Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 6.45) of 596, to Leontius, bishop of Rimini, instructs him to dedicate a restored church of *Stephen (the First Martyr, S00030) in Rimini (northern Italy), and to place contact relics (sanctuaria) of the saint within it. Written in Latin in Rome.
Evidence ID
E06369
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 6.45
Extract from the opening of the letter:
Basilicam beati Stephani martyris, quam fraternitas uestra incendio asserit concrematam, quam etiam nuper restauratam esse commemorat, facultatem tribuimus dedicandi, in qua etiam reliquiarum sanctuaria eiusdem beati Stephani martyris uolumus collocari. Et ideo, frater carissime, ad praedictam te ecclesiam ire necesse est et tam ecclesiae quam etiam altaris noviter constructi dedicationem sollemniter exhibere [...]
‘We have attributed to you the power of dedicating the church of Saint Stephen the martyr. Your Frathernity asserts that the church was consumed by fire, but you also report that it has recently been restored. We also want the holy relics of Saint Stephen the martyr [literally 'the sanctuaria of the relics of the blessed Stephen the martyr'] to be located inside it. For that reason, my very dear brother, it is necessary for you to go to the aforesaid church, and to make a solemn dedication both of the church and of the recently constructed altar ...’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 418.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 2, 434, lightly modified.
Liturgical ActivitiesContact relic - cloth
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Ceremony of dedication
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
RelicsContact relic - cloth
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
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
According to the 9th century author Agnellus of Ravenna, this church was originally founded in the mid 5th century by Galla Placidia. See E05784.The use of the term sanctuaria strongly suggests that the relics mentioned here were contact relics, made by placing a piece of cloth in close contact with the grave of the saint. For more detail about the process, see E00615 and E00617, and on the word, McCulloh 1976, 158-165.
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:
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
15/11/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00030 | Stephen, the First Martyr | Stephanus | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
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