Issued from one of the most illustrious races of ancient Rome, the son of a rich senator, and descendant of Pope Felix III., of the Anician family, Gregory was early called to fill a dignified place, which, in the midst of the Rome of that day, the vassal of Byzantium, and subject to the ceaseless insults of the Barbarians, retained some shadow of ancient Roman grandeur. He was prætor of Rome during the first invasion of the Lombards. In the exercise of this office he gained the hearts of the Romans, while habituating himself to the management of public business, and while acquiring a taste for luxury and display of earthly grandeur, in which he still believed he might serve God without reproach. But God required him elsewhere. Gregory hesitated long, inspired by the divine breath to seek religion, but was retained, led back and fascinated to the world, by the attractions and habits of secular life. At last he yielded to the influence of his intimate and close relations with the disciples of S. Benedict in Monte Cassino, and obeying the grace that enlightened him, he abruptly broke every tie, devoted his wealth to the endowment of six new monasteries in Sicily, and established in his own palace in Rome, upon the Cœlian hill, a seventh, dedicated to S. Andrew, into which he introduced the Benedictine rule, and where he himself became a monk. He sold all that remained of his patrimony, to distribute it to the poor; and Rome, which had seen the young and wealthy patrician traverse its streets in robes of silk covered with jewels, saw him now, in 575, with admiration, clothed like a beggar, serving, in his own person the beggars lodged in the hospital which he had built at the gate of his paternal house, now changed into a monastery. Once a monk, he would be nothing less than a model of monks, and practised with the utmost rigour all the austerities sanctioned by the rule, applying himself specially at the same time to the study of the Holy Scriptures. He ate only pulse, which his mother, who had become a nun since her widowhood, sent him, already soaked, in a silver porringer. This porringer was the only remnant of his ancient splendour, and did not long remain in his hands, for one day a shipwrecked sailor came several times to beg from him while he was writing in his cell, and finding no money in his purse, the Saint gave him that relic of his former wealth.