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Calvin's Appreciation of Gregory the Great*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Lester K. Little
Lester K. Little
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
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Extract

In 1861, a French priest published in Paris a pamphlet entitled “The Modern Papacy Condemned by Pope Saint Gregory the Great: Excerpts from the Works of Saint Gregory.” The author, René-François Guettée, was a Gallican, deeply involved in the so-called Roman Question. He proposed to demonstrate to his opponents, the advocates of absolute papal supremacy, that his side was really more orthodox because it conformed to the views of St. Gregory. From the letters of Gregory he drew support for his argument that all bishops share the same dignity and that claims by the bishop of Rome to a superior position represent a corruption of early Church practices. And upon those readers who rejected his thesis he placed the burden of explaining why Pope Gregory did not merit as much credence as modern popes. Father Guettée therefore turned to Gregory for help in building a case against the present-day papacy. It was not the first time someone had done this.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , April 1963 , pp. 145 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1963

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References

1 René-François Guettée, La papauté moderne condamnée par le pape Saint Grégoire le Grand, extraits des ouvrages de Saint Grégoire, traduits et commentés par l’abbé Guettée (Paris: Dentu, 1861).

2 have used the recent two-volume edition in the Library of Christian Classics series, vols. XX and XXI: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill and trans. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, i960). This useful work contains an excellent index of Biblical references, an author and source index, and a subject index. References to the Institutes in this article are indicated in the notes by two Roman numerals and one Arabic numeral, signifying respectively the book, chapter, and paragraph.

3 Most recently by E. G. Rupp in Part I of Chapter IV, “The Swiss Reformers and the Sects,” in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. II — “The Reformation, 1520–1599” (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1958), pp. 117–118Google Scholar.

4 Smits, Luchesius, Saint Augustin dans l’oeuvre de Jean Calvin (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1957)Google Scholar, for a recent example.

5 Institutes, ed. McNeill, p. 4.

6 Commentary on the Book of Psalms, tr. James Anderson (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), pp. xliv–xlvGoogle Scholar.

7 Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Care, tr. Henry Davis (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1950)Google Scholar. Dialogues, tr. Odo John Zimmermann (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959). Registrum epistolarum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae, vols. I and II, ed. Paulus Ewald and Ludovicus M. Hartmann (Berolini: Apud Weidmannos, 1891–99), hereafter cited as Epistolae, followed by a Roman numeral representing the book, and an Arabic numeral the letter.

8 Catalogue général des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque nationale, vol. LXIV (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1916), cols. 1–29Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., col. 3. The first edition of Gregory's complete works that I know of was published by Rembolt at Paris in 1518. Calvin was then nine years old.

10 IV, iv, 3. Epistolae, I, 24 and Homilies on Ezekiel, I, Horn. XI, 10 (MPL, v. 76, col. 910).

11 I am especially indebted to Mr. Jerrold E. Seigel of Princeton University for several helpful suggestions concerning humanist interpretations of history.

12 For a discussion of Biondo's works, see Ferguson, Wallace K., The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), pp. 11–14Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., p. 15.

14 Melanchthon, P., “De ecclesia et de auctoritate verbi dei,” Melanchthons Werke, ed. Stupperich, Robert (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1951), I, 368Google Scholar.

15 Melanchthon, P., “De Luthero et aetatibus Ecclesiae,” Opera omnia, ed. Bretschneider, C. G. (Halis Saxonum: Apud C. A. Schwetschke, 1843), XI, cols. 783–788Google Scholar. Melanchthon is discussed by Ferguson, op. cit., p. 51.

16 I, xi, 13.

17 IV, vii, 12 and 22.

18 IV, vii, 12. Epistolae, III, 29 and IX, 27.

19 Epistolae, V, 54 and VIII, 29. Cited by Calvin, IV, vii, 21.

20 IV, vii, 16. Epistolae, VIII, 29.

21 IV, vii, 21.

22 IV, vii, 6. Calvin cites Gregory's letter to Constantius of Milan, Epistolae, III, 29.

23 See also Polman, Pontien, L'Element historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe siècle (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1932), p. 163Google Scholar.

24 IV, xix, 10. Epistolae, LV, 26.

25 IV, xvii, 49.

26 IV, iv, 3. Epistolae, I, 24.

27 Calvin: Commentaries, ed. Haroutunian, Joseph (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958), p. 385Google Scholar. From commentary on Malachi 2:7.

28 IV, v, 8. Epistolae, IV, 11.

29 IV, xvii, 49. Dialogues, IV, 58. Homilies on the Gospels, II, 7 and 22.

30 IV, iv, 7. Epistolae, XI, 56a.

31 IV, xi, 16. Epistolae, I, 43 and V, 37, 39, 45.

32 IV, xi, 12.

33 For a literary history of the Institutes see J. T. McNeill's introduction, I, xxix–lxxi. There are indications in this new text of what passages were contained in what editions. It is more convenient, though, to use the composite version of the 1539. 1543, and 1550 editions in vol. I of the Calvini opera omnia, 59 vols. (Strassburg, 1863–1900). This volume is hereafter cited as Opera, I and is followed by an Arabic numeral which refers to the column.

34 Opera, I, 35.

35 Hards, Walter G., “A Critical Translation and Evaluation of the Nucleus of the 1536 Edition of Calvin's Institutes” (Princeton Theological Seminary: typewritten Th.D. dissertation, 1955), pp. 16–17Google Scholar. Hards says that chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6 were written at Angoulême, where Calvin did not have access to a good theological library. This explains why in these four chapters there are but six references to patristic literature, whereas the other two chapters, written later and under better scholarly circumstances, contain sixty-two such references. Chapter six, which corresponds to the final book of the 1559 edition with its more than fifty references to Gregory, cites only one Father, Eusebius.

36 Harbison, E. H., The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956), pp. 149–151Google Scholar.

37 Hards, p. 83.

38 I, xi, 5.

39 Opera, I, 1073.

40 Ibid., 572–573.

41 Ibid., 610.

42 Ibid., 1022.

43 Ibid., 657.

44 Ibid., 574.

45 Pauck, Wilhelm, “Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion,” Church History, XI, 1 (March 1946), p. 25Google Scholar.

46 Opera, I, 616 and 622.

47 Dialogues, tr. Zimmermann, pp. 3–4.

48 Commentary on the Psalms (Edinburgh, 184s), p. xli.

49 Harbison, op. cit., p. 141.