Gregory the Great with a papal letter (Register 7.23) of 597, to Theoctista, the sister of the emperor Maurice, sends a key 'from the body' of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036), and describes a punishing miracle that this key has already effected. Written in Latin in Rome.
E06375
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 7.23
This long letter, addressed also to Andreas (the teacher of Maurice's children), encourages Theoctista to act well towards her sister-in-law and to ensure that the emperor's children are brought up properly, and he thanks her for a gift of gold, sent over to redeem captives; the letter ends as follows:
Praeterea benedictionem sancti Petri apostoli clauem a sacratissimo eius corpore transmisi, de qua uidelicet claui hoc est gestum quod narro miraculum. Dum eam quidam Langobardus ciuitatem ingressus in transpadanis partibus inuenisset, quia sancti Petri clauis esset despiciens, sed pro eo, quod eam auream uidit, facere sibi ex illa aliquid aliud uolens eduxit cultellum, ut illam incideret. Qui mox cultellum, cum quo eam per partes mittere uoluit, arreptus per spiritum sibi in gutture defixit eadem que hora exstinctus cecidit. Et dum illic rex Langobardorum Autarith atque alii multi eius homines adessent et is qui se percusserat seorsum mortuus, clauis uero haec seorsum iaceret in terra, factus est omnibus uehementissimus timor, ut eandem clauem de terra leuare nullus praesumeret. Tunc quidam Langobardus catholicus, qui sciebatur orationi et elemosinis deditus, Mimiulf nomine, uocatus est atque ipse hanc leuauit de terra. Autarith uero pro eodem miraculo aliam clauem auream fecit atque cum ea pariter ad sanctae memoriae decessorem meum transmisit, indicans quale per eam miraculum contigisset. Ipsam ergo uestrae excellentiae transmittere studui, per quam omnipotens Deus superbientem et perfidum hominem peremit, ut per eam uos, quae eum timetis et diligitis, et praesentem salutem et aeternam habere ualeatis.
‘Furthermore, I have sent to you as a blessing from Saint Peter the apostle, a key from his most sacred body. Note that with regard to this key, the following miracle took place, which I relate. A certain Lombard entered the city in the districts beyond the Po, and found the key. But he ignored the fact that it was a key of Saint Peter, and as he saw it was made of gold he took out a knife to cut it up, wanting to make something else for himself out of it. But he was at once seized by a spirit, and he took the knife with which he wanted to cut up the gold, and thrust it into his own throat and within an hour he fell down dead. And when Authari, the king of the Lombards, and many of his men arrived there, and the person who had stabbed himself was lying here, and this key was lying on the ground there, a most terrible fear came upon all of them, so that nobody dared to lift this same key from the ground. Then, indeed, a Lombard was summoned called Mimiulf, who was Catholic and known to be given to prayer and charitable works, and he lifted this key from the ground. And because of this miracle, Authari had another gold key made, and sent it together with this one to my predecessor of holy memory, indicating what sort of miracle had happened through it. Therefore I have been keen to send this very key to your Excellency, with which almighty God destroyed an arrogant and faithless man, so that with it you who fear and love Him may enjoy good health now and for eternity.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 1, 478-9.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 2, 477.
Destruction/hostile attempts to prevent veneration of relics
MiraclesPunishing miracle
RelicsMaking contact relics
Reliquary – privately owned
Privately owned relics
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesForeigners (including Barbarians)
Heretics
Women
Monarchs and their family
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.
Discussion
Authari was king of the Lombards from 584 to 590.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).
Frances Trzeciak
15/11/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain |
|---|
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