Gregory the Great with a papal letter (Register, Appendix 10) of 599, to Secundinus, an anchorite, sends images of Christ, *Mary (Mother of Christ, S00033) and the Apostles *Peter and *Paul (S00036 and S00008), as well as a cross and a key, the latter probably containing a relic. Written in Latin in Rome.
Evidence ID
E06450
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters, Appendix 10
From the closing section of a long letter. Before the passage quoted below, Gregory praises Secundinus for wanting an image of Christ, and reminds him that he should not worship the image, but use it as an aid in thinking about Christ and God. He continues:
Ideoque direximus tibi surtarias duas, imaginem Salvatoris et sanctae Dei genetricis Mariae, beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum per supradictum filium nostrum diaconum et unam crucem, clavem pro benedictione.
‘For this reason, we have sent you two wooden panels (surtariae), through our aforesaid son and deacon, with a painting of our Saviour and Mary the holy mother of God, and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and a cross, and a key for a blessing.’
Text: Norberg 1982, vol. 2, 1111.
Translation: Martyn 2004, vol. 3, 895, modified.
Use of ImagesUnspecified relic
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Private ownership of an image
RelicsUnspecified relic
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Privately owned relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - 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 ninth century, but were subsequently lost; from the late eighth century onwards, however, because of the exceptional stature that Gregory had by then attained, various collections of his letters were assembled from the original copies (the largest under Pope Hadrian I at the end of the eighth 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 in some of those whose text survives there are references to other letters, wholly 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 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.
Discussion
This letter appears in the manuscripts of Gregory's Register in two variant forms. In one version of the text (published by Norberg as Letter 9.148, our E06397), Gregory sends Secundinus precious incense and unguents, and closes by telling him that he is sending him two books of homilies.However, in another version of the text (that given here, published by Norberg as Appendix 10), Gregory sends, not books, but two scutariae with the images of Christ, Mary, Peter and Paul. Norberg argues that this version (with images), not that with books, is original to Gregory, the text with books being a textual alteration of the eighth century.
The word scutaria is otherwise undocumented, but presumably refers to panels bearing these images, presumably with Christ and Mary on one, Peter and Paul on the other. Secundinus is known only through Gregory's letters and it is uncertain where he lived - it was possibly in northern Italy.
More specific information, given in other letters by Gregory, suggests that the 'key for a blessing' probably contained a relic (see, for instance, E06345 and E06410).
Bibliography
Edition: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, Bryan Ward-Perkins
Date of Entry
11/01/2019
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00008 | Paul, the Apostle | Paulus | Certain | S00033 | Mary, Mother of Christ | Maria | Certain | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Frances Trzeciak, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Cult of Saints, E06450 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E06450