E04429: Gregory the Great, writing in Latin in c.593 in Rome, recounts how an anonymous monk of the monastery of Funda caught a thief with the aid of a serpent.

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posted on 2017-12-06, 00:00 authored by CSLA Admin

Gregory the Great, Dialogues 1.3

Summary:
A monk of Funda, who was the gardener, noticed a thief was stealing his vegetables. When he found the thief’s entrance, he ordered a serpent to guard the path. During the noon hour, when the monks were resting, the thief came and climbed the fence. When he caught sight of the snake, he was afraid, caught his shoe and was caught, hanging upside down, by the fence. The monk reprimanded him and gave him vegetables.

Summary: Frances Trzeciak.

History

Evidence ID

E04429

Type of Evidence

Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts

Language

Latin

Evidence not before

590

Evidence not after

604

Activity not before

500

Activity not after

580

Place of Evidence - Region

Italy south of Rome and Sicily

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Funda

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

Funda Adriatic Sea Adriatic Sea Adriaticum Mare

Major author/Major anonymous work

Gregory the Great (pope)

Cult Activities - Miracles

Miracle during lifetime Miracle with animals and plants Punishing miracle

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Other lay individuals/ people Animals

Source

Gregory the Great (Pope, 590-604) wrote his Dialogues on the Lives and Miracles of the Italian Fathers (Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrum italicorum) in Rome around 593. Organised into four books, the first three are a collection of lives and miracles of various Italian saints. The longest is the Life of Benedict of Nursia, which comprises the entirety of book 2. The final book consists of an essay on the immortality of souls after death. As a whole, the work documents and explains the presence of the miraculous in the contemporary world and the ability of saints to effect miracles both before and after death. The attribution of the Dialogues to Gregory has been disputed, most recently by Francis Clark who argued that the work was created in the 680s in Rome. Others - such as Adalbert de Vogüé, Paul Meyvaert and Matthew dal Santo - have, however, strongly argued for Gregory's authorship and it is broadly accepted that Gregory was responsible for the Dialogues. For a discussion of Gregory's devotion in writing the Dialogues, see E04383, and for the role of the Dialogues as a tract justifying the nature of miracles and theorising on the immortality of souls, see E04506. Gregory's principal aim in collecting the miracle stories of the holy men and a very few women of sixth-century Italy was to show the presence of God's power on earth as manifested through them, rather than to encourage the cult of these individuals. Indeed, though posthumous miracles at the graves of a few individuals are recorded (and also a few miracles aided by contact relics of dead saints), there is very little emphasis in the Dialogues on posthumous cult; some of the miraculous events that Gregory records (e.g. E04429) are not even attributed to named individuals. Although very few of the holy persons in the Dialogues are 'proper' saints, with long-term cult, we have included them all in our database, for the sake of completeness and as an illustration of the impossibility of dividing 'proper' saints from more 'ordinary' holy individuals.

Discussion

This story ought to be understood in the context of other ‘garden’ miracles throughout the Dialogues, and discussed by Barbara Müller (2005). These stories work on multiple levels. The role of the gardener mirrors the ideal role of the ideal church leader keeping watch over his flock and fighting threats from the Devil. Indeed, this scene - the scene with its focus on sin, the serpent and garden scenery – is reminiscent of Eden. Yet these scenes should also, in Müller’s view, be understood in the context of a world where garden work was a fact of daily life.

Bibliography

Edition: Vogüé, A. de, Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 269 (Paris: Cerf, 1978). Translation: Zimmerman, O.J., Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, Fathers of the Church 39 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1959). Further Reading: Clark, F.,The 'Gregorian' Dialogues and the Origins of Benedictine Monasticism (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Dal Santo, M., "The Shadow of A Doubt? A Note on the Dialogues and Registrum Epistolarum of Pope Gregory the Great (590–604)," Journal of Ecclesiatical History, 61.1, (2010), 3-17. Meyvaert, P., "The Enigma of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues: A Reply to Francis Clark," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988), 335–81. Müller, Barbara, "The diabolical power of lettuce, or garden miracles in Gregory the Great's Dialogues," Studies in Church History 41 (2005), 46-55. Vogüé, A. de, "Grégoire le Grand et ses Dialogues d’après deux ouvrages récents," Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 83 (1988), 281–348.