The zeal of modern polemics has dealt more hardly with Gregory than justice demands[839]. Who shall dare to attribute to him, or to any other man, entire freedom from human error, or total absence of those faults which, for the very happiness of man, are found to chequer the most perfect of human characters? But even if we admit that he shared, to not less than the usual degree, in the weakness and selfishness of our nature, it is impossible to withhold the meed of our admiration from the man whose intellect could combine, whose prudence could direct, and whose courage could cope with, all the details of a conversion such as that of Saxon England. Let us only consider the circumstances under which he found himself placed at home, and we shall the better comprehend the power of mind which could devise and execute the vast design of a spiritual colonization, a transplantation of religion as it were from Rome the centre, to Britain the extreme, the least known, and most barbarous point of the ancient empire[840]. Temporal as well as spiritual ruler of the city, abandoned by those miserable intriguers who inherited from the emperors nothing but their title and their vices, and pressed on every side by the vigorous advance of the Langobardic arms, it was Gregory’s fate or fortune to pass in the midst of political excitement a life which he had hoped to devote to pious meditation. But he possessed a character capable of moulding itself to all the exigencies of his situation; whether reluctantly or not, he flung himself into the gap, and comprehended, with a perfect singleness of insight, that to whom belongs the post of greatest honour, on him lies also the burthen of the greatest toil and greatest danger. By turns soldier, captain, negotiator, and priest,—now wielding the pen to instruct, now the sword to protect or to chastise,—now pouring passionate exhortations from his pulpit, now providing for the resources of his commissariat, or superintending the builders engaged on the material defences of his walls,—we see in him one of those men whom troublous times have often educated to cope with themselves, and whose names have thus justly become the very landmarks and pivots of history. ----- Footnote 839: See Soames, Anglos. Church, p. 40 _seq._, and Latin Church during Anglos. Times, p. 12 _seq._, 19 _seq._ On the other side, Schrödl, Das erste Jahrhundert der Englischen Kirche, p. 10 _seq._ Footnote 840: It must not be forgotten that the Southerns shuddered at the Saxons, as the most savage and barbarous of all the Germanic tribes. However unjust the opinion might be, it was the fashionable one at Rome. ----- A great writer, who sometimes suffers his hostility against Christianity and its professors to outweigh the calmer judgment of the historian, has left us this graphic account of the condition of Rome at the end of the sixth century[841]. ----- Footnote 841: Gibbon, Dec. and Fall, chapter 45. -----