church) is to be included. Here are the relevant paragraphs.”

201. Patristic studies constitute an essential part of theological studies. Theology should draw from the works of the Fathers of the Church that have lasting value within the living tradition of the Church. The core should include Patrology (an overview of the life and writings of the Fathers of the Church) and Patristics (an overview of the theological thought of the Fathers of the Church). [FOOTNOTE: See Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on the Study of the Fathers of the Church in the Formation of Priests (1989)].

210. In historical studies, the core should include courses on the history universal and the history of the Catholic Church in the United States that way which reflects her multicultural origins and ecumenical context. The study of patristics and the lives of the saints are of special importance.

The indefatigable and always timely Maria Lectrix has posted audio of St. Cyprian’s (third-century) treatise “On the Lapsed.” It’s a great antidote to the nonsense some people are saying about the two kidnapped journalists who were persuaded at gunpoint to convert to Islam. Lectrix also posted some wise comments on the matter at her personal site, Aliens in This World. God help us all.

There’s nowhere I’d rather be next May than walking — with you — in the footsteps of the apostles, the martyrs, the popes, and the Church Fathers. So I’m pleased to announce the details of the pilgrimage I hinted at a few months ago.

Our sponsor is the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (of which I’m vice-president), and we’ll be making the pilgrimage May 16-25, 2007, along with my friends Scott and Kimberly Hahn.

Here’s the scoop. Pilgrims will leave the United States on Wednesday, May 16, and arrive in Rome around noon the next day. Our first visit will be to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls for a guided tour followed by our opening Mass. From there we’ll check in at the Grand Hotel Fleming for a dinner and reception. In the days that follow, we’ll spend time in the Catacombs of St. Callistus; the Basilicas of St. Peter, the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary Major; the churches of St. Clement, the Pantheon, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, St. Augustine, St. Peter in Chains, and Saints Praxedes and Pudentiana. In these holy places rest the relics of so many of the ancients: Saints Peter and Paul, Saints Simon and Jude, St. Lawrence, St. Jerome, St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo, St. Monica, and many martyrs whose names have been lost to history …

We’ll tour the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. We’ll pray before the original image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. We’ll climb the Holy Stairs. We’ll pray the Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum. We’ll wander the Roman Forum, see the Arch of Constantine, the Arch of Titus that depicts his return with the plunder of Jerusalem. We’ll visit the tombs of many Jesuit saints at the Church of St. Ignatius. And we’ll stroll through Piazza Navona and have time to stop for gelato or shopping.

And that’s just a sampling of what we’ll do and see!

We’re slated to see Pope Benedict XVI twice, at his Wednesday audience and his Sunday Angelus address.

On Wednesday afternoon we’ll leave for Assisi, to spend two days touring the scenes of the life of Saints Francis and Clare.

Every day’s program will also include talks from your hosts (Scott, Kimberly, and yours truly) on historical, scriptural, and spiritual themes. Since the tour will be in May, the pilgrimage will certainly have a Marian character.

The group returns home on Friday, May 25.

Pricing and other details follow, below. I welcome any questions, too. Don’t hesitate to send me a note — or contact Wendt Touring directly.

PRICING:
$3,499 per person based on double occupancy
$3,999 per person for single room
$2,999 per child (2-11 years)

TOUR INCLUDES:
* Round-trip scheduled air from Newark, NJ, including airport departure taxes
* Eight nights’ lodging with private facilities
* Continental breakfast & dinner daily
* Deluxe motorcoach transportation
* All sightseeing & admissions
* Daily seminars, Mass & prayer
* Baggage handling at hotels
* English-speaking guides

PAYMENT PLAN: A $500 per person deposit is due to secure your reservation with the balance due by Feb. 16, 2007.

CANCELLATION POLICY: Full refund for cancellations made by Feb. 16, 2007. Cancellations made after February 16 are subject to penalties assessed by airlines, hotels and land operators.

TRIP CANCELLATION/TRIP INTERRUPTION INSURANCE: $225 per person due with initial trip deposit.

To Reserve Your Space, Contact:
Wendt Touring
401 Market Street – Suite 707
Steubenville, Ohio 43952
740-282-5790 or toll-free 877-565-8687