158 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE the world, he was able to refer with the more force to the last judgment. Gregory usually has been represented, and usually represents himself, as a writer who paid little atten- tion to "grammar"; that is, to literary style. Such apolo- getic statements are always open to suspicion, however,, even when they come from a pope, and in any case show that there were critics then who still esteemed literary style.. Moreover, we find Gregory himself lamenting the fact that some of his sermons had been published by monks who took down his words at the time without giving him an oppor- tunity "to emend them with care as I intended." The "Gregorian chants ' ' approved by the Roman Catholic Church are attributed to this pope, but some doubt has been raised lately as to how much of an innovator he was in the liturgy,, and the hymns attributed to him are perhaps spurious. Besides fourteen books of letters Gregory's chief works are the Pastoral Rule, the M or alia, or commentary on the Pastoral Book of Job, and the Dialogues. The first is an Moralia eminently practical book, instructing the bishop Dialogues in the care of his flock and showing a wide ac- quaintance with human nature. The commentary on Job, written during his residence in Constantinople, is a good specimen of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture so much in favor during the Middle Ages. The Dialogues are about the lives and miracles of the saints, and introduce us to a strange world of monks, miracles, demons, and special providences. One must always be on one's guard against demons as against germs to-day; a woman once nearly swallowed one who was sitting on a lettuce leaf. Gregory, like the later Calvinists, delights in stories of condign pun- ishment especially dealt out by God to heretics, blasphem- ers, and the irreverent; in his pages even those who care- lessly disinter the bones of martyrs meet with sudden death. The object of many of his anecdotes is to stimulate his readers to venerate the relics of the saints, to accept such beliefs as that the souls of the dead can be saved by saying masses for them, and that the sign of the cross dispels de- mons even when made by an unbelieving Jew.
