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

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.

The Old Testament in Translated Patristic Works: Ezekiel 1–4:3 and 40:1–47 in Fr. Gonzalo de Ocaña’s (1442) Spanish Translation of Homiliarum in Ezechielem Prophetam libri duo by Pope Gregory I

This study explores the political and cultural context of Fr. Gonzalo de Ocaña’s translation of the Homiliarum in Ezechielem of Pope Gregory I. It sheds light on the personality of the translator, offering new information about his life. It also delves into the political circumstances in which Queen María of Castile requested this translation from her chaplain. In fact, Ocaña’s prologue to his translation provides unique historical evidence of his own personal position vis-à-vis the political strife between the Queen’s brothers and her husband, John II of Castile, a struggle that had brought Castile close to ruin. The translation of this patristic text is also important because it provides us with a literal version of extensive passages from the Book of Ezequiel and constitutes the only known translation of this book of the Old Testament made from the Vulgata in the fifteenth century. Ocaña’s use of the Latin source is by no means a trivial issue, for the only two known versions of the Book of Ezekiel translated from Latin into Spanish, the pre-Alfonsine Bible and the General estoria, were prepared much earlier, in the thirteenth century.

Apgitir chrábaid in the context of an intertextual approach

This article is dedicated to methodological problems of intertextual relations studies which appear during the research of primary sources. The subject matter stands at the joint between several branches of knowledge: Religious studies, Cultural studies, Philology and Celtic studies. In this article, we make an attempt to find the most adequate methodological approach for the detection and description of intertextual relations. The source for our experiment would be an Irish primary source — Apgitir chrábaid, the earliest surviving Christian prose tract written in Old Irish. Moreover, the article contains a brief analysis of existing hypotheses which attempt to explain what exact Christian texts, written in Latin, influenced the structure and content of this treatise in particular: P.P. Ó Néill — John Cassian; T.O. Clancy and G. Márkus John Cassian and Basil the Great; A.A. Korolev — Isidore of Seville and John Cassian. Then we make critical remarks about the methodology of identification of said influences on Apgitir chrábaid chosen by those researchers and on the language of scientific description used by them. It is proposed to use methods developed within the theory of intertextuality as a more correct approach for marking and description of intertextual relations. The use of the intertextual description in working with primary sources is shown by the example of the analysis of the fragment from Apgitir chrábaid (§ 8). The result of the analysis is the hypothesis that the source of influence, the intertext, for the indicated fragment in addition to the text of the Holy Scripture, is the work «Homilies on Ezekiel» by Pope Gregory I the Great. As an additional argument in favor of this hypothesis, a brief review of the veneration of Pope Gregory I, recorded in Irish church literature, is given.

P1836GOUT A PAPAL DISEASE: A STUDY ON 20 PONTIFFS (540-1830 AD)

Background and Aims Pope Gregory I (Magnus)―born c.540 AD, Pope 580-604 AD―in a letter to Bishop Venanzio ofLuni (later venerated as a saint) wrote “I have been confined to bed for the last eleven months, because of pain and malaise and suffer because of goutand my life has been turned into a penitence for my sins thus I am waiting death as a physician who will give me health”. He was the first Pope to suffer of gout and opens a list including in the years 20 pontiffs that includes Sisinnius, (b.650, pope 21 day in 708); Boniface VI (b. 806, Pope 15 days in 886), Honorius IV (b.1210, Pope 1285-1287); Boniface VIII (b. 1230, Pope 1294-1303); Clement VI (b.1281,Pope 1342-1352), Nicholas V (b.1387, Pope 1447-1455); Pius II( b. 1405, Pope 1458-1464); Sixtus IV (b. 1414, Pope 1471-1474); Pius III (b.1440, Pope 26 days in 1503); Pius IV (b. 1499, Pope 1559-1565); Julius II (b. 1443, Pope 1503-1516); Julius III (b.1481, Pope 1550-1555); Clement VIII (b. 1536, Pope 1592- 1605); Clement X (b.1581, Pope 1670-1676); Innocent XI (b.1681, Pope 1676-1689); Innocent XII (b.1649, Pope 1676-2692); Innocent XIII (b.1655, Pope 1721-1724); Benedict XIV (b. 1765, Pope 1740-1758), and Pius VIII (b.1761, Pope 1829-1830). Their mean age at death was 69.4 years, the youngest being Sisinnius (59 years), the oldest being Clement X (96 years). Results Some popes were strong eaters like Boniface VIII. He was chronically affected by gout and renal stone disease and by the fear for death, and the search for therapies capable to prolong life. Cosmacini says “podagroso e gottoso”… the Pope is affected by arthritis and renal disease due to overalimentation very rich (straricca) in meat”. He enrolled various archiaters among them Taddeo Alderotti (1223-1295), Pietro da Abano (1257-1315), Anselmo da Bergamo (artisphysicae professor), Simone of Genova (author of Clavissanationis), Accursino from Pistoia, Manzia from Fabriano, Gugliemo da Brescia, Angelo da Camerino and Campano da Novara (Magister Campanus), the naturalist he too affected by renal stone disease. Julius III too was a strong eater (he loved fatty foods seasoned with garlic) as was Pius IV, the hard worker who everyday used to take a nap after lunch and a long walk later in the day. By contrast Nicholas V (his Pontiff saw in 1453 the Fall of Costantinople and the end of the Hundred Years War) was a sober eater and drinker as were Pius II who made use of simple common foods, little wine and slept up to 5-6 hours. Probably Nicholas V died uremic since his pale natural color switched into yellowish-brown (itaque ex naturali et subcandido in croceumsubcinericiumque color suusconversusest). Pius III “was a sober eater and drinker and used to dine every two days. Some of the above popes were patrons of universities (Boniface VIII, Nicholas V, Pius II), some were patrons of arts and science (Nicholas V, Sixtus IV). Boniface VIII is remembered for the Bulla detestandeferitatis (against dismemberment and evisceration of cadavers), issued on September 27, 1299). For thatBulla, during the subsequent centuries he was wrongly accused even by Herman Boerhaave and Albrecht von Haller to have retarded the advancement of medicine by impeding anatomical dissections. By contrast Sixtus IV is remembered not only for modernizing Rome and embelling it, but for the 1482 Breve to the University of Tubingen allowing―for teaching purposes ―dissection of dead bodies of people sentenced to death.

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

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.

The Dialogues Bioregional Project: Landscape Ecology in Central Italy from the Sixth Century to the Present

Pope Gregory I (r. 590-604), commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, is celebrated for re-organizing both the institutional and liturgical life of the Roman Catholic Church; for instigating the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome to England; and for his writings. Among these, a distinct importance has been attributed to his “Dialogues,” a collection of four books of miracles, signs, wonders, and healings carried out by then little-known holy men, which represent a portion of central Italy as a sacred space where the Christian God is present in both human and non-human form, while also interacting with the environment by performing landscaping functions. This article outlines the “Dialogues Bioregional Project,” a digital, interdisciplinary interface on Italian landscape ecology which would promote dialogues between scientists and humanists as well as provide a modeling tool for environmental and cultural awareness. Shaped around the “Dialogues” of Pope Gregory I, this digital humanities project explores continuities and discontinuities between the socio-political and ecological history of a specific section of Italian territory, a set of multidisciplinary environmental narratives (from c. 600 AD to the present), and local communities. My aim is to introduce readers to the ecological potentials of Gregory’s book and thus prompt scholars interested in the environmental humanities and the integration of biophysical and analytical approaches with humanistic and holistic perspectives to become part of the “Dialogues Bioregional Project” and collaborate in its further development.

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

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.

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

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.

Envy: The biochemical substrates

The concept of ‘envy’ (in Latin, invidia) is old. Envy or coveting the possessions of others is prohibited in the Ten Commandments and became a central tenant of the Catholic Church. Prudentius, a Roman Catholic scholar, writing in AD 410, considered envy to be the antonym of ‘kindness’. Envy was added to the list of seven ‘deadly sins’, by the Catholic Pope Gregory I in the late 6th Century and was later described in Dante's The Divine Comedy.