E04444: Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues (3.5), describes the ability of *Sabinus (bishop of Canosa, southern Italy, ob. 556, S01729) to identify Totila, the king of the Goths, despite his blindness, and how the holy man did not die after drinking poison. Written in Latin in Rome, c. 593.
online resource
posted on 2017-12-07, 00:00authored byfrances
Gregory the Great, Dialogues 3.5
Summary:
Sabinus had become completely blind in his old age. The king of the Goths, Totila, tried to test the holy man. He sat next to him and offered him a cup. Sabinus was able to identify the king, proving his holiness.
On another occasion, an ambitious archdeacon who sought the episcopal see tried to poison the bishop. Sabinus knew the cup was poisoned, made a sign of the cross over it and drank it. He did not die, but the poisoner did, as if he had drunk from the poisoned cup himself.
Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts
Language
Latin
Evidence not before
590
Evidence not after
604
Activity not before
510
Activity not after
566
Place of Evidence - Region
Rome and region
Place of Evidence - City, village, etc
Rome
Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Rome
Rome
Rome
Roma
Ῥώμη
Rhōmē
Major author/Major anonymous work
Gregory the Great (pope)
Cult Activities - Miracles
Miracle during lifetime
Revelation of hidden knowledge (past, present and future)
Power over life and death
Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Monarchs and their family
Slaves/ servants
Foreigners (including Barbarians)
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
Canosa is in the north of modern Puglia, and was a major late antique settlement. Totila reigned as king of the Ostrogoths 541-552, during Justinian's conquest of Italy.
Bibliography
Edition:
Vogüé, A. de, Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 260 (Paris: Cerf, 1979).
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.
Vogüé, A. de, "Grégoire le Grand et ses Dialogues d’après deux ouvrages récents," Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 83 (1988), 281–348.