Note 66 — Chapter IV · THE SALVE REGINA

St. Gregory the Great, who died about 604, was the first monk who became a pope. “It was he,” says Montalembert, “who inaugurated the Middle Ages, modern society, and Christian civilization. He was the first to collect the ancient melodies of the Church, in order to subject them to the rules of harmony, and to arrange them according to the requirements of Divine worship, ... he established at Rome the celebrated school of religious music, to which Gaul, Germany, England, all the Christian nations came in turn.”