Grégoire le Grand : un christianisme renouvelé

The problem adressed by the present paper is whether, and in what sense, Christianity may be considered the foundation of western civilisation. This has led to a reconsideration of the figure of Gregory the Great (590-604) in the context of the religious renewal in the Mediterranean world of the sixth and seventh centuries. It is demonstrated accordingly that Gregory was not so much the pope who passed “from the State to the Church”, the 'consul Dei', but rather he who openly abandoned the Romano-Christian tradition (the religion of power) in order to embrace the religion of the New Testament and of Christ on the cross (the religion of service), far more suited to the ruralised and ethnically composite society of his time. Consequently, the Judaeo-Christian tradition was not renewed only in Arabia through Mohammed, nor was it renewed only in the eastern Roman Empire (as Gilbert Dagron has also demonstrated). It was renewed in the West as well through Gregory. This renewal was enormously successful. Thus one may say that Christianity was at the base of the western civilisation; at the same time, one must emphasize that this was a Christianity reshaped by Gregory the Great as evangelical, prophetic and spiritual. [Author with M. Jones]