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The Roman Church in the Seventh Century: the Legacy of Gregory I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

P. A. B. Llewellyn
P. A. B. Llewellyn
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, University College of North Wales, Bangor
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Extract

The posthumous reputation of Gregory the Great presents a sharp but possibly insufficiently appreciated contrast. On the one hand, there is the Anglo-Saxon historical tradition which, through the Carolingian world and the eleventh-century reformers, has prevailed to the present day. The Gregory of Aldhelm of Malmesbury and of the Anonymous of Whitby, is ‘the teacher of the English’, ‘our own St. Gregory’, ‘this apostolic saint of ours’ who ‘on the Day of Judgement … will bring us, the English nation whom he has taught, to present us to the Lord’. By the English mission he had brought the English into the community of Christian nations and was seen as the initiator of the new missionary apostolate which Bede's contemporaries were consciously perpetuating on the Continent; as the source for the life of St. Benedict he was of major interest to those who had made peculiarly their own Benedict's monasticism. He is in a sense the immediate founder of all things; in an age which was losing the perspective of the secular as its historical horizons shrank, he was a principal link in a new chain of authority and legitimacy which extended back to St. Peter. His legend and prestige as a founding authority spreads and assumes diverse forms in unlikely places.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 363 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Aldhelm of Malmesbury, de laude Virginitate, ch. 55: MGH., AA., xv, 314; Anonymous of Whitby, ch. 19, ed. Colgrave, B., The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, Lawrence 1968Google Scholar, and Introduction, 19; Meyvaert, Dom. P., Bede and Gregory the Great (Jarrow Lecture, 1964)Google Scholar. The shrinking of historical horizons among visitors from the North may be illustrated by the early pilgrim guides to Rome, which concentrate on the religious and ignore the secular sites: Llewellyn, P., Rome in the Dark Ages, London 1971, 177–178Google Scholar. Cf. also a tenth-eleventh century Irish Life which presents Gregory as a Kerry man who was buried on Aran and had most of the major Irish saints for disciples: Vendryes, J., ‘Betha Grighora’, Revue Celtique, 42 (1925), 119–153.Google Scholar

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1 I can find only four spontaneous Roman references to Gregory between his death in 604 and the ninth century: at the Synod of Rome, 610 (Mansi, Concilia, x. 506–507), whose authenticity may, however, be questioned; in the epitaphs of Boniface IV and Honorius (Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, L., 2nd ed., Paris 1955–1957, i, 317 n.4 and 326 n. 19); at the Synod of Rome, October 679, in an English context (Mansi, xi. 180).Google Scholar

2 Taio, Epistola (MGH., AA., xiv. 287–290.)

3 Paulus Diaconus, Vita Gregorii (Migne, PL., lxxv. 41–59); although the major interpolations from the Whitby Life date from later in the ninth century, and John Immonides knew and used Paul's original version, John VIII's reaction indicates Roman feeling at the northern approach.

4 MGH, Ep. v. 55. Odilo, Translatio S. Sebastiani (MGH., SS. xv. 379–391): see ndrieu, M., ‘La Chapelle de Saint Grégoire dans l'ancienne basilique Vaticane’, Rivista di archeologia cristiana, 13 (1936). On this occasion Roman agitation was caused primarily by the threat to St. Sebastian, the third patron and spiritual defensor of Rome: Llewellyn, op. cit., 184–5.Google Scholar

5 Iohannes Diaconus, Vita Gregorii: PL. lxxv. 61 ff. John related his Life closely to the circumstances of contemporary Rome, drawing selectively on the Registrum for antisimoniacal material and so, through the use of his excerpts rather than of the Registrum itself by the eleventh century reformers, helping in the establishment of Gregory's juridical reputation: Ryan, J. J., Saint Peter Damiani and his Canonical Sources, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: Studies and Texts, 2, Toronto 1956, 162Google Scholar. The close relationship of the Life to contemporary politics is shown by the last chapter: Devos, P., ‘La mystérieuse épisode finale de la Vita Gregorii de Jean Diacre: La fuite de Formose’, Analecta Bollandiana, 82 (1964), 355–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 See citations in Penco, G., ‘Il concetto di monaco e di vita monastica in Occidente nel secolo VI’, Studia Monastica, 1. (1959), 14Google Scholar, and Gregory's adaptation (Hom, in Evangel., I. II: PL. lxxvi. 1113) of Caesarius of Aries's Patria nostra Paradisus est, to Regio nostra … Cf. also the transfer of the church of S. Pancrazio from the priestly college of the titulus of S. Crysogono to the care of a monastic community, and a presbyter peregrinus for services: Gregory, Ep. iv. 18: MGH., Epp., i. 252, and Ferrari, G., Early Roman Monasteries, Studi di Antichità cristiana, 23, Citta del Vaticano 1957, 342.Google Scholar

2 Llewellyn, op. cit., 109–110. Two instances of clerical jealousy; in LP. i. 350, clerical objections to pope Agatho acting as his own treasurer, and LP. i. 369, on Roman resentment at a Sicilian's appointment, with Roman privileges, as rector of a patrimony. For later exclusiveness, see Dijk, S. J. P. Van, ‘Papal Schola versus Charlemagne’, Organicae Voces, Festschrift Smits van Waestberghe, Amsterdam 1963. For leases of property by Honorius to a subdeacon, with improvement in mind, see Honorius, Ep., II. 12 PL., lxxx. 480–81.Google Scholar

1 Whitby Life, ch. 28 and, ed. cit. 161, n. 121. The sale of wheat may have been a device such as the Ostrogothic government had used eighty years previously, to defeat speculation: Ruggini, L., Economia e Società nell'Italia Annonaria, Milan 1961, 485 n. 753. Sabinian had been Gregory's apocrisiarius in Constantinople between 592 and 595, with specific instructions to obtain further military protection for Rome and the abandonment of the patriarch John's ecumenical style; in neither did he satisfy Gregory. His policy as pope was: hic ecclesiam de clero implevit (LP., i. 315); his epitaph:Google Scholar

Hic primam subita non sumpsit laude coronam

Sed gradibus meruit crescere sanctus homo (ibid., n. 5). For Boniface III's legislation see LP., i. 316.

2 Possible identifications for Boniface IV: Dialogues, iii, 29, a monk of Gregory's house on a mission in Lombard territory; Reg. I, 52, a deacon acting as Gregory's agent in the foundation of a monastery in Corsica, perhaps (as in Reg. IV, 2) being Gregory's secretary; Reg. VI, 61, a papal agent in Ravenna. A Boniface was apocrisiarius in Constantinople in July 603, the first papal representative to present himself at Phocas's court after the disturbances of late 602 (Reg. XIII, 41). Dufourcq, A., Etudes sur les Gesta Martyrum romaines, Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, Athens 1900–1910, i. 318, suggests that this Boniface brought the relics of Boniface of Tarsus to Rome; it is, however, not possible to identify with certainty the monastery founded by Boniface IV with SS. Bonifatii et Alexii, which later claimed the relics: Ferrari, op. cit., 76. Boniface's epitaph:Google Scholar

Gregorii semper monita atque exempla magistri

vita, opera ac dignis moribus iste sequens (LP., i. 317 n. 4)

See also Boniface's letter to Florianus of Arles (MGH., Epp. iii, 453), quoting from Gregory's synodical letter (Reg. I, 24), in turn derived from the Pastoral Care: see Conte, P., Chiesa e Primato nelle lettere dei Papi del secolo VII, Milan, Università cattolica del S. Cuore, Saggi e Ricerche, Ser. 3, Scienze storiche, 4, 1971, 85Google Scholar, 63. Synod of Rome, 610: Mansi, x. 506–507.

1 LP., i. 319, 321. Deusdedit's epitaph:

hic vir ab exortu Petri est nutritus ovile

sed meruit sancti pastor adesse gregis (ibid., 320, n. 7).

2 LP., i. 324. Privilege to Bertulf, priest and abbot of Bobbio, PL., lxxx. 483–484 (Conte, op. cit., 410–412), the sole genuine papal monastic privilege of the seventh century, and the first to give total exemption. High praise for Honorius and his learning came from abbot Jonas of Bobbio, Vita S. Bertulphi, ch. 6: PL., lxxxvii. 1063. John as Honorius's secretary; Maximus Confessor to Marinus: PG, xci. 227–246. The figures given in LP. for ordinations may reflect the clerical-monastic swing: in ten years Deusdedit and Boniface v ordained forty priests and nine deacons, against Honorius's thirteen priests and eleven deacons in thirteen years.

3 Paschal I (817–824) is excluded since he had followed a clerical career to the priesthood before his appointment by Leo III as abbot of St. Stephen Major to undertake reforms: LP., ii. 52. In the ninth century abbacies were frequently given to political figures, such as the former anti-pope Anastasius, bishop Megistus of Ostia and bishops Nicholas and Lucidus. Later seventh century popes: LP., i. 341; 348; 366; 367, n. 7; 371. Benedict II's epitaph:

Quippe quod a parvo meritis radiantibus auctus

iure patrum solium pontificale foves (LP., i. 365, n. 8)

1 Columbanus, Ep. 5: MGH., Epp. iii. 170–177.

2 Ravenna's increased jurisdiction: Simonini, A., Autocefalia ed Esarcato in Italia, Ravenna 1970, 57–8Google Scholar. The reactions of Milan and Aquileia; Croquison, J., ‘Une f^te liturgique mystérieuse: la mémoire de S. Euphémie’, Echos d'Orient, 35, 1936.Google Scholar

1 Goubert, P., Byzance avant l'Islam: T. 1, Byzance et l'Orient, Paris 1951, 45–47Google Scholar;T. 2, II: Rome, Byzance et Carthage, Paris 1965, 133–135Google Scholar. Also Gregoire, H., ‘S. Euphémie et l'Empereur Maurice’, Le Museon, 56, 1946Google Scholar, for Maurice's hesitations, and compare the renewed interest in Euphemia under Constantine IV with the restoration of unity, Canart, P., ‘Le Palimpseste Vat. gr. 1876 et la date de la Translation de Sainte Euphémie’, Analecta Bollandiana, 87, 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On missionary activity, John of Ephesus, cc. 13, 26: Frend, W. H. C., The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, Cambridge 1972, 287–288, 296–315.Google Scholar

2 Conte, P., ‘Missioni aquileiesi, orientali e Romani nel regno longobardo’, Studi Romani, 17, 1969.Google Scholar

1 Ch. Moeller, , ‘Le cinquième concile oecuménique et le magistère ordinaire au Vle siècle’, Rev. des Sciences philosophiques et theologiques, 35, 1951Google Scholar. The same evasion of the 5th Council may be seen in the Lives of John the Almsgiver of Alexandria. A Synaxarist abridgement of the Life by the strongly Chalcedonian Sophronius and John Moschus shows John demanding allegiance from Egyptians to five councils, but a later, anonymous, Life, also drawing on Sophronius and John for its earlier chapters, refers to four councils only; Lappa-Zizicas, E., ‘Une épitomé de la vie de S. Jean l'Aumonier par Jean et Sophronios’, Analecta Bollandiana, 88, 1970, 268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Magi, L., La Sede romana nella corrispondenza degli Imperatori e Patriarchi bizantini, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'Histoire ecclésiastique, fasc. 57, Louvain 1972, 161–194, esp. 177. There may have been a personal, family element in Gregory's insistence on this point, for it was his great-grandfather, Felix III, who had first raised it, in his ex-communication of Acacius: ‘nescio quemadmodum te ecclesiae totius asseras esse principem’, Ep. i: PL., lviii. 898.Google Scholar

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1 P. Goubert, op. cit. T. 2, II, 111–121. Stratos, N., Byzantium in the Seventh Century, Amsterdam 1968, I. 74–78.Google Scholar

2 Columbanus, Ep. 5: PL., lxxx. 274–284.

1 Andreolli, art. cit., 58–9; Fredegar, Chron. IV, 49.

2 Frend, op. cit., 345–6, 349–50. Sergius's letter, Mansi, xi. 529–38; Honorius's reply, ibid., 537–544: on this, see Galtier, P., ‘La première lettre du pape Honorius: sources et éclaircissments’, Gregorianum, 29, 1948Google Scholar. By accepting Sergius's letter and by a misunderstanding of the word συλλήπτορος,, Honorius in effect accepted the patriarch as the pope's co-equal and partner: Magi, op. cit., 202–3. Roman standards of translation had seriously declined since the mid-sixth century: cf. the high standards of Pelagius (I) and John (III) noted by Halkin, F., ‘La juridiction suprême du pape’, Analecta Bollandiana, 89, 1971, 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Novellae of Heraclius of 612, 619 and 629, all concerned with internal matters of the Patriarchate, accord Sergius the ecumenical style: Magi, op. cit., 194 n. 127. Sergius's correspondence with Honorius does not employ this style, but the texts survive only as read out at the Council of 680, lacking protocols: ibid., 198 n. 10. The Croatian mission: Constantine Porphyrogennetus, de Administrando Imperio, ch. 31. The mission perhaps continued until 680: Agatho to Constantine IV: PL., lxxxvii. 1226.

1 Chronicon Patriarchium Gradensium, ch. 6: MGH., SS. RR. Ital. et langob., 394–5. Cf. also Honorius's inscription in St. Peter's with its initial allusions to Pelagius II (LP. i. 324 n. 2) and his epitaph (ibid., 326 n. 19). Paschini, P., ‘Le fase di una leggenda aquileiese’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia, 8, 1954.Google Scholar

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3 PL., lxxxvii. 972–4.

4 LP. i. 328: cf. the position of Italian bishops as imperial agents in the Liber Diurnus formula, Indiculum Episcopi.

5 Braulio of Saragossa, Ep. 21 (PL., lxxx. 667–70), in which also Braulio catches Honorius out in a misattribution of Isaiah, lvi. 10, to Ezechiel.

6 Dvornik, F., The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 4, Cambridge, Mass., 1958Google Scholar: art. ‘Barthelémé’ in Dictionnaire d'Archeologie chrétienne et de Liturgie, ed. Cabrol, , Paris 1910, ii. 499–500Google Scholar. At this time of recovery Roman opinion may also have been impressed by Heraclius's piety and humility, and his constant prayers for victory, in contrast to, say, Corippus's portrait of Justin II, expecting divine favours of right, at a time of mounting disaster.

1 Contrast the tone of the letter of the African episcopate to Martin at the opening of the Lateran synod, 649 (Mansi, x. 943–50), with that of other bishops and episcopates.

2 PL., lxxxvii. 78–79.

3 LP., i. 328. Roman opinion may well have contrasted this treatment with recent imperial calls on church reserves. In, probably, 619–20, Sergius of Constantinople placed the capital's church plate at Heraclius's disposal for a war-chest; not only was the patriarchate given a large share of the booty of the Persian War, but the Government continued to pay interest on the outstanding loan until at least the early ninth century: Stratos, op. cit., 126–7. In 616–18, during the Persian advance into Egypt, the patrician Nicetas asked the patriarch John to place the Alexandrian church's funds at his disposal; John refused and when Nicetas took the funds by force public opinion compelled him to restore them at once.

4 Maximus Confessor, Ep. to Thalassius: PL., cxxix. 583–6.

1 LP. i. 330; Bede, HE., ii. 19; and cf. a letter of Benedict II as pope-elect in 683: PL., lxxxiv. 147–8.

2 PL. lxxxvii. 75–80.

3 Libellus of the Eastern monks (Mansi, x. 903–10); Martin and the synod to Constans II (ibid., 789–98); Martin to bishop John of Philadelphia (ibid., 805–14); Conte, Chiesa e Primato, 120–233, esp. 163–4. See Tuilier, A., ‘Le sens de l'adjectif οικουμηνικός dans la tradition patristique et dans la tradition byzantine’, Studia patristica, 7, 1966; its significance for the defence of orthodoxy was appropriate to the papacy in the later seventh century, but not perhaps in the sixth.Google Scholar

4 LP., i. 337; Martin, Ep. to Theodore: PL., lxxxvii. 199–202.

1 Guillou, A., Régionalisme et indépendance dans l'Empire byzantine au VIIe siècle: l'exemple de l'xarchat et de la Pentapole d'Italie, Rome, Instituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi Storici, 75–6, 1969Google Scholar, 229–54. Also, Laurent, V., ‘L'oeuvre canonique du Concile in Trullo (691–2), source primaire du droit de l'Eglise orientale’, Revue des études byzantines, 23 (1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 128: PL., 552–3. Gregory, Reg., v. 11 and Honorius, LP., 1. 323, ascribing martyrdom to Apollinaris. Simonini, op. cit., 77.

2 Susman, F., ‘Il culto di S. Pietro a Roma dalla morte di Leone Magno a Vitaliano (461–672)’, Archivio della Società di storia patria Romana, Ser. 84, 1964, 74–6, and Conte, Chiesa e Primato, 239 n. 19, 240, 243 n. 34, for use of Leo in the seventh century. On Gregory: John Moschos, Pratum Spirituale, cc. 147–51; Gregory, Reg. 1. 6. For Sergius see LP., i. 375.Google Scholar

1 Lepelley, C., ‘Saint Léon le Grand et la Cité romaine’, Revue des sciences religieuses, 35 (1961), 130–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lauras, A., ‘Saint Léon le Grand et la Tradition’, Revue de science religieuse, 48 (1960), 166–84Google Scholar; Chavasse, A., ‘Dans sa prédication, S. Léon le Grand a-t-il utilisé des sources liturgiques?’, Mélanges liturgiques offerts au R. P. Dom Bernard Botte, OSB, Louvain 1972Google Scholar. On the homiliaries see Low, G., ‘Ein stadtromisches Lektionar des VIII Jahrhunderts’, Romische Quartalschrift, 37 (1929)Google Scholar and ‘Il più antico sermonario di S. Pietro in Vaticano’, Rivista di archeologia cristiana, 19 (1942)Google Scholar; Chavasse, A., ‘Le sermonnaire de saintes Philippes-et-Jacques et le sermonnaire de S. Pierre’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 69 (1955).Google Scholar

2 Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, vi. 2, 3: PG. iii. 533.

1 For the impact of the sufferings of Martin and Anastasius, see Anastasius Sinaita, Sermo 111: PG., lxxxix. 1156. He attributes the Arab successes to divine punishment on Constans II for the treatment of the pope and his deacon. See also the early publication of the Greek Life of Martin: Peeters, P., ‘Une Vie grecque du pape S. Martin’, Analecta Bollandiana, 51 (1933).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Llewellyn, op. cit., 170–1; Dijk, S.J. P. Van, ‘The Urban and Papal Rites in 7th and 8th century Rome’, Sacris Erudiri, 12 (1961). A formal personal praise of each pope is introduced into the Liber Pontificalis with the entry for Adeodatus (672–6): LP., i. 346. The pseudo-Dionysius was quoted in the Tome of Agatho: PL., lxxxvii. 1161–1214.Google Scholar

3 Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen âge, ed. Andrieu, M., Louvain 1931–1961, Ordo Romanus I, 91. I interpret the formal offertory where the pope, flanked by the two primicerii, receives ‘oblationes principum per ordinem archium’ as an official donation from the emperors to the Roman Church, represented at the papal liturgy by the civil leaders of the city.Google Scholar

4 LP., i. 390. In addition to the preservation of clerical privileges, the safeguarding, of Latin as the language for primary drafting of official correspondence issued in Greek during a period of Greek ascendancy in Rome, may also indicate the continuing strength of local identity: see Quentin, D. H., Note sur les originaux latins des lettres des papes Honorius, S. Agathon et Léon II relatives au monothélisme, Rome 1920.Google Scholar

1 Ferrari, op. cit., 355–61, 365–75.