days and nights; all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure," down to the bronze of the statues and the furniture of brass and copper, was carried away in the ships of the African conqueror. And yet a third time the soldiers of Ricimer, in 472 A.D., forced their way into the city, and indulged in unrestrained rapine and licence, in which the mob and the slaves of the city joined them. Rome thus ruined, fell into the condition of a place of second-rate importance.

When Theodoric the Ostrogoth made himself master of Italy, he took up his residence at Ravenna; but he visited Rome, was filled with admiration of the grandeur of its ancient monuments, and took pains to encourage its returning prosperity. After sixty years of subjection to the Gothic yoke, Belisarius rescued it (536 A.D.), and added it to the dominions of the Eastern Emperor.

Then came the invasion of the Lombards, who occupied the north, the south, and scattered portions of the middle of the country; leaving to the Eastern Emperor a tract of country between the Adriatic and the Apennines around Ravenna, and the three subordinate provinces of Rome, Venice, and Naples, isolated amidst the Lombard conquests, under the rule of the Exarch of Ravenna. During two hundred years this division continued under eighteen successive Exarchs. It was not till 755 A.D. that King Pepin gave his Lombard conquests of that year to the See of St. Peter, to be held as a fief of the Frankish kingdom; and not till the disruption of the Carolingian Empire, in the latter part of the ninth century, that the Pope, together with other feuda

tories, was able to hold his dominions as an independent prince. Our present concern is with Rome at the close of the sixth century, when it was still part of the Eastern Empire.

The Roman province extended along the coast from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and inland to Ameria and Narni. During the period which we have reached -the close of the sixth century-the Duchy of Rome was in this condition: it was a dependency of the Exarchate of Ravenna, isolated amidst the Lombard conquests; ruled by the Exarch and his representative in Rome, but left to defend itself by its own diplomacy and force, in face of the hostile attitude of the Lombard Duke of Beneventum on the south. In 570-582, the clergy and Senate collected the remains of their ancient opulence, and sent an embassy to the Emperor Tiberius II., asking aid, and offering three thousand pounds of gold as their contribution to the cost of the expedition. The Emperor declared his inability to help them, and returned the money, advising the Romans either to buy peace from the Lombards with it, or to spend it in hiring the aid of the Franks. Rome had reached the lowest point of its depression. The influx of wealth from the revenues of the provinces had ceased; strangers no longer resorted to it for business or curiosity; large parts of the city were in ruins; the Campagna was falling into the condition of an unwholesome waste, from which it has never recovered. So great were the miseries of the time, as to produce in many minds the belief that the end of the world was at hand.

The Church of Rome had shared in the misfortunes

of the city. In the previous centuries, the See, endowed by the piety of wealthy devotees with estates in Italy and the provinces, and further enriched by continual offerings, was very wealthy. The legal recognition accorded by the Christian Emperors to the arbitration of bishops between disputants, and the deference paid to their intercession on behalf of accused persons, had placed the bishop virtually among the chief magistrates of the city; and the magistracy of Rome maintained some of the pretensions of the ancient Senate; the position of the Bishop of Rome had therefore been one of great wealth, dignity, and influence.

But the overthrow of the Empire and the ruin of Rome had dried up the chief sources of the wealth of the See, and, under the rule of Ostrogothic Kings and Eastern Emperors, it had lost much of its prestige. Both rulers had maintained the right of intervention in the appointment of bishops, and both had treated the bishops as their subjects. Theodoric had sent Bishop John to Constantinople, as his ambassador, to obtain for the Arians in the East that toleration which the Arians gave to the Orthodox in the West, and on his return had cast him into prison for the partial failure of his mission, where he shortly died (536 A.D.). Theodahat had sent Bishop Agapetus, as his ambassador, to avert a threatened attack. When Belisarius had conquered the city, he, or rather his wife Antonina, had summoned Bishop Sylverius to her chamber, rated him for treasonable correspondence with the besieging Goths, sent him off by sea to the East, and caused Vigilius to be elected in his place. Vigilius (545 A.D.) had been summoned to

court by Justinian to give an account of himself, and had been detained there seven years, and died on his way homeward. The vacillation of Vigilius on the great theological dispute of the time had even sullied the reputation of the See for its soundness in the faith, and diminished its spiritual authority. In the time of his successor Pelagius, the rest of the Italian bishops withdrew from communion with Rome, and the province of Aquileia maintained its excommunication of Rome for nearly a century and a half. This was the Rome of Gregory the Great, and the scene of the opening of the present history.

CHAPTER II

GREGORY THE GREAT

GREGORY THE GREAT (Anicius Gregorius) is said to have descended from the Anician family. His grandfather was Bishop Felix III.; his father, Gordian, was the noblest of the Senate; his mother, Sylvia, illustrious for her piety, retired to a convent on her husband's death. Gregory entered into civil life, and attained the highest municipal office of prefect of the city. But at the age of thirty-five (about 575 A.D.) he fell under the influence of the prevalent ascetic enthusiasm, and entered what was technically called the "religious" life. He converted the house of his family on the Cælian Hill into a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew, and devoted the remainder of his patrimony to the founding of six monasteries in Sicily. Whether he adopted the rule which St. Benedict had drawn up for his monks fifty years before, is not stated by the contemporary authorities, and is disputed by the modern historians. Gregory was a great admirer of Benedict, and wrote his biography; but he was a man of so much originality of genius and selfreliance, so much in the habit of seeking to improve what he touched, that while he could hardly help taking the rule of Benedict in its broad outlines as a wise adaptation, on the whole, of the Eastern rule to