Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection.Carole Straw

Speculum ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 761-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Ann Matter
Keyword(s):  
Gregory The Great

Patron Saints of Early Medieval Italy, AD c. 350–800: History and Hagiography in Ten Biographies. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Nicholas Everett. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2016, x, 276 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 362-363
Author(s):  
Scott G. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Patron Saints

Like a modern-day Gregory the Great, Nicholas Everett has assembled a collection of little-known saints’ lives from early medieval Italy: the Life of Gaudentius of Novara; the Life of Barbatus of Benevento; The Sermon of the Notary Coronatus on the Life of Zeno, Bishop and Confessor; The Book Concerning the Apparition of St. Michael on Mount Gargano; the Life of Senzius of Blera; the Passion of Cetheus of Pescara; the Passion of Vigilius of Trent, Bishop and Martyr; the Passion of Apollinaris of Ravenna; the Passion and Life of Eusebius of Vercelli; and the Life of Sirus of Pavia.

scholarly journals The Patrimony of the Roman Church in the Time of Gregory the Great.

1919 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 347
Author(s):  
Harry J. Carman ◽  
Edward Spearing
Keyword(s):  
Gregory The Great

scholarly journals A Vindication of Desire: St Anselm, with C. S. Lewis

2021 ◽  
pp. 001258062110167
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Christian Life ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Anselm Of Canterbury ◽  
The World ◽  
Mutual Interest

Despite different starting points, in the cloister and the world respectively, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) enjoyed a mutual interest in the concept and experience of spiritual desire. Inspired by Lewis’ famous sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’ (1941), but principally guided by Anselm’s reflections, this essay argues that desire exists in a dynamic relationship with love and that, as a journey of desire, the Christian life is extremely challenging, since it is a journey into mystery and towards moral perfection, but also contains and ultimately fulfils God’s promise of eternal joy. It is hoped that one by-product of this exploration may be to accord greater recognition to Anselm as a spiritual, even mystical, theologian, recognising him in Jean Leclercq’s description of an earlier monastic leader, Gregory the Great (d. 604), as a ‘doctor of desire’.

Authority and Service in Gregory the Great

2004 ◽  
Vol 122 (427) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Aelred Niespolo
Keyword(s):  
Gregory The Great

Remembering Pope Gregory VII: Cardinal Boso and Alexander III

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
John Doran
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The Church

In the conclusion to his masterly biography of Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), H. E. John Cowdrey notes the paradox that the pope so lionized by modern historians, to the extent that the age of reform bears his name, was largely forgotten in the twelfth century and made little impact on Christian thought, spirituality or canon law. Cowdrey is not alone in his observation that Gregory ‘receded from memory with remarkable speed and completeness’; when he was remembered, it was as a failure and as one who brought decline upon the church. For Cowdrey, the answer to this conundrum lay in the fact that Gregory VII was in fact far closer to the ideals of the sixth century than of the twelfth; he was a Benedictine monk and shared the worldview and oudook of Gregory the Great (590–604) rather than those of the so-called lawyer popes Alexander III (1159–81) and Innocent III (1198–1216). Yet within a century of Gregory’s death he was presented by Cardinal Boso as a model pope, who had overcome a schismatic emperor and the problems which his interference had precipitated in Rome. For Boso, writing for the instruction of the officials of the papal chamber, the very policies set out by Gregory VII were to be pursued and emulated. Far from being a peripheral and contradictory figure, with more in common with the distant past than the near future, Gregory was the perfect guide to the beleaguered Pope Alexander III, who was also struggling against a hostile emperor and his antipope.

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