Gregory was born into a patrician family about540, and became Prefect of Rome in 573. Shortly thereafter, however, he retired to a monastic life in a community which he founded in his ancestral home on the Coelian Hill. Pope Pelagius II made him Ambassador to Constantinople in 579, where he learned much about the larger affairs of the church. Not long after his return home, Pope Pelagius died of the plague, and in 590, Gregory was elected as his …