Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 4.19) of 593, to Leo, an acolyte, orders him to care for the rents of a church, once a 'den of heretical depravity', now dedicated to orthodoxy and to *Agatha (virgin and martyr of Catania, S00794) in the Suburra, Rome; the church's property is the same as that held 'in the time of the Goths'. Written in Latin in Rome.
E06350
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 4.19
Full text of the letter:
GREGORIUS LEONI ACOLYTO
Locorum venerabilium cura nos admonet de eorum utilitate per omnia cogitare. Quia ergo ecclesia sanctae Agathae sita in Subura, quae spelunca fuit aliquando prauitatis haereticae, ad catholicae fidei culturam deo propitiante reducta est, ideoque huius auctoritatis tenore communitus pensiones omnium domorum in hac urbe constitutarum, quas praedicta ecclesia temporibus habuisse Gothorum constiterit, annis singulis congregare non desinas, et quantum in sarta tecta vel luminaribus aliaque reparatione eiusdem ecclesiae necessarium fuerit, erogare modis omnibus studebis. Quicquid vero exuberare potuerit, fideliter rationibus te ecclesiasticis praecipimus.
‘Gregory to Leo the acolyte
Our concern for venerable places reminds us to think about their usefulness in all ways. Thus, the church of Saint Agatha, situated in the Suburra, that was once a den of heretical depravity, has been brought back to the worship of the Catholic faith. For that reason, armed with the direction of this authority, continue to collect each year the rents on all the houses built in this city that the aforesaid church is agreed to have had in the time of the Goths. However much is needed for repairing the roof or for the lamps, you must strive to pay in full. But whatever might be left over, we order you to credit honestly to the church accounts.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol.1, 237.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 1, 301-2, modified.
Ceremony of dedication
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityAppropriation of older cult sites
Cult Related ObjectsOil lamps/candles
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
This is the church of Sant'Agata dei Goti, whose rededication to orthodoxy is also mentioned in Gregory's Dialogues (E04501) and in his short Life in the Liber Pontificalis (E01419).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 | S00794 | Agatha, virgin and martyr of Catania | Agatha | Certain |
|---|
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