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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
SIGNS
In Book iv of the Dialogues Peter the Deacon takes Gregory through a series of difficulties of a very concrete kind: in fact, difficulties of precisely the sort which can be expected to arise in the minds of beings cut off by sin from a clear sight of heavenly things. Peter, taking as in Ecclesiasticus (more Ecclesiasticis) the persona or part of those who are feeble in faith (infirmantes) asks a series of crude questions about the nature of the soul and its relation to the body – crude because they are posed from the point of view of a ‘carnal’ man, who cannot ‘envisage’ the spiritual (d: iv.5–6, pl 77.325–8). Peter often objects that he cannot ‘see’ what Gregory is telling him. Gregory tries to help him by means of concrete examples. Imagine, he says, the construction of a great building. What does the actual building? Does the visible body lift those masses of masonry in its hands, or the invisible soul which gives life to the body, he asks (d: iv.6, pl 77.329B)? What is heaven like for the soul, enquires Peter? Everything is better there, says Gregory. Souls are healed and cleansed when they are out of the body.
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