ABSTRACT
Pope Gregory's reign illustrates perfectly the process whereby the popes, without any settled intention of doing so, gradually became the undisputed masters of Rome. The increasing involvement of the papacy in strictly secular matters placed an enormous additional burden on the pope, and already the war and its attendant problems had considerably extended the responsibilities and duties of the pope and the papal administration. Quite apart from this increasing involvement in secular matters, the normal ecclesiastical business of the papacy had been enormously increased by the war. It was no doubt as a response to the pressures placed on the church administrative structure that Gregory undertook reforms in the central administration. The same sense of administrative tidiness dictated his policy on the war zones, those troubled areas lying between imperial and Lombard territory. Because central re-organization was obviously done centrally, regrettably little of it has percolated into the Papal Register.
