Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 3.19) of 593, to Petrus, sub-deacon and papal agent in Campania (southern Italy), requests relics of *Severinus (hermit and monk of Noricum, S00848) for the purpose of the rededication of an Arian church in Rome. Written in Latin in Rome.
Evidence ID
E06340
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 3.19
Full text of the letter:
GREGORIVS PETRO SVBDIACONO CAMPANIAE
Cor nostrum pia diuinitatis inspiratione conpungitur loca quondam exsecrandis erroribus deputata in catholicae religionis reuerentia dedicare. Quia ergo ecclesiam positam iuxta domum Merulanam regione tertia, quam superstitio diu arriana detinuit, in honore sancti Seuerini cupimus consecrare, experientia tua reliquias beati Seuerini summopere debita cum ueneratione transmittat, quatenus quae nostris animis perficienda decreuimus implere, omnipotentis gratia suffragante, possimus.
‘Gregory to Peter, sub-deacon of Campania
Our heart is being pricked by the holy inspiration of divinity to dedicated, with the reverence of our Catholic religion, places which were once condemned for detestable sins. Since therefore we desire to consecrate, in honour of Saint Severinus, a church located next to the Merulan house in the third region, long occupied by the Arian superstition, would your experience please send over relics of Saint Severinus, with the reverence which is highly deserved, so that we can implement what we have decided in our mind should be carried out, with the support of the grace of almighty God.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 165.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 1, 248.
Liturgical ActivitiesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ceremony of dedication
Non Liturgical ActivityAppropriation of older cult sites
RelicsUnspecified relic
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Heretics
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
Gregory was presumably seeking relics (whether corporeal or otherwise is not specified) from the monastery of Saint Severinus in the castellum Lucullanum, just outside Naples, where the saint's body rested. It is possible that Gregory intended to dedicate the former Arian church in Rome specifically to Saint Severinus, and with relics of the saint, because Severinus in his lifetime had upheld the Catholic faith when surrounded by Arians in Noricum (see E02347). The letter can be dated to January of 593.There is no further reference in our sources to this planned dedication to Severinus; but in a letter which can be dated to March 594, Gregory mentions the dedication to Saint Agatha (E06350) of a former Arian church in Rome, and this same conversion and dedication are also mentioned in his Dialogues (E04501) and in the short Life of Gregory in the Liber Pontificalis (E01419): the church, Sant'Agata dei Goti, survives. The most likely explanation of the disappearance of a dedication to Severinus of a former Arian church, and the appearance, shortly afterwards, of a dedication to Agatha (also of a former Arian church), is that Gregory changed his mind over which saint to dedicate the same church to, perhaps because he never received the relics of Severinus that he is here requesting.
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
30/09/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00848 | Severinus, hermit and monk in Noricum, ob. 482 | Seuerinus | Certain |
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