Servants of god?: Servi in the letters of Gregory the great

When Gregory the Great styled himself 'servant of the servants of God' in his correspondence, he was drawing on a long tradition of using service as a metaphor to describe appropriate religious leadership and piety. However, his letters also reveal a church filled with servi, whose service to religion was neither metaphorical nor chosen, and upon whom both religious institutions and individuals were utterly dependent. This article explores the conjunction and disjunction between the rhetoric of service as a religious ideal in Gregory's correspondence, and the reality of service, which his letters indirectly reveal. It argues that the rhetoric and reality of service both shaped each other and that service thereby became a determinative model of behaviour in late antique and early medieval Christianity. Gregory's letters are therefore a useful case-study through which to explore an important issue in the development of the church as a sociallyembedded institution.