GREGORY
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GREGORY
this is not an exaggeration, fully two-thirds of them
have been lost. Very different estimates have been
formed of the value of his poetry, the greater part of
which was written in advanced years, and perhaps
rather as a relaxation from the cares and troubles
of life than as a serious pursuit. Delicate, graphic,
and flowing as are many of his verses, and giving
ample evitlence of the cultured and gifted intellect
which produced them, they cannot be held to parallel
(the comparison would be an unfair one, had not
many of them been written expressly to supersede and
take the place of the works of heathen writers) the
great creations of the classic Greek poets. Yet Ville-
main, no mean critic, places the poems in the front
rank of Gregory's compositions, and thinks so highly
of them that he maintains that the writer ought to be
called, pre-eminently, not so much the theologian
of the East as " the poet of Eastern Christendom ".
Prose Epistles. — These, by common consent, belong to the finest literary productions of Gregory's age. All that are extant are finished compositions; and that the writer excelled in this kind of composition is shown from one of them (Ep. cci.x, to Nicobulus) in which he enlarges with atlmirable good sense on the rules by which all letter-writers should be guided. It was at the request of Nicobulus, who believed, and rightly, that these letters contained much of per- manent interest and value, that Gregory prepared and edited the collection containing the greater number of them which has come down to us. Many of them are perfect models of epistolary style — short, clear, couched in admirably chosen language, and in turn witty and profound, playful, affectionate and acute.
Orations. — Both in his own time, and by the general verdict of posterity, Gregory was recognized as one of the very foremost orators who have ever adorned the Christian Church. Trained in the finest rhetorical schools of his age, he did more than justice to his distinguished teachers; and while boasting or vain- glory was foreign to his nature, he frankly acknowl- edged his consciousness of his remarkable oratorical gifts, and his satisfaction at having been enabled to cultivate them fully in his youth. Basil and Gregory, it has been said, were the pioneers of Christian elo- quence, modelled on, and inspired by, the noble and sustained oratory of Demosthenes and Cicero, and cal- culated to move and impress the most cultured and critical audiences of the age. Only comparatively few of the numerous orations delivered by Gregory have been preserved to us, consisting of discourses spoken by him on widely different occasions, but all marked by the same lofty qualities. Faults they have, of course: lengthy digressions, excessive ornament, strained antithesis, laboured metaphors, and occa- sional over-violence of invective. But their merits are far greater than their defects, and no one can read them without being struck by the noble phraseology, perfect command of the purest Greek, high imaginative powers, lucidity and incisiveness of thought, fiery zeal and transparent sincerity of intention, by which they are distinguished. Hardly any of Gregory's extant sermons are direct expositions of Scripture, and they have for this reason been adversely criti- cized. Bossuet, however, points out with perfect truth that many of these discourses are really nothing but a skilful interweaving of Scriptural te.xts, a pro- found knowledge of which is e^^dent from every line of them.
Gregory's claims to rank as one of the greatest theologians of the early Church are based, apart from his reputation among his contemporaries, and the verdict of history in his regard, chiefly on the five great "Theological Discourses" which he delivered at Constantinople in the course of the year 3S0. In estimating the scope and value of these famous utter- ances, it IS necessary to remember what was the re- ligious condition of Constantinople when Gregory, at
the urgent instance of Ba.sil, of many other bishops,
and of the sorely-tried Catholics of the Eastern capital,
went thither to undertake the spiritual charge of the
faithful. It was less as an administrator, or an
organizer, than as a man of saintly life and of oratori-
cal gifts famous throughout the Eastern Church, that
Gregory was asked, and consented, to undertake his
difficult mi.ssion; and he had to e.xercise those gifts in
combating not one but numerous heresies which had
been dividing and desolating Constantinople for many
years. Arianism in every form and degree, incipient,
moderate, and extreme, wasof course the great enemy,
but Gregory had also to wage war against the Apolli-
narian teaching, which denied the humanity of Christ,
as well as against the contrary tendency — later
developed into Nestorianism — which distinguished
between the Son of Mary and the Son of God as two
distinct and separate personalities.
A saint first, and a theologian afterwards, Gregory in one of his early sermons at the Anastasia insisted on the principle of reverence in treating of the mys- teries of faith (a principle entirely ignored by his Arian opponents), and also on the purity of life and example which all who dealt with these high matters must .show forth if their teaching was to be effectual. In the first and second of the five discourses he de- velops these two principles at some length, urging in language of wonderful beauty and force the necessity for all who would know God aright to lead a super- natural life, and to approach so sublime a study with a mind pure and free from sin. The third discourse (on the Son) is devoted to a defence of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, and a demonstration of its consonance with the primitive doctrine of the Unity of God. The eternal existence of the Son and Spirit are insisted on, together with their dependence on the Father as origin or principle; and the Divinity of the Son is argued from Scripture against the Arians, whose mis- understanding of various Scriptural texts is expo.sed and confuted. In the fourth discour.se, on the .same subject, the union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ Incarnate is set forth and luminously proved from Scripture and reason. The fifth and final dis- course (on the Holy Spirit) is directed partly against the Macedonian heresy, which denied altogether the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, and also against those who reduced the Third Person of the Trinity to a mere impersonal energy of the Father, tiregory, in reply to the contention that the Di\inity of the Spirit is not expressed in Scripture, quotes and comments on several passages which teach the doctrine by implica- tion, adding that the full manifestation of this great truth was intended to be gratlual, following on the revelation of the Divinity of the Son. It is to be noted that Gregory nowhere formulates the doctrine of the Double Proces.sion, although in his luminous exposition of the Trinitarian doctrine there are many passages which seem to anticipate the fuller teaching of the Quicnmque vull. No summary, not even a faithful verbal translation, can give any adequate idea of the combined subtlety and lucidity of thought, and rare beauty of expression, of the.se wonderful discourses, in which, as one of his French critics truly observes, Gregory "has summed up and closed the controversy of a whole century". The best evidence of their value and power lies in the fact that for four- teen centuries they have been a mine whence the greatest tlieologians of Christendom have drawn treasures of wisdom to illustrate and support their own teaching on the deepest mysteries of the Catholic Faith.
Acta SS.: tires prefixed to Migne, P. G. (1S57), XXXV, 147-303; Lirrs of the Saints collected from Avthfntick Heconlit (1729), II: B-vRONius. De Viiit Greg. Naziam. (Rome, 1760*: DucHESXE. Hist. Ancienne de VEglisc (Paris, 1907). 418-446; Socrates. Hist. Eccl.. ed. Bright (Oxford, 1S93), 195, 201, etc.; Ullma.S'N. Greooriiis v. Nazianz dcr Theotoge (Gotha, 1S67), tr. Cox (London, 18.51); Benoit, Saint Greg, de Naziame (Paris, 1876); Baudueh, Vie de S. Greg, de Naziame (Lyons, 1827);
