Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 1.8) of 590, to bishop Bacauda of Formia, mentions the grave of the martyr *Erasmus (bishop of Antioch and martyr of Formia, S00867) in Formia (southern Italy). Written in Latin in Rome.
E02762
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 1.8
Complete text of the letter:
GREGORIVS BACAVDAE EPISCOPO FORMIENSI
Et temporis necessitas nos perurget et imminutio exigit personarum ut destitutis ecclesiis salubri ac prouida debeamus dispositione succurrere. Et ideo, quoniam ecclesiam Minturnensem funditus tam clerus quam plebis destitutam desolatione cognouimus, tuamque pro ea petitionem quatenus Formianae ecclesiae, in qua corpus beati Erasmi martyris requiescit, cuique fraternitas tua praesidet, adiungi debeat piam esse ac iustissimam praeuidentes, necessarium duximus, consulentes tam desolationi loci illius quam tuae ecclesiae paupertati, reditus supradictae ecclesiae Minturnensis uel quicquid ei antiquo modernoque iure uel priuilegio potuit potestque qualibet ratione competere, ad tuae ecclesiae ius potestatemque hac praecepti nostri auctoritate migramus, ut a praesenti tempore sicuti de propria quippe ecclesia debeas cogitare eique competentia tua prouisione disponere, quatenus deinceps quod perire nuncusque potuit pauperum ecclesiae tuae utilitatibus clerique proficiat.
'Gregory to Bacauda, bishop of Formia
The necessity of time urges us, and the diminution of the population demands, that we should assist destitute churches with a helpful and provident disposition. We have learnt that through abandonment, the church of Minturno is as totally destitute of its clergy as it is of its people, and we can see how pious and extremely just your petition is on its behalf, namely that it ought to be joined to the church of Formiae (wherein lies the body of Saint Erasmus the Martyr), over which your Fraternity presides. We have thought it necessary, therefore, in considering the abandonment of the place as much as the poverty of your church, that by the authority of this injunction of ours, we transfer to the right and power of your church the revenues of the above-mentioned church of Minturno, or whatever could and can for whatever reason belong to it, by ancient and modern right or privilege. Thus from now onwards you should think of it as if it were in fact your own church and should dispose of its belongings with foresight, so that thereafter what might have been wasted until now, might benefit the interests of the poor of your church and of your clergy.'
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 10.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 1, 127.
Cult building - independent (church)
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Source
Gregory's Register is a collection of some 854 of his letters as pope, collected into 14 books (each book representing an indictional year of his pontificate, from 1 September to 31 August) of varied length and deriving from the file-copies that were made in Rome and kept in the papal archive. The original copies survived into the 9th century, but were subsequently lost. From the late 8th century onwards, however, because of the exceptional stature that Gregory had by then attained, various collections were assembled from the original copies (the largest under Pope Hadrian I at the end of the 8th century), and these constitute the Register as we have it today.The Register does not contain all the letters that Gregory despatched as pope, since some whose text survives refer to others which are lost; but the collection we have is unique from the late antique period, and only matched in quantity and range of subjects by the registers of high-medieval popes. Recipients range from papal administrators, through prominent churchmen and aristocrats, to kings and the imperial family, and treat a wide variety of topics, from the mundane administrative affairs of the papal patrimony to deep theological and moral considerations.
For the cult of saints, there is much that is of interest in the letters, but two particular concentrations of evidence stand out. The first is a clutch of around a dozen letters that mention requests for relics from Rome, or that accompanied small personal relics as gifts to influential correspondents. The second concentration of evidence relates to the dedications of churches and other ecclesiastical institutions in southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia. Because the papacy owned extensive estates in these regions, and exercised particular authority there, many of Gregory's letters mention churches and other ecclesiastical institutions by the name of the saint to whom they were dedicated, thereby providing us with a rich panorama of the spread of both local and imported saintly cults.
Gregory's Register has been the subject of two substantial critical editions: the first by Ewald and Hartmann for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica; the second by Dag Norberg for Corpus Christianorum. The numbering of the letters is often the same in both editions, but it can differ, because Norberg removed letters (and other passages) that appear to have been added at a later date to the original Register, assigning them instead to Appendices. We have used Norberg's numbering, which is that now generally used.
(Bryan Ward-Perkins)
Bibliography
Editions:Ewald, P. and L.M. Hartmann (eds), Gregorii I papae Registrum epistolarum, 2 vols. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae I and II, Berlin 1891 and 1899).
Norberg, D., S. Gregorii Magni, Registrum epistularum. 2 vols. (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 140-140A; Turnhout: Brepols, 1982).
English translation:
Martyn, J.R.C., The Letters of Gregory the Great, 3 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004).
Matthieu Pignot
08/05/2017
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00867 | Erasmus, bishop of Antioch and martyr of Formia | Erasmus | Certain |
|---|
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