Please note that due to software, not everything recorded in this transcript will be accurate.

Good Pope

Media – Angels and Demons clip

John Dickson – Studio:

That’s a clip from the Catholic political thriller film – Angels and Demons, based on the book by Dan Brown (who also wrote Director Mark’s favourite book, The Da Vinci Code), and starring Tom Hanks as Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon. It’s pretty ridiculous.  In it, the death of the pope sparks a murderous insurrection from the Illuminati, spearheaded by the demonic priest Father Patrick McKenna, played by a clean-shaven Ewan McGregor. The film plays with the idea that the upper echelons of the Vatican are part of a “shadow government” seeking to control the world. As I say, it’s ridiculous. BUT. There’s no denying that throughout the last 2000 years of history, the Bishop of Rome – AKA The Pope – has sometimes been at the forefront of global affairs. The death in April 2025 of Pope Francis – and the global fixation on the conclave that would elect the new pope Leo – has brought the Papacy back into the spotlight. US President Donald Trump got in on the act.

Media – MSNBC clip

John Dickson – Studio:

Whether you agree with President Trump that it’s just a little fun, or, like MSNBC, you think it was very very serious, the point is: the pope remains a big deal. And if we go back in time, he’s an even bigger deal. Almost to the beginning of Christianity, the bishops of Rome played a role in geo-politics. For some, the Vatican and its popes are guiding lights to Christianity in the world.  For others, they are symbols of decadence and the corruption of faith. And I’m not going to solve that one today! This is not an ep about the papacy in general or the Roman Catholic church itself. I want to talk about a particular bishop of Rome in the early history — someone, who to my mind, was a remarkable scholar, pastor, politician, missionary, ascetic, visionary, and public works manager! I don’t have strong views about the late Pope Francis or the election of the new Chicagoan Pope Leo XIV. But I am fascinated by the man who led western Christianity — not eastern Christianity, by the way — at the close of the 500s AD and the dawn of the 600s. It was a crazy time for Italy, Gaul, and Britannia, and they needed the ultimate servant-leader. That’s what they got in … my favourite pope. Yes, shoot me Protestants …  I have a favourite bishop of Rome. I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson:
All right, great. Uh, George, um, let’s start with your dinner party pitch, right? So you, you’re at a dinner party. Your friends say, hang on, George, who on earth is Gregory the Great, and why on earth would you write a book about him? What’s the headline?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, well there, there would be two things. One, he’s the first monk to become Pope. So that in and of itself is pretty interesting. Um, and second, He stands at the crossroads, both between the Greek world and the Latin world, and between the ancient world and the medieval world. So if you look into his writing and into his career, you see that he is this transition in all of these really important ways for what’s gonna become the medieval church, the medieval papacy, and so forth.

John Dickson – Studio:

That’s George Demacopoulos – he’s the Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University, as well as Co-Founding Director of the  Orthodox Christian Studies Centre and Co-Founding Editor of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies. He’s written one of the great books on GREGORY THE GREAT! Gregory the Great became bishop of Rome (pope) in 590 AD–through to his death in 604–at a time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling  …. and the Eastern Roman Empire was thriving (remember, that’s what we call the Byzantine Empire, even though they just thought of themselves as the continuation of the Roman empire). The papacy traces its roots to the Apostle Peter, traditionally seen as the first Bishop of Rome and symbolic “rock” of the church. After him is Linus, then Anencletus, and Clement—all from the first century. We have two sources for this early succession list (Eusebius in 4th century and Irenaeus in the 2nd century). And the earliest of our sources is fascinating, because it actually says Peter and Paul together were the founders of the Roman church who appointed their successor. Here it is:

Reading

But since it wouldn’t be too long, in a work like this, to list the successions in all the churches we shall take only one of them, the church that is greatest, most ancient, and known to all, founded and set up by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul at Rome… After founding and building up the church, the blessed apostles delivered the ministry of the episcopate to line us: Paul mentions this Linus in the letters to Timothy. Anacletus succeeded him, and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement received the lot of the episcopate; He had seen the apostles and met with them and still had the Apostolic preaching in his ears and the tradition before his eyes. He was not alone, for many were then still alive who had been taught by the apostles. 

Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 3

John Dickson – Studio:

Fun fact: we actually have a full letter from this Clement. We’ll link to it in the show n. It is a wonderful insight into earliest Christianity. It was composed in the middle of the 90s of the 1st century. That means it’s as old as one or two of the texts that are in the New Testament. The letter of Clement was written to the church in Corinth, a little over a generation after Paul had founded the church there. In the letter, Clement begs the Church of Corinth to remember Paul’s teaching about love, humility, and unity. Apparently, the Corinthian church was still a bit of a mess! Throughout the letter, Clement doesn’t claim Scriptural authority—this letter was never considered a possible NT text—he doesn’t even claim ‘papal’ authority. He just pleads, on behalf of the churches of Rome, that the churches in Corinth obey the apostles. I love it. Anyway, back to my point. The Catholic Church as we know it today didn’t really exist in the early centuries. And, although the bishops of Rome were important figures, the Roman church was by no means where the main action was at. Power was in Constantinople (the capital of the ongoing Roman empire in the East). The churches of Rome were nothing compared to the churches of the east. We now all think of St Peter’s Basilica—with its 20,000 person capacity. But that was only built in the 1500s. In the time of Gregory the Great, the greatest church was the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the jewel of the worldwide church. 

John Dickson:
Okay. Got it. He lived at a turbulent time, so can you give us a sense of the Roman empire, the, the world, immediately around him?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, you’re right. It, it was a turbulent time. Um, he, uh. He is Pope when Rome is, is pillaged by barbarians, right? He, he’s literally watching from the gates or, or from the, from the city walls as thousands of Roman citizens are carried away into slavery. Um, and he, uh, it’s, it, it’s quite turbulent, the Roman Empire as we think of it no longer exists, um, because Rome is basically, or sorry, Italy is basically a tossup between the Byzantines who sometimes care about Italy and sometimes don’t. Um, and between a variety of Germanic tribes who are making incursions all over the peninsula, and Gregory very, very much sees himself as a Roman.

John Dickson – Studio:

Way back in AD 410 the Visigoths sacked Rome. Roman citizens in the west tried to rebuild or reimagine their glorious culture, and there was a succession of false starts and half-emperors. In the vacuum, the church increasingly looked like the most stable game in town. Any semblance of western imperial stability ended in the late fifth century: the barbarian warrior Odoacer deposed the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 (a date sometimes regarded as the official end of the western empire); 20 years later, in 493, a new Gothic leader named Theodoric united various barbarian tribes to form the Ostrogoths, who finished what the earlier Visigoths couldn’t. After killing Odoacer, they overtook Italy, established their own rule, and ended the western empire for good. Most locals got on with trying to live their lives, pay their taxes, and hope for better days. It’s what conquered people usually do. The Gothic warrior-aristocracy maintained surprisingly good relations with the church in Rome. That church now owned major buildings and estates in the east of the city, at the famous Lateran Palace where the bishop of Rome lived, as well as in a former imperial park known as the “Vatican” on the west bank of the Tiber. Constantine had donated these lands and constructed churches there a hundred and fifty years earlier. “Vatican” today means Catholic HQ, but in this period it was an out-of-the-way suburb on the edges of the city.The key thought here is that: In the uncertain times of the fifth century, Romans increasingly looked to church figures … especially the bishop of Rome, as a source of social authority with a legitimacy reaching back into previous centuries. The model of the bishop as a kind of twon mayor was now wholly accepted by the populace, especially since many bishops were, in fact, from the senatorial class. In these fractured conditions, as Rome crumbled and Europe groaned, the last non-Christians in the former western Roman Empire rallied to the Church. The Church was seen as the source of stability, charity, and, of course, spiritual comfort. Gregory was the right man at the right time. But he needed the support of the Byzantine leadership.

George Demacopoulos:
And he very much sees the people we call Byzantine as Romans as well. He doesn’t think of them as any different. Um, he, he thinks that the emperor in Constantinople is the Roman Emperor. Um, but as we look at it from hindsight, things have changed dramatically.

John Dickson:
Yes. That whole division between Roman Empire and now the Byzantine Empire or Byzantine Empire, as often you often say in the us. Um, but, but, but, but the Byzantines just thought they were the Roman Empire. Empire, they, they’d looked people in the west and saying, ‘what do you mean the Roman Empire fell? It didn’t, we’re here. We’re here still!

George Demacopoulos:
There, there’s a fabulous line in in a Khomeini who is a princess, right? A Byzantine princess in very erudite. And she offers a firsthand account of when the Crusaders first show up in, in the 11th century, and she describes skirmishes between crusaders and Byzantine armies as a battle between the Romans and the barbarians. They are the Romans and the Italian crusaders are the barbarians.

John Dickson:
Okay. So going, going back to going back to context, um, okay, so that’s the Turbulent Roman Empire. Um, let’s talk about Gregory’s upbringing, uh, his family and education in particular.

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, so Gregory, um, belongs to one of the ancient Roman families. He, he is raised in a sort of senatorial household. He would have received all of the benefits of that, that someone in the middle of the sixth century could have. So he would’ve had. The best possible education that money could buy in, in Italy in the sixth century. I mentioned at the outset that he stands at this crossroads between east and west and the ancient, the medieval world. And we see even in his own education, these transformations. So Gregory is an extremely well-educated man. And yet he is always asking for Latin translations of Greek texts, which tells us that even though he studied Greek, um, he actually wasn’t in a milieu in which it was really in vibe. Right? He didn’t know Greek like Cicero had known Greek. Right? Um, or even somebody like Ambrose of Milan had known Greek. Um, just because Greek learning had gone into decline in, in the sixth century.

John Dickson – Studio:

That might sound trivial, but the decline of Greek learning in Rome was symbolic of a pretty significant cultural shift. Greek was the truly intellectual language. Gregory knew the language but not in the way earlier Roman elites had. Gregory was amongst the wealthiest and most educated men in the west but he represents a bit of a step down from the glory days of Rome. 

George Demacopoulos:
And, and yet One of the other really interesting things about him, um, his, uh, well, I guess his second, um, professional position, his first professional position is he starts out as effectively the mayor of Rome. Um, right. Uh, and, um, but in his second professional position, he resigns that post and becomes a monk. He is, um, named the lead diplomat between, um, the Pope at the time and the Roman Emperor in Constantinople, a position known as Apo Chrissiaris. And so he actually spends about six years in Constantinople. And still doesn’t know Greek.

John Dickson:
I mean, that’s extraordinary. I mean, surely he, he must have been able to get by, but tell me about that time in Constantinople, um, as an official of the Roman Church, he goes there, how would you summarize A, what was he doing there, and B, what effect did the East have on him intellectually, spiritually?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s great questions. So, in terms of what his role was, is he was the permanent ambassador. So the same way that we would send an ambassador to the Vatican now, or an ambassador to Moscow or Athens or London or wherever. Wherever. Right. Sydney, um, he was the sort of permanent ambassador. He, he was the papal representative to the emperor. Right. It was, it was still very important for the, the Pope to have the imperial ear. And Gregory is a very important position. Gregory was in that position.

John Dickson – Studio:

A monk becoming a diplomat is … pretty weird. But when you look at Gregory’s CV, it’s unsurprising. He had a pretty meteoric rise in his 20s, becoming, as George said, mayor of Rome. Then, in his early 30s, he resigned his job, gave away most of his money, and turned his home into a monastery, committing himself to the contemplative, quiet life of a monk. He actually became pretty obsessed with building monasteries, commissioning a further six on family land in Sicily! …. You can still visit Gregory’s old house-turned monastery in Rome – it’s the San Gregorio Magno al Celio, located just a ten-minute walk from the Colosseum — I walked past it recently! (Researcher Al tells me it’s got 4.5 stars from 539 reviews on Google Maps too!) Going from elite public office into a life of contemplation and prayer would have raised eyebrows at the time. But his spiritual “retreat” didn’t last long; in 579, he was appointed a deacon and sent as the Bishop of Rome’s permanent ambassador in Constantinople. The Vatican still has ambassadors from around the world. Chief among Gregory’s responsibilities was to lobby Byzantine Emperor Tiberius II for aid to help Rome defend itself against the Lombards – another scary Germanic tribe who were menacing the city at the time. 

George Demacopoulos:
Now, at the time in Constantinople. So even Con, the Roman government is only at this moment transitioning from Latin into Greek. So even the, the Justinian famous, uh, law book, uh, which had been issued a couple generations before, that was still composed in Latin, in Constantinople. Um, so the people of Constantinople are primarily conversing in Greek. The imperial government is making this transition from Latin to Greek, but Gregory definitively lived in the Latin quarter of the city, and he clearly, we know from the sources, um, lived with a group of Latin speaking monks in a monastery provided for them, um, in this Latin quarter of the city, and he was kind of serving as the Abbott of that monastery as a kind of side job. And actually in that context, because. He’s only gonna see the emperor so often in that context, he, um, drafts what will be his longest work. He wrote a 2,700 page commentary of the book of job. Um, and he does that as lectures that he is offering for his monks, um, there in, in Constantinople. But your other question was about Eastern Christian influences in, in Gregory’s thought and it is very clear that, um. Theologically speaking and in, in terms of spirituality, uh, we should very much see Gregory along the lines with the eastern, the major Eastern Christian figures like the Cappadocian fathers or a serial of Alexandria, um, or even an origin, more so than even a figure like Augustine. He absolutely knows Augustine there, there’s no doubt about it. Um, but he has greater theological affinity, um, with Eastern Christian sources.

John Dickson:
You mean because there’s a kind of, uh, mystical flavor to his theologizing?

George Demacopoulos:
I, I think that’s exactly right there. There is a kind of spirituality, a, a monastic spirituality, um, that permeates, um, all of his thinking, both about how to interpret scripture and how, and how to live one’s life. Um, and that just, it just resonates more, we find more, um, continuity with other Eastern sources than, than we do, certainly than we do Latin ones.

John Dickson – Studio:

Constantinople was the place to be in the 6th century. The Vikings, who arrived on the scene about 150 years later, called it Miklagard – ‘The Great City’. Sitting on the Black Sea, with access to both the Silk Road trading networks of Central Asia and sea lanes to broader Europe, Constantinople was the crossroads of the world and home to around half a million people in Gregory’s day. J.R.R. Tolkien based the city of Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings on classical accounts of Constantinople, which described its incredible temples, stupendous walls, and bustling markets. Of course, it’s Istanbul today! Back in the 6th century, it had all the hallmarks of a Roman city, but spiritually, a different style of Christianity was developing; a more mystical style of worship which would eventually grow into Eastern Orthodoxy. Here’s an extract from a journal of the Orthodox Church of America on what was happening on the ground around this time. It references the “non-Chalcedonians” – Christians who believe Christ had one human-divine nature instead of (as declared at the Council of Chalcedon) two distinct natures, fully human and fully divine.

Reading

The convergence of several factors caused numerous changes in the Church’s liturgical ritual and piety. These factors were the rise of the Constantinopolitan Church as the model for other churches; the development of the imperial churchly ritual; the appearance of the mystical theology expressed in the writings published under the name of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite ; and the attempts of the Church and State to reconcile the Non-Chalcedonians. At this time, the practices of the Church of Constantinople were combined with the original Jewish-Christian worship of the early Church, the rule of prayer which had developed in the Christian monasteries, and the liturgical practices of the Church in Jerusalem, to form the first great synthesis of liturgical worship in Orthodox history.

John Dickson – Studio:

Mysticism (connecting directly with God through liturgy and prayer) was pretty significant in this part of the world, and Gregory was into it! But Gregory’s mysticism was NOT like the popular asectic desert fathers who walked around naked, or sat on poles for years eating nothing but lettuce. Gregory just wanted to avoid worldly wealth and spend hours a day in prayer, praise, study, and contemplation. But he did it all in order to be more effective in serving others. There is the critical adage, “So heavenly minded you’re of no earthly good.” Gregory came from the school of thought that said you could only be of profound earthly good if you were heavenly minded. If you’re too much a part of earthly society, you’ll be shaped completely bit and so be of little real good to it. The heavenly minded person comes, as it were, from outside culture. They are able to see human culture with greater clarity. And if they’ve had their heads in the clouds of heaven, so to speak, they can return to earth with greater resources of divine love. That was Gregory’s way of thinking. I suspect he was on to something. And it’s why, after Pope Pelagius, died in 590, the people of Rome wanted just one man to fill the papal shoes: Gregory. Stay with us.

Break

Director Mark and Producer Kaley acting out a scene from Conclave.

John Dickson – Studio:

That’s a scene from the recent hit movie Conclave – brought to life by our spare-no-expense inhouse Undeceptions actors Producer Kaley – as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence – and Director Mark – as Cardinal Aldo Bellini. Conclave is a kind of political thriller all about the convoluted process of electing a new pope. The conclave is a very recent thing. It’s only a thousand years old!! Gregory was selected not by a secret circle of papal appointees but by popular election. But Gregory said ‘nope’ to being ‘pope’! And he ran away from Rome! Here’s how The Golden Legend – a medieval book we already featured on our Mary Magdalene episode – puts it.

Reading

The Church of God, however, could not be without a head, and the people unanimously elected Gregory to be their bishop, although he made every effort to dissuade them. He had to be consecrated bishop of Rome, but the plague was causing havoc in the city, so he preached to the people, organized a procession, and had litanies recited, exhorting everyone to pray zealously to the Lord. Even while the entire population pleaded with God, however, in any one hour ninety men died; but Gregory continued to urge all to pray until the divine mercy should banish the plague.

When the procession was finished, Gregory tried to flee from Rome but could not, because they watched for him day and night at the city gates. At length, he changed his clothes and persuaded some tradesmen to hide him in a wine cask and get him out of the city in a wagon. When they reached a forest, he made for a hiding place in the caves and hid there for three days.

A relentless search for him was under way, and a bright column of light beamed down from the heavens and appeared over the place where he had concealed himself. A certain hermit saw angels descending and ascending in this beam. Of course, this led the pursuers to Gregory, and they carried him back to Rome and consecrated him as supreme pontiff.

The Golden Legend

John Dickson – Studio:

A theme running through the film Conclave is whether someone who wants to be pope is the right person to be pope. With or without the ascending and descending angels in that medieval account, it is likely Gregory genuinely did not want the job. 

John Dickson:
Okay, so Gregory is he, he’s an elite. He’s an intellectual, he’s an ambassador. So he is in the world of politics. Uh, but you say he, he’s imbibed this, uh, Greek, this eastern mystical approach to classical theology is still classically theological, obviously, but mystical and, and so he’s, he’s really drawn to the aesthetic life, to prayer, to study, then he’s invited to be the Bishop of Rome. Uh, can you tell us what led to the elevation? Well to his elevation to be the Bishop of Rome. And am I right that he really, really didn’t want it, or is that just false humility, you know, oh, I don’t want to be the president. That sort

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so an important scholar, um, uh, British by the name of Conrad Lazer, wrote, wrote a lot about this. Um, and, and he just, he, he speaks about it as the sort of rhetoric of humility and how, um, whether feigned or genuine, um, in a sense doesn’t matter, um, because it still works a kind of magic in the popular imagination, right? So, um, I, I happen to be, I, I read Gregory Sympathetically just because I’ve been through the whole corpus. I, I think it is genuine. Um, he, he really, and it’s not so much, it’s not just pure humility, like, oh, I’m not worthy. He really doesn’t like. The responsibility of, you know, managing grain shipments and lumber shipments and rescuing slaves.

John Dickson:
He is more like a mystic, right?

George Demacopoulos:
He would much rather spend his time in, um, uh, acetic retreat, acetic contemplation, prayer.

John Dickson:
Does he actually runs away when, when they – ?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, so we do have a source that says that he ran away, and then the, the emperor soldiers go and find him. I don’t know what to do with that. Um, you, you know, it is a kind of trope. Um, it could be genuine, it might not be. There are precedents going back hundreds of years that this is what a saintly figure does, right? And so these are kind of radiographic excerpts saying that he did this. I, I don’t really know what to do about that, like if, if that specifically happened. Um, but I do know that for him, with, without a doubt, humility is the greatest Christian virtue. There is no other virtue like humility. And, and so even if he had moments in his life where he might not have been so humble. He genuinely understood it as something that he should strive for, and, and he developed this entire regimen of, uh, spiritual direction for how to coax people to be better Christians, um, uh, and which in which, um, humility was the ultimate goal. And you. You make it to that goal through a series of aesthetic detachments and discipline and and so forth.

John Dickson:
Okay, so he becomes the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. Um, how, how does he balance. Once he’s in the role, how does he balance his contemplative intellectual life, which he loves with the very practical life of the Bishop of Rome at that time.

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, so it’s, um, it’s really interesting. I, I mean, we don’t have insight into, you know, how does he break down his day, so, so to speak. And we know that he is, um, he is a very, very efficient and involved manager of the papal estate, for lack of a better word, right? So we have more letters that survived from Gregory’s office than from any other figure from late antiquity. We have almost 900 letters that, um, are his, um, they only come from the 14 years. He’s Pope. Uh, there’s, I, there are Scho. There’s been a scholar who predicts that he may have composed his office, may have com composed as many as 20,000 letters.

John Dickson – Studio:

These letters offer us a fascinating insight into life in 6th-century Rome. For his day job, Gregory is dealing with a whole range of things, ranging from menial tasks like grain shipments, to things like who is fit to be a cleric, whether Jews could own Christian slaves or buy property from churches, evangelising to Sardinian pagans, disciplining misbehaving sons of clerics, property disputes – and everything in between.  Here’s a letter Gregory wrote to an Abbot called Mellitus, who was about to head on a missionary trip to England to evangelise the pagans there (more about that to come).

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To my most beloved son, Abbot Mellitus, Gregory, servant of the servants of God. Since the departure of our companions and yourself I have felt much anxiety because we have not happened to hear how your journey has prospered. However, when Almighty God has brought you to our most reverend brother Bishop Augustine, tell him what I have decided after long deliberation about the English people, namely that the idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them. For if the shrines are well built, it is essential that they should be changed from the worship of devils to the service of the true God. When this people see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able to banish error from their hearts and be more ready to come to the places they are familiar with, but now recognizing and worshipping the true God. And because they are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be given them in exchange for this. So on the day of the dedication of the festivals of the holy martyrs, whose relics are deposited there, let them make themselves huts from the branches of trees around the churches which have been converted out of shrines, and let them celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts. Do not let them sacrifice animals to the devil, but let them slaughter animals for their own food to the praise of God, and let them give thanks to the Giver of all things for His bountiful provision. Thus while some outward rejoicings are preserved, they will be able more easily to share in inward rejoicings. It is doubtless impossible to cut out everything at once from their stubborn minds: just as the man who is attempting to climb to the highest place, rises by steps and degrees and not by leaps.

John Dickson – Studio:

I find this amazing. He’s saying, Look not everything in pagan culture is wicked. Sure, the idol itself is evil. Get rid of it, if you can. But there’s no need to destroy the buildings. And even this cattle sacrifice, if the feast is held in honour of the gifts of the Creator, why not let it continue for a while. Gregory is a missionary theologian here. He’s picking up the thought of the apostle Paul in the New Testament.

Reading

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 1 Corinthians, Chapter 9.

John Dickson – Studio:

I find this so fascinating, I asked George a little more about this mission to England and Gregory’s approach to it. 

It’s bonus content for Plus subscribers. 

If you’re a plusser, enjoy. 

If you’ve got the regular episode – there’s still some fun stuff ahead … after the break.

Break 2

Media – Rome Reports clip

John Dickson – Studio:

That’s the first few lines from a 2014 New York Times article, reporting on the publication that week of Pope John Paul II’s personal notes as a book, despite the Pope’s desire for them to be burned after his death. Cardinal Dziwisz was Pope John Paul II’s secretary and one of his closest confidants, and said he “didn’t have the courage” to follow John Paul’s order to destroy the notes. The Cardinal said the notes contained important historical information – including the Pope’s religious meditations as a young, up-and-coming bishop, to when he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease towards the end of his life. “These notes are so important, they say so much about the spiritual side, about the person, about the great Pope, that it would have been a crime to destroy them,” Dziwisz said. Regardless of what you think about the Cardinal’s decision to defy the Pope’s wishes to have the notes burned, I reckon if they survive 1400 years – like the many, many letters we have of Gregory the Great – they’ll be a boon to historians. As we’ve heard, Gregory the Great’s letters have helped us piece together who he was and what life as bishop of Rome looked like in the 6th century. 

George Demacopoulos:
You asked the question how does he balance his day? He is definitely involved in the running of the papal machine. Um, a quarter of his letters go to, um, the men who are running the papal farms in Sicily. So it’s just active property management. Right. Uh, making all kinds of decisions like that. He’s actively involved in, um, correspondence to the Capitol in Constantinople to leading bishops, uh, across the west. He’s intervening in various, uh, conflicts. He’s trying to open negotiations with various, uh, Germanic kings in France and England and Spain, uh, in northern Italy. But I think. The balance. Where does the balance come in? I think the balance comes in with him continuing to lead biblical study sessions. So he continues to offer commentaries on the gospels with his aesthetics in Rome. And I think that’s where he does it. He’s kind of taken over the role of Abbott, right? And, and the people running the papal machinery for the first time are monks because Gregory is a monk. And I think he keeps that spiritualized discipline, um, uh, by doing this, uh, biblical ex of Jesus with them.

John Dickson:
Now I want to pick up something you just said because some of my skeptical listeners, uh, when they heard you say, uh, papal Farms, uh, you know, the grain supplies, I mean, he, he was probably in charge of the aqueducts as well, right.

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah. The restoration of the aqueducts in Rome.

John Dickson:
Yeah, so, so some of my skeptical listeners are gonna be thinking, yeah, see, even right there at that early part of the Bishop of Rome, they were bossing everyone around and trying to take over secular power. That’s kind of reading back into it, isn’t it? Uh, in, in a kind of, uh,

George Demacopoulos:
And I would make two re I would make two. I would offer two responses to that. One. Um, this distinction between secular and ecclesial is kind of modern and arbitrary, right? They, they’re really, really integrated in the ancient world. In other words. Gregory is an aristocrat, whether he is an aristocratic senator or an aristocratic bishop, the presumption is that he works for the good of the city, right? In other words, he, he commits himself to the good of the city. And the reality, um, during the Lombard invasions, um, of the late latter part of the sixth century is there’s no one else to do it. Um, there, there is literally no one else to do it. Um, he has, uh, access to levers of resources, not only from his own personal wealth, um, that he’s basically given over to the church. His family’s money, I. Um, but he is really the only one who can effectively get financial resources from Constantinople. No one else is able to do that. There are, um, Byzantine governors, um, in Ravenna, and they have no interest. They have no interest in Rome. In fact, the, the Byzantine governor in Ravenna and Gregory are often at odds with one another. Um, because. For whatever reason, those governors are willing to let Rome be, um, attacked by the Lombards so long as Ravenna isn’t right. And so he’s, they’re, they’re willing to sacrifice Rome and Gregory has to negotiate with constant pon go over his head and so forth,

John Dickson:
Yeah. It’s not power hungry church. It’s just. There’s good to be done and there’s no one else to do it, so let’s do it. Um,

George Demacopoulos:
That, that, that’s, that’s exactly right.

John Dickson – Studio:

History is, sadly, littered with examples of spiritual overreach for political power. We’ve talked about it here on Undeceptions once or twice—or like a hundred times!!! But that really doesn’t seem to be what’s going on in the early 6th century with Gregory. Here was a man who gave up enormous power and wealth to serve as the leader of the church. His happy place was in prayer in a monastery … but the devastations in Rome and in the West generally meant he felt compelled to serve in both spiritual and practical ways. The great Princeton historian Peter Brown points out that bishops in this period were “expected to do anything”. A bishop on the plateau of Spain, he notes, was responsible for the rounding up of stray horses! The bishop of Palermo was nominated by the local governor as the — I’m serious — inspector of brothels! Gregory was the master of this weird combination of deep spirituality and surreal mundanity. It’s something he ended up writing about in what would become – arguably at least – the most influential book on leadership ever written.

John Dickson:
I wanna move to the amazing book, uh, the regular pastoral, the, uh, how, how do you translate that? The rule of the pastor

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah. Pastoral role. Yeah. The, the pastoral role. Yeah.

John Dickson:
Um, can you try and do the impossible and summarize its aims and content? Go.

George Demacopoulos:
yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, the first thing Gregory writes is, Pope is this book of Pastoral rule. And, and really he, he sets out to do three things. He sets out to identify who should and who should not be in a position of spiritual authority. What will the responsibilities be? What are they for those in spiritual authority? And both of those had been done by previous authors, um, in different ways. What makes Gregory’s contribution so unique is the third component where he identifies, um, 36 pairs of personality traits. Old, young, male, female, rich, poor, um, uh, and on and on and on, right? 36 of these binaries. And then he identifies how a, uh, a pastor recognizes these conditions. I mean, some are obvious, some are less obvious, and then offers a prescription for how a pastor should, um. Cos that individual in, into becoming a better Christian, right? And so some of them are obvious, like old, young, male, female, some of ’em are, um, not quite so clear. Like [00:21:00] what do you do with someone who appears to be generous but is actually greedy? And what do you do with somebody who appears to be greedy but is actually gen, uh, generous, right? And, and those kinds, like he’s really got this, um, developed sense of trying to penetrate into who people are and what kind of pastoral guidance is necessary to make them better. So that’s what the book, uh, set sets out to do. And there’s some really interesting things in there he doesn’t make. Um. really make a distinct distinction between who the pastor is. Historically, people thought he just meant bishops, but, but his language, I would argue is deliberately slippery. So the pastor is the Abbott, the pastor is the priest. The pastor is the bishop, right. It, it could be any of these figures. Um, it’s anybody who’s in a position of spiritual authority.

John Dickson:
Yeah. And, um, the great, um, Peter Brown, uh, from Princeton, the, you know, one of the most important historians of this period. Um, ever, um, he, he waxes lyrical about this pastoral rule, um, and says it, it, it became perhaps the most important leadership book in history because secular leaders would read this book for advice. Can you tell me, like, what was, what would be a secular leader’s interest in it?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, well now it’s, it’s, it’s been a while. I, I can’t remember who it is, but there is a very early King of England. And I, and I apologize for not re remembering his name. There’s a very early King of England who has it translated or maybe even performs the translation himself from Latin into old English and makes copies of it, um, and distributes it to all of his aristocrats as a model for governance. Right? So in, in other words, right, the very notion that we have today, and sometimes obviously. Like in, in our political worlds, obviously this gets exploited, but the very idea that some people hold that your leader needs to be morally sound so that they will then make, um, decisions that are in the interests of the good, not necessarily the interests of themselves or the interests of just, um, a portion of the community that very conception that a prerequisite is moral soundness to be able to make the right decision. That effectively, um, begins with Gregory right in, in the right. I I mean, yeah, it’s in Plato and so forth, but Gregory is the one who really takes that idea and develops it and introduces it to the Christian Middle Ages, and it’s simply become a part of, uh, uh, western European Western, um, values for, for what leadership looks like.

John Dickson:
Yeah. And when a modern reader comes across certain sections. That are all about humility, that, that the, the, the, the true leader must condescend to people, um, in the best

George Demacopoulos:
Is a servant. The leader is a servant.

Reading

Often a ruler, by the very fact of his pre-eminence over others, becomes conceited; and because everything is at his service, because his orders are quickly executed to suit his wishes, because all his subjects praise him for what he has done well … his mind, led astray by those below him, is lifted above itself. Forgetful of what he is, he is diverted by the commendations of others, and believes himself to be such as he hears himself outwardly proclaimed to be, not such as he should inwardly judge himself. For the human mind is prone to pride even when not supported by power; how much more, then, does it exalt itself when it has that support! 

But he disposes his power aright, who knows how, with great care, both to derive from it what is profitable, and to subdue the temptations which it creates, and how, though in possession of it, to realise his equality with others.

Paul showed no consciousness of his pre-eminence over his deserving brethren when he said: “We do not lord it over your faith, for in faith you stand, and we are equals with you wherein we know you stand.” It was as if he was not aware of his pre-eminence over his brethren, when he said: “We became little ones in the midst of you”; and again: … “and ourselves your servants through Christ.” 

Supreme rank is, therefore, well-administered, when the superior lords it over vices rather than over brethren. When rulers correct their delinquent subjects, it is incumbent on them to observe carefully that, while they smite faults with due discipline in virtue of their authority, they acknowledge, by observing humility, that they are only the equals of the brethren whom they correct. 

Consequently, humility must be preserved in the heart, and discipline in action. 

Superiors, then, should ceaselessly take care that the greater the external manifestation of power, the more it is to be kept in subjection internally.

So, the Truth in person, inviting us to the more sublime merits of virtue, says: “You know that the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them, and they that are the greater exercise power upon them. It shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your servant; and he that will be first among you, shall be your slave. Even as the Son of man is not come to be served, but to serve.”

Gregory the Great, The Pastoral Rule, Book 2.

Five Minute Jesus

Let’s press pause – I’ve got a Five Minute Jesus for you. We’ve noted before on the podcast that humility was not a virtue in the ancient world. The word meant something like “pushed low to the ground.” It was a mostly negative term. You could be humble toward the gods and toward the emperors—but that’s because they were your superiors. It made sense. But humility toward an equal, let alone a lesser, was almost unthinkable in ancient Greek and Roman ethics. The whole thing was turned on its head by Jesus. Suddenly, in the Christian literature of the 1st and 2nd centuries, we see an explosion in the use of the word humility. It appears 25 times just in the letter we call 1 Clement, that wonderful epistle written by the bishop of Rome Clement in the 90s AD. He pleads the Corinthians, amidst their disputes, to adopt a posture of humility that puts others first.
From that ethical revolution, our Western world now completely assumes the value of humility. There’s the whole servant leader movement, which was started by Robert Greenleaf and his book The Servant as Leader in 1970. Then there’s the book by Jim Collins from the early 2000s. It was called Good to Great, and it made the case—an entirely secular, research-based case—that the most effective leadership combines what he called “a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.” But these recent discoveries of the management industry really are ancient Christian gifts to our world. And it can be argued that Gregory the Great, the Roman bishop—or pope—at the end of the 6th century and beginning of the 7th, was the great turning point. His book The Pastoral Rule was largely about the way professional will and personal humility combine in effective leadership. The book itself was incredibly famous for the next 500 years. The great Princeton historian Peter Brown has made the point that, while Gregory intended this book mainly to be read by church officials, it was picked up by secular officials for centuries afterward. The book became THE leadership book of the medieval world. Brown summarises Gregory’s answer to the question, What is true leadership:

Reading

Gregory thought that he had found the answer in the figure of the Apostle Paul. Paul was the ideal pastor … Paul the contemplative had entered the “third heaven,” “and yet, with heartfelt empathy, he surveys with care the average person’s marriage bed.” Condescensio, a compassionate stepping down to the level of every person in the Christian Church, was the key to Gregory’s notion of spiritual power. It was “condescension” in the best meaning of the word. It echoed the dizzying act by which God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, had bent to earth, to touch every aspect of the human condition. Christ also had both prayed on the mountain-top and gone down into the cities to heal the sick and to comfort the down-hearted. Based on the models of Saint Paul and of Christ, the ideal pastor of Gregory must learn to be “intimately close to each person through compassion, and yet to hover above all through contemplation.”

 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom 

John Dickson – Studio:

Gregory’s Pastoral Rule cemented in the popular consciousness—if not always in practice—that leaders must wield their power only for the benefit of those they serve, always being fearful that power will go to their heads. This is a dramatic change from the attitude of Roman elites among whom Gregory had been born and raised. As Gregory put it in Book 2: “The person who uses power correctly knows how, with great care, both to derive from it what is profitable, and to subdue the temptations which such power creates, and how, though in possession of power, he realises his equality with others. Humility must be preserved in the heart and discipline in action. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.” This is a brilliant statement of precisely what Jim Collins found in the top CEOs of America: a steely will and a humble demeanour. It’s just that Bishop Gregory stumbled on the idea 1,411 years before Professor Collins. And, of course, Gregory got it from the servant king himself—560 years earlier. Humility has nothing to do with having a low view of yourself or denying you possess authority, gifts, or power. Jesus, of course, certainly didn’t have a low view of himself! Humility is lowering yourself, with all of your power, for the sake of those you love. The Lord of the universe giving himself for us on a cross is an amazing model of leadership. Forget leadership: it’s just amazing! You can press play now.

John Dickson:
Um, you know, I mean, some people think didn’t, didn’t the servant leadership movement of the 1970s, uh, uh, invent that idea or Jim Collins in Good to Great, uh, no, it’s there in Gregory. In on a huge scale C. So can you just say a little more about this idea of

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah. Well, and it, I, I mean, to, to be clear, it’s in the gospel, right? Um, uh, it, it, it’s in the gospels, but what Gregory is doing is he’s taking this, [00:25:00] um, um, this gospel image of humility, uh, as being so central to what authentic leadership is, and he’s. He’s developing an actual plan for it. Like how, how do you, how do you functionally put it in place? And one of the arguments I may make in my book about Gregory is that this comes from his monastic background, right? This sort of a acidizing of scripture and, um, but an, an aesthetic for being an aesthetic for others, right? Not an aesthetic for yourself. And, and so the pastoral rule then becomes the theory book. It’s kind of the theory that he wants to govern by. And then if you look at his career, because again, he writes at the first year, he is Pope. He’s he’s Pope for almost 14 years. If you look at the evidence of what he actually does at Pope as Pope, you see that he really, really consistently strives to put this into practice. Right. And he sets the paradigm for what good leadership, uh, should be. Right? It’s why so many other popes are named Gregory, right. They all wanna, right. In other words, it’s a nod to the sort of great contribution, uh, that Gregory had made.

John Dickson:
What, what about my listeners who aren’t Christian believers, who aren’t really sure what to make of the Christian faith, um, do you think Gregory has anything to offer them, uh, intellectually, spiritually?

George Demacopoulos:
Yeah. Well, I would say that, Gregory is the mediator. Well, one of the key mediators of the ancient world to the modern. Right. Um, so something like. The best attributes of Christian. If you’re not a Christian, you might not think that Christianity’s great, but the best attributes of  Christianity, right, the building of hospitals, the taking in of orphans, the, the, the social, just like Christianity invents the idea of social justice, right? It really does. Um, Gregory is someone who, um, maximizes those commitments. And establishes an institution, um, to let them flourish in the Middle Ages. Now, do they become corrupted and problematic at different moments in history? Of course they do, just like everything does. But Gregory is somebody who. Who brings the best of the Christian tradition and also, um, channels the best of the ancient world.

Reading

“I could easily be Roman Catholic, were it not for the Sacrifice of the Mass, Mariology, Indulgences, Purgatory, and Papal Authority.”

John Dickson – Studio:

That was a Facebook post written the other day by …. me! Some Catholics liked it — took it as a compliment. Other Catholics not so much. Same with Protestants. Some thought it was a nice statement that despite profound differences, there is a shared Christianity between all the brands (captured in the Bible and the Creeds). Other Protestants insisted I should’ve expanded my list of disagreements: we have different ideas of grace, different ideas of justification, and so on. I think I will concede all the criticisms! I was just trying to convey a sentiment. I can’t delete all of church history between the apostle Paul in the first century and Martin Luther in the 16th. In that Catholic tradition, there is much gold. Indeed, there is gold among the bishops of Rome, including Clement in the 90s AD and Gregory in the 590s AD. Leaders like Gregory let their faith dictate their leadership in very difficult circumstances. They help us understand what Christianity looks like in action – and it leaves me feeling inspired! 16 popes have taken the title of ‘Gregory’, but only one is called ‘The Great’. Gregory I (the Great) left behind an incredible legacy. On the foreign policy front, he was constantly walking the tightrope of keeping his menacing northern neighbours at bay, while also staying on good terms with the Byzantines, who were not as interested in Rome as they might have been.When Gregory took office, Rome was a ruin, ravaged by violence, famine, and disease. Despite this, he made his time count. Gregory used his excellent administrative skills to organise emergency food supplies for the city, which came from the church’s reserve grain stock. He also liquidated church property to fund the expenses of providing for the poor. Even after things stabilised, Gregory kept close track of the church’s finances and gave away generous swathes of its land profits to the needy. In a letter to Bishop Protasius of France, he insisted that whatever the church has accumulated is, in fact, “the property of the poor.” But he was a reluctant leader. He would have preferred to stay praying and studying in a monastery. But he knew that the God who left glory to serve the world on a bloody cross demanded that his servants not only spend time in heavenly contemplation but in dirty, earthly service. We’ve actually been listening throughout the episode to some classic Gregorian Chants, named after the hero of this episode. It’s not clear that he actually deserves the credit, but long tradition says he invented the style. I’m going to go with: It ought to be true, even if it isn’t! Gregory the Great died on 12th March 604, and his tomb is located in St Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican. He got a shout-out recently in the newly elected Pope Leo XIV’s first Sunday message.

Leo said:

“In the Gospel, Jesus says that he knows his sheep and that they listen to his voice and follow him. Indeed, as Pope Saint Gregory the Great teaches, people “respond to the love of those who love them.”

This was Gregory’s gospel. This was Gregory’s approach to life and leadership. We have been loved by heaven. Let’s not respond to that divine love with love toward all upon the earth. Let’s move the world, not through force but through love: people respond to the love of those who love them.

CREDITS

I wanted to say a big thank you to our Undeceptions Plus subscribers. Your support means we can keep doing this thing we love! 

You can become an “Undeceiver” by heading to undeceptions.com/plus – there’s a few different support options starting from just $5 a month, and opens up access to our extended episodes and a few other special things just for Plus members. 

One of the things PLUS members get is first access to our special events, and we have plenty of those coming up in my home, Australia, as part of the launch of our new documentary, The First Hymn. 

The documentary chronicles the remarkable story of a tiny papyrus fragment found in the Egyptian desert with the earliest-known Christian hymn lyrics and musical notation. With the help of acclaimed musos Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding, we’ve transformed the ancient melody – 1800 years old – into a contemporary worship piece, and we’re giving it back to the world to sing anew. 

The First Hymn documentary is available to stream already in the US, and in Australia it’s premiering at the end of this month in Sydney, and then the team and I are zipping around the country – to every capital city in Australia – to host special Q&A screenings of the film. We’d love to see you there. 

Head to thefirsthymnmovie.com for everything you need to know. And if you’re in the US, that’s where you can already stream it: thefirsthymnmovie.com 

See ya…

Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dickson, produced by Kaley Payne and directed by Mark Hadley. 

Alasdair Belling is a writer-researcher.

Siobhan McGuiness is our online librarian. 

Lyndie Leviston remains my wonderful assistant. 

Santino Dimarco is Chief Finance and Operations Consultant. 

Editing by Richard Hamwi.

Our voice actors today were Yannick Lawry and Dakotah Love.

Special thanks to our series sponsor Zondervan for making this Undeception possible. 

Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com – letting the truth out.