Gregory the Great with a papal letter (Register 9.148) of 599, to Secundinus, an anchorite monk, sends a gift of incense, aloes, storax and balsam, to be offered to unnamed martyrs, and asks God, through the intercession of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036), to protect the monk. Written in Latin in Rome; the text seemingly altered in the 8th c.
Evidence ID
E06397
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 9.148
Two extracts from a long letter, dealing with moral and theological issues:
Aloa uero, thymiama, storacem et balsamum sanctorum martyrum corporibus offerenda latore praesentium deferente transmisimus.
[...]
Rogo autem omnipotentem Deum ut sua te gratia protegat et beati Petri apostolorum principis intercessione a malis omnibus illaesum seruet, quatenus feruor caelestis desiderii in tua mente cotidie ardentius excrescat, ut semper nouus et semper se ipso robustior ad caelestia praemia multiplicius percipienda pertingat.
‘We have sent you, brought by the bearer of this letter, aloes, incense, storax and balsam, to be offered to the bodies of holy martyrs.
[...]
I ask almighty God to protect you with his grace and keep you unharmed by all evil things through the intercession of Peter, prince of the apostles, so that the fervour of heavenly desire may grow each day more ardently in your mind, and thus, ever new and ever more robust in yourself, you might obtain manifold rewards in Heaven.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 702 and 704.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 2, 633-4 and 635, lightly modified.
Liturgical ActivitiesBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Sacrifice/libation
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Prayer/supplication/invocation
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - 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 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
It is not clear from the letter where Secundinus (described in the address as servus Dei inclauso) was based. It is possible that he is the 'abbot Secundus' of a letter from Gregory to the Lombard queen, Theodelinda (Register 14.12); if so, he was presumably somewhere in northern Italy.This letter exists in two distinct versions in the manuscripts of Gregory's Register, which Norberg published separately as Register 9.148 and as Register Appendix 10. The gift of precious incense and unguents features only in this, the Register 9.148 version of the text, which Norberg attributes to the eighth century. The Appendix 10 version of the letter (our E06450), which Norberg argues is original to Gregory, does not include this gift, but a different gift - icons of Christ, Mary, Peter and Paul - and, at the end of the letter, asks Jesus to protect Secundinus, without any reference to Peter.
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).
Pietri, C. and Pietri, L., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 2 Prosopographie de l’Italie chrétienne (313-604), 2 vols. (École française de Rome, 2000), vol. 2, 2014-15, 'Secundinus 8'.
Record Created By
Frances Trzeciak
Date of Entry
12/12/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain | S00060 | Martyrs, unnamed or name lost | Certain |
|---|
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