St Gregory the Great: Dialogues

304 Pages·2002·14.38 MB·English

by  by Gregory the Great (Author), Odo John Zimmerman (Translator)

THE FATHERS
OF THE CHURCH
A NEW TRANSLATION
VOLUME 39
THE FATHERS
OF THE CHURCH
A NEW TRANSLATION
EDITORIAL BOARD
Hermigild Dressler, O.F.M.
Quincy College
Editorial Director
Robert P. Russell, O.S.A. Thomas P. Halton
Villanova University The Catholic University of America
Robert Sider Sister M. Josephine Brennan, l.H.M.
Dickinson College Marywood College
Richard Talaska
Editorial Assistant
FORMER EDITORIAL DIRECTORS
Ludwig Schopp, Roy J. Deferrari, Bernard M. Peebles
SAINT GREGORY
THE GREAT
DIALOGUES
Tra,nslated by
aDO JOHN ZIMMERMAN, O. S. B.
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS
Washington, D.C.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
JOHN A. GOODWINE, D.D.
Censor Deputatus
IMPRIMATUR:
~ FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN
Archbishop of New York
June I, 1959
Copyright © 1959, by
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
OF AMERICA PRESS, INC.
All rights reserved
Second Printing 1983
First paperback reprint 2002
ISBN 0-8132-1322-3
INTRODUCTION
REGORY THE GREAT (540?-604) is one of the strong
[11. men whom God raises up periodically to guide His
w Church and her members through periods of crises.
His social and intellectual background and his spiritual
formation prepared him well for the work awaiting him as
supreme shepherd of God's flock.
When he was about thirty-five years old, he resigned from
the high political office held, as Prefect of Rome, to enter
religious life. He founded six monasteries on his estates in
Sicily and turned his own home on the Caelian Hill in Rome
into the Monastery of St. Andrew. Then, after distributing
the rest of his wealth among the poor, he entered St. Andrew's
as an ordinary monk and lived there under the Rule of St.
Benedict, which he was later to praise for its discretion.
In 578 Pope Benedict I ordained him one of the seven
deacons of Rome, and the next year Pope Pelagius II sent
him as nuncio to the imperial court at Constantinople, where
he remained for six years. Shortly after his return to Rome,
be became abbot of St. Andrew's and five years later, when
Pelagius II died, the clergy and people of Rome elected
him Pope.
v
vi SAINT GREGORY
During a pontificate (590-604) which kept him very active
in administering the temporalities of the Church, he was ever
deeply concerned with the temporal and eternal welfare of
his people. He had them in mind in particular when he
wrote the Dialogues, the first three books of which contain
accounts of the lives and miracles of various Italian saints,
and the fourth an essay on the immortality of the soul.
It is clear from the general preface in Book 1 that St.
Gregory's chief reason for writing the Dialogues was to honor
the memory of the saints of Italy and to edify and instruct
his fellow countrymen. He wanted them to realize that they
were living in a land of saints and that great miracles were
as numerous among the Fathers of Italy as they had been
among the Fathers of the Desert and elsewhere. The book
was also written to comfort and encourage the people of
Italy during one of the most disheartening periods of their
history. The wars between the Emperor Justinian and the
barbarian Goths for the mastery of the country had left much
of it a wilderness. Men and women had to live in constant
dread of the savage Lombard hordes that swept down into
Italy in 568 and were still slaying and pillaging wherever
they turned. Floods and plagues and a long series of famines
added to the general gloom. Many even felt that the final
destruction of the world was at hand. After reading in the
first three books of Dialogues about the many striking miracles
performed in their very midst, they would no longer question
God's unfailing protection of His people. Then in Book 4
St. Gregory endeavored to strengthen their faith in the
unseen hereafter by proving that the soul does not perish
with the body and can look forward to eternal happiness.
Gregory presented his material in the form of a dialogue,
a literary device quite common among the pagan classical
authors as well as among the Fathers of the Church. The
INTRODUCTION Vll
discussions take place between the author and his deacon
Peter, and, as in the case of many earlier 'dialogues,' the
leading speaker completely dominates the conversation. He
did not employ this literary form, however, merely as a means
of interrupting his narrative from time to time and of adding
a note of informality. Peter's remarks and suggestions, his
questions and doubts, were designed to give Pope Gregory
an opportunity to draw spiritual lessons for his readers from
the incidents narrated. These digressions have great doctrinal
value and contain the practical moral reflections for which
St. Gregory is so famous.
Very likely, Peter was also meant to be a spokesman for
the members of the papal household, giving expression to
the interest and enthusiasm with which they had watched the
Pope compiling his narrative. For, as St. Gregory mentioned
in a letter to Maximian, l Bishop of Syracuse, it was in answer
to their urgent requests that he had originally decided to
write about the saints of Italy.
From this letter, too, we know that St. Gregory was busy
writing the DialogueJ' in the summer of 593. Perhaps the
work was nearing completion at the time, for he asked
Maximian to hurry and send the story about Abbot Nonnosus
and any other details that might be of interest. Very probably,
then, much of the material to be published was already at
hand. The members of the papal household would hardly
have urged him to write these lives had they not previously
heard many of them from his own lips. As spiritual father,
St. Gregory was in the habit of instructing his household in
asceticism as he had done during his mission at Constan-
tinople and later as abbot of St. Andrew's. These instructions,
no doubt, were enlivened by vivid narratives from the lives
1 Epistolas 3.50 (edd. Ewald·Hartmann, MGH Epist. 1 206).
viii SAINT GREGORY
of the saints of Italy, so that his audience became enthusiastic
enough to urge him to publish them. With materials ready
at hand, it was quite possible for the Pope to complete the
publication of the Dialogues in the fall of 593 or shortly
thereafter.
The present translation is based on the text given in
Moricca's critical edition of the Dialogues. The Douay Ver-
sion is tised for Scriptural citations from those books of the
Old Testament not yet available in the Confraternity Version.
New Testament quotations are from Monsignor Ronald
Knox's translation. Exceptions are indicated in the footnotes.
The translator wishes to express his indebtedness to Rever-
end Benedict Avery, O.S.B., of Saint John's Abbey, for
reading the manuscript and offering valuable suggestions,
and especially for his work as co-author of the translation of
Book 2, Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict (Collegeville,
Minnesota 1949) which is here reprinted with some slight
changes.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts:
Dialogorum Libr; IV opera et studio Monachorum S. Benedicti a
Congregatione S. Mauri (Opera omnia 2, Venice 1744).
J. P. Migne, Patrologia Lat,'na 66 (Paris 1847), Book 2; 77 (Paris
1848), Books 1,3,4.
U. Moricca, Gregorii Magni Dialogi (Rome 1924).
Translations:
E. Gardner (ed.) , The Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great (London
1911) .
J. Funk, Gregor des Grossen vier Bucher Dialoge, Bibliothek der
Kirchenvater, zweite Reihe, Band 3 (Munich 1933).
A. Hoffman, The Life and Miracles 0/ St. Benedict (Collegeville,
Minnesota 1925).
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
~~~ hp
1 Honoratus, abbot of the monastery at Fondi . 6
2 Libertinus, prior of that monastery . 9
3 The gardener of the same monastery . 14
4 Equitius, abbot in the province of Valeria 16
5 Constantius, sacristan of the Church of St.
Stephen near Ancona . 25
6 Marcellinus, Bishop of Ancona . 27
7 Nonnosus, prior of the monastery on Mt. Soracte 28
8 Anastasius, abbot of the monastery of Suppentonia 31
9 Boniface, Bishop of Ferentino . 34
10 Fortunatus, Bishop of Todi 41
11 The monk Martyrius of Valeria 49
12 Severus, priest of Valeria . 50
BOOK TWO
1 The mending of a broken tray 56
2 The saint overcomes a temptation of the flesh 59
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