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Hibiscus, Butterfly Farm, Stratford-upon-Avon, England (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)

Women in Early and Medieval Catholic Doctrine

Pope (Saint) Gregory the First/ the Great

(540 – 604)

The last of the Catholic church's four principal "doctors" (doctrinal fathers) – after bishop Saint Ambrose of Milan, his even more famous student Saint Augustine of Hippo, and their contemporary Saint Jerome – and also the last of the church's Latin fathers, Gregory, whose life would a millennium and a half later form the basis of Thomas Mann's allegorical novella "The Holy Sinner," was a tremendously active pope who did not hesitate to intercede in the political events of his conflict-prone age. In addition to an extended correspondence with a number of the era's warring secular and ecclesiastical leaders, Gregory's writings include first and foremost his commentary on the Book of Job ("Moralia in Iob"), in addition to Augustine's "City of God" and (centuries later) Saint Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologiae" the single most influential (re)statement of the entire Catholic doctrine, as well as a treatise in dialogue form on the lives of various saints (appropriately entitled "Dialogos"), and a pastoral rule ("Liber Regulae Pastoralis"). Among the concepts authoritatively defined for the first time in Gregory's "Moralia" are the Seven Deadly Sins (gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, envy, and lust), which are contrasted with the seven opposing virtues (wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, devotion and fear of the Lord), as well as the four cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice), and the Catholic trinity of faith, hope, and charity. His views on women, however, seem to have been very much in accord with those of the earlier church fathers; his "Moralia"'s view of Job's wife as a temptress and instrument of the devil, in any event, links yet another, heretofore less prominently-considered female biblical character both to the heritage of Eve and to the contrasting image, that of the sanctity of Mary, thus reinforcing and amplifying the dichotomy already created in the earlier doctors' writings.

Dialogos:
Second Dialogue (The Life of Saint Benedict)

Chapter Two: How He Overcame a Great Temptation of the Flesh

Upon a certain day being alone, the tempter was at hand: for a little black bird, commonly called a merle or an ousel, began to fly about his face, and that so near as the holy man, if he would, might have taken it with his hand: but after he had blessed himself with the sign of the cross, the bird flew away: and forthwith the holy man was assaulted with such a terrible temptation of the flesh, as he never felt the like in all his life.

A certain woman there was which some time he had seen, the memory of which the wicked spirit put into his mind, and by the representation of her did so mightily inflame with concupiscence the soul of God's servant, which did so increase that, almost overcome with pleasure, he was of mind to have forsaken the wilderness. But, suddenly assisted with God's grace, he came to himself; and seeing many thick briers and nettle bushes to grow hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst of them, and there wallowed so long that, when he rose up, all his flesh was pitifully torn: and so by the wounds of his body, he cured the wounds of his soul, in that he turned pleasure into pain, and by the outward burning of extreme smart, quenched that fire which, being nourished before with the fuel of carnal cogitations, did inwardly burn in his soul: and by this means he overcame the sin, because he made a change of the fire.

From which time forward, as himself did afterward report unto his disciples, he found all temptation of pleasure so subdued, that he never felt any such thing. Many after this began to abandon the world, and to become his scholars. For being now freed from the vice of temptation, worthily and with great reason is he made a master of virtue: for which cause, in Exodus, commandment is given by Moses that the Levites from five-and-twenty years and upward should serve, but, after they came to fifty, that they should be ordained keepers of the holy vessels. [Numbers 8:24-26]

PETER: Somewhat I understand of this testimony alleged: but yet I beseech you to tell me the meaning thereof more fully.

GREGORY: It is plain, Peter, that in youth the temptation of the flesh is hot: but after fifty years the heat of the body waxeth cold, and the souls of faithful people become holy vessels. Wherefore necessary it is that God's elect servants, whiles they are yet in the heat of temptation, should live in obedience, serve, and be wearied with labour and pains. But when, by reason of age, the heat of temptation is past, they become keepers of holy vessels; because they then are made the doctors of men's souls.