Early medieval (6th–7th century)
Feast: September 3
The monk who became pope, sent missionaries to England, reformed the liturgy, and called himself 'servant of the servants of God.'
Gregory was the wealthiest man in Rome when he gave it all away. He turned his family estate on the Caelian Hill into a monastery and lived as a monk — happily — until the pope dragged him into public service and then the people of Rome elected him pope in 590 AD. He tried to refuse. Plague was devastating the city. The Lombards were at the gates. The imperial government in Constantinople was useless. Gregory fed the poor, negotiated with barbarians, managed Church estates across the Mediterranean, reformed the Roman liturgy, and still found time to write Pastoral Rule — a handbook on how to be a bishop that was so good Charlemagne required every bishop to own a copy. He saw blond Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman market and reportedly said, 'Non Angli, sed angeli' — 'Not Angles, but angels.' Then he sent Augustine of Canterbury to convert their homeland. The Gregorian chant tradition bears his name, though his actual role in its development is debated. He wrote thousands of letters — more than eight hundred survive — and in them you hear a man constantly exhausted, constantly in pain from gout, and constantly doing the next thing. He invented the title 'servant of the servants of God,' which every pope since has used. He died in 604, one of only three popes called 'the Great.'