, which he had in
earlier years been most anxious himself to undertake, and which was
begun in 597 under his direction by Augustine; but it is not the only
one. In Northern Italy, in Africa and Gaul, Gregory was active in
seeking the conversion of pagans and heretics, and in endeavouring by
gentle measures to lead the Jews to Christ.

[Sidenote: His relations on monasticism.]

More important still in the history of the papacy was Gregory's work in
spreading, organising, and systematising monasticism. He insisted on
the strict observance of the rule of S. Benedict. Not only did he
reform, but he very greatly strengthened, the monasticism of Italy.
Conspicuously did his _privilegia_, granting or recognising a
considerable freedom from episcopal control, start the monks on a new
advance. While not exempting them from the rule of bishops, he made it
possible for future popes to win support for themselves by granting
such exemptions.

But Gregory's fame does not lie wholly in any of these spheres of
activity. Great as a ruler and an {70} organiser, he was known also to
later ages, as to his own, for his theological writings. He was not
only a practical ruler and practical minister of Christ; he was also a
leader in Christian learning--the last, as men have come to call him,
of the four great Latin doctors.

[Sidenote: His relations to learning.]

The work of Gregory the Great was here as elsewhere far-reaching, but
rather an organising than a formative one. Classical studies, in which
he had been trained, he put aside; and when he did his utmost to spread
monasteries over the length and breadth of Italy, it was not at all of
learning in a secular sense, but wholly of religion that he thought.
Thus his own theology is primarily a biblical theology. The Bible was
to him the word of God. Like the author of the _Imitatio Christi_ in
later days, he did not care to argue as to the authorship of the
different books but to profit by what was in them. He was a great
expositor, a great preacher, and that always with a practical aim. As
he said, "We hear the doctrine words of God if we act on them."
[Sidenote: His doctrine of the church.] In his more general theological
writings he sums up, with the precision of a master, not any new
doctrines or advances in speculation, but the theology of the Church of
his age. And he is able thus to emphasise the crying need of unity in
words which state the claim of the Church fo