Relics, Feast, and Cult

Gregory died on 12 March 604, worn out by illness and the labours of fourteen years, and was buried in the portico of the basilica of St. Peter in Rome. His cult, remarkably, took root first not in Rome but in England — the land of his mission — where the monks of Whitby wrote the earliest Life of him around 704–714 and where Bede made him “our apostle”; only afterward did his veneration flower at Rome and across the West. In the East he is kept on 12 March as St. Gregory the Dialogist; in the West his feast was long 12 March and is now 3 September. His relics rest at St. Peter’s, and his image in both traditions often shows the dove of the Holy Spirit at his ear.

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

Death and Burial

Gregory’s last years were marked by chronic ill health — he suffered from gout and other ailments, and his letters speak often of his sufferings — and by unremitting labour. He died on 12 March 604, having governed the Roman Church for thirteen and a half years (Markus 1997, 17; Moorhead 2005, 1–7). He was buried in the portico (atrium) of the basilica of St. Peter in Rome, near the tombs of earlier popes. An epitaph was composed for his tomb that called him, in a famous phrase, consul Dei — “God’s consul” — celebrating the Roman aristocrat who had laid the honours of the world at the feet of Christ; the phrase later gave Jeffrey Richards the title of his biography, Consul of God (Markus 1997, 17; Richards 1980, title and 1–3).

In the centuries that followed, Gregory’s relics were translated within and around St. Peter’s as the basilica was rebuilt; portions of his relics are recorded at various points, and his principal shrine remains associated with St. Peter’s in Rome [Disputed: the medieval and later history of Gregory's relics is complex, with claims of translations and of portions held at several places (including, by some accounts, Soissons in France); the early and principal resting-place at St. Peter's is secure, but the detailed later relic-history is not fully recoverable and is reported here only in outline (Markus 1997, 17; standard hagiographical references)].

The English Origin of the Cult

One of the most striking facts about Gregory’s veneration is that his cult grew up earliest and most warmly in England, not in Rome. The Anglo-Saxon Church, which owed its very existence to the mission he had sent (see Sending Augustine of Canterbury), revered him as its founder and apostle. The earliest surviving Life of Gregory was written not by a Roman but by an anonymous monk of Whitby in Northumbria, around 704–714 — the same monastery and milieu that produced so much early English Christian culture (the Whitby Monk, Earliest Life of Gregory, ed. Colgrave 1968; Markus 1997, 17, 177–187). It is from this Whitby Life that the famous slave-boys story (“not Angles but angels”) first reaches us, before Bede took it up (see Sending Augustine of Canterbury).

A generation later, Bede (d. 735), in his Ecclesiastical History, gave Gregory the warmest possible tribute, devoting a whole chapter to his life and praises and calling him the apostle of the English (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 2.1; on Bede, see St. Bede the Venerable). The English devotion to Gregory — keeping his feast, telling his stories, treasuring his Pastoral Rule (which King Alfred would translate) — preceded and in some ways prompted the fuller Roman and Continental cult. The apostle was honoured first by the people he had won.

The Feast, East and West

In the Orthodox East Gregory is commemorated on 12 March, the day of his death, as “our father among the saints Gregory the Dialogist, Pope of Rome,” his memory woven into the services of Great Lent (see Veneration as a Great Hierarch). In the Latin West his feast was also long kept on 12 March; in the 1969 reform of the Roman calendar it was moved to 3 September, the day of his episcopal consecration in 590, so as to free his commemoration from the penitential weekdays of Lent. The Orthodox Church retains the older date.

Iconography: The Dove

In the iconography and art of both traditions Gregory is frequently depicted with a dove — the Holy Spirit — perched at his ear or shoulder, dictating or inspiring his words. The image arose from a story, told already by the Whitby monk and elaborated by later writers (notably Paul the Deacon and John the Deacon), that Gregory’s secretary once saw a dove at his master’s ear as he composed, understanding it as the Holy Spirit inspiring his writing (the Whitby Monk, Earliest Life; John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii) [Disputed: the dove-at-the-ear motif is a hagiographical legend, first attached to Gregory in the early *Lives* and developed in the West (where it also fused with the legend of the Spirit dictating the chant — see [The Presanctified and Gregorian Tradition](../07-liturgy-and-theology/the-presanctified-and-gregorian-tradition.md)); per METHODOLOGY §3.5 it is reported as the iconographic tradition it became, not as historical event]. Whatever its origin, the dove became Gregory’s emblem, a visual confession of the Church’s sense that his teaching was Spirit-given. In Orthodox icons he appears as a hierarch in episcopal vesture, blessing and holding the Gospel, named “Gregory the Dialogist, Pope of Rome.”

The Endurance of the Cult

Gregory’s cult, once established, never waned. In the West he became one of the four great Latin Doctors and a fixture of the medieval calendar, his name on the liturgy, the chant, and the pastoral office (see The Gregorian Legacy). In the East he kept his place among the holy hierarchs, his name on the Presanctified Liturgy, his feast in the heart of Lent. Across a Christendom that would later divide, Gregory remained one of the relatively few fathers honoured fully and continuously on both sides — a measure of the stature of the man and of the undivided age to which he belonged (see Veneration as a Great Hierarch).

See Also

References

  • The Whitby Monk. The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great. Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1968. (The earliest, English Life; the slave-boys and dove legends.)
  • Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People 2.1. Ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (Gregory as the apostle of the English.)
  • John the Deacon. Vita Gregorii Magni. (Ninth-century Roman life; the dove and the relics.)
  • Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 17, 177–187. (Death, burial, and the English origin of the cult.)
  • Richards, Jeffrey. Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. (The consul Dei epitaph.)
  • Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2005, 1–7.