He was born to a patrician Roman family (father, Gordianus, and mother, Silvia) and pursued a secular political career which climaxed in the position of Urban Prefect before he entered a monastery. About fifteen years later he became pope.
Gregory's chief acts as Pope include his role in the schism of the Three Chapters, and sending Augustine of Canterbury to convert the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. He is also known in the East as a tireless worker for communication and understanding between East and West. He is also credited with increasing the power of the papacy. Before his pontificate the Pope was regarded as the foremost among other high-ranking ecclesiasts, but without any jurisdiction outside his own diocese.
Commentary on Job, frequently known even in English-language histories by its Latin title, Moralia in Job.
The Rule for Pastors
Some 850 letters have survived from his Papal Register of letters. This collection serves as an invaluable primary source for these years.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Gregory is credited with devising the Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts. It is celebrated on certain nights during Great Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Gregorian Chant, a religious musical style of the Middle Ages, is named for Pope Gregory. While he is not known to have written any chants himself—the majority of chants written during this time were published anonymously—his influence in the church caused the style to be named after him.
Gregory was born to a patrician and thoroughly Christian Roman family (father, Gordianus, and mother, Silvia) that owned latifundia in the south and a domus on the Caelian Hill, the foundations of which support the Church of St. Andrew and St. Gregory.
Gregory's childhood in the disasters of the Gothic War, his secular cursus honorum, his sojourn in Constantinople, and doubtless his personal assessment of the Exarch, convinced him that no help from the East was to be expected in the confrontations with the Lombards that began his pontificate.
Gregory expressed the difficulty and danger of his position in some of the earliest letters (Epistles I, iii, viii, xxx); but no actual hostilities began until the summer of 592, when a threatening letter from Ariulf of Spoleto was followed by the appearance of the Lombard before the walls of Rome.
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