80 Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 1 Introduction We do not know the exact date of Gregory’s birth, but the year 540 is generally accepted. He came from a Roman patrician family. He was a functionary in the weakened Roman empire, where around year 570 he held the prestigious position of a Roman prefect. He was a helpless witness to the gradual decay of the civilization that had shaped him. Around the year 573, Gregory experienced an internal conversion and entered a monastery (Dagens 1969, 149–162). The conversion, which was fulfilled in the monastic profession, marked the whole of Gregorian theology (Gregorius 1979, 1). Abandoning the contemplative life for the difficult and laborious life of the Roman Bishop was understood by Gregory as a certain form of a cross (Gregorius 1982, 4, 5, 7–8, 9, 33–34, 36–37). Around year 579, Pope Benedict I or Pope Pelagius II received Gregory into service, ordained him as a deacon and sent him to Constantinople as an “ambassador” (Lat. apocrisiariate) at the imperial court. He returned to Rome in about 586. In 589, a plague broke out in Rome, to which Pope Pelagius II succumbed on 7 February 590. The deacon Gregory was chosen by the people of Rome as his successor, and on 3 September 590, he was consecrated in the Basilica of St. Peter as a bishop and sat on the papal throne. Gregory died around year 604 (Labriolle 1924, 6–15; Drobner 2011, 657–670). His pontificate from 590–604 marks the end of the patristic Latin era, the subsequent influence of which was considerable in the Middle Ages (Lubac 1968, 14–15). Gregory’s attempt to monasticize Western Christianity had a major impact on Western Christianity (Lichner 2019, 58; Lichner 2017, 380). Although he was significantly influenced by the thinking of St. Augustine in his own theological philosophy, unlike him, he did not try to convert ancient culture, but rather tried to “shape the behavior” of Christians (Lat. conversio morum), because the faith of that time coexisted with manifestations in the life of Christians that were too worldly (Lubac 1961, 571). We can thus consider him as the first Latin analyst of spiritual Christian experience in its connection to life practice. 2 Methodology Gregory’s ideas on the importance of the hermeneutics of the sacred text in spiritual life are dispersed throughout his exegetical commentaries and homilies. We studied these in a synchronic way by which we read the commentary or homily in its final version as a literary and theological text within a concluded corpus. We use the hermeneutic method of “emerging themes” in our studies, and this allows us to avoid the scholastic approach, in which the texts are approached with already prepared spiritual and theological ideas and only their confirmation is sought in the texts. The chosen method is based on a comprehensive and continuous reading of the texts, which gradually emphasized certain ideas and themes, underlining their importance by their frequency. Its advantage rests in the fact that the text itself justifies certain topics as essential, and the reader does not impose his or her own topics on the text (Borgomeo 1972, 16–17). 3 Bible Reading as a Foundation for Personal Christian Spirituality According to Gregory, the Holy Scriptures are the basic formative instrument for shaping the personal spirituality of a Christian. He starts from the situation of man after original sin, who is able to spiritually return to God through reading the Holy Scriptures. In the Regula Pastoralis, he constantly emphasizes that a person to whom authority is entrusted should read and meditate on the Holy Scriptures again and again, because this is a necessary means of personal Christian spiritual growth. Gregory no longer develops Christian faith based on the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, but he emphasizes its importance for the moral and spiritual transformation of the reader (Vrégille 1960, 172–173). Gregory adopts an Augustinian understanding of Holy Scripture as a “mirror” (Lat. speculum) of our soul (Augustinus 1887, 3). In an interpretation of the Old Testament Book of Job that he wrote during his stay in Constantinople in the years 579–585, he writes (Gregorius 1979, 59): “Holy Scripture is offered to the eyes of our soul like a mirror: we can contemplate our inner face in it. There we see both our ugliness and our beauty. From there we perceive what kind of progress we have made and how far we are from the goal. He tells of the deeds of the saints and urges the hearts of the weak to imitation… Sometimes he not only shows us their virtues, but he even reveals to us their downfalls, so that we can understand what we should imitate in their strong triumphs and what we should fear through their falls.” The excerpt of the text indicates that the author emphasizes the allegorical and tropological interpretation and does not look for the elementary literary meaning of the text. The Christian reader thus reads the sacred text and finds in it Old Testament and New Testament examples of lives, that is, biblical hagiography, which helps him avoid mistakes and orientate his own spiritual journey to God; in the same chapter the Pope continues: “Job grew with the temptations; King David was knocked to the ground: the first example gives us hope and the second keeps
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