Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 11.57) of 601, to Petrus, bishop of Otranto, asks that contact relics (sanctuaria) of *Leucius (bishop and martyr of Brindisi, S02221) be provided from Brindisi (southern Italy), for a church and monastery five miles from Rome, dedicated to Leucius, to replace sanctuaria that had been stolen. Written in Latin in Rome.
E06425
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 11.57
Full text of the letter:
GREGORIVS PETRO EPISCOPO YDRONTINO
Oportunus abbas monasterii sancti Leucii, quod in quinto Romanae urbis miliario situm est, sanctuaria eiusdem martyris, quae de ecclesia nomini ipsius dicata, ut astruit, furto ablata sunt, sibi denuo postulat debere concedi, ut in loco eodem recondantur. Et ideo, frater carissime, quia eiusdem beatissimi martyris corpus in Brindisii ecclesia, cui uisitationis impendis officium, esse dinoscitur, praefati uiri desideriis ex nostra praeceptione conuenit oboedire, ut in deuotione quam postulat sortiatur effectum.
‘Gregory to Petrus, bishop of Otranto
Oportunus, abbot of the monastery of Saint Leucius, which is situated at the fifth milestone from the city of Rome, asks that contact relics (sanctuaria) of the same martyr, which he says have been stolen from the church dedicated to name, should be granted to him again, to be housed in the same place. And so, dearest brother, because the body of that blessed martyr is known to be in the church of Brindisi, for which you hold the office of visitor, it is right for you to obey the desires of the aforesaid man, following our injunction, so that he may obtain the outcome that he demands through devotion.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 963.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 3, 803-4, modified.
Cult building - monastic
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Theft/appropriation of relics
Contact relic - cloth
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - abbots
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
The term sanctuaria used here 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.Leucius is certainly the bishop and martyr of Brindisi (ancient Brundisium), though it is not obvious why a monastery near Rome should be dedicated to him.
This letter is early evidence of the theft of relics, in this case relatively humble contact relics.
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
05/01/2019
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S02221 | Leucius, bishop and martyr of Brindisi | Leucius | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Frances Trzeciak, Cult of Saints, E06425 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06425