Gregory the Great: Reader, Writer and Read

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 12-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Anlezark
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Christian Literature

An episode unique to the late ninth-century Life of Gregory the Great by John the Deacon reports a famine that occurred in the year of Gregory’s death; a hostile party blamed the lavish generosity of the late pope for Rome’s suffering. The fury of the people was roused and they set out to burn Gregory’s books. However, the deacon Peter, Gregory’s familiarissimus, intervened to dissuade them, telling the people that Gregory’s works were directly inspired by God. As proof he asked God to take his life, and promptly dropped dead. This episode is not found in the earlier accounts of Gregory’s life: the brief account in the mid seventh-century Liber pontificalis, the early eighth-century Life by an anonymous monk of Whitby, and the mid eighth-century account by Paul the Deacon. Doubtful as John the Deacon’s account of the exchange between Peter and the mob may be, it does tell us something about the status of Gregory and his works in the mid 870s, when Pope John VIII commissioned the new hagiography. Gregory the Great became one of the most widely read authors of the Middle Ages, and even in his lifetime some of his works were eagerly sought after. With his popularity and influence Gregory not only added to the body of Christian literature, but also made a lasting contribution to the debate over what kinds of works it was appropriate for Christians to read. This essay will survey his works and discuss his ideas on reading and literature, and on the establishment of a Christian literary canon. The influence of Gregory’s works and ideas will be examined in relation to one particular medieval nation - Anglo-Saxon England. As the instigator of the Anglo-Saxon mission, Gregory enjoyed a great reputation as an author in Anglo-Saxon England, where his ideas on literature and society had a lasting impact.

Peter's Throne and Augustine's Chair: Rome and Canterbury from Baldwin (1184–90) to Robert Winchelsey (1297–1313)

2000 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANE SAYERS
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Church

The arrival of St Augustine in England from Rome in 597 was an event of profound significance, for it marked the beginnings of relations between Rome and Canterbury. To later generations this came to mean relations between the papacy in its universal role, hence the throne of St Peter, and the metropolitical see of Canterbury and the cathedral priory of Christ Church, for the chair of St Augustine was the seat of both a metropolitan and an abbot. The archiepiscopal see and the cathedral priory were inextricably bound in a unique way.Relations with Rome had always been particularly close, both between the archbishops and the pope and between the convent and the pope. The cathedral church of Canterbury was dedicated to the Saviour (Christ Church) as was the papal cathedral of the Lateran. Gregory had sent the pallium to Augustine in sign of his metropolitan rank. There had been correspondence with Rome from the first. In Eadmer's account of the old Anglo-Saxon church, it was built in the Roman fashion, as Bede testifies, imitating the church of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, in which the most sacred relics in the whole world are venerated. Even more precisely, the confessio of St Peter was copied at Canterbury. As Eadmer says, ‘From the choir of the singers one went up to the two altars (of Christ and of St Wilfrid) by some steps, since there was a crypt underneath, what the Romans call a confessio, built like the confessio of St Peter.’ (Eadmer had both visited Rome in 1099 and witnessed the fire that destroyed the old cathedral some thirty years before in 1067.) And there, in the confessio, Eadmer goes on to say, Alfege had put the head of St Swithun and there were many other relics. The confessio in St Peter's had been constructed by Pope Gregory the Great and contained the body of the prince of the Apostles and it was in a niche here that the pallia were put before the ceremony of the vesting, close to the body of St Peter. There may be, too, another influence from Rome and old St Peter's on the cathedral at Canterbury. The spiral columns in St Anselm's crypt at Canterbury, which survived the later fire of 1174, and are still standing, were possibly modelled on those that supported St Peter's shrine. These twisted columns were believed to have been brought to Rome from the Temple of Solomon. At the end of the sixth century, possibly due to Gregory the Great, they were arranged to form an iconostasis-like screen before the apostle's shrine. Pope Gregory III in the eighth century had added an outer screen of six similar columns, the present of the Byzantine Exarch, of which five still survive. They are practically the only relics of the old basilica to have been preserved in the new Renaissance St Peter's.

Inventing Gregory “the Great”: Memory, Authority, and the Afterlives of the Letania Septiformis

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Jacob A. Latham
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Pope Gregory I ◽  
Great Memory ◽  
The Middle Ages

In modern scholarship, Pope Gregory I “the Great” (590–604) is often simultaneously considered the final scion of classical Rome and the first medieval pope. The letania septiformis, a procession organized into seven groups that Gregory instituted in 590 in the face of plague and disease (and performed only once thereafter in 603), has similarly been construed as the very moment when Antiquity died and the Middle Ages were born. However, his Roman contemporaries in the papal curia largely ignored Gregory and his purportedly epochal procession. In fact, memory of the procession languished in Italy until the late-eighth century when Paul the Deacon made it the center of his Life of Gregory. At Rome, remembrance of the procession lay dormant in the papal archives until John the Deacon dug it out in the late-ninth century. How then did the letania septiformis come to be judged so pivotal? Over the course of centuries, the letania septiformis was inventively re-elaborated in literature, liturgy, and legend as part of the re-fashioning of the memory of Gregory. Shorn of its context, the letania septiformis gained greater imaginative power, becoming the emblem of Gregory's pontificate, if not also of an historical era.

The Maaseik embroideries

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages

Among the relics in the treasury of the church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Limburg, Belgium, there are some luxurious embroideries which form part of the so-called casula (probably ‘chasuble’) of Sts Harlindis and Relindis (pls. I–VI). It was preserved throughout the Middle Ages at the abbey church of Aldeneik (which these sister-saints founded in the early eighth century) and was moved to nearby Maaseik in 1571. Although traditionally regarded as the handiwork of Harlindis and Relindis themselves, the embroideries cannot date from as early as their time, and they must have been made in Anglo-Saxon England. Indeed, they represent the earliest surviving examples of the highly prized English art of embroidery which became famous later in the Middle Ages as opus anglicanum.

A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready

1986 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 195-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Keynes
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Apparent Contrast ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Alfred The Great ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Personal Qualities

IN the gallery of Anglo-Saxon kings, there are two whose characters are fixed in the popular imagination by their familiar epithets: Alfred the Great and ÆEthelred the Unready. Of course both epithets are products of the posthumous development of the kings' reputations (in opposite directions), not expressions of genuinely contemporary attitudes to the kings themselves: respective personalities. In the case of Alfred, it was the king’s own resourcefulness, courage and determination that brought the West Saxons through the Viking invasions, for it was these qualities, complemented by his concern for the well–being of his subjects, that inspired and maintained the people’s loyalty towards the king and generated their support for his cause. Whereas in the case of jEthelred, it was the king’s incompetence, weakness and vacillation that brought the kingdom to ruin, for it was these failings, exacerbated by his displays of cruelty and spite, that alienated the people and made them abandon his cause. Few historians, perhaps, would subscribe to such a view expressed as bluntly as that, and more, I suspect, would consider such comparisons to be futile and probably misconceived in the first place. I would maintain, however, that something is to be gained from the exercise of comparing the two kings in fairly broad terms: by juxtaposing discussions of the status of the main narrative accounts of each king’s reign we can more easily appreciate how their utterly different reputations arose, and see, moreover, that in certain respects the apparent contrast between them might actually be deceptive; by comparing the predicament in which each king was placed we can better understand how one managed to extricate himself from trouble while the other succumbed; and overall we can more readily judge how much, or how little, can be attributed to personal qualities or failings on the part of the kings themselves.

The Early Medieval Textiles at Maaseik, Belgium

1985 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred Budny ◽  
Dominic Tweddle
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article offers an account of the components, the structure and the history of the so-calledcasulaandvelaminaof Sts Harlindis and Relindis preserved at the Church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Belgium as relics of the two sisters who founded the nearby abbey of Aldeneik (where the textiles were kept throughout the Middle Ages). The compositecasulaof Sts Harlindis and Relindis includes the earliest surviving group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries, dating to the late eighth century or the early ninth. Probably similarly Anglo-Saxon, a set of silk tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold associated with the embroideries offers a missing link in the surviving corpus of Anglo-Saxon braids. The ‘David silk’ with its Latin inscription and distinctly western European design dating from the eighth century or the early ninth offers a rare witness to the art of silk-weaving in the West at so early a date. Thevelamenof St Harlindis, more or less intact, represents a remarkable early medieval vestment, garment or cloth made up of two types of woven silk cloths, tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold, gilded copper bosses, pearls and beads. Thevelamenof St Relindis, in contrast, represents the stripped remains—reduced to the lining and the fringed ends—of another composite textile. Originally it was probably luxurious, so as to match the two other composite early medieval textile relics from Aldeneik. As a whole, the group contributes greatly to knowledge of early medieval textiles of various kinds.

Toledo, Rome and the legacy of Gaul

1984 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 49-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Levy
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Local Material ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Lengthy Process

Between the late sixth and mid-ninth centuries the lengthy process unfolded that brought substantial unity to the liturgical-musical practice of the Western Church. The Roman-Benedictine liturgy of Gregory the Great was taken to England in 596–7 by the Italianborn Augustine, prior of the Monastery of St Andrew on the Caelian hill. His purpose was to substitute Roman observance for entrenched Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Gallican rites as well as pagan customs. Yet when Augustine questioned Gregory about the variety of Christian usages he found, the pope was unwilling to offend local sensibilities and impede the Anglo-Saxons' conversion. Augustine was told to leave in place whatever of the local rites seemed desirable. During the seventh and early eighth centuries an accelerating missionary activity spread the Roman liturgy through France, Germany and northern Italy. Yet wherever it arrived it became similarly intermixed with local material, and it was not until the mid-eighth century that vigorous measures were taken to impose a purer Roman usage. The change came about not through ecclesiastical initiative but through the practical politics of a pious Frankish monarch. Pepin the Short (714–68) sought to increase unity throughout his domain by imposing the Roman rite. He asked Stephen iii (752–7) for clerics to teach the musical rite, and Stephen's successor Paul i (757–67) sent Roman chant books, an ‘antiphonale et responsale’, presumably without notation.

Some Recent Receptions of Early Christian Literature in Bulgaria and Their Ethnical Connotations

Proglas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Christov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Pelagian Controversy ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
God's Grace

In this paper, when I use the concept of ‘early Christian literature’ I mean the body of texts from Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages that affects the controversies around the issue of God’s Grace and the role of free human will in the context of making a choice in a strict ethical sense. For that reason, firstly, here I analyze the problems that arose with relation to the doctrine of Pelagius. Secondly, in this paper, by ‘recent receptions of this early Christian literature in Bulgaria’ I mean those receptions – in a theological, literary, and ethical sense - that we encounter in current studies of Christian Latin literature done by the promising young researcher Rosen Milanov. Thirdly, the present study attempts to answer the question of the ethical connotations of those same receptions in the present-day moral controversies in Bulgaria – a country rich in conservative views of Eastern Orthodox nature, concerning contemporary ethical issues such as those related to the ratification of the Istanbul Convention last year. In this way it may be possible to obtain a more clear outlook on how such distant historical events as the Pelagian controversy about the value of free moral choice could still influence the modification processes in the sociocultural layers of modern Bulgarian society with its Eastern Orthodox heritage.

Growth of American Theories of Popular Government

1907 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Bushnell Hart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Creative Mind ◽  
The People ◽  
Popular Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
French Nation

Next to the conception of a visible church, no abstraction has had such an effect upon the minds of men as the idea of the State as an organization. The Roman Imperium has been a regnant principle in Europe for twenty centuries, against which the church in the Middle Ages made head with its doctrine of “The Two Swords”—church and empire. To the French mind “L'Etat” is something different from the body of Frenchmen or the French nation; and the old fashioned English idea of “God and the King” expressed a conception of an abstract sovereign power. It is strange that the people who have done most to alter the world's acceptance as to what government ought to be, have furnished no political creative mind, formulated no accepted philosophical basis for their government, and justify Bryce's dictum that the Americans have had no theory of the State, and have felt no need for one. “Even the dignity of the State has vanished. It seems actually less than the individuals who live under it—the nation is nothing but so many individuals. The government is nothing but certain representatives and officials.” Or as Tocqueville puts it: “As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding.” It is true that the Americans are people who would speak disrespectfully of the equator if they knew of its existence; yet no people is more profoundly influenced by a body of political doctrine, only their point of view is that they practice freedom, equality and self-government, and therefore suppose that there must be definite principles behind those usages. While the French with their national acuteness in analysis and generalization deduce the principles of liberty from the nature of man and then strive to work them out in practice, the American theory of government is to be sought, not in treatises on political ethics or the disquisitions of American statesmen, but in the acts of assemblies, votes of conventions, proclamations of presidents and governors, and the thousand instances of exercise of an accepted authority.

scholarly journals CEO Wrongdoing: A Review of Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 2405-2432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Schnatterly ◽  
K. Ashley Gangloff ◽  
Anja Tuschke
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Fraud Triangle ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Top Executives ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Organizational Wrongdoing ◽  
Management Scholarship

Wrongdoing, and specifically that which is committed by top executives, has attracted scholars for decades for a number of reasons. Among them, the consequences of wrongdoing are widespread for organizations and the people in and around them. Due to the vast array of consequences, there continues to be new questions and additional scholarly attempts to uncover why it occurs. In this review, we build upon previous efforts to synthesize the body of literature regarding the antecedents of CEO wrongdoing utilizing a framework that sheds light on the status of the literature and where unanswered questions remain. We apply the Fraud Triangle, a framework drawn from the accounting literature, to derive conclusions about what we know about the pressures faced by CEOs, the opportunities afforded to CEOs to commit wrongdoing, and contributing factors to a CEO’s ability to rationalize misbehavior. We organize the literature on these conceptual antecedents of CEO wrongdoing around internal (e.g., compensation structure and organizational culture) and external (e.g., shareholder pressure and social aspirations) forces. In doing so, we integrate findings from a variety of disciplines (i.e., accounting, finance, and sociology) but remain focused on management scholarship since the last review of organizational wrongdoing to provide an updated state of the literature. This review offers a clear framework and a common language; it highlights gaps in the literature and specific directions for future research with the ultimate goal of understanding why CEOs engage in wrongdoing.

scholarly journals Ecclesiastical advice literature in Anglo-Saxon England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Toby R. Beeny
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Advice Literature ◽  
The People ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Clear Link ◽  
Political Writing

This dissertation examines the writing of religious writers during the Anglo-Saxon period in England (410- 1066). The purpose of this work is to better understand how religious writing also functioned as political writing. Ecclesiastics such as monks and bishops were the primary authors during the period and wrote many types of works, such as histories and sermons. My research seeks to explore how a work such as a history was in fact designed to shape the role of government, especially the function of kings. I proceeded by examining a wide range or works, including sermons, histories, and biographies and connecting the content to contemporary political situations. I did this by first examining what behavior was praised and what was condemned, and then connecting this praise and blame to what was happening politically during the time of writing. What I discovered was that there was a clear link between many writers and contemporary politics, and that these men used their writing to shape the concept of kingship. Ecclesiastics understood kingship to be a sacred office and one that was deeply connected to the salvation of the people, but also an office with a sacred duty for war. My work helps us to better understand the role that kings played during the early Middle Ages, and how ecclesiastics used writing to advance their political vision.

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