The Disputed Authorship

The most serious modern challenge to any of Gregory’s works is the thesis, argued at length by the scholar Francis Clark in The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues (1987), that the Dialogues are not Gregory’s work at all but a forgery composed in Rome around 670–680, some two generations after his death, and only then attributed to him. Clark pointed to the silence of the early sources, the difference in tone and theology from Gregory’s certain works, and the late appearance of the text in the record. His thesis provoked a vigorous and largely hostile scholarly response — from Paul Meyvaert, Adalbert de Vogüé, Robert Markus, and others — who defended the traditional authorship. The question is one of the live disputes of Gregorian scholarship, and is set out here both ways, with no verdict.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Pope of Rome; Great Hierarch)

The Traditional Attribution

The Dialogues have been ascribed to Gregory since the early Middle Ages, and the attribution gave him his most enduring title: in the Greek East he is Gregorios ho Dialogos, “Gregory the Dialogist,” named precisely from this work (see The Presanctified and Gregorian Tradition). The text was translated into Greek in the eighth century (by Pope Zacharias, himself a Greek), and it circulated under Gregory’s name throughout the medieval Church, East and West. Until the twentieth century the authorship was scarcely questioned: the Dialogues were simply one of Gregory’s major works, alongside the Pastoral Rule, the Moralia, and the Homilies (Markus 1997, 51–67; de Vogüé 1978–1980).

Clark’s Thesis

In 1987 the English scholar Francis Clark published The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, two volumes arguing that this received attribution is false. Clark’s central claims may be summarized:

The silence of the early record. Clark argued that the Dialogues are not securely attested in the decades immediately after Gregory’s death — that the earliest references and manuscripts are later than one would expect for a major work of so prominent an author, and that an “absence” in the record points to a later origin (Clark 1987, vol. 1; summarized in Markus 1997, 53–67).
Discontinuity with Gregory’s certain works. Clark held that the Dialogues differ markedly in tone, theology, and sensibility from the Moralia, the Pastoral Rule, and the Homilies — being far more credulous of the marvellous and the popular-miraculous than the sober, interiorized spirituality of the undoubted Gregory. He argued that genuine Gregorian passages (a body of authentic material he called the “Gregorian Dialogist” excerpts) had been worked up by a later compiler into the present narrative form.
A late-seventh-century forger. Clark proposed that an anonymous Roman cleric, around 670–680, composed the Dialogues as we have them, embedding genuine Gregorian fragments in a fabric of invented miracle-stories and attaching Gregory’s name, for motives connected with the promotion of the cult of relics and Italian saints in that period (Clark 1987, vols. 1–2).

The thesis was bold and, if accepted, would have removed the Dialogues — including the only Life of St. Benedict — from Gregory’s corpus and recast it as a pseudonymous seventh-century production.

The Scholarly Response

Clark’s thesis met with sustained and largely negative scholarly criticism. The principal responses came from the foremost editors and students of Gregory:

Paul Meyvaert, a leading Gregorian textual scholar, wrote detailed rebuttals arguing that Clark had misread the manuscript and citation evidence, that the early attestation is in fact adequate, and that the supposed discontinuities of style and thought are overstated and can be explained by the different genre and purpose of the Dialogues (Meyvaert, reviews and articles, 1988 onward; summarized in Markus 1997, 53–67).
Adalbert de Vogüé, editor of the standard critical edition of the Dialogues in Sources Chrétiennes, defended the Gregorian authorship at length on textual, linguistic, and historical grounds, holding that the work fits Gregory’s lifetime, vocabulary, and theological world (de Vogüé 1978–1980; and later defences against Clark).
R. A. Markus, in Gregory the Great and His World, weighed Clark’s case carefully and concluded against it, judging that the arguments from silence and from discontinuity do not bear the weight Clark placed on them, and that the balance of evidence continues to favour the traditional authorship — while acknowledging that Clark had performed a service in forcing the question into the open (Markus 1997, 53–67).

The broad consensus of Gregorian scholarship after the debate has been to reject Clark’s thesis and retain the traditional authorship, though the Dialogues are now read with a sharper awareness of their distinctive character and of the questions Clark raised about the text’s transmission and reception (Markus 1997, 53–67; de Vogüé 1978–1980).

How the Question Stands

[Disputed: the authorship of the *Dialogues* is a genuine scholarly controversy. Francis Clark (*The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues*, 2 vols., Brill, 1987) argued that the work is a late-seventh-century forgery incorporating genuine Gregorian fragments, on grounds of weak early attestation and discontinuity with Gregory's certain works. The great majority of specialists — Paul Meyvaert, Adalbert de Vogüé (the modern critical editor), R. A. Markus, and others — rejected the thesis and defended Gregory's authorship, judging Clark's arguments from silence and from style insufficient. Per METHODOLOGY §4 no verdict is offered here: the traditional attribution remains the scholarly majority position and the basis of the Church's veneration of Gregory "the Dialogist," while Clark's challenge stands on the record as a minority position that was seriously engaged and largely answered].

For an Orthodox reader two things may be held together. First, the Church’s veneration of Gregory does not rest on the resolution of a modern textual dispute: he is a saint for his life, his pastoral writings, his service of the Church, and his place in the undivided tradition, whatever the precise compositional history of the Dialogues. Second, the Dialogues have in any case carried Gregory’s name and shaped his memory for thirteen centuries, and the title “the Dialogist” by which the East knows him is now inseparable from him — so that even on Clark’s view the Gregory of devotion and the Dialogues cannot really be prised apart. The honest course, which this guide follows, is to name the dispute, report the consensus, and leave the textual question to the specialists while receiving Gregory as the Church has received him.

References

Clark, Francis. The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1987. (The forgery thesis; the “Gregorian Dialogist” excerpts; the late-seventh-century compiler.) See also Clark, The “Gregorian” Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine Monasticism (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
Meyvaert, Paul. Reviews and articles in response to Clark (e.g., in Journal of Ecclesiastical History and the Revue Bénédictine, from 1988). (The leading rebuttal of the forgery thesis.)
de Vogüé, Adalbert, ed. Grégoire le Grand: Dialogues. Sources Chrétiennes 251, 260, 265. Paris: Cerf, 1978–1980; and de Vogüé’s defences of the authorship against Clark. (The critical edition and its case for Gregorian authorship.)
Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 51–67. (Judicious assessment concluding against Clark and for the traditional authorship.)