He gave away his house — then moved back in

ROME, 574 AD — The house on the Clivus Scauri stands on the slope of the Caelian hill in Rome. It is a big one, and there is a fountain of fancy design inside it. Until this year it belonged to the family of a senator called Gordianus. He owned large estates in Sicily too.

It is a monastery now, named for St. Andrew, and monks live in it. The house was Saint Gregory the Great’s. His father left it to him, and he is still living in it — as an ordinary monk. He is thirty-four.

The top job in Rome

The Emperor Justin II made St. Gregory Prefect of the City when he was little more than thirty. That was very young for the job. The prefect is the top of what is left of Rome’s civil government.

Inside the walls, running the city is in his hands. He is the man in charge of the city’s money. He buys the grain and hands it out, together with the pope. He works with the general in charge of the soldiers on defending the city. He is the chief judge of Rome too. The job makes him wear the trabea (a rich robe of silk), covered in fancy stitching and sparkling with precious stones.

The city he was running had been emptied out. The Lombards marched into Italy in the spring of 568 AD. Plague had gone through the country ahead of them and left whole villages standing empty. Then came a famine, in 570 and 571 AD.

Most of the people in Rome were living on charity handouts. While St. Gregory was prefect the Lombards were all round the city. The road to Constantinople was cut off.

Then his father died

Gordianus died. His wife, Saint Silvia, did not stay in the house. She went to live quietly at a place called Cella Nova, right by the great door of the Basilica of St. Paul. The rest went to her son.

The house and most of the family money were his now. That made him one of the richest men in the city.

Seven monasteries, and nothing left over

He gave all of it away. He gave up every government job he held too.

Most of the money went into building and paying for seven monasteries. Six were built out of the estates in Sicily. The seventh was his own house on the Clivus Scauri, the one named for St. Andrew. On each of the seven he settled enough income to keep the monks living in it. They would not have to work for their food. Whatever was left over he handed out to the poor.

He didn’t move out

He kept nothing, and he stayed. His silk robes and glittering jewels had caught every eye when he drove through the city. He gave up every one of those marks of his rank. He put on the rough clothes of a monk. He started as a simple brother in the house he had just given away.

He wears a tunic and a long black cuculla (the monk’s hooded cloak). His days go on studying Scripture in his cell and on the church services. He spends them too on the slow work of copying books out. The rule of the house is strict about property: no monk may own anything of his own.

His fasts are already hard enough to be doing him damage. His food comes across the city from his mother. She sends him raw vegetables and fruit from Cella Nova, on a silver dish.

Near the fountain he has had his parents painted. In the first picture St. Peter sits with his right hand holding the hand of Gordianus. In the second St. Silvia is sitting, robed in white, with a Psalter held open in her left hand.