oral position in which St. Gregory had to fight
the battle for the cause, as he said, of the universal Church. Yet the
speech of the Pope beleaguered by the Lombards in a decimated and subject
Rome is as strong as the speech of the Pope who had the imperial
grandchildren of Theodosius for friends and supporters, and, when they
failed, saved Rome by her two Apostles from the destruction menaced by
Attila and Genseric.

But there was no one in the eastern Church--neither the emperor Mauritius,
nor the patriarch John the Faster, nor the patriarch Eulogius--who failed
to acknowledge the Pope's charge over the whole Church, grounded on the
three texts to Peter. Gregory himself reprehends the patriarch Eulogius for
giving him in the superscription of his letter the title "universal Pope".
He chose for himself, in opposition to the bishop John's arrogated title of
ecumenical patriarch, that of "servant of the servants of God". The title
chosen indicated the temper in which St. Gregory exercised the vast charge
which he had inherited. For if there is any one principle which seems to
serve as the favourite maxim of his whole pontificate, it is that expressed
in a letter to the bishop of Syracuse. That bishop had been speaking of an
African primate who had professed that he was subject to the Apostolic See.
St. Gregory's comment is: "If a bishop is in any fault, I know not any
bishop who is not subject to it. But when no fault requires it, all are
equal according to the estimation of humility."[196] Natalis, archbishop
of Salona, in Dalmatia, had given the Pope much trouble. The Pope deals
with him tenderly in more than one letter. But he says: "After the letters
of my predecessor (Pelagius) and my own, in the matter of Honoratus the
archdeacon, were sent to your Holiness, in despite of the sentence of us
both, the above-mentioned Honoratus was deprived of his rank. Had either of
the four patriarchs done this, so great an act of contumacy could not have
been passed over without the most grievous scandal. However, as your
brotherhood has since returned to your duty, I take notice neither of the
injury done to me, nor of that to my predecessor."[197]

Of the immense energy shown by St. Gregory in the exercise of his
Principate, of the immense influence wielded by him both in the East and in
the West, of the acknowledgment of his Principate by the answers which
emperor and patriarch made to his demands and rebukes, we possess an
imp