Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 13.5) of 602, to Brunhild, queen of the Franks, mentions a church dedicated to *Martin (ascetic and bishop of Tours, S00050) in the suburbs of Autun (central Gaul); he also refers to an oath sworn before the body of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036) in Rome. Written in Latin in Rome.
E06428
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 13.5
Extracts from a long letter dealing with a number of matters:
Epistulis autem uestris indicantibus agnoscentes ecclesiam uos sancti Martini in suburbano Augustodonensi atque monasterium ancillarum dei nec non et xenodochium in urbe eadem construxisse, ualde laetati sumus et gratias omnipotenti deo retulimus, qui cordis uestri sinceritatem ad haec operanda compungit. Qua de re ut et nos bonis uestris in aliquo participes haberemur, priuilegia locis ipsis pro quiete et munitione illic degentium, sicut uoluistis, indulsimus nec excellentiae uestrae amplectenda nobis desideria uel ad modicum differre pertulimus.
[...]
Menan uero reuerentissimum fratrem coepiscopum que nostrum, postquam ea quae de eo dicta fuerant requirentes in nullo inuenimus esse culpabilem, qui insuper ad sacratissimum corpus beati Petri apostoli sub iureiurando satisfaciens ab his quae obiecta eius opinioni fuerant se demonstrauit alienum.
‘‘We learnt from what your letters indicated that you have built a church of Saint Martin in the suburbs of Autun and a monastery for nuns and also a hostel in the same city, for which we were extremely happy and gave our thanks to almighty God, who goads the sincerity of your heart to do these works. On this matter, so that we might also be thought to participate in some way in your good deeds, we have granted privileges to those places for the peace and protection of those living there, as you wanted, and have not allowed ourselves even a short delay in embracing the desires of your Excellency.
[...]
But as for Menas [bishop of Toulon], our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop, after we had inquired into what had been said about him, we found him in no way culpable. As well as this, he satisfied us under oath at the most sacred body of Saint Peter the apostle and demonstrated that the charges made against his reputation were not connected with him.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 997-8.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 3, 826.
Cult building - independent (church)
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityConstruction of cult buildings
Oath
RelicsOath made on a relic
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
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 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 church of Martin is also mentioned in a further letter by Gregory's (E06430).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 | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain | S00050 | Martin, ascetic and bishop of Tours, ob. 397 | Martinus | Certain |
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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, E06428 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06428