During the first dozen years of Gregory's life, relatives groomed the boy not only how to faithfully expect the aid of saints but also how to discern, and even interact with, invisible, divine forces behind visible phenomena. A second influence that would mold Gregory as he entered his early adult years was sacred literature, of which the Scriptures played a significant part. The lad's earliest contacts with Scriptures undoubtedly had already commenced with his pious parents sharing biblical stories and at churches where figures such as Bishop Gallus and Nicetius, the latter still only a priest, had provided more lessons through sermons and liturgical readings. Gregory learned to read Scripture early on, but presumably it was only after he fulfilled his fateful vow to Saint Illidius that he mounted a reading regimen which would approach a level of influence comparable to what his parents had taught him. Concurrent with the young cleric ingesting the teachings of the Fathers, familial instructions in spiritual growth and cultic practices persisted. Some of these newer lessons, mainly being imparted now by relatives of his maternal line, would enable Gregory to rise to the challenge of prospering in the sometimes dangerous ecclesiastical culture into which he became immersed. As the Auvergnat cleric endured, one decade after another, Death proved itself an even fiercer foe than it had appeared during Gregory's childhood.

Death and the Aspiring Cleric

In 551, probably not three years after Florentius's demise, Death claimed the life of the person whom the child-cleric likely internalized as his first fosterfather, Gallus of Clermont. By this year Armentaria possibly had already located back to her native Burgundy; she apparently settled near Chalon. Gregory's elder brother Peter likewise may already have moved to Langres, where as a cleric in Bishop Tetricus's entourage he perhaps started aspiring to succeed his mother's aging uncle to that city's bishopric. In the Auvergne Gregory possibly shared time between Clermont and one of his family’s rural estates. While in the city, he, now barely a teen, will have witnessed the contest for his deceased uncle's vacant cathedra.