But his name is specially associated, in the history of Catholic worship, with that branch of religious art which is identified with worship itself, and which is of the utmost moment to the piety as to the innocent joy of the Christian people. The name of _Gregorian Chant_ reminds us of his solicitude for collecting the ancient melodies of the Church, in order to subject them to rules of harmony, and to arrange them according to the requirements of divine worship. He had the glory of giving to Ecclesiastical music that sweet and solemn character which has descended through ages, and to which we must always return after the most prolonged aberrations of frivolity and innovation. He made out himself, in his Antiphonary, the collection of ancient and new chants; he composed the text and melodies of several hymns, which are still used in the Church; he established at Rome the celebrated school of sacred music, to which Gaul, Germany, and England came in turns, trying with more or less success to assimilate their voices to the purity of Italian modulations. And when Gregory was too ill to leave his little chamber and his couch, he gathered about him the boys of the choir, and continued their instructions. The gout made the last years of his life a kind of martyrdom. The cry of pain rings in many of his letters. "For nearly two years," he wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria, "I have been imprisoned to my bed by such pangs of gout, that I can scarcely rise for two or three hours on great holidays to celebrate solemn mass. And the intensity of the pain compels me immediately to lie down again, that I may be able to endure my torture, by giving free course to my groans. My illness will neither leave me nor kill me. I entreat your holiness to pray for me, that I may be soon delivered, and receive that freedom which you know, and which is the glory of the children of God." Up to his last moments he continued with unwearied activity to dictate his correspondence, and to concern himself with the interests of the Church. He died on the 12th March, 604, aged nearly fifty-five, in the thirteenth year of his pontificate. He was buried in S. Peter's; and in the epitaph engraved on his tomb, it is said that, "after having conformed all his actions to his doctrine, the consul of God went to enjoy eternal triumph." S. Hildefonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, in the seventh century, writes thus of him--"He surpassed Antony in holiness, Cyprian in eloquence, and Augustine in wisdom." Yet so great was his humility, that he subscribed himself, "Servant of the servants of God"--a style which his successors in the chair of S. Peter have retained till this day. He was buried in the basilica of S. Peter. His pallium, reliquary, and girdle were preserved as precious memorials.