Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues (3.13), describes how the body of *Herculanus (bishop of Perugia, ob. 541/552, S01754) was found restored to perfection and uncorrupted forty days after his execution by Totila, and was buried in the church of *Peter the Apostle (S00036) in Perugia (central Italy). Written in Latin in Rome, c. 593.
Evidence ID
E04475
Type of Evidence
Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Gregory the Great, Dialogues 3.13
Summary:
The Gothic army had besieged Perugia for seven years. When they took the city, King Totila ordered them to cut a strip of skin from the body of Herculanus, bishop of the city, from head to foot, then behead him. He was executed and then this strip of skin was removed. He was buried along with a child, and exhumed forty days later, so he could be buried in the church of Peter the Apostle. Not only was his body found uncorrupted, while the child had rotted away, but his head had rejoined his body and his skin was whole.
Summary: Frances Trzeciak.
Cult PlacesMiracle after death
RelicsForeigners (including Barbarians)
Cult building - independent (church)
MiraclesMiracle after death
Changing abilities and properties of the body
Bodily incorruptibility
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesForeigners (including Barbarians)
Monarchs and their family
Soldiers
Children
Source
Gregory the Great (Pope, 590-604) wrote his Dialogues on the Lives and Miracles of the Italian Fathers (Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum italicorum) in Rome around 593. Organised into four books, the first three are a collection of lives and miracles of various Italian saints. The longest is the Life of Benedict of Nursia, which comprises the entirety of book 2. The final book consists of an essay on the immortality of souls after death. As a whole, the work documents and explains the presence of the miraculous in the contemporary world and the ability of saints to effect miracles both before and after death. The attribution of the Dialogues to Gregory has been disputed, most recently by Francis Clark who argued that the work was created in the 680s in Rome. Others - such as Adalbert de Vogüé, Paul Meyvaert and Matthew dal Santo - have, however, strongly argued for Gregory's authorship and it is broadly accepted that Gregory was responsible for the Dialogues.For a discussion of Gregory's devotion in writing the Dialogues, see E04383, and for the role of the Dialogues as a tract justifying the nature of miracles and theorising on the immortality of souls, see E04457.
Gregory's principal aim in collecting the miracle stories of the holy men and a very few women of sixth-century Italy was to show the presence of God's power on earth as manifested through them, rather than to encourage the cult of these individuals. Indeed, though posthumous miracles at the graves of a few individuals are recorded (and also a few miracles aided by contact relics of dead saints), there is very little emphasis in the Dialogues on posthumous cult; some of the miraculous events that Gregory records (e.g. E04429) are not even attributed to named individuals. Although very few of the holy persons in the Dialogues are 'proper' saints, with long-term cult, we have included them all in our database, for the sake of completeness and as an illustration of the impossibility of dividing 'proper' saints from more 'ordinary' holy individuals.
Discussion
Totila reigned as king of the Ostrogoths 541-552, during Justinian's conquest of Italy.Bibliography
Edition:Vogüé, A. de, Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 260 (Paris: Cerf, 1979).
Translation:
Zimmerman, O.J., Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Fathers of the Church 39 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1959).
Further Reading:
Clark, F.,The 'Gregorian' Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine Monasticism (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
Dal Santo, M., "The Shadow of A Doubt? A Note on the Dialogues and Registrum Epistolarum of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604)," Journal of Ecclesiatical History, 61.1, (2010), 3-17.
Meyvaert, P., "The Enigma of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues: A Reply to Francis Clark," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988), 335–81.
Vogüé, A. de, "Grégoire le Grand et ses Dialogues d’après deux ouvrages récents," Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 83 (1988), 281–348.
Record Created By
Frances Trzeciak
Date of Entry
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus Apostolus | Certain | S02921 | Herculanus, bishop and martyr of Perugia, ob. 541/552 | Herculanus | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Frances Trzeciak, Cult of Saints, E04475 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E04475