Evidence ID
E06339
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 3.3
From a letter to the abbot of the monastery of Saint Lucia in Syracuse:
De tunica uero sancti Iohannis omnino grate suscepi, quia sollicitus fuisti mihi indicare. Sed studeat dilectio tua mihi ipsam tunicam aut, quod est melius, eundem episcopum qui eam habet cum clericis suis cum ipsa ad me transmittere, quatenus et benedictione tunicae perfruamur, et de eodem episcopo uel clericis mercedem habere ualeamus.
‘But I heard about the tunic of Saint John with extreme gratitude, as you had taken the trouble to inform me. But let your Beloved be keen to send the tunic itself over to me, or even better, send the same bishop who has it along with his clergy, so that we may enjoy the blessing of the tunic and receive a benefit (merces) from the same bishop and clergy.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 148.
Translation: Martyn 2004, 236-7.
RelicsContact relic - saint’s possession and clothes
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Contact relic - saint’s possession and clothes
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Transfer/presence of relics from distant countries
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - abbots
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)
Discussion
Nothing more is known about this relic. It is most likely to have been a tunic of the Baptist, who attracted considerably more cult than the Apostle and Evangelist.Bibliography
Edition: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).
Further Reading:
Dal Santo, M., Debating the Saints' Cult in the Age of Gregory the Great (Oxford: OUP, 2012).
McCulloh, J., "The Cult of Relics in the Letters and Dialogues of Gregory the Great," Traditio 32 (1976), 145-184.
Neil, B., and Dal Santo, M. (eds.), A Companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Record Created By
Frances Trzeciak
Date of Entry
25/09/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00020 | John the Baptist | Iohannes | Uncertain | S00042 | John, the Apostle and Evangelist | Iohannes | Uncertain |
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