Latin Church Father (c. 540-604) and Pope Gregory I (590-604); the last of the Western Church Fathers and the great architect of the Roman-Catholic medieval church-and-monastic order. Born to a wealthy Roman senatorial family; served as Prefect of Rome (the senior civil office of the city, 573-574); abandoned civil life to become a monk, converting his ancestral home on the Caelian Hill into the monastery of St. Andrew (c. 575); served as papal nuncio to Constantinople (579-585); elected Pope after the death of Pelagius II in 590. Gregory's papal labor spanned both ecclesial and civil emergency. (1) Theologically and pastorally: produced the Pastoral Rule (591, a substantive manual for bishops on the care of souls, influential throughout the medieval West and translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred); the great Moralia on Job (a substantial allegorical commentary on Job, the principal source for medieval Western moral-allegorical exegesis); the Dialogues (a collection of saints' lives and miracles, foundational for the medieval cult of saints); over 850 surviving letters covering pastoral, administrative, doctrinal, and political matters. (2) Liturgically: reformed the Roman liturgy and gave shape to the chant tradition that bears his name (Gregorian chant); the substantive form of the Roman Mass that prevailed from his time until Vatican II (1962-1965) was largely Gregorian. (3) Missionarily: sent the Gregorian Mission led by Augustine of Canterbury to convert the Anglo-Saxons (596-604), establishing the Roman-Christian church in England. (4) Politically: substantially governed Rome during the Lombard invasions and the collapse of effective Byzantine civil administration; the papal state's substantive emergence as a civil power dates substantially from Gregory's pontificate. The patriarchal-Reformed reader engages Gregory with appropriate discernment: his pastoral substance in the Pastoral Rule and his substantive contribution to medieval theology are engaged with profit; his role in the developing Roman-Catholic medieval system (cult of saints, purgatory, Marian devotion, allegorical exegesis, papal monarchy) is engaged with the discernment the Reformation later applied to those developments.