07 — Liturgy and Theology
Two of the things most firmly attached to Gregory’s name — the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in the East, and “Gregorian” chant in the West — are also two of the points where the traditional attribution and the historical record must be carefully distinguished. In the Orthodox Church the Presanctified Liturgy celebrated on the weekdays of Great Lent bears Gregory’s name, and it is from this association (alongside the Dialogues) that he is honoured as “the Dialogist”; yet the historical connection between Gregory and the rite is a real question. So too the medieval West credited him with the systematizing of liturgical chant. And in his eschatology — above all in Book IV of the Dialogues — Gregory taught a doctrine of post-mortem purification that the later Latin West built into purgatory and that the Orthodox East reads with care, accepting some elements and rejecting others. These files examine all three with named positions on each side.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Pope of Rome; Great Hierarch)
This is the theologically delicate heart of the collection, where the Gregory of devotion and the Gregory of history most need to be held apart and then rejoined. The Orthodox Church venerates Gregory as the Dialogist and reads his name over the Presanctified Liturgy; this is the living tradition, and it is not overturned by the historical observation that the rite is older and broader than any one author. Likewise the East honours Gregory while declining the later Latin doctrine of purgatory that grew, in part, from his eschatology — distinguishing what Gregory actually taught from what the medieval West made of it. Both files keep the dogma of the Church, the theologoumenon of a father, and the later doctrinal development distinct, per METHODOLOGY §4.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Presanctified and Gregorian Tradition | Why Gregory is “the Dialogist”; the attribution of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts to him in the East and the historical question behind it (the rite older and broader than any single author); the Western attribution of “Gregorian” chant and how scholarship assesses it — both with named positions. |
| Purgation, Penance, and the East | Gregory’s teaching on post-mortem purification, prayer for the dead, and the Eucharist offered for the departed (Book IV of the Dialogues; the “thirty Masses”); how this stands toward the later Latin doctrine of purgatory and what the Orthodox East does and does not accept — dogma vs theologoumenon, both sides. |
See Also
- The Disputed Authorship — the Dialogues, the source of the name “the Dialogist”
- The Dispute with Eutychius — another point of Gregory’s eschatology read across the traditions
- The Divine Liturgy — the Orthodox liturgical tradition of which the Presanctified is part
- Great Lent — the season in which the Presanctified Liturgy is served
- Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism — the East–West divergence over purgatory
References
- Gregory the Great. Dialogues, Book IV. Trans. Odo John Zimmerman. Fathers of the Church 39. New York, 1959.
- Schmemann, Alexander. Great Lent: Journey to Pascha. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969.
- Taft, Robert F. A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and related liturgical studies. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute.
- Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.