Gregory the Great in a document of 603 (Register, Appendix 9) issues instructions for a sevenfold litany (septiformis letania), with seven supplicatory processions through Rome to the church of *Mary (Mother of Christ, S00033) [Santa Maria Maggiore], seeking the end of an unspecified scourge from God; the processions are to leave from the following churches: of *John (the Baptist, S00020); *Marcellus (bishop and martyr of Rome, S00529); *Iohannes and Paulus (brothers and eunuchs, martyrs of Rome, S00384); *Cosmas/Kosmas and Damianus (brothers, physician martyrs of Syria, S00385); *Stephen (the First Martyr, S00030); *Vitalis (soldier and martyr of Ravenna, S02826); *Caecilia (virgin and martyr of Rome, S00146). Written in Latin in Rome.
E06449
Literary - Letters
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters, Appendix 9
The document opens with a generic statement about the scourges of God currently being inflicted on the city, before urging the people to seek divine mercy through suitable contrition and penance. It continues:
Proinde, fratres carissimi, contrito corde et correctis operibus crastina die primo diluculo ad septiformem letaniam iuxta distributionem inferius designatam devota cum lacrimis mente veniamus. Nullus vestrum ad terrena opera in agros exeat; nullus quodlibet negotium agere praesumat, quatenus ad sanctae genetricis Domini ecclesiam convenientes, qui simul omnes peccavimus, simul omnes mala quae fecimus deploremus, ut districtus iudex, dum culpas nostras nos punire considerat, ipse a sententia propositae damnationis parcat.
Letania clericorum exeat ab ecclesia sancti Iohannis baptistae; letania virorum ab ecclesia sancti martyris Marcelli; letania monachorum ab ecclesia beatorum martyrum Iohannis et Pauli; letania ancillarum Dei ab ecclesia beatorum martyrum Cosmae et Damiani; letania feminarum coniugatarum ab ecclesia beati primi martyris Stephani; letania viduarum ab ecclesia beati martyris Vitalis; letania pauperum et infantium ab ecclesia beatae martyris Caeciliae.
Fecit et in basilica sanctae Savinae sub die IIII. kalendarum Septembrium indictione sexta.
‘Therefore, dearest brethren, let us come tomorrow at first light, with contrite hearts and emended lives, for a sevenfold litany (septiformis letania), in accordance with the arrangements shown below, our minds devout with tears. None of you must go out into the fields for work on the land, none presume to do any business at all, so that as we come together at the church of the holy Mother of God, let us who have all sinned together now all weep together for our evil deeds. So may that strict Judge himself, as he sees that we are punishing our own faults, spare us from the sentence of condemnation pronounced against us.
Let the procession of clergy go out from the church of saint John the Baptist; that of the men, from the church of the holy martyr Marcellus; that of the monks from the church of the blessed martyrs Iohannes and Paulus; that of the nuns, from the church of the blessed martyrs Cosmas and Damianus; that of the married women, from the church of the blessed first martyr Stephen; that of the widows, from the church of the blessed martyr Vitalis; and that of the poor and infants, from the church of the blessed martyr Caecilia.
Composed in the basilica of Saint Sabina, on the twenty-fifth August in the sixth indiction [= AD 603].’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 1102-4.
Translation: Martyn 2004, 887-8, lightly modified.
Procession
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Activities accompanying CultMeetings and gatherings of the clergy
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Ecclesiastics – unspecified
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Other lay individuals/ people
Crowds
Ecclesiastics - Popes
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
For an earlier instance (in 590) of very similar sevenfold supplicatory processions, organised by Gregory and also aimed at ending a scourge that was devastating the city, see 02397. In that case, we know that Rome was suffering from the plague. In this instance, in 603, we do not know what disasters had occurred.As in 590, Gregory organised different constituents of the city to process from different churches. The churches selected, and the allocation to these of the different groups, is, however, different:
From the church of John the Baptist (= San Giovanni in Laterano, the Lateran basilica), the clergy.
From the church of Marcellus (= San Marcello al Corso), the men.
From the church of Iohannes and Paulus (= Santi Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian), the monks.
From the church of Cosmas and Damianus (= Santi Cosma e Damiano on the Forum), the nuns.
From the church of Stephen (= Santo Stefano Rotondo on the Caelian), the married women.
From the church of Vitalis (= San Vitale, west of Santa Maria Maggiore), the widows.
From the church of Caecilia (= Santa Cecilia in Trastevere), the poor and infants.
The decision to focus all the processions on Santa Maria Maggiore is almost certainly indicative of the growing status of Marian cult in the sixth century, though we should note that Mary herself is not invoked in Gregory's text and that her basilica was the only very large churches within the walls of Rome, suitable for a huge final gathering and mass, other than the more peripheral San Giovanni in Laterano.
The choice of churches from which the seven processions originated was probably determined by population distribution and by the choreographing of a sevenfold convergence; there is no evidence that the various saints themselves influenced the choice of their churches. We might note that the poor and the infants were expected to process all the way from Santa Cecilia, on the other side of the river, while the clergy were to take a much shorter stroll from the Lateran.
For further discussion, see Andrews 2015 and Latham 2015.
Bibliography
Editions: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:
Andrews, M.M., "The Laetaniae Septiformes of Gregory I, S. Maria Maggiore and Early Marian Cult in Rome," in: I. Östenberg, S. Malmberg, and J. Bjørnbye (eds.), The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome (London, 2015), 155-164.
Latham, J.A., "Inventing Gregory 'the Great': Memory, Authority, and the Afterlives of the Letania Septiformis," Church History 84:1 (2015), 1-31.
Neil, B., and Dal Santo, M. (eds.), A Companion to Gregory the Great (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Frances Trzeciak, Bryan Ward-Perkins
02/10/2023
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00020 | John the Baptist | Iohannes | Certain | S00030 | Stephen, the First Martyr | Stephanus | Certain | S00033 | Mary, Mother of Christ | genetrix Domini | Certain | S00146 | Caecilia, virgin and martyr of Rome | Caecilia | Certain | S00384 | Iohannes and Paulus, brothers and eunuchs, martyrs of Rome under the emperor Julian | Iohannes, Paulus | Certain | S00385 | Kosmas and Damianos, brothers, physician martyrs of Syria | Cosmas, Damianus | Certain | S00529 | Marcellus, bishop and martyr of Rome | Marcellus | Certain | S02826 | Vitalis, soldier and martyr of Ravenna | Vitalis | Certain |
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