the Wisdom of Gregory Great: Pastoral Care, Contemplative Wisdom, and Making Medieval Christendom

At the hinge between ancient Rome and medieval Europe, one quiet pastor helped shape a thousand years of Christian life.Born around 540 into one of Rome's oldest senatorial families, Gregory renounced a brilliant secular career to become a monk, served reluctantly as papal ambassador in Constantinople, and was elected pope during the plague that swept the city in 590. He governed for fourteen years under almost continual crisis, with Lombard armies pressing the gates, refugees crowding the streets, and the visible institutions of Roman civilization unraveling around him. Through it all he composed a body of writing that would define the Latin Christian tradition for centuries.The Wisdom of Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, Contemplative Wisdom, and the Making of Medieval Christendom traces the life and thought of the man often called the last of the Latin Fathers and the first of the medieval popes. With historical precision and contemplative depth, it examines the great works that emerged from his pontificate, including the Pastoral Rule, the Moralia on Job, and the Dialogues, and recovers the spiritual vision that animated them.Readers will explore: - How Gregory reshaped pastoral authority as service rather than dominion, taking for himself the title servant of the servants of God- His luminous teaching on the balance between the active and contemplative lives- The threefold method of reading scripture he transmitted to a thousand years of Christian readers- His pastoral doctrine of compunction, humility, and the soul's slow ascent toward God- The mission to the Anglo-Saxons that helped reshape the Christian map of Europe- His liturgical reforms and the contemplative spirit behind the chant tradition that bears his nameWritten for thoughtful readers drawn to Christian spirituality, the early medieval church, and the long inner history of Western thought, The Wisdom of Gregory the Great: Pastoral Care, Contemplative Wisdom, and the Making of Medieval Christendom offers a portrait of a contemplative whose pastoral wisdom continues to illuminate the perennial questions of leadership, suffering, and the inward life.