Pope Gregory I (ca. 540–604), known as Gregory the Great, was the last of the traditional Latin “Doctors of the Church.” Little is known of his life apart from a letter he attached to his work on the Book of Job (Magna moralia in Iob) and scattered references in his other letters and writings. Unlike some other figures of the patristic church, there is no contemporary biography. Most medieval accounts of his life are dependent upon the same sources available to modern scholarship.

The son of a senator, Gregory in 573 occupied the highest civil position in Rome (praefectus urbi). Shortly after…