Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues (3.15), describes a miracle, effected by a tunic that had belonged to *Euthicius (abbot of Nursia, 6th c., S01756), in the countryside of Nursia (central Italy). Written in Latin in Rome, c. 593.
E04478
Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts
Gregory the Great (pope)
Gregory the Great, Dialogues 3.15
Euthicius, a monk of Nursia and companion of Florentius [for whom see E04479], was selected as the abbot of a monastery; his holiness was made manifest after his death through miracles. Gregory recounts one:
(18) Nam quotiens pluvia deerat et aestu nimio terra longa siccitas exurebat, collecti in unum cives urbis illius eius tunicam levare atque in conspectu Domini cum precibus offerre consueverant. Cum qua dum per agros exorantes pergerent, repente pluvia tribuebatur, quae plene terram satiare potuisset.
(19) Ex qua re patuit eius anima quid virtutis intus, quid meriti haberet, cuius foris ostensa vestis iram Conditoris averteret.
(18) 'For whenever the rain failed and a long drought burned up the soil with its great heat, the citizens of his town would come together, take up his tunic and display it in the sight of the Lord with prayers. When they progressed with it through the fields praying, at once they would be granted enough rain to fully satisfy the land.
(19) From this it was made clear how much virtue and how much merit his soul had within, when even his outer garment, when displayed outside, could deflect the ire of the Creator.'
Text: de Vogüé 1978.
Summary and translation: Bryan Ward-Perkins.
Procession
Non Liturgical ActivityPrayer/supplication/invocation
MiraclesMiracle after death
Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather)
RelicsContact relic - saint’s possession and clothes
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesCrowds
Other lay individuals/ people
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
Euthicius is otherwise unknown.Nursia was the region around present-day Norcia, in southern Umbria.
Bibliography
Edition:Vogüé, A. de, Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 260 (Paris: Cerf, 1979), with full introduction and notes.
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.
Pietri, Ch. and Pietri, L., Prosopographie chrétienne du bas-empire, 2 Prosopographie de l'Italie chrétienne (313-604), 2 vols (Rome 1999-2000: École française de Rome), vol. 1, 722, 'Euthicius 2'.
Vogüé, A. de, "Grégoire le Grand et ses Dialogues d’après deux ouvrages récents," Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 83 (1988), 281–348.
Frances Trzeciak
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S01756 | Euthicius, abbot of Nursia, 6th c. | Euthicius | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
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