Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 9.166) of 599, to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples, mentions the foundation and consecration of a monastery dedicated to *Hermes (martyr of Rome, buried on the via Salaria vetus, S00404), *Sebastianus (martyr of Rome, S00400), *Cyriacus (presumably the martyr of Rome, S00678) and *Pancratius (martyr of Rome, S00307) in Naples (southern Italy). Written in Latin in Rome.
E06399
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 9.166
Full text of the letter:
GREGORIVS FORTVNATO EPISCOPO NEAPOLITANO
Fraternitati uestrae esse non putamus incognitum quia Romanus clarissimae memoriae uir per ultimae suae uoluntatis arbitrium in domo iuris sui, quae in ciuitate uestra sita est, aedificari monasterium deputauit. Et quia Deo miserante defuncti noscitur uoluntas impleta, sanctitas uestra illic ingrauanter accedat et, si nullum ibidem corpus constat humatum, locum ipsum in honore sanctorum Hermes, Sebastiani, Cyriaci atque Pancratii sollemniter studeat absque missis publicis cum ueneratione debita consecrari, ita ut in eodem loco numquam baptisterium construatur nec presbyterum constituas cardinalem. Sed quotiens missas sibi degentes illic monachi fieri uoluerint, a dilectione uestra presbyterum nouerint postulandum, quatenus nihil tale a quolibet alio sacerdote ullatenus praesumatur.
‘Gregory to Fortunatus, bishop of Naples
We think that your Fraternity is well aware that Romanus, a man of most distinguished memory, through the decision of his final will, decreed that a monastery should be built in a house, legally his, situated in your city. And because the dead man’s will is known to have been implemented, with God’s mercy, let your Holiness go there willingly, and if it is certain that no human body has ever been buried there, you should solemnly take care to consecrate the place itself in honour of Saints Hermes, Sebastianus, Cyriacus and Pancratius, doing so without public masses and with due veneration, so that no baptistry is ever built in that place and you do not consecrate its own priest there. But whenever the monks living there want masses to be held for them, they will know that they will need to request a priest from your Beloved, so that nothing of this sort is ever presumed by any other priest.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 724-5.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 2, 648, lightly modified.
Ceremony of dedication
Cult PlacesCult building - monastic
Non Liturgical ActivityBequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Construction of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Other lay individuals/ people
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 one of a number of surviving papal letters - two from Pelagius I (556-561) and four from Gregory the Great (590-604) - permitting, while also carefully regulating, the consecration and dedication to saints of private oratories, either on aristocratic estates or in monasteries, by the use of a set form of wording: E06878 and E06880 (both from Pelagius); E06377, E06390, E06399, E06403 (all from Gregory).From his grouping with the Roman maratyrs Hermes, Sebastianus and Pancratius, the Saint Cyriacus mentioned is presumably the martyr of Rome (S00678), not the more famous Kyrikos/Cyriacus of Tarsus (S00007).
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
12/12/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00307 | Pancratius, martyr of Rome | Pancratius | Certain | S00400 | Sebastianus, martyr of Rome | Sebastianus | Certain | S00404 | Hermes, martyr of Rome, buried on the via Salaria vetus | Hermes | Certain | S00678 | Cyriacus, Smaragdus, Largus and their companions, martyrs of Rome | Cyriacus | Uncertain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Frances Trzeciak, Cult of Saints, E06399 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06399