watched over the
faith and discipline of the subordinate pastors. Under his reign, the
Arians of Italy and Spain were reconciled to the Catholic church, and
the conquest of Britain reflects less glory on the name of Caesar, than
on that of Gregory the First. Instead of six legions, forty monks were
embarked for that distant island, and the pontiff lamented the austere
duties which forbade him to partake the perils of their spiritual
warfare. In less than two years, he could announce to the archbishop of
Alexandria, that they had baptized the king of Kent with ten thousand
of his Anglo-Saxons, and that the Roman missionaries, like those of
the primitive church, were armed only with spiritual and supernatural
powers. The credulity or the prudence of Gregory was always disposed to
confirm the truths of religion by the evidence of ghosts, miracles, and
resurrections; and posterity has paid to _his_ memory the same tribute
which he freely granted to the virtue of his own or the preceding
generation. The celestial honors have been liberally bestowed by the
authority of the popes, but Gregory is the last of their own order whom
they have presumed to inscribe in the calendar of saints.

Their temporal power insensibly arose from the calamities of the times:
and the Roman bishops, who have deluged Europe and Asia with blood, were
compelled to reign as the ministers of charity and peace. I. The church
of Rome, as it has been formerly observed, was endowed with ample
possessions in Italy, Sicily, and the more distant provinces; and her
agents, who were commonly sub-deacons, had acquired a civil, and even
criminal, jurisdiction over their tenants and husbandmen. The successor
of St. Peter administered his patrimony with the temper of a vigilant
and moderate landlord; and the epistles of Gregory are filled with
salutary instructions to abstain from doubtful or vexatious lawsuits;
to preserve the integrity of weights and measures; to grant every
reasonable delay; and to reduce the capitation of the slaves of
the glebe, who purchased the right of marriage by the payment of an
arbitrary fine. The rent or the produce of these estates was transported
to the mouth of the Tyber, at the risk and expense of the pope: in the
use of wealth he acted like a faithful steward of the church and the
poor, and liberally applied to their wants the inexhaustible resources
of abstinence and order. The voluminous account of his receipts and
disbursements