Centralized bureaucratic control over civil matters continued to fragment, and this gave rise to local strongmen who held power at the expense of the civilian senatorial aristocracy. The Lombard invasion of 568 triggered several more decades of war. Cities and commerce had declined, and cycles of famine and the plague had depopulated the countryside in the wake of the emperor Justinian’s reconquest of Italy (535–554). As the fourth and final of the traditional Latin Fathers of the Church, Gregory was the first exponent of a truly medieval, sacramental spirituality. His epithet “the Great” reflects his status as a writer as well as a ruler. 540, Rome -died March 12, 604, Rome Western feast day, September 3 ), pope from 590 to 604, reformer and excellent administrator, “founder” of the medieval papacy, which exercised both secular and spiritual power. Gregory the Great, also called Saint Gregory I, (born c.