When Pope Pelagius II. died in 590, the western part of Europe was in a very critical condition. The Teutonic barbarians had overrun the Empire from England around to Constantinople, destroying or burying nearly all that was best in the civilisation of old Rome. Justinian, to be sure, had recaptured Rome in 556, and it was to remain nominally under imperial rule until the time of Charles the Great (800), but the Emperor's hold on the West was limited and precarious. His representative, the exarch, lived mostly at Ravenna. The Pope, however, acknowledged the sovereignty of the Emperor both in theory and practice. As a result of the weakness and inactivity of the exarch, nearly all Italy lay prostrate before the fierce Lombards, and no efficient help came from the East. The city of Rome was in a miserable condition. The Tiber had overflowed its banks and had swept away the granaries of corn, thus entailing famine and starvation. A dreadful pestilence had swept away thousands, among them the Pope himself. In a letter, Gregory compared the Roman See to an old shattered ship, letting in the waves on all sides, tossed by daily storms, its planks rotten and gnawed by rats--almost a wreck![187:1] An imperial organisation was needed to give Latin-Teutonic Europe the highest type of an organised, Christian civilisation under one law and one faith, and thus to preserve for future generations the best that was in old Greece and Rome, as well as the best that was in the Germans. "It is impossible to conceive what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages, without the mediæval Papacy."[188:1] A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose--a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career--such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other. Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. He felt unworthy of it and feared its duties might lure him to worldliness--hence he fled the city and wrote the Emperor beseeching him not to confirm the election. But the Roman prefect intercepted the letter and sent instead a petition urging the confirmation. Gregory was captured at last and forcibly consecrated Supreme Pontiff. He was the best qualified man in all Christendom for the place. He represented the best in Rome and the best in Christianity. His comprehensive policy, his grasp of fundamental issues, his political training, his capacity for details, made him the man for the hour. He merged the office of Roman Emperor and Christian bishop into essentially one and thus became the real founder of the mediæval Papacy. His pontificate, therefore, was an era in the history of the Church.