medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Monday, November 22, 2004, at 8:36 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Gregory of Girgenti (Agrigentum) (d. c. 603) Gregory was born in
> Sicily, studied in monasteries in Palestine, became a deacon in
> Jerusalem, and eventually became bishop of Agrigentum (Sicily). He
> was a scholar--he wrote a Greek commentary on Ecclesiastes. Perhaps
> more interesting, his enemies decided to ruin his reputation by
> planting a prostitute in his house, but G's name was cleared at a
> hearing in Rome.
Er, Gregory of Agrigento. As it's been over seventy-five years since
the city was so renamed (on 16. June 1927, to be exact), referring to it
in this now dated fashion ('Girgenti') is bad form. Would one refer to
present-day Oslo as 'Christiania' or to present-day Bratislava as
'Pressburg' or 'Presporok'?
We know that there was a late sixth-century bishop of Agrigentum named
Gregorius because of several mentions in the letters of Gregory the
Great. His date of death is unknown; 603 is merely the last we hear of
him. The commentary on Ecclesiastes, said to be of Eastern origin, is
not known to have been ascribed to him before the fourteenth century and
is very unlikely to be his. Everything else that is said about him
above comes from his late eighth-century or very early ninth-century
Life by the priest Leontios, "hegumen" (the title is probably an
honorific) of the Greek monastery of St. Sabas on the Aventine at Rome.
Much of this lengthy life is clearly fictional and opinions differ on
how much (if any) experience of Agrigentum Leontios actually had. In
the absence of controlling external evidence, it is difficult to know
which of its details represent historically founded local tradition
(however accurately or inaccurately preserved) and which are
hagiographic invention.
One detail of Leontios' Life that probably does represent local
tradition is its report that G. restored a decayed pre-Christian temple
at Agrigento and consecrated it as a Christian church. Someone at
Agrigento certainly did this, for one of that city's archaic Greek
temples owes its considerable degree of preservation to the fact that it
was so converted in late antiquity. Last dedicated to saints Peter and
Paul, and popularly known (on the basis of a sixteenth-century
conjecture of dubious merit) as the Temple of Concord, it was
secularized in 1788 and restored to a semblance of what must have been
its ancient appearance (minus the colored paint, roof, other woodwork,
metal fittings, fictile revetments, furniture, cult statue, etc., etc.).
A nocturnal view is here:
http://www.arnoneeditore.com/images/ag_con.jpg
And an Italian language account of what had to be done to convert the
building to Christian cult use (essentially the same steps as were taken
with the cathedral of Syracuse) is here (scroll down to "Tempio della
Concordia"):
http://www.aaa-agrigento.it/html/vallei.htm
Leontios' Life has been edited by Albrecht Berger as: Leontios,
Presbiteros von Rom, _ Das Leben des heiligen Gregorios von Agrigent:
kritische Ausgabe, Übersetzung und Kommentar_ (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1995; Berliner byzantinistische Arbeiten, Bd. 60). Libraries using the
cataloging record for this book provided by the Library of Congress are
likely to have retained the latter's inaccurate author entry, "Leontius,
Presbyter of Constantinople, 5th/6th cent." (a neat trick for the author
of a life of someone whom LC, in the same record, dates to "6th/7th
cent."). For those whose Greek and whose German may both be a bit
rusty, the Life has been translated into Italian by Domenico De Gregorio
as: Leonzio, ieromonaco e igumeno di San Saba in Roma, _Vita di S.
Gregorio Agrigentino. Introduzione, traduzione e note_ (Agrigento, 2000).
Best,
John Dillon
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