Gregory the Great and the Sixth-Century Dispute over the Ecumenical Title

2009 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
George E. Demacopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Pope Gregory I

The article explores the showdown between Pope Gregory I and Patriarch John IV of Constantinople over the ecumenical title. It argues that the promotion of the title coincided with other Eastern challenges to Roman prestige and that Gregory's diplomatic strategies evolved over the course of the controversy. While nothing in his correspondence suggests that he would endorse subsequent claims to universal Roman privilege, Eastern intransigence pushed the pontiff to embrace the rhetorical claims of Petrine privilege.

scholarly journals Ograniczenia stanu jako przeszkoda w przyjmowaniu do klasztorów w czasach Grzegorza Wielkiego na podstawie jego "Registrum epistularum" oraz norm prawa rzymskiego

Vox Patrum ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 317-344
Author(s):  
Janusz Lewandowicz
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
Pope Gregory I ◽  
Social Backgrounds

Monastic life, which development has been significantly contributed by St. Gregory the Great, has an important place in the history of Europe. This paper attempts to go back to the period of monasticism in the Late Antiquity, of which there are numerous testimonies in the epistles of St. Gregory the Great. Based on Registrum epistularum, the paper presents the practice of admitting to the monas­teries candidates from different social backgrounds. Simultaneously, it discusses the evolution of the imperial law, from the reign of Constantine to the end of the sixth century, by concerning restrictions on the admission to the monasteries ari­sing from the fact of belonging to the specific state (obnoxii): decurions, tax col­lectors, colonate, slaves assigned to the land. The paper highlights the concern of Pope Gregory I for those who join the monasteries as well as draw attention to the motives, which guided the emperors to make laws concerning the admission to the monasteries and the Gregory’s attitude towards the secular law. The paper also draws attention to the efforts of the pope aiming at promoting the monastic life as the highest form of Christian life.

Remembering Pope Gregory VII: Cardinal Boso and Alexander III

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
John Doran
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The Church

In the conclusion to his masterly biography of Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), H. E. John Cowdrey notes the paradox that the pope so lionized by modern historians, to the extent that the age of reform bears his name, was largely forgotten in the twelfth century and made little impact on Christian thought, spirituality or canon law. Cowdrey is not alone in his observation that Gregory ‘receded from memory with remarkable speed and completeness’; when he was remembered, it was as a failure and as one who brought decline upon the church. For Cowdrey, the answer to this conundrum lay in the fact that Gregory VII was in fact far closer to the ideals of the sixth century than of the twelfth; he was a Benedictine monk and shared the worldview and oudook of Gregory the Great (590–604) rather than those of the so-called lawyer popes Alexander III (1159–81) and Innocent III (1198–1216). Yet within a century of Gregory’s death he was presented by Cardinal Boso as a model pope, who had overcome a schismatic emperor and the problems which his interference had precipitated in Rome. For Boso, writing for the instruction of the officials of the papal chamber, the very policies set out by Gregory VII were to be pursued and emulated. Far from being a peripheral and contradictory figure, with more in common with the distant past than the near future, Gregory was the perfect guide to the beleaguered Pope Alexander III, who was also struggling against a hostile emperor and his antipope.

“In what has been allowed to them, [the Jews] should not sustain any prejudice.”

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-341
Author(s):  
Ross Shepard Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the West, Arian Gothic administrations seem less interested in the active anti-Jewish programs of their Nicene counterparts and less susceptible to the pressures of Nicene bishops. Jewish advisors, such as one Symmachus, served in the court of Theoderic. Gregory of Tours recounts how his catholic colleague, Avitus of Clermont, forced Jews in sixth-century Clermont to convert—strikingly reminiscent of the account about events on Minorca. In Gregory’s writings, synagogues are sometimes attacked, yet Jews participate in public life in major towns like Orleans. The late sixth-century letters of Gregory the Great depict a landscape still populated by unconverted Jews, dissident Christians, and recalcitrant practitioners of ancestral religions. They provide glimpses of Christian attacks on synagogues and Jewish rights, complexities of life for often impoverished newly converted Jews, and strategies to evade restrictions on Jewish slaveholding. Gregory advocated kindness and persuasion, rather than violence and coercion, but his relatively irenic stance toward Jews would not prevail.

scholarly journals CIL III 9527 as Evidence of Spoken Latin in the Sixth-century Dalmatia

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 99-106
Author(s):  
Dragana Kunčer
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
L 13

The epitaph of Priest Iohannes (CIL III 9527, Salona, August 13, 599 or AD 603) is one of the few inscriptions from the sixth-century Salona, which can be dated with precision. It is also one of the rare inscriptions from Dalmatia of this period, which mention a person (proconsul Marcellinus) known from other sources (Registrum epistularum of Pope Gregory the Great). However, its linguistic importance seems to be summarized in the remark of its most recent editor Nancy Gauthier (2010) that the language of the epitaph reflects the features of Latin spoken in Dalmatia at the time (“la langue vivante”). The aim of this paper was to check the plausibility of this statement by comparing the Vulgar Latin features in the inscription with the results of research on Latin in late Dalmatia. Also, a new interpretation of the word obsis l. 13 is proposed.

Assessing Visigoth latinity in the late sixth century: The contribution of Reccared's letter to Gregory I

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Chris Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Native Tongue

In the final years of the sixth century, the Gothic chieftain, Reccared, wrote a letter to Pope Gregory the Great - a letter that offers a unique insight into that generation of Visigoths who abandoned their native tongue, embraced Catholicism, and established the kingdom of Spain. The letter demonstrates that Reccared was reasonably fluent in Latin, although commentators have, for some centuries now, felt compelled to point out just how many mistakes the warlord made and how egregious these mistakes were. These errors are particularly troubling given that, at the Third Synod of Toledo conducted in 589, Reccared had purportedly addressed the assembly in perfect, even slightly archaised, Latin. This article compares Reccared's letter with a selection of other early Germanic literature, especially those elements of the corpus that seek to translate Greek or Latin predecessors, in order to contextualise his errors and to offer some opinions as to why those mistakes might have been made.

scholarly journals Pope Gregory the Great’s Arguments Against the Ecumenical Title of the Patriarch of Constantinople: Analysis of the Letters from 595

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Aleksei Migalnikov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
High Importance ◽  
Argumentation System ◽  
The One ◽  
Pope Gregory I

Introduction. At the end of the sixth century a dispute broke out between the popes and the patriarchs of Constantinople – first of all, between pope Gregory I the Great (590–604) and patriarch John IV the Faster (582–595) – over the epithet “Ecumenical”, which appeared in the title of John of Constantinople. This dispute is quite widely represented in the scientific literature, but since researchers almost always pay attention to this topic in general, their papers often miss many nuances contained in the texts of the letters of pope Gregory. Methods. This article attempts a detailed analysis of the first series of letters of pope Gregory dedicated to the dispute and related to 595. These are letters to emperor Maurice (582–602), empress Constantina, the patriarch John IV of Constantinople, and the papal apocrisiary in Constantinople, deacon Sabinianus. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct pope Gregory’s argumentation system against the use of the Ecumenical title. Analysis. The author identifies several types of arguments that pope Gregory puts forward in his polemic against the title: canonical, biblical, dogmatic, ecclesiastical, political, pastoral and ascetic. Results. The article shows, on the one hand, what the letters have in common, and on the other, how the arguments of the pope vary depending on the recipient. Generally, pope Gregory expresses a sharply negative attitude to the title, and many researchers tend to see this fact as a contradiction to the concept of papal primacy, as it developed in a later period. Basing on the significant differences in argumentation between the letters to the emperor, the empress and the patriarch John – with the same purpose of all the messages – the article makes a conclusion about the care with which pope Gregory selects arguments. This can serve as one of the indirect indicators of the high importance of the dispute over the Ecumenical title for him, and also characterizes his perception of the idea of Church power in general.

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.

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