Gregory the Great, Dialogues (1911) Book 4.  pp. 177-258.

[Footnotes moved to the end and combined with editorial notes]

1. Chapter. I. p. 178. There is a certain resemblance here with the famous opening of the seventh book of Plato's Republic;but Gregory, in spite of his residence at Constantinople, knew hardly any Greek, and the analogy is probably accidental.

1. Chapter III. p. 180. "Man, therefore, as he is created in the middle state." Cf.Dante in the De Monarchia(iii. 16).

1. ¹ Eccles. 3, 17-20.

1. ¹ Eccles. 12, 13.

1. ² Ibid.5, 18.

1. ³ Ibid.7, 2.

1. ¹ Eccles. 7,2.

1. ² Ibid.11,9.

1. ³ Ibid.6, 8.

1. ¹ Eccles. 9, 10.

1. ² 1 Cor. 9, 22.

1. ¹ Hebr. 11, 1.

1. Chapter VIII. p. 188. The monastery founded by St. Benedict at Terracina has been already mentioned, Bk. II. chap. 22.

1. Chapter X. p. 189. Venerabilis pater nomine Spes."Cample" is, perhaps, Campello sul Clitunno, nearer Spoleto than Norcia.

1. Chapter XII. p. 192. For "Read" (Reate) read "Rieti." A St. Juvenal was Bishop of Narni in the fourth century, but he was not a martyr ; St. Eleutherius (not to be confused with St. Gregory's friend, the Abbot of that name), Pope and martyr, suffered death under the Emperor Commodus in 189.

1. Chapter XIII. pp. 192, 193. The Roman patrician and Christian philosopher, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, was consul in 485, and afterwards Head of the Senate ; he was put to death by Theodoric in 525 (cf.below, chapter 30). He was the father-in-law of Boethius, and Galla was therefore the sister of the latter's wife, Rusticiana. It was to this Galla (Ad Gallant viduam)that St. Fulgentius of Ruspe addressed his treatise, De Consolatione super morte mariti et de statu viduarum(In Migne, P.L. LXV., coll. 311-323). Another Symmachus, the son of Boethius, was consul in 522 ; but chronological considerations make it clear that his grandfather is the person whom St. Gregory means.

1. Chapter XIV. p. 194. The story of Servulus is told by St. Gregory in his 15th Homily. (Homiliarum in Evangelia,Lib. I. Homilia15.)

1. ¹ Homelia 15.

1. Chapter XV. p. 195. Homiliarum in Evangelia,Lib. II. Homilia40.

1. Chapter XV. p. 196. Praeneste, or Palestrina, was always a haunt for hermits and ascetics in the Middle Ages. For a later instance, that of the beata Margherita Colonna, seeMaud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna,pp. 32, 33.

1. Chapter XVI. p. 198. The story of Tharsilla, or Tarsilla, is told at greater length in the Homilies (Lib. II. Homilia38). Tharsilla, Gordiana, and Emiliana were the three sisters of St. Gregory's father, Gordianus ; one, Gordiana, returned to the world and married. The Pope Felix, whom St. Gregory describes as atavus meus,was probably the third Pope of that name, who was Bishop of Rome from 483 to 492, famous for his struggle with the patriarch Acacius of Constantinople. He was a married man before taking priest's orders, but his exact relationship with St. Gregory is uncertain. This story curiously suggests the apparition of St. Gregory himself to the dying Santa Fina, painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio at San Gimignano.

1. Chapter XVIII. p. 200. He refers to the great pestilence that devastated Rome at the beginning of 590, during which he was elected Pope on the death of Pelagius II.

1. Chapter XIX. p. 201. In the Homilies (Lib. II. Homilia35), St. Gregory speaks of Stephen as "pater monasterii juxta Reatinae urbis moenia constituti." Cf.above, Bk. IV. chap. 11.

1. Chapter XXI. p. 202. Cf.note on Bk. III. chap. 22.

1. Chapter XXII. p. 203. Sura is the present Sora in the valley of the Liris (included in the modern province of Caserta), still famous for the abbeys in its neighbourhood.

1. Chapter XXIII. p. 203. For "Marsori" read "Marsi" (Ecclesia Marsorum).The district indicated is the modern Abruzzi.

1. ¹ 3 Kings 13, 24-28.

1. ¹ Luke, 17, 37.

1. ² Philipp. 1, 23.

1. ³ 2 Cor. 5, 1.

1. ⁴ Isai. 61, 7.

1. ⁵ Rev, 6, 11.

1. Chapter XXV. p. 205. This appeal to these two texts in Isaiah and the Revelation of St. John, for evidence of the resurrection of the body, became a traditional one with mediaeval theologians. Thus Dante, answering St. James as to the object of the Christian's hope (Par.xxv. 88-96) :

1. Chapter XXVI. p. 206. The church of San Sisto is on the Via Appia within the city ; it was given by Honorius III. to St. Dominic in the thirteenth century, and is now occupied by Dominican nuns. The Via Praenestina runs from the Porta Maggiore (Porta Praenestina) to Palestrina. ['Way that is called Appia' replaced by 'Appian Way' in online text].

1. Ibid.p. 207. Portua (more properly Portus, the Portus Traiani) is the modern Porto, an important commercial seaport under the Empire, but now a village two miles from the sea. ['Portua' replaced by 'Portus' in online text]

1. Ibid,p. 208. Patricii Narsae temporibus.The Narses meant is evidently the famous Armenian eunuch who reconquered Italy from the Goths and governed Rome for the Empire from 552 to 567 ; not the Narses, a contemporary of St. Gregory, to whom several of the Pope's letters are addressed. ['Narsus' replaced by 'Narses' in online text]

1. Chapter XXVII. p. 210. Centumcellaeis the present Civita Vecchia. "Earl" is the translator's equivalent of comes,or "count," the chief military officer of a district. St. Gregory relates this story in his Homilies (Lib. II. Homilia36). ['Earl' replaced by 'Count' in online text.]

1. ¹ Luke 16, 24.

1. ¹ Matt. 25, 41.

1. Chapter XXX. p. 213. Julianus hujus Romanae Ecclesiae secundus defensorhas already been mentioned, Bk. I. chap. 10. He was the second of this name to hold the office of "defender." Cf. note on Bk. I. chap. 4.

1. Ibid.p. 214. Theodoricus (Thiuda reiks), whom we call Theodoric the Goth, was born in 454, invaded Italy as the delegate of the Emperor Zeno in 489, and, by his capture of Ravenna from Odoacer in 493, founded the short-lived Ostrogothic kingdom. In 500, he came to Rome as a pacific and beneficent sovereign, hailed by the Romans as a new Trajan, pledging himself to maintain the Roman laws for the benefit of the Roman People. He restored the walls and decreed the preservation of the monuments of the city, "King of the Goths and Romans in Italy," he ruled nominally as the representative of the Emperor at Byzantium. Himself an Arian, Theodoric during the greater part of his reign treated Arians and Catholics with the same impartial justice as he did Goths and Romans in the political field. But the reconciliation between the Byzantine Court and the Holy See in 519, the consequent tendency of the Roman Senate towards Constantinople rather than towards Ravenna, and the increasing bitterness between Arians and Catholics both in East and West, gradually alienated the King from his Catholic and Roman subjects, and he finally degenerated into a religious persecutor and suspicious tyrant. The philosopher Boethius was tortured to death by his orders in 524 or 525 ; Symmachus, the Head of the Senate, was executed in 525 ; and Pope John I. (cf,above, Bk. III. chap. 2) died in the King's dungeons at Ravenna in May, 526. Theodoric followed his victims to the grave on August 30, 526, the day on which, according to his decree, all the Catholic churches in Italy were to have been surrendered to the Arians. At some uncertain date, his body was cast out of his magnificent tomb at Ravenna : Agnellus of Ravenna, who wrote in the first half of the ninth century, states that it had been done before his time (Liber Pontificalis,in Migne, P.L. cvi. col. 535) ; but there seems no foundation for the assertion of Fra Salimbene, the thirteenth-century chronicler of Parma (Cronica,ed. Holder-Egger, pp. 209, 210), that it was St. Gregory the Great himself who ordered this work of desecration to be carried out. The crater mentioned in this unpleasant legend is either that of Vulcano or Stromboli, two of the Lipari islands.

1. Chapter XXXI. p. 215. San Lorenzo in Damaso, the basilica of St. Lawrence near the site of Pompey's theatre, was founded by Pope St. Damasus (366-384).

1. Chapter XXXII. p. 216. "Courtier" is here, as before, the translator's equivalent for curialis. Cf.above, note on Bk. II. chap. II.

1. ¹ Luke 16, 19-25.

1. Chapter XXXIII. p, 219. "For seeing that they do in that place with unspeakable brightness (common to all) behold God, what is there that they know not, that know him who knoweth all things."CfDante, Par.xv. 55-63, xxi. 82-102.

1. Chapter XXXV. p. 219. A "natural brother" (germanus frater)means a brother according to the flesh, not merely a fellow-monk.

1. ¹ Psalm 118, 19-20.

1. Ibid.p. 220. Optiowas not Stephen's name, but his military rank. The right reading is not cui cognomen Optio fait, "whose surname was Optio," but qui in numero optio fuit,"who in rank was adjutant."

1. Ibid.p. 221. This allegorical ship is possibly the ultimate source of the boat that conveys the souls of the redeemed from the mouth of the Tiber in Dante's Purgatorio.

1. ¹ John 14, 2.

1. ² Matt. 13, 30.

1. Chapter XXXVI. p. 223. Evasa appears to be the island of Ibiza in the Balearic Archipelago.

1. Ibid.pp. 223-226. This famous and important chapter may be regarded as the germ of the later mediaeval visions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The Bridge is the "Bridge of Dread," said to be of Oriental origin, which occurs in so many of the later visions of the other world (though not in the Divina Commedia ); this is its first appearance in the West, the Latin version of the Visio Sancti Pauli,in which (though not in the original Greek) it also occurs, being later. The sumptuous house of gold, which is being built for an unnamed person, is the ultimate source of the empty throne seen preparing (probably for St. Bernard) in the vision of Tundal (Visio Tnugdali,ed. cit., p. 54), and for Henry VII. in the Divina Commedia(Par.xxx. 133-138). The episode of the priest, who passes safely over the bridge, is dramatically expanded in the vision of Tundal (ed. cit., pp. 15, 27).

1. Ibid.p. 227. In the usual version of the Latin text, the arrangement of the chapters is different. The story of Deusdedit forms chapter xxxvii., the story of the boy Theodorus being included with those of the deaths of Chrysaorius and the monk of Iconium as chapter xxxviii.

1. 1 Matt. 7, 14.

1. ² Job 24, 20.

1. ³ Gen. 19, 24.

1. Chapter XXXVII. p. 229. The story of Theodorus (without his name) is told by St. Gregory in the Homilies (Lib. II. Homilia38).

1. Chapter XXXVIII. p. 230. Chrysaorius in the Latin text.

1. Ibid.p. 232. St, Gregory calls this monastery in Greek Tw~nGala&twn,that is, "of the Galatians."

1. ¹ John 12, 35.

1. ² Isai. 49, 8.

1. ¹ 2 Cor. 6, 2.

1. ² Eccles. 9, 10.

1. ³ Psalm 118, 1.

1. ⁴ Matt. 12, 32.

1. ⁵ 1 Cor. 3, 11-15.

1. Chapter XL. pp. 234, 235. Pope Anastasius II., whom Dante (Inf.xi. 7-9) condemns as a heretic, died in November 498. Two rival conclaves met: the one, which represented the majority, was held in the Lateran, and elected the Sardinian deacon Symmachus to the papacy; the other, which favoured a reconciliation with the Emperor (Anastasius I.), in S. Maria Maggiore, chose for Pope the Archdeacon Laurentius, who was a Roman. After a violent struggle, an appeal to the arbitration of Theodoric resulted in the general recognition of Symmachus. The struggle was afterwards renewed, until Laurentius finally withdrew in 505. In the synod (Synodus palmaris) which was called in 501 to investigate the charges against Symmachus, the famous principle of the Church of Rome was established : Summa sedes a nemine judicatur. Cf.Grisar, Geschichte Roms und der Papste im Mittelalter,nos. 308, 309. Paschasius died a few years before the death of Symmachus (514) ; he is venerated as a saint on May 31. A work on the Holy Ghost, De Spiritu Sancto libri duo,is attributed to him, and identified with the "rectissimi et luculenti de Sancto Spiritu libri," of which St. Gregory here speaks (Migne, P.L. lxii.); but its authenticity has been disputed, and it is included by Augustus Engelbrecht among the works of Bishop Faustus o. Riez (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum,vol. xxi., Vienna, 1891.) A letter from Paschasius to Eugippius, the biographer of St. Severinus, is extant (In Migne, tom. cit.,and ed. Pius Knoell in Corp. Script. Eccles. Lat.,vol. ix. pars 2, Vienna, 1886). The scene of this apparition is laid by St. Gregory in Angulanis thermis,that is, the baths of Angulus, or Paterno, near the modern Castel Sant' Angelo in the Abruzzi. This story of Paschasius is cited by mediaeval writers on the place of Purgatory as implying that souls are punished in the places on earth where they committed their faults. In his Commentary upon the Sentencesof Peter the Lombard (In Lib. IV. Sententiarum, dist. xx. pars i. art. i. q.6), St. Bonaventura combats this theory, declaring that the case of Paschasius was a special dispensation, and not according to the general purgatorial rule; for "it appears altogether incredible, or at least improbable, that all the souls who sinned in Paris should be punished in Paris."

1. ¹ Psalm 86, 13.

1. ² Rev. 5, 1-3.

1. ¹ Matt. 25, 46.

1. ¹ Matt. 5, 44.

1. ² 2Tim. 2, 25-26.

1. Chapter XLIV. p. 240. This doctrine of St. Gregory's, that the faithful do not pray for the souls of those whom they suppose to be in Hell, is more explicitly stated in the Moralia(lib. xxxiv. cap. 19) : "The Saints do not pray for the unbelieving and impious that are dead, because they shrink from the merit of their prayer, concerning those whom they already know to be condemned to eternal punishment, being made void before that countenance of the just Judge." This is curiously inconsistent with the popular legend, first heard in the eighth century, that St. Gregory, moved by the tale of the justice and humility of Trajan towards the poor widow whose son had been slain, prayed and obtained that the soul of the Emperor might return from Hell to his body to win his salvation. This inconsistency is noticed by St. Thomas Aquinas, who discusses the story at some length (Summa Theologica,III. supl. Q. 71, A. 5 : Utrum suffragia prosint existentibus in Inferno). Dante speaks of the legend of Trajan and St. Gregory, in two famous passages (Purg.x, 73-93; Par. xx. 106-117).

1. Chapter XLV. p. 241. "Two manner of deaths," duobus etiam modis mors debet intelligi. Cf.Rev. xxi. 8 : "which is the second death." Thus Dante speaks of the souls of the lost, che la seconda morte ciascun grida (Inf.i. 117).

1. ¹ Ecclus. 34, 7.

1. ² Eccles. 5, 2.

1. ³ Gen. 37, 5-10.

1. ⁴ Matt. 2, 13.

1. ⁵ Daniel 2, 29-31.

1. Chapter XLVIII. p. 245. This power of saints, to "discern betwixt illusions and true revelations," is emphasised by St. Catherine of Siena.

1. Chapter LII. p. 246. In the Latin text, this John is described as in hoc urbe locum praefectorum servans,that is, vicar of the prefect or Rome. Bressa (Brixia) is the modern Brescia, of which St. Faustinus (martyred in the second century) is one of the patron saints.

1. Chapter LIII. p. 247. This Liberius, a contemporary ot St. Gregory, is not to be confused with the Liberius mentioned in Bk. II. chap. 35. The office that Valentinus held was ecclesiae Mediolanensis defensor (Cf.Book I. chap. 4, notes). St Syrus, who is specially venerated at Genoa, was Bishop of Pavia, and was martyred about 96.

1. Chapter LV. p. 249. "Two singing breads," duas oblationum soronas ;apparently, two unconsecrated hosts.

1. Ibid.p. 250. The monastery is, as usual, St. Gregory's convent of Sant' Andrea, on the Caelian Hill. In the Rule of St. Benedict,we read : "The beds shall be frequently searched by the abbot to guard against the vice of hoarding. And if any one be found in possession of something not allowed by the abbot, let him be subjected to the severest punishment" (chap. 55, Gasquet's translation).

1. Chapter LVI, p. 253. Cassius, Bishop of Narni, died in 558. The story of his death is told at greater length in the Homilies Lib. II. Homilia37).

1. ¹ 1 Kings 1. 18.

1. ² Matt. 5. 23-24.

1. ³ Matt. 18. 27.

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