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The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity


from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world


Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues (4.14), describes a deathbed vision, experienced by Galla, a noblewoman of Rome, of *Peter the Apostle (S00036). Written in Latin in Rome, c. 593.

Evidence ID

E04581

Type of Evidence

Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Major author/Major anonymous work

Gregory the Great (pope)

Gregory the Great, Dialogues 4.14

Summary:

During the period of Gothic rule, Galla, a young widow from a very noble family of Rome (her father, one of the Symmachi, had been consul), decided to devote herself to God. This resulted in her growing a beard, since she was of a passionate nature. She entered a convent attached to a church of Peter. On her deathbed, she was visited by a vision of Peter who told her that her sins were forgiven. She was called to Heaven and, at her request, one of her sisters – Benedicta – was able to follow her in thirty days.


Summary: Frances Trzeciak.

Cult Places

Cult building - monastic

Miracles

Miracle after death
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Power over life and death

Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Women
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits

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

Galla is a figure known also from other sources (Martindale 1980, 491, 'Galla 5'), as active in early-sixth-century Rome, though this particular story is known to us only through Gregory's account. Her father was consul in 485 (Martindale 1980, 1044-1046, 'Symmachus 9').

Bibliography

Edition:
Vogüé, A. de, Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 265 (Paris: Cerf, 1980).

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.

Martindale, J.R.,
The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire II, A.D. 395 - 527 (Cambridge 1980).

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

Related Saint Records
IDNameName in SourceIdentity
S00036Peter, the ApostlePetrus ApostolusCertain


Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Frances Trzeciak, Cult of Saints, E04581 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E04581