Gregory the Great in a papal letter (Register 11.40) of 601, to Aetherius, bishop of Lyon, states that he has searched for the 'Acts' (gesta) and writings of *Irenaeus (bishop and martyr of Lyon, S02832) in the papal archives but has not been able to find anything. Written in Latin in Rome.
Evidence ID
E08520
Type of Evidence
Literary - Letters
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Pope Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 11.40
[...] De eo uero quod ecclesiae uestrae ex antiqua consuetudine concedendum deposcitis requiri in scrinio fecimus, et nihil inuentum est. Vnde ipsas nobis epistulas, quas uos dicitis habere, transmittite, ut ex eis quod concedendum est coligamus.
Gesta uero uel scripta beati Herenaei iam diu est quod sollicite quaesiuimus, sed hactenus ex eis aliquid inueniri non ualuit.
'As to what you demand to be granted to your church out of ancient custom, we have made a search in the archive, and nothing has been found. So send us the letters themselves, which you say you have, so that we may gather from them what is to be granted.
It is already long that we have searched with care for the acts or writings of the blessed Herenaeus, but up to now it has not been possible to find anything from them.'
Text: Norberg 1982, 937.
Translation: David Lambert.
Non Liturgical ActivityEcclesiastics - Popes
Theorising on Sanctity
Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Theorising on SanctityUsing saints to assert ecclesiastical/political status
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 letter from Gregory the Great to Bishop Aetherius of Lyon can be dated to June 601 from its position in Book 11 of Gregory's Register. Aetherius became bishop of Lyon between 585 and 589 and held the see until his death in 602 (Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 'Aetherius 5'). Gregory's letter responds to a letter from Aetherius which does not survive. Judging from Gregory's reply, it dealt in part with the organisation of a synod in Gaul to deal with disciplinary matters, but also made certain claims relating to the status or privileges of the see of Lyon, though Gregory does not say precisely what these were. Aetherius stated that his claims were supported by 'letters' (epistulas) which he possessed, and which he assumed also existed in the papal archives (the implication is that these were letters from earlier popes, approving the status that Aetherius was claiming for his see). Gregory, however, replies that such letters had not been found and asks Aetherius to send him those held at Lyon. It is then that Gregory mentions Irenaeus, who became bishop of Lyon in the aftermath of the persecution of 177 (E00212), and was also the author of a number of theological works. Gregory says that his 'acts or writings' (gesta uero uel scripta) had also been sought, unsuccessfully, in the papal archives (gesta probably refers to an account of Irenaeus' martyrdom). At first sight, Gregory's statement seems to imply that Aetherius did not possess the documents mentioned and hoped that Gregory would be able to provide them, and indeed this is how it has generally been interpreted in modern scholarship (see the references in Bogaert 2010, 202, n. 2).The idea that Irenaeus' martyrdom narrative and writings were unavailable to Aetherius raises some problems, however. The only known narrative of Irenaeus' martyrdom (E08522) was a Gallic text and was certainly known to Gregory of Tours (see E07728), who had close links to Lyon. It would be surprising if it had been unobtainable in Lyon in 601. In the case of Irenaeus' literary works, while he wrote in Greek, his most celebrated work, Against Heresies, was available in a Latin translation (now the only form in which most of the text survives), and there is evidence that this was available in Lyon in the 9th century (Bogaert 2010, 205-7). Again, it seems surprising that it would have been unobtainable for Aetherius, though in this case there is the possibility that he was seeking other works by Irenaeus, known from sources such as Eusebius, most of which (as far as we know) were never translated and had probably vanished from Gaul by Aetherius' time.
A plausible alternative scenario was published in 2010 by P.-M. Bogaert, based on an unpublished manuscript by the Benedictine scholar Célestin Charlier (ob. 1976). Charlier argued that the reference to Irenaeus should be read in the light of the claims about the status of the see of Lyon mentioned by Gregory in the previous sentence. In other words: rather than seeking copies of Irenaeus' 'acts and writings' for himself, Aetherius had cited these documents in order to justify his claims relating to the see of Lyon and had suggested that – like the epistulas mentioned in the previous sentence – they could be found in the papal archives. The Martyrdom of Irenaeus claims that Irenaeus had been sent to evangelise Lyon by Polycarp, the disciple of John the Evangelist, a quasi-apostolic pedigree that could easily be used as the basis of a claim to primacy for the see. Irenaeus himself mentions that he had known Polycarp in a passage of Against Heresies (3.3.4), which is quoted by Eusebius (HE 4.14). Although most of the material about Irenaeus and Polycarp in the Martyrdom of Irenaeus is invented, this passage could easily have been taken as a confirmation of it, giving Aetherius a reason to cite it in support of his claims. While the suggestion made by Charlier and elaborated by Bogaert remains hypothetical, it undeniably resolves the problematic elements of the traditional interpretation. (The suggestion that Aetherius had cited Irenaeus' 'acts and writings' to support his claims for the status of the see of Lyon was put forward already by J.R.C. Martyn, in a note to his translation of Gregory's letter – Martyn 2004, vol. 3, p. 787, n. 238 – though without any supporting argumentation.)
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:
Bogaert, P.-M., "Les œuvres de Irénée étaient-elles introuvables à Lyon vers 600? À propos d'une note manuscrite de Dom Célestin Charlier," Revue bénédictine 120 (2010), 201-207.
Pietri, L., and Heijmans, M., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 4 Prosopographie de la Gaule chrétienne (314-614), 2 vols. (Paris, 2013).
van der Straeten, J., "Saint Irénée fut-il martyr?", in: Les martyrs de Lyon (177) (Paris: CNRS, 1978), 145-153.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
23/06/2024
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S02832 | Irenaeus, bishop and martyr of Lyon | Herenaeus | Certain |
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