Gregory I. was born at Rome in 540 of a rich, pious, senatorial family. His great-grandfather was Pope Felix II. (483-492). His father was a wealthy lawyer and senator. His mother and two aunts were canonised. He was very well educated for that period as a "saint among the saints" as John the Deacon, his biographer, declared. In grammar, rhetoric, and logic he was second to none in Rome.[185:2] He studied law preparatory to public life and was well versed in the inspiring history of Rome and in current events. At thirty he was a distinguished senator and three years later Emperor Justin II. made him Prætor of Rome. From his mother Gregory inherited a profound religious temperament, hence he naturally became imbued with the ascetic religious ideas of the age. The monastic crusade of the West, now at its height, found him a willing convert. Upon his father's death, Gregory used his vast wealth for charity and for founding seven monasteries. Persuaded by his pious mother, he himself became a monk in 575. Selling all his costly furniture, fine clothes, and jewels for the poor, he turned his own house into a monastery and almost killed himself by his vigorous fasts and ascetic vigils. Soon he gained great fame as a monk, was chosen abbot, founded six monasteries in Sicily and enforced a tyrannical discipline.[186:1] Gregory was a man of too great ability, however, to be penned up in a monastery; consequently Pope Benedict called him to his court as one of the seven deacons of Rome. In 579 he was sent, as a papal nuncio, to Constantinople to reconcile the Emperor and the Pope and to unite the Eastern and Western churches, while at the same time he was instructed to solicit military aid against the troublesome Lombards. For six years he remained at Constantinople on this mission and gained much fame as a theologian and diplomat. Although he failed to reunite the two branches of the Christian Church, he did bring about an amicable understanding between the Pope and the Emperor and got some help against the Lombards. In a discussion with the Patriarch of Constantinople over the nature of the body after resurrection, Gregory won a signal victory. During his stay in the East he wrote his renowned work _Magna Moralia_. In 585 he returned to Rome, resumed his duties as abbot, became a popular preacher, and was recognised generally as the most able man in the Church.