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5 results

  • 17 - Gregory the Great

  • from Part II
  • Edited by Philip L. Reynolds, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book:
    Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium
    Published online:
    21 June 2019
    Print publication:
    27 June 2019, pp 353-380

  • Summary

    During Gregory I’s papacy (590–604), Rome was the final court of appeal for disputes over matters such as property, debt, marriage, and inheritance. Gregory pursued a judicial philosophy of moderation, discretion, and compassion. He urged judges to consider such mitigating circumstances as poverty, marital status, family history, and age. Judgments were relative, and even the law itself was sometimes best kept when suspended. In cases of reasonable doubt, it was wrong to judge as if there was certainty. Gregory required judges to think the best of defendants unless they knew otherwise. Power lay with the imperial court in Constantinople, whose archbishop claimed to be “ecumenical patriarch.” Gregory claimed moral leadership as Peter’s successor, but his political perspective was Byzantine, so that the emperor’s role in the church was beyond dispute. In Gregory’s “Christian empire” or “holy commonwealth,” church and empire constituted a single body of Christ.