Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 1.12) of 590, to bishop Iohannes of Orvieto, asks him to stop ill-treating a monastery of saint *George (soldier and martyr, S00259) within the diocese of Orvieto (central Italy). Written in Latin in Rome.
E02770
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 1.12
Complete text of the letter:
GREGORIVS IOHANNI EPISCOPO DE VRBEVETERE
Agapitus abbas monasterii sancti Georgii insinuauit nobis plurima se a uestra sanctitate grauamina sustinere, et non solum in his quae necessitatis tempore aliquod monasterio possint ferre subsidium, uerum etiam in eodem monasterio missas prohibetur celebrari, sepeliri etiam ibidem mortuos interdicas. Quod si ita est a tali uos hortamur inhumanitate suspendi, et sepeliri ibidem mortuos uel celebrari missas, nulla ulterius habita contradictione, permittas, ne denuo querelam de his quae dicta sunt praedictus uir uenerabilis abbas deponere compellatur.
'Gregory to Iohannes bishop of Urbs vetus
Agapitus, abbot of the monastery of Saint George, has informed us that he has suffered a lot of trouble from your Holiness, and not only in matters that could give some assistance to the monastery in a time of need, but he says also that in the same monastery the celebration of masses is prohibited, and you even forbid the dead from being buried there. But, if that is so, we exhort you to put an end to such inhumanity, and please allow the dead to be buried there and masses to be celebrated, with no further prohibitions, so that the venerable abbot mentioned above is not compelled to make yet another complaint about these matters which have been discussed.'
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 13.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 1, 129.
Other liturgical acts and ceremonies
Cult PlacesCult building - monastic
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 | S00259 | George, soldier and martyr, and Companions | Georgius | Uncertain |
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