medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (3. September) is "the" feast day of:
Gregory I, pope (d. 604). Gregory the Great, known in some churches as
Gregory the Dialogist, was born into a Roman senatorial family and as a
relatively young man served briefly as city prefect. But he soon
resigned, sold his estates in order to establish monasteries, and
withdrew to a monastery he had founded on family property on the
Caelian. Within a few years he had been drafted into papal service and
was ordained a deacon. Pelagius II made him his apocrisarius in
Constantinople, where the essentially Greekless G. stayed for six years,
began his _Moralia in Job_, and won a doctrinal controvery with that
city's patriarch, St. Eutychios. In about 585 he returned to his
monastery at Rome, completed and published the _Moralia_, and continued
to advise Pelagius and to act on his behalf. In 590 G. was elected
bishop of Rome. The first monk to be so chosen, he was consecrated on
this day.
An early act of G.'s pontificate was the publication his _Pastoralis
Cura_, on the role and duties of a bishop. Many of his energies were
spent on administrative and diplomatic matters (e.g. managing the
estates of the church, keeping the Lombards at bay). He affirmed and
exercised his authority in Western dioceses other than Rome and the
suburbicarian sees, wrote the _Dialogi_, and sent St. Augustine of
Canterbury and others to evangelize the English. He died on 12. March.
The latter was G.'s primary feast day in the Roman Calendar prior to the
latter's reform of 1969 and is still the day of his commemoration in the
Church of England and in Orthodox churches that have not adopted the
Gregorian calendar; in those that have, his feast falls on 25. March.
G.'s own monastery church of St. Andrew was rebuilt in the twelfth or
thirteenth century and again in the early seventeenth century. Formally
the Chiesa di Santi Andrea e Gregorio Magno al Celio, it is now usually
referred to simply as San Gregorio Magno (or as San Gregorio al Celio).
Adjoining its Cappella San Gregorio is a little room traditionally held
to have been G.'s cell; in it is a late Roman chair said to have been
his. Two views of the chair are here:
http://www.camaldoli.it/web_it/sg_storia/sg_storia00.htm
A brief, Italian-language account of this complex (which includes three
adjacent oratories, two of which are also medieval), with indications of
surviving medieval elements, is here:
http://www.medioevo.roma.it/saggi/chiese/gregoriocelio.htm
The church of San Gregorio Magno at Ascoli Piceno (AP) in the Marche is
built into a former Roman temple:
http://tinyurl.com/c66ek
A brief, Italian-language discussion of it is here:
http://tinyurl.com/7svdb
Perhaps the best known of the many medieval depictions of G. composing
with the dove of the Holy Spirit at his ear is this scene from a
tenth-century ivory book cover now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in
Vienna:
http://www.umilta.net/gregory1.jpg
Some views of the Cappella di San Gregorio at the Sacro Speco at Subiaco
(RM) in Lazio, notable for its early thirteenth-century frescoes:
Atrium:
http://web.tiscali.it/benedettinidirectory/benedettini/082.htm
Chapel proper:
http://web.tiscali.it/benedettinidirectory/benedettini/083.htm
G. (with Job at lower left):
http://www.benedettini-subiaco.org/benedettini/101.htm
After Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, G. is the last of the four Western
Doctors of the Church. All four are depicted here (G. at upper left) in
Pietro di Puccio's mosaics (1388; restored) on the facade of the
cathedral of Orvieto (TR) in Umbria:
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/italy/orvieto/cathedral/0093.jpg
G. is the patron saint of Vizzini (CT) in Sicily, whose principal church
(fifteenth-century; rebuilt in the eighteenth century) is dedicated to
him. An exterior view, showing a Catalan Gothic portal, is here:
http://www.vizzinidascoprire.it/foto/htm/mm1.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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