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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture R. A. Markus, _Gregory the Great and his World_ (Cambridge U. P., 1997), devotes an appendix (pp. 206-09) and a map (pp. xx-xxi) to the distribution of Gregory's correspondence. The bulk of these, not surprisingly, are to imperially controlled areas of today's Italy: 500 (out of a total of 970 letters) to Italia suburbicaria, 70 to Ravenna, 25 to Milanese clergy in exile in Byzantine Liguria. There are also 95 to Gaul and 75 to Constantinople, plus smaller groups of 45 or fewer to many other destinations in the empire and 5 to Britain. So, in a general sense, they do seem to have gotten by. Not so, however, with Gregory's letter to the emperor Maurice asking for the withholding of imperial confirmation of his election, as this seems not to have been delivered. That letter, because it involved business of the state, would presumably have travelled by imperial messenger utilizing whatever remained of the _cursus publicus_ at this point. But our source for the letter's existence and content (Gregory of Tours, _Historia Francorum_ 10.1, followed by later Lives of Gregory the Great) says that the city prefect of Rome intercepted it and replaced it with one announcing the popular consensus. In Gregory of Tours' account, the city prefect is specified as _Germanus_; whereas this may have been transmitted (as now edited) with a capital 'G' and was interpreted by Paul the Deacon and others after him as the proper name Germanus, J. R. Martindale notes in _The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire_, vol. IIIA, p. 530, that the original reading may have been lower-case _germanus_, alluding to Gregory's brother Palatinus (who, rather than this otherwise unattested Germanus, would then have been the city prefect at the time). Best, John Dillon On Wednesday, February 23, 2005, at 1:41 am, Bill East wrote, responding to Wendy Reardon: > > I have always wondered how anything got done back then...they had > to go by horse or ship, and Gregory sent a letter from Rome to > Byzantium...it's a miracle it got there at all. They never cease > to amaze me. > > > Respondeo: > > I don't know about that. Horses have seldom been known to crash, > and many ships have been known to float. I dare say they got by. > > Bill. ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html