Gregory the Great

c. 540–604 · Latin Church (Rome) · Rome

Gregory I (c. 540–604), monk of the Coelian Hill and bishop of Rome from 590, is the last of the four great Latin doctors and the pope who sent Augustine of Canterbury to the English. His forty Homiliae in Evangelia were preached at the Roman stational churches between 590 and 592 and expound the gospel of the day plainly, closing again and again with a story of a recent death or conversion. The twenty-two Homiliae in Hiezechihelem were delivered while the Lombards were besieging Rome, and he broke them off in grief at the city's ruin.