Pastoral Care

Gregory I’s Pastoral Care (6th century): though centred on the role of bishops, rather than secular lords, Gregory’s emphasis on humility as a key virtue of those holding worldly power, on the moral temptations of secular might, and on the need to provide moral leadership by example…

…service is demonstrated in his Pastoral Rule, a guidebook for bishops that outlines their obligations to teach and to serve as moral exemplars to their flocks. Gregory the Great was also one of the most important patrons of the Benedictine monastic movement, to which he owed a considerable part of…

His Pastoral Care, written after he became bishop of Rome in 590, was so influential that it became customary to present it to new bishops upon their ordination. This textbook of the medieval episcopate emphasized the role of the pastor as shepherd of souls.

Alfred’s translation of the Pastoral Care of St. Gregory I, the great 6th-century pope, provided a manual for priests in the instruction of their flocks, and a translation by Bishop Werferth of Gregory’s Dialogues supplied edifying reading on holy men. Alfred’s rendering of the Soliloquies of the 5th-century theologian…