The attribution to Pope Gregory I (590-604) of an official codification of the collection of antiphons occurring in the Divine Office has at frequent intervals, exercised the wit of the learned.
At the end of the ninth century John the Deacon (d. c. 882) ascribed to Gregory I the compilation of the books of music used by the schola cantorum established at Rome, by that pope.
He was followed by Ellies du Pin, by Denis de Sainte-Marthe [it], and by Casimir Oudin, who added nothing noteworthy to the arguments of Goussainville.
In 1749, Dominic Georgi took up the defence of the traditional opinion; among other arguments he brought forward a text whose full bearing on the point at issue he hardly seems to have grasped.
This illusion passed through various phases from 1837 to 1848, when Danjou, in his turn, discovered the Gregorian antiphonary in a Montpellier manuscript of the tenth or eleventh century.
The discussion concerning the antiphonary was suddenly revived, in 1890, by a public lecture delivered before the Belgian Academy on 27 October, 1899, by François-Auguste Gevaert.
His argument has been summarized by Germain Morin: "The productive period of church musical art extends from the pontificate of St. Celestine (422-432) to about the year 700, and is divided into two epochs.
That of simple chant, the latest development of Græco-Roman music, includes the last years of the Western Empire, and the whole duration of the Gothic kingdom (425-563).
Finally, it was most probably the Syrian, Gregory III (731-741), the last but one of the Greek popes, who co-ordinated and united all the chants of the Mass in a collection similar to that which his predecessor, Agatho, had caused to be compiled for the anthems of the Day-Hours.
But there is evidence for the popes of Greek origin who lived at the end of the eighth century, notably for Agatho and Leo II.
In his dialogue entitled De institutione ecclesiasticâ, and in a sermon for the second fast of the fourth month, Egbert formally ascribes the composition of both the antiphonary and the sacramentary to Gregory, the author of the conversion of England: noster didascalus beatus Gregorius.
Bede appears to have been one of Egbert's friends from that time onward, which enables him to inform us (H. E., V, 20) that Acca had learned the ecclesiastical chant from a certain Maban, who had acquired it, himself, while living in Kent, from the successors of the disciples of the Pope Gregory.
The series thus obtained begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on the Friday in Passion Week, forming a regular succession of Psalms from 1 to 26, except for the interruptions caused (1) by intercalations and (2) by lacunæ.
Its existence prior to his time is proved by the intercalation of the Thursdays which interrupt the continuity of an harmonious arrangement, to which Gregory II paid no attention, though possibly he may rather have wished to respect it as a work thenceforward irreformable, as a traditional deposit which he refused to disturb and re-order.