scholarly journals Hues of Martyrdom: Monastic and Lay Asceticism in Two Homilies of Gregory the Great on the Gospels

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Nikolas O Hoel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Pope Gregory I ◽  
The Middle Ages

Pope Gregory I was the first monk to hold the office of Bishop of Rome, and he was one of the most prolific papal writers of the Middle Ages. It should not be a surprise that his views on monasticism can be found in everything that he wrote, including the Homiliae in Evangelia. This text includes lessons that would be heard by both monks and lay people, because both would have been listening to the sermons. By looking at the first two of these homilies, it can be determined that Gregory urged his audience to strive for asceticism, which he equated to martyrdom. Yet, the asceticism of the monk could not be the same as that of the lay person. This article argues that Gregory conceived of two types on non-red martyrdom: the white martyrdom of the monks which served as the model for the blue martyrdom of the laity.

Further Parallels to the ‘Hadrianum' from St. Gregory the Great's Commentary on the First Book of Kings

Traditio ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 364-373
Author(s):  
Henry Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Pope Gregory I ◽  
Sufficient Stimulus ◽  
Parallel Texts ◽  
The Middle Ages

A previous study entitled ‘Liturgical Prayers of Pope Gregory I’ sought to establish links between some 80 prayer formulae of the Hadrianum and the recognized authentic works of Saint Gregory the Great. That study, begun and completed several years ago, did not take into account — unfortunately as now appears — works about which there had been controversy in the past and whose Gregorian authenticity was not unanimously accepted. For this reason no parallel texts were given from the Commentary on the First Book of Kings. But Dom P. Verbraken has recently shown in two convincing articles that hesitations concerning St. Gregory's authorship of the Commentary are not justified. Even though the diffusion of this work in the Middle Ages was a very restricted one, there can be no real doubt that it was written by St. Gregory himself. This conclusion was by itself a sufficient stimulus to set about analyzing the Commentary on Kings with a continual eye on the text of the Hadrianum, and the result has not been unrewarding: a new set of parallels can be added to those already published in the previous article, and in addition six new prayers inserted in the list. The very fact that such loca parallela can be found in the Commentary would seem in itself a further proof of the Gregorian authenticity of this work. A few texts have also been taken from the beginning of the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, also attributed to St. Gregory.

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.

scholarly journals “Detrusio: Penal Cloistering in the Middle Ages,” Revue Bénédictine 118 (2008): 89-108

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Geltner
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Lay People ◽  
The Middle Ages

Documents and examines the use of monasteries as spaces and places of penal incarceration for lay people in western Europe between the fifth and fifteenth century.

The Enigma of Gregory the Great's Dialogues: A Response to Francis Clark

1988 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Meyvaert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages remained serenely unaware that a dark problem might attach itself some day to the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. They knew their Gregory, studied his Moralia and other scriptural commentaries with uplifted hearts, read his Dialogues with equal veneration and devotion and never perceived even the glimmer of a contradiction between the two categories of works. Then came the Reformation with its stress on Scripture and its dislike of the ‘superstitious Romanist piety’ fostered by works like the Dialogues. A problem thus arose for the Reformers. They had little love for the papacy but retained a veneration for the Church Fathers, among whom they counted Gregory the Great, that great interpreter of Scripture, who had been instrumental in bringing Christianity to England. Was it possible to retain Gregory but divest him of an embarrassing work? It is important to note that the first attempts to deny Gregory's authorship of the Dialogues are rooted in the polemics of the Reformation period.

Prelacy, Pastoral Care and the Instruction of Subordinates in Late Twelfth-Century England

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 114-128
Author(s):  
Rebecca Springer
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Lay People ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Services ◽  
Eternal Salvation ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
The Middle Ages

Historians of the Middle Ages usually associate the phrase ‘pastoral care’ with the sacraments and religious services performed by parish priests on behalf of lay people. But late twelfth-century writers primarily attributed pastoral care to prelates. Closely following the tradition of Pope Gregory I's Pastoral Rule, they held that prelates bore the responsibility to govern, guide and (perhaps most importantly) instruct their subordinate clergy or religious. Prelates did this by preaching, and they were supposed to validate their words with the example of their own righteous lives. But although commentators assumed that prelates would be reasonably well educated, late twelfth-century writers did not attribute good preaching to intellectual aptitude, or to the availability of preaching treatises or model sermon collections, as historians often assume. In an age of intellectual vibrancy and flourishing schools, ensuring that prelates instructed their subordinates remained firmly a moral, rather than an educational, question for the English church. Only by instructing subordinates could a prelate ensure their, and by extension his own, eternal salvation: neglect of preaching was tantamount to murder. This article uses the little-studied writings of Alexander of Ashby, Bartholomew of Exeter and Thomas Agnellus to uncover new links between ideas about prelacy, pastoral care and the instruction of subordinates in the high Middle Ages.

Folle d’amour, folle de Dieu : la femme de Potiphar au prisme des cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-140
Author(s):  
Joanna Gorecka-Kalita
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Joseph And Aseneth ◽  
The Middle Ages

The paper analyses the character of Potiphar’s wife in the intercultural/ interreligious context. The founding story, that of the Book of Genesis, is the starting point; then comes the Hellenistic one (Joseph and Aseneth), the Christian (Morales on Job by Gregory the Great, Moralized Bibles etc.), the Jewish (Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Midrashim etc.) and the Muslim (the Quran, the Tafsir, the Stories of the Prophets etc.) stories and commentaries are presented. Particular attention is given to the Persian texts of the Middle Ages, since they fundamentally reinterpret the character of the heroine: from a lustful and perfidious woman, she becomes the image of a suffering lovestruck virgin and finally an allegory of the soul seeking God in Youssouf and Zouleïkha, Djami’s famous Sufi novel, tinged with Platonism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document