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 perfor...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[2015]
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2015, Volume: 84, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-31 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Gregor, I., Pope 542-604
/ Saint's life
/ Middle Ages
/ Plague
/ Procession
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| IxTheo Classification: | KAD Church history 500-900; early Middle Ages KCB Papacy KCD Hagiography; saints RC Liturgy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0009640714001693 |