Pope St. Gregory I…better known historically as Gregory the Great, was pope from September 590 until his death.
He is also known as Gregory the Dialogist in Eastern Orthodoxy because of his Dialogues. He was the first of the popes to come from a monastic background. Gregory is a Doctor of the Church and one of the six Latin Fathers. He is considered a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Gregory is the patron saint of musicians, singers, students, and teachers.
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[This is the same Gregory who codified the pejorative version of Mary Magdalene (i.e. the vilification that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute)].
Jewish traditions, in the very rare cases where they encounter the issue, do not “buy–into” the pejorative version of the Magdalene saga. If anything, they are intrigued by the female disciple Mary Magdalene.
As noted above, Gregory’s actions mystify. He comes perilously close to undermining Christendom itself with his undermining of pivotal Mary Magdalene, the asserted “sole witness” (of the “resurrection” of Jesus).]
–who adopts a “moderate” policy towards the Jews. He condemns forced conversions, but approved of conversions attached by material inducements; he first formulates the principle which was reiterated from the twelfth century onwards in all papal bulls ‘benign’ to the Jews that “and one should not accord the Jews in their synagogues any liberty beyond what is fixed by law, thus they should not suffer, within what they were accorded, any infringement of their rights.”
Rosemary Ruether writes:
“Gregory the Great, reigning as Roman pontiff at the end of the sixth century, represents a perfect model of the anti–Judaic theory, as this had been embodied in Christian Roman law and carried on by the Church through Roman law. In contrast to the view of medieval Christians and even medieval popes, Gregory the Great is often cited as a “friend” of the Jews, but this is a misunderstanding of the context in which he himself worked. It is true that Gregory opposed forced baptism and synagogue burning, but he did so as an executor of Roman law which protected Jewish religious institutions and forbade violence.*” (Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, p. 199).
* Solomon Katz, “Pope Gregory The Great and the Jews,” JQR