h. He founded a
school for singing, and established a new way of chanting, which from
him has the name of the _Gregorian Chant_, and is used to this day. We
are told that the whip with which he used to correct his choristers was
kept at Rome as a relic for hundreds of years.

His charities were very great. On the first day of every month he gave
out large quantities of provisions to the people of Rome. The old
nobility had suffered so much by the wars, and by the loss of their
estates in countries which had been torn from them by the barbarians,
that many of them were glad to come in for a share of the good pope's
bounty. Every day he sent relief to a number of poor persons in all
parts of the city; and he used to send dishes from his own table to
those whom he knew to be in distress, but ashamed to ask for assistance.
Once when a poor man was found dead in the streets, Gregory denied
himself the holy communion for some days, because it seemed to him that
he must be in some measure to blame. He used to receive strangers and
wanderers at his own table, out of regard for our Lord's
words--"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me" (_St. Matt._ xxv. 40).

PART II.

Having thus seen something of Gregory's life at home, we must now look
at his proceedings in other quarters.

He had a sharp dispute with a bishop of Constantinople, on account of
the title of _Universal Bishop_, which the patriarchs of the eastern
capital had for some time taken to themselves. When we hear such a
title, we may naturally fancy that it signified a claim to authority
over the whole Church on earth. But, as it was then used, it really had
no such meaning. The Greeks were fond of lofty and sounding titles,
which seemed to mean much more than they were really understood to mean.
This fondness appears in the titles of the emperors and of the officers
of their empire, and it was by it that the patriarchs were led to style
themselves "Universal Bishop." If the title had been intended as a claim
to authority over all Churches, it could only have been given to one
person at a time; but we find that the emperor Justinian gave it to the
bishops both of Constantinople and of Rome, and that he styled each of
them "Head of all the Churches;" and, whatever the patriarchs of
Constantinople may have meant by it, they certainly did not make any
claim to authority over Rome or the western Church.

But t