Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 3.58) of 593, to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples, mentions the foundation of an oratory dedicated to *Mary (the Mother of Christ, S00033) in the city or territory of Naples (southern Italy). Written in Latin in Rome.
E06347
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 3.58
Extract from the opening of the letter:
Religiosis desideriis sine difficultate praestari decet effectum. Atque ideo Gratiosa abbatissa una cum congregatione sua, oblata petitione quae tenetur in subditis, postulauit quod patriciae recordationis Rustica, per ultimum uoluntatis suae arbitrium, in ciuitate Neapolitana in domo propria in regione Herculensi in uico qui appellatur Lampadi, monasterium ancillarum dei, in quo praefatam Gratiosam abbatissam praeesse disposuit, simul que et oratorium exstruxisse dinoscitur, cui et pro uoto suo quattuor uncias totius substantiae suae dimisisse suggessit, quod que in honore beatae Mariae semper uirginis genitricis dei et domini nostri Iesu Christi desiderat consecrari. Et ideo, frater carissime, praesenti praeceptione dilectionem tuam duximus adhortandam ut, inspecto primitus testamento, si iure subsistit, et easdem quattuor uncias uerissime eidem monasterio collatas esse compereris, ad praedictum locum cum postulauerint ingrauanter accedas, uenerandae sollemnia dedicationis impendens, ut quotiens necesse fuerit a presbyteris ecclesiae in superscripto loco deseruientibus celebrentur sacrificia ueneranda missarum.
‘It is right to fulfil religious desires when it is not difficult. And this is so in the case of Abbess Gratiosa, who has joined her community in presenting a petition, which is contained in her appendix. In it she has claimed that Rustica, recorded as a patrician, is known to have built a monastery for nuns, through the final decision of her will, in the territory [or city] of Naples (in civitate Neapolitana). It is in her own home, in the region 'of Hercules', in the village [or quarter] called Lampas. Here she has arranged that the aforesaid Gratiosa should be abbess in charge. She has also built an oratory and, to carry out her vow, Gratiosa has suggested that she withdraw a third of her whole fortune, and she wants it to be consecrated in honour of the blessed Mary, ever virgin and mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. And for that reason, my very dear brother, we thought that your Beloved should be encouraged with the present injunction to inspect the final will first of all and, if it remains lawful, to make certain that the same third has in all truth been spent on the same convent. Please approach the aforesaid place not unwillingly when they ask you to, using the solemn rites of a venerable dedication. Thus the venerable sacrifices of masses may be celebrated by priests of the church in the above mentioned place, whenever necessary.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 206-7.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 1, 278-9, lightly modified.
Cult building - monastic
Cult building - dependent (chapel, baptistery, etc.)
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Aristocrats
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
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 ninth century, but were subsequently lost; from the late eighth century onwards, however, because of the exceptional stature that Gregory had by then attained, various collections of his letters were assembled from the original copies (the largest under Pope Hadrian I at the end of the eighth 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 in some of those whose text survives there are references to other letters, wholly 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 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.
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:
Neil, B., and Dal Santo, M. (eds.), A Companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Frances Trzeciak
20/10/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00033 | Mary, Mother of Christ | Maria | Certain |
|---|
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