Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 6.12) of 595 frees two slaves and mentions a monastery dedicated to *Laurence (deacon and martyr of Rome, S00037), in an unnamed location (presumably in Rome, southern Italy, or Sicily). Written in Latin in Rome.
E06364
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 6.12
Extract from a letter manumitting two slaves of the Roman church, Montana and Thomas. Montana intends to enter a female monastery:
Et quia tu, Montana, animos ad conuersationem fateris appulisse monachicam, idcirco duas uncias, quas tibi quondam Gaudiosus presbyter per supremae suae uoluntatis arbitrium institutionis modo noscitur reliquisse, hac die tibi donamus atque concedimus, omnia scilicet monasterio sancti Laurentii cui Constantina abbatissa praeest, in quo conuerti Deo miserante festinas.
‘And because you, Montana, say you have applied your mind to a monastic way of life, for that reason we give and concede to you today the two ounces of gold which the late priest, Gaudiosus, is known to have left to you recently in his last will and testament, for your investiture, all of which will of course benefit the monastery of Saint Laurence, where Constantina is in charge as abbess, and where you hasten to be converted, with God’s mercy.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 381.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 2, 410-11, lightly modified.
Cult building - monastic
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesSlaves/ servants
Women
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
There is no indication in the letter of the location of the monastery of Saint Laurence, but it is most likely to have been in Rome, southern Italy, or Sicily, where most papal business was transacted.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
15/11/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00037 | Laurence/Laurentius, deacon and martyr of Rome | Laurentius | Certain |
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