The ratification of the election arrived from Constantinople, but Gregory shrank in dismay from the high mission which lay before him. He himself admits that he sought to avoid it by flight, and legend in the ninth century related that he had caused himself to be conveyed secretly from Rome by some merchants, and hidden in a wooded ravine. The citizens who followed in search were guided to his retreat by a radiant dove, or a column of light, and the reluctant candidate was led back in triumph to S.Peter's, and there consecrated Pope, 3rd Sept. 590. He found the Church, to use his own expression, an old wreck, swept by the waves on every side, and whose timbers, shaken by the storm, threatened immediate dissolution.

Gregory's first sermon

The desperate straits to which the city was reduced afforded him material for his first sermon. When at this moment the Roman bishop (in the truest sense of the term the priest and father of his people) ascended the pulpit, the words to which he gave utterance were indeed historic actuality. Gregory summoned the remnant of the citizens to S. Peter's, and the degenerate descendants of Cicero, crowded together in the gloomy basilica, listened in feverish suspense as their forefathers had listened to the orators in the Temple of Concord.