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Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum

Gregory I

Language:
English
Status:
Complete work
Authorship:
Written by the author
Condition of the text:
No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
Extent:
~110,000 words · 538 passages
Cite this work
  • APAGregory I. (n.d.). Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/gregory-i/dialogi-de-vita-et-miraculis-patrum-italicorum
  • MLAGregory I. Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/gregory-i/dialogi-de-vita-et-miraculis-patrum-italicorum.
  • ChicagoGregory I. Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum Italicorum. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/gregory-i/dialogi-de-vita-et-miraculis-patrum-italicorum.

Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.

What it is about

Gregory the Great's Dialogues.

Context and history

Four books of lives and miracles of Italian saints; the second is, in its entirety, the only ancient biography of St Benedict, and hence the source of everything we know about the father of Western monasticism. Gregory (pope 590–604) wrote for a public emerging from imperial collapse, which needed examples rather than arguments. The original is in LATIN. This is an English translation; for citation, the original.

Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.

How it begins
prostrate at his prayers ; and calling upon him to rise and take his horse, he bade them go on a God’s name, saying that he needed him not ; but for all that they alighted and set him perforce upon his own beast, and so in all haste departed, and returning back to the river they passed over so quickly as though in the channel there had been no water at all ; and so it fell out that God’s servant having restitution made him of his one horse, that all the soldiers came likewise to enjoy the use of their own. At the same time one Buccellinus entered Campania with an army of French men, and because it was commonly said that the Abbey in which the holy man lived had great store of money, the French men, very greedy of so good a booty, came thither, and with raging minds went into his oratory (where he lay prostrate at his prayers) seeking and crying out for Libertinus ; and a strange thing it was, for though they came in, and stumbled upon him, yet could they not see him, and so, deceived through their own blindness, away they departed as empty as they came. At another time likewise upon business of the monastery, at the commandment of the Abbot who succeeded his master Honoratus, he took his journey to Ravenna. And for the great love which he bare to venerable Honoratus, always did he bear about him in his bosom one of his stockings. Being in his way it fell so out that a certain woman was carrying the corpse of her io libertinus of JFunDa

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