impotence to interfere in Italian matters, Gregory was chosen bishop of Rome, when Pelagius died of the plague (590). Gregory was elected without the Imperial sanction. Rome was so closely beset by the Lombards that there was neither time nor means for asking Maurice’s consent, but the emperor afterwards confirmed the elevation of the saintly abbot. All Italy—nay, even the whole of the Christian West—knew of him already as the most prominent of the Roman clergy, and he was able at once to assume a position of great independence and authority. Gregory’s most striking feature was his extraordinary self-confidence and conviction in the absolute wisdom and righteousness of his own ideas. The legend, started by his admirers not long after his death, to the effect that he was actually inspired by the Holy Ghost, who visited him in the form of a dove, very adequately represents his own notion of his infallibility. It was this self-confidence which enabled him to take up the line of stern and unbending autocracy which he always adopted. Other men were mute and obedient before the imperious saint, in whom they recognised their moral superior. Few, save the emperor Maurice and the fanatical John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, ever ventured to confront or withstand him. Unquestionably he was the most able, and one of the best-intentioned, men of his age. He left his mark on all that he touched, from the conversion of the English and the Lombards down to the official music of the Western Church—the Gregorian chants that still preserve his name. Although posterity enshrined him as one of the four great doctors of the Latin Church, his theological work was the weakest part of his activity. His writings are full of tropes, far-fetched conceits, misinterpretation of Scripture (he was ignorant of Hebrew and even of Greek), and pedantic arguments from analogy.