scholarly journals The sword of god: Plague and episcopal authority in the Late Antique West

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Amanda Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Venerable Bede ◽  
Understanding Of Illness ◽  
Episcopal Authority

This thesis examines three major historical figures of Early Medieval Europe to discover the attitudes and responses to the plague: Pope Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours, and the Venerable Bede. Gregory the Great provides the standard for episcopal reaction to plague with his own example and with the advice given to two bishops whose districts suffered outbreaks of plague. I then examine Gregory of Tours' 'History of the Franks' and the Venerable Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People' to discover their understanding of illness in general, plague in particular, and the types of responses praised and condemned in their accounts.

scholarly journals “Jonah’s gourd” and its early Byzantine interpretations

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Dmitry Kurdybaylo ◽  
Inga Kurdybaylo
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bible Interpretation ◽  
Early Byzantine ◽  
Patristic Exegesis

Many modern scholars consider the Old Testament book of Jonah being written in a boldly parodic manner. The narrative engages many details that sound humorous for a modern reader. However, from the standpoint of late Antique and early Medieval patristic exegesis, it is often unclear whether Byzantine interpreters perceived such passages laughable or at least inappropriate for a prophetic writing. This study presents a few examples of early Byzantine commentaries to the episode with Jonah and a gourd (Jonah 4:6–11). None of the commentaries expresses any explicit amusement caused by the discussed text. However, the style, method, or context of each commentary appears to be passing the traditional bounds of Bible interpretation. The earlier interpreters adhere to the most expected moral reading of Jonah 4, but they use epithets, metaphors, or omissions, which produce the effect of paradox comparable to the biblical wording itself. The later commentaries tend to involve unexpected and even provocative senses. In such interpretations, God can be thought of as being able to play with a human or even to fool and deceive. What seems us humorous in the Bible, Byzantine commentators take primarily as a paradox, which they did not explain or remove but elaborate further paradoxically. The later an interpreter is, the bolder his paradoxical approach appears. The results of the study provide some clues to understanding how the interpretation of humorous, parodic, or ironical passages were developing in the history of Byzantine intellectual culture.

Servants of god?: Servi in the letters of Gregory the great

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Lisa Kaaren Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Leadership ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Religious Ideal ◽  
Medieval Christianity ◽  
The Church

When Gregory the Great styled himself 'servant of the servants of God' in his correspondence, he was drawing on a long tradition of using service as a metaphor to describe appropriate religious leadership and piety. However, his letters also reveal a church filled with servi, whose service to religion was neither metaphorical nor chosen, and upon whom both religious institutions and individuals were utterly dependent. This article explores the conjunction and disjunction between the rhetoric of service as a religious ideal in Gregory's correspondence, and the reality of service, which his letters indirectly reveal. It argues that the rhetoric and reality of service both shaped each other and that service thereby became a determinative model of behaviour in late antique and early medieval Christianity. Gregory's letters are therefore a useful case-study through which to explore an important issue in the development of the church as a sociallyembedded institution.

Gregory the Great and a papal missionary strategy

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Markus
Keyword(s):  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Holy Water ◽  
History Of

In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede includes a deservedly famous letter of Gregory I containing the Pope’s instructions to his missionaries in Kent on how to go about converting the heathen English to Christianity. The letter is addressed to Abbot Mellitus, one of the band of reinforcements sent to England from Rome in June 601. In it Mellitus is asked to instruct Augustine, established at Canterbury for the last four years, that ‘the sanctuaries of the idols among this nation should on no account be destroyed’; by all means, let the idols go; but the temples, if they be soundly constructed, need only be sprinkled with holy water and consecrated to the worship of the true God. In this way hardened English minds may be won to a stepwise ascent and not be required to make too large a leap of faith.

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