Under his predecessor, Pelagius II, Rome and the country were in dire straits due to incursions from the Lombards that had ravaged the country. Rome was filled with poor refugees, and the Lombards were "at the gates" and overrunning the peninsula. Pelagius sent emissaries (including Gregory) to Constantinople (the seat of the Empire) to send help.
Constantinople was not helping, and when Gregory became pope in 590, he took matters into his own hands. Rome was overcrowded with people who were starving and destitute. Gregory turned out to be a very effective administrator, possibly from the influence of his father's political knowledge. He started organizing ways to help the citizens.
Charitable relief was one of his greatest triumphs, using profits from donations to churches to help the poorest among the population. He demanded that each parish seek out those in need and keep track of them. Gregory encouraged his rich acquaintances to expiate their sins by making donations to aid the poor. If his staff (the papacy already had an accounting department) and followers would not cooperate, he replaced them. In one of his letters, he reprimands a subordinate:
I asked you most of all to take care of the poor. And if you knew of people in poverty, you should have pointed them out ... I desire that you give the woman, Pateria, forty solidi for the children's shoes and forty bushels of grain."
Famine was a large problem. The church owned over 1300 square miles of farmland which produced goods that were sold. Gregory set quotas for production, urged the people tending the land to do more, and had the results shipped to Rome to be distributed to the needy. The starving crowds in Rome started to receive—free of charge—necessities such as cheese, fish, grain, meat, oil, and wine.
Gregory was responsible for many other reforms, both political and religious. He made some changes to the order of the Mass which still pertain today, and maybe I will get to those details some day. In yesterday's post, however, I teased that he set in motion something that would make a profound change to the whole of English history. Tomorrow I'll tell you what he did outside of Rome and Italy. Stay tuned.
