Inventing Gregory “the Great”: Memory,Authority, and the Afterlives of the Letania

Septiformis

JACOB A. LATHAM

In modern scholarship, Pope Gregory I “the Great” (590–604) is often simultaneouslyconsidered the final scion of classical Rome and the first medieval pope. The letaniaseptiformis, a procession organized into seven groups that Gregory instituted in 590in the face of plague and disease (and performed only once thereafter in 603), hassimilarly been construed as the very moment when Antiquity died and the MiddleAges were born. However, his Roman contemporaries in the papal curia largelyignored Gregory and his purportedly epochal procession. In fact, memory of theprocession languished in Italy until the late-eighth century when Paul the Deaconmade it the center of his Life of Gregory. At Rome, remembrance of the processionlay dormant in the papal archives until John the Deacon dug it out in the late-ninthcentury. How then did the letania septiformis come to be judged so pivotal? Over thecourse of centuries, the letania septiformis was inventively re-elaborated in literature,liturgy, and legend as part of the re-fashioning of the memory of Gregory. Shorn ofits context, the letania septiformis gained greater imaginative power, becoming theemblem of Gregory’s pontificate, if not also of an historical era.

IN modern historical scholarship Pope Gregory I (590–604) has often beenpresented simultaneously as the last Roman of Rome, the final scion ofclassical Rome’s great aristocratic families, and the first medieval pope—

in short, the linchpin of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.1 Inthe historiographical imagination, the letania septiformis, a seven-foldprocession first organized in 590 by Gregory in the face of plague and ruin(and performed only one further time in 603), once served as the verymoment when antiquity died and the medieval period was born—thoughmost accounts now render the procession as a pious omen auguring an

Though scholarship may seem a solitary endeavor, it is rather a communal enterprise and aparticular debt of gratitude is owed to Conrad Leyser, whose patient guidance is responsible formuch of what is good in this essay (and who is not at all liable for what is not).

Jacob A. Latham is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee,Knoxville.

1Eg, Claudio Leonardi, “Gregorio Magno e l’invenzione del Medioevo,” in Gregorio Magno el’invenzione del Medioevo, ed. Luigi Giovanni Giuseppe Ricci (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni delGalluzzo, 2006), 3–10.

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Church History 84:1 (March 2015), 1–31.© American Society of Church History, 2015doi:10.1017/S0009640714001693

ostensibly epochal pontificate. Many of his Roman contemporaries, however,particularly those in the papal curia, had a different opinion of the pope whowould eventually be called “the Great.”2 The brief life of Gregory in theLiber Pontificalis (LP), a serial biography of the bishops of Rome written bythe papal chancellery, signaled Gregory’s unpopularity in typical, obliquebureaucratese: it focused on institutional prestige and praised successors whoaided the clergy to ensure that readers would understand proper papalbehavior, while studiously avoiding outright condemnation and ignoring theprocession that would eventually be considered momentous.

How then did the letania septiformis come to be considered as the veryfuneral procession of antiquity or—less portentously—as the auspiciousintroduction to Gregory’s pontificate? In part, the answer lies in theinventive re-descriptions of the letania septiformis as an element in the re-fashioning of the memory of Gregory.3 This “rewriting and adaptation”allowed the processional narrative to “remain in use and meaningful toreaders,” maintaining the memory and the relevance of the letaniaseptiformis and so also Gregory.4 That is, over the course of centuries, there-descriptions of the letania septiformis re-invented tradition in order torespond to new situations by reference to the past.5 However, “that it may besuitably reinvented to fit the occasion might better be understood as a sign ofvitality rather than of decadence”—(re)invention does not stipulateinauthenticity.6

A contemporary source attests to each of the two iterations of the processionin which seven different groups gathered at seven different churches thatwere widely distributed throughout the city, before marching to a commondestination, S. Maria Maggiore: one, a lurid passage in the Historiarum libridecem (Ten Books of Histories) of Gregory of Tours (538/9–594) conjures the590 procession in apocalyptic tones that seem to have spurred subsequentmemorialization; and two, a sermon of Gregory I conserved among his papalletters preserves the procession announcement from 603. No author—not

2Conrad Leyser, “Late Antiquity in the Medieval West,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed.Philip Rousseau (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009), 39–41, a brief but incisive exploration of theepithet.

3Conrad Leyser, “The Memory of Gregory the Great and the Making of Latin Europe,700–1000,” University of Oxford History Working Paper 7 (2013): 1–18, http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:eab52f34-098a-4df7-bc9a-9c4807f2d70d.

4Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture, trans. S. Young (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 167,168.

5Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. EricHobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14.

6Marshall Sahlins, “Two or Three Things That I Know about Culture,” Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute 5 (1999): 409. On tradition more generally, see Steven Engler,“Tradition,” in The Brill Dictionary of Religion, vol. 4, ed. Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill,2007) 1907–1911.

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even Gregory’s early afficiandos, John Moschus (ca. 550–634)—the first to callGregory great in Greek, Isidore of Seville (570–636), Bede (673–735), or theanonymous author of the Whitby vita Gregorii (ca. 700–750)—mentions theprocession again until Paul the Deacon (ca. 720–799) in the second half ofthe eighth century. No text from Rome describes the letania until the vitaGregorii of John the Deacon (died by 882) in the late-ninth century. Like aneddy in “the stream of tradition,” the letania septiformis remained forcenturies an unexploited resource in Roman cultural memory until it was re-discovered by Paul the Deacon and John the Deacon.7 In conjunction withthe apocalyptic narrative frame in the account by the bishop of Tours, bothauthors offered descriptions that altered and elided details of the procession.On the one hand, Paul condensed the seven-fold procession into a portrait ofGregory as an icon of monastic virtue. On the other hand, seemingly inresponse to Paul’s restricted, monastic vision, John purportedly scoured thepapal archives, sifting through Gregory’s letters and homilies where he foundthe sermon from 603 which he used to develop a competing version ofGregory as a more broadly and classically conceived Christian leader.Once freed from the constraints of its original context, this procession was

free to develop in myriad ways. In ninth- and tenth-century liturgical texts,organizational details of the letania septiformis would be conflated withthose of the letania maior—a distinct and separate annual procession from S.Lorenzo in Lucina in the campus Martius to St. Peter’s performedthroughout the Middle Ages, which was possibly also instituted by GregoryI—creating a hybrid procession, which served as a symbol of Gregory’s andthereby the church of Rome’s liturgical acumen. The imaginative literarydescriptions and the amalgamated liturgical accounts culminated in theLegenda aurea in which a brave Gregory marched through the city in orderto convince the archangel Michael to sheath his sword and to end theplague, even as Romans fell dead in the streets. In short, the letaniaseptiformis was re-crafted through a series of inventive descriptions whichincreasingly divorced it from its original setting, inflecting it by means ofother rituals and legends and amplifying its import and impact—an emphasisthat has affected modern scholarship.

I. THE LETANIA SEPTIFORMIS IN 590 AND 603

According to Gregory of Tours, on a Sunday morning in 590 quite possiblyduring Lent, Gregory I, though not yet confirmed as bishop by the emperor,

7Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and PoliticalImagination (New York: Cambridge University Press 2011), 76–78; and Jan Assmann, Religionand Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. R. Livingstone (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UniversityPress, 2007), 1–30.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 3

preached a sermon, calling the citizens of Rome to repentance and reflection inthe face of ruinous floods and a devastating plague.8 At the end of his homily,Gregory directed his audience to gather at dawn on Wednesday in order toperform a letania septiformis—a procession in which the (Christian) citizensof Rome were divided into seven distinct groups which would meet at sevenseparate churches before each made their way to a common destination, thechurch now known as S. Maria Maggiore:

Therefore, let the clergy go forth from the church of the holy martyrs Cosmasand Damian with the priests of the sixth region; all the abbots, indeed, withtheir monks from the church of the holy martyrs Gervasius and Protasiuswith the priests of the fourth region. Let all the abbesses with theircongregations go forth from the church of the holy martyrs Marcellinusand Peter with the priests of the first region; all the children from thechurch of the holy martyrs John and Paul with the priests of the secondregion; moreover, all the laymen from the church of the holy protomartyrStephen with the priests of the seventh region; all the widows from thechurch of holy Euphemia with the priests of the fifth region. However,let all the married women go from the church of the holy martyr Clementwith the priests of the third region: so that all departing from theseindividual churches with prayers and tears may assemble at the basilica ofthe blessed Mary, ever Virgin, Mother of our Lord God Jesus Christ; sothat there, supplicating the Lord for a long time with weeping andgroaning, we may be worthy to merit pardon for our sins.9

8Victor Saxer, “L’utilisation par la liturgie de l’espace urbain et suburbain: l’exemple de Romedans l’Antiquité et le Haut Moyen Âge,” in Actes du XIe Congrès international d’archéologiechrétienne: Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, Genéve et Aoste, vol. 2, ed. Noël Duval, François Baritel,and Philippe Pergola (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1989), 963, suggests a Lentenprocession. For more detail on the processions, see Jacob A. Latham, “The Making of a PapalRome: Gregory I and the letania septiformis,” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, eds.Noel Lenski and Andrew Cain (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009), 293–304; Giula Barone,“Gregorio Magno e la vita religiosa della Roma del suo tempo” in Scritti per Isa: Raccolta distudi offerti a Isa Lori Sanfilippo, ed. Antonella Mazzon (Rome: Istituto storico italiano perMedio Evo, 2008), 19–25; and Margaret Andrews, “The Laetaniae Septiformes of Gregory I, S.Maria Maggiore and Early Marian Cult in Rome,” in The Moving City: Processions, Passagesand Promenades in Ancient Rome, ed. Ida Östenberg, Simon Malmberg, and Jonas Bjørnebye(New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2015). On the flood, see Paolo Squatriti, “The Floods of589 and Climate Change at the Beginning of the Middle Ages: An Italian Microhistory,”Speculum 85 (2010): 799–826.

9Gregory of Tours, Historiarum libri X, 2nd edition, eds. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison,Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, vol. 1.1 (Hanover: Hahn,1951), 10.1: Clerus igitur egrediatur ab eclesia sanctorum martyrum Cosmae et Damiani cumpraesbyteris regionis sextae. Omnes vero abbatis cum monachis suis ab eclesia sanctorummartyrum Protasi et Gervasi cum praesbyteris regionis quartae. Omnes abbatissae cumcongregationibus suis egrediantur ab eclesia sanctorum martyrum Marcellini et Petri cumpraesbyteris regionis primae. Omnes infantes ab eclesia sanctorum martyrum Iohannis et Paulicum praesbyteris regionis secundae. Omnes vero laici ab eclesia sancti protomartyris Stephanicum praesbyteris regionis septimae. Omnes mulieres viduae ab eclesia sanctae Eufimiae cum

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Avoiding the low-lying areas of Rome, the seven different groups wound theirway from a set of churches located above flood levels—situated in a rough arcfrom the Caelian hill in the southwest to the Quirinal hill in the west-northwest—to their destination on the Esquiline.Thirteen years later in 603, Gregory preached substantially the same

penitential homily and again organized a seven-fold procession by which hehoped to secure God’s mercy. At the end of the sermon, however, Gregorycalled for his audience to gather at first light the very next morning. Then,following an injunction to avoid any work, absent from the sermon in theTen Books of Histories, the processional regulations were given:

Let the litany of the clergy go out from the church of John the Baptist, thelitany of men from the church of the martyr saint Marcellus, the litany ofthe monks from the church of the blessed martyrs John and Paul, thelitany of the nuns from the church of the blessed martyrs Cosmas andDamian, the litany of married women from the church of the blessed firstmartyr Stephen, the litany of the widows from the church of the blessedmartyr Vitalis and the litany of the poor and infants from the church of theblessed martyr Cecilia.

Given at the basilica of Saint Sabina on the fourth day of the Kalends ofSeptember in the sixth indiction [August 29, 603].10

This iteration of the letania septiformis comes directly from Gregory himself asthe sermon and processional directions were preserved in the Hadrianiccollection of the registrum epistularum Gregorii (Gregory’s correspondence).The occasion for this procession must remain a matter of speculation, but itseems that flooding may be ruled out as S. Cecilia across the Tiber river wasavailable as was S. Marcellus on the eastern edge of the flood-prone CampusMartius. There are other, relatively minor differences. In the 590-performance, the poor were not a separate category, while the call for the603-procession eliminated the distribution of presbyters among all the

praesbyteris regionis quintae. Omnes autem mulieres coniugatae egrediantur ab eclesia sanctimartyris Clementis cum praesbyteris regionis tertiae, ut, de singulis eclesiis exeuntes cumpraecibus ac lacrimis, ad beatae Mariae semper virginis genetricis domini nostri Iesu Christibasilicam congregemur, ut, ibi diutius cum fletu ac gemitu Domino supplicantes, peccatorumnostrorum veniam promerire valeamus.

10Gregory I, S. Gregorii Magni Registrum epistularum, 2 vols, ed. Dag Norberg (Turnhout:Brepols, 1982), Appendix IX, 46–55: Sequitur: Letania clericorum exeat ab ecclesia sanctiIohannis baptistae, letania uirorum ab ecclesia sancti martyris Marcelli, letania monachorumab ecclesia beatorum martyrum Iohannis et Pauli, letania ancillarum Dei ab ecclesia beatorummartyrum Cosmae et Damiani, letania feminarum coniugatarum ab ecclesia beati primimartyris Stephani, letania uiduarum ab ecclesia beati martyris Vitalis, letania pauperum etinfantium ab ecclesia beatae martyris Ceciliae. Fecit et in basilica sanctae Sauinae sub die IIIIKalendarum Septembrium indictione sexta.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 5

assemblies. The declining prominence of the clergy from 590 to 603 maywell index Gregory’s elevation of monks and the corresponding devaluationof priests. Additionally, the letania septiformis of 603 took place the verynext day, instead of after three days of prayer and penance.11 Otherwise,both processions were similarly organized: four churches, including thefinal destination S. Maria Maggiore, and many of the same groups featuredin both: clergy, monks, nuns, married women, widows, laymen, andchildren.12 Also, in both cases seven individual cortèges—comprising eightdifferent categories by which the procession was organized—formed oneunified procession. Equally, both renditions of the letania septiformis werenotable acts of pastoral care, though, as this simple sketch suggests, not yetepochal ones.

II. THE ROMAN MEMORY OF GREGORY I

Despite such a seemingly compelling and compassionate launch, Gregory’spontificate garnered him few supporters in the curial establishment, asituation that endured throughout his reign.13 Specifically, Gregory’smonastic vocation threatened both the hard won position of the early papalbureaucrats and the prominence of Rome in the Mediterranean world, basedin part on the very papal institutions created by curial clerics. Then onlya few months after the second iteration in 603, Gregory himself died onMarch 12, 604. The recently deceased bishop was first buried in the atriumof St. Peter’s basilica in front of the secretarium. The inscription of thefuneral epitaph has largely disappeared, though numerous syllogae recordits contents, which have been characterized as quietly original, acommemoration that was neither wholly formulaic nor entirely personal.14

11Saxer, “L’utilisation par la liturgie de l’espace,” 963, on the date; and Barone, “GregorioMagno e la vita religiosa,” on the possible clerical demotion.

12Letizia Pani Ermini, “La Roma di Gregorio Magno,” in L’Orbis christianus antiquus diGregorio Magno: convegno di studi Roma, vol. 1, ed. Letizia Pani Ermini (Rome: Presso laSocietà alla Biblioteca vallicelliana, 2007), 19–47, and figs. 1 and 2 (maps of the processions).See also Andrews, “The Laetaniae Septiformes of Gregory I,” on S. Maria Maggiore as thedestination.

13See esp. P. A. B. Llewellyn, “The Roman Church in the Seventh Century: The Legacy ofGregory I,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25 (1974): 363–380; Conrad Leyser, Authority andAsceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),143–150, on Gregory’s isolation; and Conrad Leyser, “The Temptations of Cult: Roman MartyrPiety in the Age of Gregory the Great,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 289–307, on thecompetition between Gregory and Rome’s deacons and priests.

14Gabriel Sanders, “L’épitaphe de Grégoire le Grand: banalité ou message,” inGregorio Magno eil suo tempo: XIX Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana in collaborazione con l’Écolefrançaise de Rome, vol. 1 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum,” 1991), 251–281.Both Pierre Jounel, “Le culte de Saint Grégoire le Grand,” in Grégoire le Grand, eds. JacquesFontaine, Robert Gillet, and Stan Pellistrandi (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherchescientifique, 1986), 671–680; and Robert Godding, “Culto di Gregorio Magno,” in Enciclopedia

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At Rome, apart from the epitaph, only a rather brief entry in the clerical LPremarked upon the life of Gregory I, omitting mention of the letaniae eventhough it was written under a sympathetic successor, pope Honorius (625–638). In fact, the LP very selectively memorialized Gregory I—highlightinghis literary output, the mission to the English, a minor liturgical adjustment,his patronage of Roman churches (though credited with the construction ofonly a single edifice, S. Agata dei Goti), and his ordinations, which weretypical institutional concerns—with little to suggest Gregory’s eventual,retrospective prominence.15 As Alan Thacker has noted, “Unlike most earlymedieval saints, whose cults were local and focused around their tombs, inthe century and a half after his death Pope Gregory the Great was veneratedless in Rome, where he was born, died, and was buried, than in thedistant province of England.”16 While commemorated and even veneratedelsewhere—first in Spain where his works were already collected by the endof the sixth century and then in France, Ireland, and especially Englandwhere a flourishing cult developed by the early-eighth century—the Romanremembrance of Gregory was decidedly lackluster until the ninth century.17

In stark contrast to his later legacy, neither Gregory nor the letaniaseptiformis was particularly well received by his Roman clerical colleagues.However, none of the early non-Roman, pro-Gregory texts mentioned theostensibly revolutionary letania septiformis either—apart from Gregory ofTours.

Gregoriana: La vita, l’opera e la fortuna di Gregorio Magno, ed. Giuseppe Cremascoli andAntonella Degl’Innocenti (Florence: Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008), 80–82, consider thetomb and its epitaph as Gregory’s first cult site.

15Liber Pontificalis, 2nd ed., 3 vols, eds. Louis Duchesne and Cyrille Vogel (Paris: E. deBoccard, 1955–1957), vita 66. Hereafter cited as LP with vita and chapter number.

16Alan Thacker, “Memorializing Gregory the Great: The Origin and Transmission of a Papal Cultin the Seventh and Early Eighth Centuries,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 59. For what follows,see also Jounel, “Le culte de Saint Grégoire”; Godding, “Culto di Gregorio”; and Constant J. Mewsand Claire Renkin, “The Legacy of Gregory the Great in the Latin West,” in A Companion toGregory the Great, eds. Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 315–346.

17For Spain: Ann Kuzdale, “The Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great in the Literary andReligious Culture of Seventh- and Eighth-Century Europe” (PhD diss., University of Toronto,1995), 79–113; France: Bruno Judic, “À propos de la messe de saint Grégoire,” in L’usage dupassé entre Antiquité tardive et haut Moyen Âge: Hommage à Brigitte Beaujard, eds. ClaireSotinel and Maurice Sartre (Rennes: Presses Universitaires Rennes, 2008), 77–88; England:Constant J. Mews, “Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman Liturgy,” Journal ofMedieval History 37 (2011): 132–134; and Douglas Dales, “‘Apostle of the English’: Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of St Gregory the Great,” in L’ereditá spirituale di Gregorio Magno traOccidente e Oriente: Atti del simposio internazionale “Gregorio Magno 604-2004” Roma, ed.Guido Innocenzo Gargano (Verona: Gabrielli Editori, 2005), 293–306; northern Europe: R.Bremmer, K. Dekker, and D. Johnson, eds., Rome and the North (Paris: Peeters, 2001); and seealso the essays in Neil and Dal Santo, eds., A Companion to Gregory the Great, 315-386 for ageneral consideration.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 7

At Rome, Gregory was known as a teacher and author whose emphasis onmonastic and ascetic virtues did not win universal acclaim. John the Deaconin his late-ninth-century vita Gregorii dramatized the anti-Gregorianbacklash with an emblematic story in which the Romans wanted to burnGregory’s books in order to obliterate his memory.18 In particular, hismonastic values conflicted, it seems, with the institutionalized habits of thepapal curia. The papal clergy had developed into a rather unyieldinginstitution whose perks and privileges its members were loath to relinquish.For example, in 594 Gregory wrote to the bishop of Ravenna to protest theillegitimate clerical occupation of monastic churches. While scolding theRavennate bishop, Gregory’s opinion of certain clerics emerged all tooclearly: “For I cannot endure in any way the sacred places being destroyedthrough the vanity of clerics.”19 In addition, Gregory’s attempts to placemonks and ascetics in positions of authority disrupted the status quo of theclergy, damaging its pride in office. Finally, the Roman clergy may havebeen concerned for Rome’s place in Christendom. The papal bureaucracyand its clerical methods had helped make Rome a powerful Christian capital.Gregory, for all of his Roman patriotism, may have threatened this positionby undermining the papal institution and its independence with ascetic andeven apocalyptic ideals and by tying the fortunes of Rome too closely to theByzantine emperor.20

In fact, the clerical values of the papal administration asserted themselvesquite pointedly in the vita of Sabinian (604–606), Gregory’s successor whosupposedly “filled the church with clerics.”21 Apparently, the memory ofSabinian served as a vehicle for clerical revenge, for which reason, perhaps,the Whitby vita Gregorii depicts an unnamed successor, probably Sabinian,as jealous of Gregory and penurious with the church’s store of wheat onaccount of which a spirited but defunct Gregory “kicked the man in thehead. His successor died within a few days from the pain of the blow.”22

Several subsequent LP vitae also highlight clerical concerns. For example,

18John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 4.69 (Patrologia Latina [hereafter PL] 75 cols. 221D-222B), onwhich Lucia Castaldi, “L’Archivum Lateranense e la transmissione delle opere di GregorioMagno,” in Ricci (ed.), Gregorio Magno e l’invenzione del Medioevo, 67–68.

19Gregory I, Epistula 5.1: quia ego nullomodo patior loca sacra ut per clericorum ambitumdestruantur, on which see Mews, “Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict,” 127–129.

20On Gregory’s apocalypticism, see Leyser, Authority and Asceticism, 150–159.21LP 67.2: Hic ecclesiam de clero implevit.22Anonymous Whitby, Vita Gregorii 28: pede suo percussit in caput. Cuius dolore percussionis

in paucis diebus / defunctus est in The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, By an Anonymous Monkof Whitby: Text, translation & notes by Bertram Colgrave (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press,1968), on which see Llewellyn, “The Roman Church,” and Thacker, “Memorializing Gregory theGreat,” 62. See Sofia Boesch Gajano, “La memoria della santità: Gregorio Magno autore e oggettodi scritture agiografiche,” in Gregorio Magno, nel XIV centenario della morte (Rome: Accademianazionale dei Lincei, 2004), 337 for clerical revenge.

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Boniface III (607) obtained recognition of the Roman church as head of allchurches from the Byzantine emperor Phocas.23 Deusdedit (615–618)“greatly loved the clergy; he restored the sacerdotes and clergy to theiroriginal places.”24 “For his funeral, [Boniface V (619–625)] left an entirestipend to all the clergy”—as did Severinus (640), who “loved the clergyand increased the bounty for them all,” followed by John IV (640–642),Agatho (678–681), John V (685–686), and Conon (686–687).25 Likewise,“on Easter Day this holy man [Benedict II (684–685)] honoured the clergyof various ranks with preferments.”26 Even Honorius, despite his monasticsentiments and Gregorian predilections, was praised for his support of theclergy: “In his time he did much good. He educated the clergy.”27

Nonetheless, the mid-seventh-century Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (aso-called “pilgrim guide” possibly composed under Honorius) seeminglyillustrates Honorius’ Gregorian sympathies—as well as those of visitors toRome—when it guides pilgrims to the “bed of the holy father Gregory.”28

A few ensuing popes also favored Gregorian, ascetic ideals. Boniface IV(608-615), like Gregory, “made his own house into a monastery andenriched it.”29 Adeodatus (672–676) grew up in a monastery in the middleof the seventh century, which he later enlarged.30 Such sentimentsnotwithstanding, the papal, clerical establishment ensured that posteritywould view its popes favorably by means of the LP vitae, a powerfulinstrument of institutional memory that consistently praised popes whobuttressed the position of the clergy.31

Gregory’s reputation at Rome began to wax in the late-seventh century whenpope Vitalian (657–672) sent Gregorian and other Roman relics to King Oswiu

23LP 68.1.24LP 70.1: Hic clerum multum dilexit, sacerdotes et clerum ad loca pristine revocavit, trans. R.

Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber pontificalis), 2nd edition (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,2000).

25LP 71.3 (Boniface): Hic demisit omni clero pro obsequias suas rogam unam integram (trans.Davis, Book of Pontiffs), 73.5 (Severinus):Hic delixit clerum et omnibus donum augmentavit (trans.Davis, Book of Pontiffs), 74.3, 81.18, 84.5, and 85.5.

26LP 83.5: Clerum videlicet diversis ordinibus in diem sanctum Paschae honoribus ampliavit,trans. Davis, Book of Pontiffs.

27LP 72.1: Hic temporibus suis multa bona fecit. Hic erudivit clerum.28Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae in Codice topografico della città di Roma, vol. 2, eds. R.

Valentini and G. Zucchetti (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1940–53), 98: ad Gregorii lectum,patris sancti (see also 99, ad corpus sancti patris Gregori), on which see Debra Birch,Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change (Woodbridge, Suffolk: BoydellPress, 1998), 12–13.

29LP 69.3: Hic domum suam monasterium fecit, quem et ditavit, trans. Davis, Book of Pontiffs.30LP 79.4.31See apposite remarks by Marios Costambeys and Conrad Leyser, “To be the neighbour of St

Stephen: patronage, martyr cult, and Roman monasteries, c. 600-c. 900,” in Religion, Dynasty,and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300-900, eds. Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 262–287, at 264–270.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 9

of Northumbria.32 As early as the late-seventh century, a mass for Gregory wasintroduced into the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, possibly by popeSergius (687–701), as part of a wider elaboration of papal public ceremonial,which was most impressively evidenced by the Sergian Ordo romanusprimus (ca. 700) which outlined a spectacular papal, stational liturgy.33

However, the mass for Gregory first appeared only in the Hadrianum, theredaction of the Roman sacramentary that pope Hadrian (772–797) sent toCharlemagne in the late-eighth century. Charlemagne had requested a puresacramentary of Gregory I—though such a composition was seemingly firstattributed to Gregory only in the mid-eighth century by Egbert of York. PopeHadrian obliged the king of the Franks by sending the most authenticsacramentary available, whose title emphasized its Gregorian authenticity—“This sacramentary . . . was published by Saint Gregory, the Roman pope.It was written in a room of the library from an authentic book”—intimatingthat the sacramentary may have only become “Gregorian” at this moment.34

That is, although some of the contents of the “Gregorian” sacramentary mayhave been penned by Gregory, it seems to have been considered trulyGregorian only by the late-eighth century.

In the mid-eighth century, Gregory III (731–741), whose name along withthat of his immediate predecessor Gregory II (715–731) might signal a risingtide of Gregorian sympathies, is thought to have erected an altar to S.Gregorii ad ianuas at S. Paul’s outside the walls.35 Yet, the cult of Gregory Iat Rome truly blossomed only in the ninth century as Roman veneration

32Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 3.29.33On the development of papal ceremony, see John F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of

Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome: Pont.Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987), 104–166; Saxer, “L’utilisation par la liturgie del’espace”; Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor: liturgia e architettura nella Roma tardoantica emedievale: Basilica Salvatoris, Sanctae Mariae, Sancti Petri, 2 vols. (Vatican City: BibliotecaApostolica Vaticana, 1994); Thomas F. X. Noble, “Topography, Celebration, and Power: themaking of a papal Rome in the eighth and ninth centuries,” in Topographies of power in theearly Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill,2001), 83–91; and John F. Romano, “The Fates of Liturgies: Towards a History of the FirstRoman Ordo,” Antiphon 11 (2007): 43–77.

34Jean Deschusses, ed., Le sacramentaire grégorien: ses principales formes d’après les plusanciens manuscrits, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1971–1982), 85: Hicsacramentorum . . . a sancto Gregorio papa romano editum. Ex authentico libro bibliothecaecubiculi scriptum, and 127 #30: the mass. On Gregorian sacramentary, see Cyrille Vogel,Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, trans. William G. Storey and Niels KroghRasmussen (Washington, D.C.: Pastoral Press, 1986), 80–82, 99; Marcel Metzger, LesSacramentaires (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994), 59–65, 79–80; and Éric Palazzo, A History ofLiturgical Books from the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century, trans. Madeleine Beaumont(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998), 50. On the addition of the mass, Judic, “À proposde la messe de saint Grégoire.” For a different slant on Gregory and the liturgy, see Mews,“Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict,” 134–138.

35Jounel, “Le culte de Saint Grégoire”; and Godding, “Culto di Gregorio.”

10 CHURCH HISTORY

finally caught up to Gregorian devotion elsewhere. At the very beginning of theninth century, Leo III (795–816) provided “a white all-silk cloth with gold-studded panels and a cross” to cover Gregory’s tomb.36 Leo also “coatedSt. Gregory the confessor and pontiff’s altar with fine silver-gilt weighingoverall 127 lb.”37 Nearly thirty years later, in 828–829, another Gregoriannamesake, Gregory IV (828–844), translated the remains of his eponymouspredecessor:

As he was inflamed with the fire of divine love he took the body ofSt. Gregory, the prelate of this universal church through whom the graceof the Holy Ghost had imparted a gift of unquenchable wisdom to all theearth, from the place where it had formerly been buried, and brought it notfar from there to another place newly constructed within St. Peter theapostle’s church, and he decorated his silver altar on all sides with silverpanels, dedicated an oratory to his holy name and depicted his apse abovewith gilded mosaic.38

To burnish his work, Gregory IV also translated other martyr relics to thisoratory and then provided silk veils and a gold-studded cloth for the new tomb.Finally, in the first Roman vita Gregorii (873–876), John the Deacon

recounted the simple nighttime vigil performed to celebrate Gregory I duringwhich Gregorian use-relics would be displayed.39 At this point, John theDeacon appears to have been the first Latin author to characterize Gregoryas magnus—great.40 Though Gregory I would eventually be venerated as asaint in his hometown, the process was slow and stuttering, stretching from

36LP 98.35: fecit vestem albam olosiricam cum tabulis de chrisoclavo et cruce, trans. RaymondDavis, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liber pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of NinePopes from AD 715 to AD 817 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992).

37LP 98.84: Necnon investivit altarem beati Gregorii confessoris atque pontificis ex argentodeaurato pens. undique lib. CXXVII, trans. Davis, The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes.

38LP 103.6: Et quoniam tunc divino ignis amore succensus corpus beati Gregorii huiusuniversalis ecclesiae praesulis, per quem sancti Spiritus gratia toto orbe terrarum inextinguibilisapientiae munus induxit, ex loco sepultus quo prius fuerat tulit, et non longe ab eo in aliumnoviter constructum infra ecclesiam beati Petri apostoli summo honore perduxit, eiusque sacrumaltare argenteis tabulis undique perornavit, et oratorium suo sancto nomine titulavit,absidamque eius desuper aurato musibo depinxit, trans. Raymond Davis, The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of Ten Popes from A.D. 817–891(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995).

39John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 4.80 (PL 75 col. 228). On dating the vita, see Paul Devos, “Lemystérieux episode final de la Vita Gregorii de Jean Diacre: Formose et sa fuite de Rome,” AnalectaBollandiana 82 (1964): 355–81. On the vigil of Gregory, see Boesch Gajano, “La memoria dellasantità,” 342–47.

40John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 4.63 (PL 75 col. 213C): de magno Gregorio beatissimo paparomano, on which see Leyser, “Late Antiquity in the Medieval West”; and Conrad Leyser, “TheMemory of Pope Gregory the Great in the Ninth Century: A Redating of the Interpolator’s VitaGregorii (BHL 3640),” in Gregorio Magno e le origini dell’Europa, Atti Del ConvegnoInternazionale, Firenze, ed. F. Santo (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014).

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 11

his death in 604 to the late-ninth century, when even canon law compilationscame to include some of Gregory’s letters.41 The process by which theletania septiformis was elaborated was equally slow and stuttering from itsfirst performance in 590 to the ninth century, after which point the re-imagination of the letania really gained momentum.

III. AFTERLIVES OF THE LETANIA SEPTIFORMIS

The letania septiformis would eventually be broadly disseminated both directlyand indirectly and fundamentally re-described in order to play its (later) role asthe providential inauguration of Gregory’s pontificate, the fulcrum of ahistorical age.42 The processional directions were directly diffused in theregistrum epistularum of Gregory I. More specifically, the announcement ofthe sevenfold procession with instructions from 603 was inserted into theblank space between the fifth and sixth indictions in the collection ofGregory’s letters compiled under pope Hadrian—perhaps another attempt, inaddition to the Hadrianum, to exploit the increasingly powerful legacy ofGregory.43 As Conrad Leyser puts it, Gregory’s register “illustrates preciselythe power of cultural memory.”44 The 603-announcement did not circulatewith earlier Gregorian letter collections, including one possibly assembled byPaul the Deacon himself.45 If Paul really did compile this collection, then the

41Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1980), 259–266; and for letters as canon law, see Detlev Jasper and Horst Fuhrmann,Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,2001), 73–80.

42See eg, Sofia Boesch Gajano, Gregorio Magno: Alle origini del Medioevo (Rome: Viella,2004), 139–147, who uses the 603-iteration to begin a consideration of Gregory’s legacy.

43Gregory I Pope, Gregorii I Papae Registrum Epistularum, vol. 2.2, ed. P. Ewald and L.Hartmann (Berlin, 1887–1899), 365–367; Gregory I, Pope, S. Gregorii Magni RegistrumEpistularum, vol. 1, ed. Norberg, vi–vii and 2:1102; Gregory I Pope, Registre des Lettres Tome1 (Livres I et II), trans. P. Minard (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991), 58–59; and Gregory I Pope,Lettere, 4 vols, trans. V. Recchia (Rome: Città nuova: Bibliotheca Gregorii Magni, 1996–1999),1.10 and 4.364-369. On the Lateran archive, see Castaldi, “L’Archivum Lateranense.”

44Leyser, “Memory of Gregory and Latin Europe,” 1.45On collections of Gregory’s letters, see Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle

Ages, 71–81; Bruno Judic, “La production et la diffusion du registre des lettres de Grégoire leGrand,” in Les échanges culturels au moyen âge: XXXIIe Congrès de la SHMES (Paris:Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 76–78; Lucia Castaldi, “Il Registrum Epistolarum diGregorio Magno,” Filologia mediolatina 11 (2004): 55–97; Marcella Forlin Patrucco,“Registrum Epistularum,” in Scrittura e storia: per una lettura delle opere di Gregorio Magno,ed. Lucia Castaldi (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005), and Forlin Patrucco,“Registrum Epistularum” in Enciclopedia Gregoriana, 292–295; and Lucia Castaldi, Latrasmissione dei testi latini del Medioevo. TE.TRA. 5: Gregorius I Papa (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013). On Gregroy’s efforts to circulate his texts, see Girolamo Arnaldi,“Gregorio Magno e la circolazione delle sue opere,” Gregorio Magno, nel XIV centenario dellamorte, 53–65.

12 CHURCH HISTORY

letania announcement was likely preserved elsewhere in the archives at thattime, as Paul depended entirely on the version penned by the bishop ofTours, wholly unaware, it seems, of the sermon-instructions that wouldeventually be conserved among Gregory’s letters.In the first half of the ninth century, Amalarius of Metz, in his work on the

Roman liturgy and ecclesiastical offices, accurately reproduced the registerversion—omitting only the place where and time when the homily was given—that he had found inserted in a volume of Gregory’s letters, perhaps theHadrianic florilegium of Gregory’s registrum. At the same time, however,Amalarius presented the letania septiformis as a species of letania maior,instituted in this case by Gregory himself in the face of Lombarddepredations, an early conflation of the two processions.46 In the late-ninthcentury, John the Deacon claimed that in order to write his vita Gregorii hescoured the papal archives, where among other Gregorian texts hesupposedly found the original proclamation from 603. Finally, the register-announcement of the letania septiformis seems to have also circulated moreor less on its own beginning in the ninth century. For example, an early-ninth-century Ordo romanus preserves a copy.47

The homily that preceded the processional call was itself transmitted alongwith Gregory’s gospel homilies in more than thirty manuscripts, the earliestexample from Spain dating to the seventh or eighth century. In this case, thesermon was copied from Gregory of Tours, whose edition varies slightlyfrom the register version, though without the processional instructions,despite the fact that the procession was indicated in the speech itself.48 Muchas the register version enjoyed independent circulation, so too did thesermon from Gregory of Tours experience a limited afterlife of its own.Nonetheless, without the processional instructions, the sermon circulatingwith the gospel homilies was just a fine oration with no part in the directtransmission of the letania septiformis.The indirect or narrative transmission of the description of the letania

septiformis was far more influential until the ninth century. Gregory ofTours, most likely, penned his vivid description of the procession, the

46Amalarius, Liber officialis 4.24-5 in Amalarii episcopi opera liturgica omnia, vol. 2, ed. IoanneMichaele Hanssens (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1948–50), 481–485.

47Codex 138, Köln, Dombibliothek, folio 43 recto-44 recto (http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/ceec-cgi/kleioc/0010/exec/katl/%22kn28-0138%22); and M. Andrieu, ed., Les Ordines Romani du HautMoyen-Âge, vol. 1 (Louvain: “Spicilegium sacrum lovaniense” bureau, 1931–1961), 107.

48Raymond Étaix, “Répertoire des manuscripts des homélies sur l’ Évangile de Saint Grégoire leGrand,” Sacris erudiri 36 (1996): 137–138; Gregory I Pope, Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae inevangelia, ed. Raymond Étaix (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), lii–liv; and Castaldi, Te. Tra. 5Gregorius I papa, 81fn37 (on De mortalitate).

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 13

earliest report of a letania septiformis, at the end of the sixth century.49 OwenChadwick and then Adriaan Breukelaar argue that the description is a laterinterpolation—perhaps added by the deacon Agiulf sometime shortly afterthe death of the bishop of Tours, as only the deacon was sufficiently close toGregory of Tours and adequately knowledgeable about Rome.50 Theinterpolation hypothesis has not, however, found many supporters.51

Whatever the case, whether interpolated or not, the letania septiformisformed part of Gregory of Tours’s work from a very early stage.52

More importantly, this passage served as one of the first steps in thesanctification of the letania, as the bishop of Tours framed the processionwith a harrowing account of devastation and disease: an account that was ashort distance, if any, from hagiography.53 In fact, this tale of misery andwoe in Gregory of Tour’s emplotment of the letania septiformis wouldbecome central to most subsequent re-descriptions of the procession, evenwhen the pope’s own text, without the dramatic staging, was available.

According to the disputed passage in the Ten Books of Histories:

In the fifteenth year of King Childebert [590 CE], our deacon [Agiulf],coming from the city of Rome with relics of the saints, related that in theprevious year, in the ninth month [November 589], the Tiber river coveredRome with such a flood that ancient temples collapsed and the granariesof the church were ruined, in which several thousand bushels of wheatwere lost. Even a multitude of serpents swam down the course of the riverto the sea, among them a great dragon large as a tree trunk, but thesebeasts were drowned in the salt waves of the wild sea and cast up onshore. In its tracks, devastation followed, which they call the plague of the

49On Gregory of Tours, Gregory I, and the papacy, see Thomas F. X. Noble, “Gregory of Toursand the Roman Church,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, eds. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 145–161.

50Owen Chadwick, “Gregory of Tours and Gregory the Great,” Journal of Theological Studies 50(1949): 38–49; and Adriaan H. B. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul: The Histories of Gregory of Tours interpreted in their historical context(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 66–69. Robert Godding, “Gregorio di Tours,” inEnciclopedia Gregoriania, 162–163, also accepts possibility of interpolation.

51Eg, Judith McClure, “Gregory the Great: Exegesis and Audience” (PhD diss., OxfordUniversity, 1978), 175–180; and Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society inthe Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001),76–81. Even Chadwich admitted that the manuscript evidence did not support his argument.

52On the circulation of the work of Gregory of Tours, see Pascale Bourgain, “GregoriusTuronensis Ep.,” in La trasmissione dei testi latini del Medioevo TE.TRA I, eds. Paolo Chiesaand Lucia Castaldi, (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004), 152–168. On theHistoriae specifically, see Walter Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After (London: Hambledon Press,1989), 255–274; and Helmut Reimitz, “Social networks and identities in Frankishhistoriography: New aspects of the textual history of Gregory of Tours’ Historiae,” in TheConstruction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts, eds.Richard Corradini, Max Diesenberger, and Helmut Reimitz (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 229–268.

53Boesch Gajano, “La memoria della santità,” 333–335.

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groin. Coming in the middle of the eleventh month [January 590], itimmediately struck Pope Pelagius first of all, because it is written in theprophet Ezekiel: “And begin at My sanctuary,” [Ezekiel 9.6] anddestroyed him without delay. After his death, great destruction of thepeople was caused on account of this disease. But because the Church ofGod could not remain without a leader, the whole people chose thedeacon Gregory.54

This apocalyptic moment called for dramatic action. Even though not yetimperially sanctioned as the bishop of Rome, Gregory quickly instituted apenitential procession by which the anger of God would be pacified, theperformance of which was equally marked by calamity:

And so, at the third hour all the choirs came to church chanting psalmsand crying out the Kyrie eleison through the avenues of the city. Ourdeacon, who was present, affirmed that in the space of a single hour,while the people produced sounds of supplication to the Lord, eightypersons fell to the ground and died. But the bishop-elect never stoppedexhorting the people not to cease their prayers.55

The image of Gregory leading his flock through the streets of Rome, urging thepeople to persist in prayer even as many of them fell dead, would eventuallyrepresent the letania septiformis tout court, even as this very passage by Gregoryof Tours would serve as the foundation of many subsequent re-descriptions.This foundation, however, was not wholly solid. Gregory of Tours recorded

that the procession took place only after three days of prayer, which mayindicate that Gregory of Tours or his deacon confused the seven-fold litanywith the Gallic rogation processions, which did in fact take place over threedays.56 More importantly, the procession would not have been so compelling

54Gregory of Tours, Hist. 10.1: Anno igitur quinto decimo Childeberthi regis diaconus noster aburbe Roma sanctorum cum pigneribus veniens, sic retulit, quod anno superiore, mense nono, tantainundatio Tiberis fluvius Romam urbem obtexerit, ut aedes antiquae deruerent, horrea etiameclesiae subversa sint, in quibus nonnulla milia modiorum tritici periere. Multitudo etiamserpentium cum magno dracone in modo trabis validae per huius fluvii alveum in marediscendit; sed suffocatae bestiae inter salsos maris turbidi fluctus et litori eiectae sunt.Subsecuta est de vestigio cladis, quam inguinariam vocant. Nam medio mense XI. adveniens,primum omnium iuxta illud, quod in Ezechiel profeta legitur: A sanctoario meo incipite,[Ezechiel 9.6] Pelagium papam perculit et sine mora extinxit. [February 7] Quo defuncto,magna stragis populi de hoc morbo facta est. Sed quia eclesia Dei absque rectorem esse nonpoterat, Gregorium diaconem plebs omnis elegit.

55Gregory of Tours, Hist. 10.1: De hora quoque tertia veniebant utrique chori psallentium adecclesiam, clamantes per plateas urbis Kyrie eleison. Asserebat autem diaconus noster, quiaderat, in unius horae spatio, dum voces plebs ad Dominum supplicationis emisit, octoagintahomines ad terram conruisse et spiritum exalasse. Sed non distitit sacerdos dandus praedicarepopulo, ne ab oratione cessarent.

56Joyce Hill, “The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England:Terminology, Texts, and Traditions,” Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000): 228fn45. On the rogations,

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 15

or so consequential without the apocalyptic narrative frame. The flood and itssubsequent disease assuredly devastated the city, but, nonetheless, theportentous omens and the biblical citations amplified (and explained) theactual devastation. The flood and plague took on catastrophic, indeed epicproportions seemingly heralding the end of the world.57 So Gregorysuccored his flock by determined repentance in the face of cataclysm. Inshort, the first literary description of the letania septiformis was also the firstinstance in which the specific details of the procession as it would have beenperformed at Rome—not to mention the actual situation of the city—wereseemingly altered to suit the narrative needs of the author.

In fact, the very next re-description of the letania by Paul the Deacon makesplain this imaginative freedom.58 Given the relative unpopularity of Gregoryamong the Lateran clergy, the lack of a Roman vita Gregorii might cause nosurprise. But, until the mid- to late-eighth century when Paul composed hisvita Gregorii, possibly at Monte Cassino, there was no Italian vita.59 In thisidealized portrait of Gregory, which he wrote to construct and to celebrate acertain image of Christian, even monastic, leadership, a description of theletania septiformis looms large, occupying over one-tenth of the text. UsingGregory of Tours freely, Paul dwelt on the circumstances of the flood, thecoming of the plague, and the death of Pelagius. After detailing theunanimous election of Gregory by all the plebs, Paul recounted Gregory’s

see Geoffrey Nathan, “The Rogation Ceremonies of Late Antique Gaul: Creation, Transmission andthe Role of the Bishop,” Classica et Medievalia 49 (1998): 275–303.

57On Gregory of Tours’ apocalypticism, see Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours; Giselle de Nie,Views From a Many-Windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), 46–57. On the flood devastation see, H. H. Mollaret and J.Brossollet, “La procession de saint Grégoire et la peste à Rome en l’an 590,” Médecine deFrance 199 (1969), 14–15; Mark Humphries, “From Emperor to Pope? Ceremonial, space, andauthority at Rome from Constantine to Gregory the Great,” in Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage,22–25; and Squatriti, “The Floods of 589.”

58Paul the Deacon, Vita Sancti Gregorii Magni, ed. Sabina Tuzzo (Pisa: Scuola normalesuperiore, 2002), on which see Lucia Castaldi, “Nouvi testimoni della Vita Gregorii di PaoloDiacono [BHL 3639],” in Paolo Chiesa (ed.), Paolo Diacono: Uno scrittore fra tradizionelongobarda e rinnovamento carolingio, atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Cividale delFriuli, Udine (Udine: Forum, 2000), 75–126; Lucia Castaldi, “Paolo Diacono,” in EnciclopediaGregoriana, 249–250; and Orazio Limone, “La tradizione manoscritta della ‘Vita GregoriiMagni’ di Paolo Diacono (B.H.L. 3639): censimento dei testimoni,” Studi Medievali 3, no. 29(1988): 888–953. For a comparison of Gregory of Tours and Paul, see Dante Bianchi, “DaGregorio di Tours a Paolo Diacono,” Aevum 35 (1961): 150–166.

59Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory ofTours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 370–372,394–399, argues for Monte Cassino, while Marios Costambeys, “The Monastic Environment ofPaul the Deacon,” in Paolo Diacono, 127–138; and Rosamond McKitterick, History andMemory in the Carolingian World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 60–83, urgecaution.

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sermon that urged the people to penance: “Therefore, dear brothers, withcontrite hearts and works of penance, let us come to the tears of a letaniaseptiformis with devout disposition at dawn of the fourth day so that thestrict judge, when he considers the punishment for our faults, may spare usfrom the sentence of the proposed condemnation.”60 Then, at the conclusionof the homily, Paul very briefly described the participants of the letania. Onthe appointed day, “a great multitude of priests and monks and others ofdiverse sex and age” marched through the city with Gregory, who neverceased to preach and to exhort the crowds, even though eighty men died inthe space of an hour.61 Paul thus borrowed the apocalyptic portrayal ofGregory of Tours in order to highlight the indefatigable pastoral leadershipof a pious pope who remained a monk at heart in the face of overwhelmingdevastation.62

In this case, however, Paul did not maintain the seven-fold processionalorganization. Despite his dependence upon Gregory of Tours, Paul took theopportunity to re-imagine the processional participants. Instead of the longlitany of eight social groups into which the procession was originallyorganized, Paul offered a starkly abbreviated and extremely revealingdescription, which not only lumped together most of the groups that hadparticipated but omitted the gathering places as well. As a deacon and amonk himself, Paul was seemingly only concerned with priests and monks:no one else really mattered.63 The other categories by which the processionwas organized were simply dismissed en masse. What is more, by leavingout so many details, including the itineraries, Paul robbed the procession ofits original specificity, which, I contend, greatly facilitated its subsequenttransformation by later medieval authors. Importantly, Paul’s abbreviatedportrait gained a wide audience in the extremely popular interpolated versionof his vita Gregorii—the product of an unknown editor working sometimebefore 844, who interpolated Paul’s text with one similar to the miracle-laden Whitby vita—which left the truncated letania untouched.64

60Paul the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 11: Proinde, fratres carissimi, contrito corde [cf. Ps. 50.19] etcorrectis operibus, ab ipso feriae quartae diluculo septiformis letaniae devota ad lacrimas menteveniamus, ut districtus Iudex, dum culpas nostras nos punire considerat, ipse a sententia propositaedamnationis parcat.

61Paul the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 11: magna multitudo sacerdotum, monachorum diversiquesexus et aetatis.

62Claudio Azzara, “La figura di Gregorio Magno nell’opera di Paolo Diacono,” in PaoloDiacono, 29–38.

63Boesch Gajano, “La memoria della santità,” 339–342.64Leyser, “Memory of Gregory and Latin Europe,” now dates the Interpolator to before 844. On

the circulation of the interpolated life, see Paolo Chiesa and Francesco Stella, “Paulus Diaconus,” inLa trasmissione dei testi latini del Medioevo TE.TRA 2, vol. 2, eds. P. Chiesa and L. Castaldi(Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005), 497–498.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 17

A few years later, in hisHistory of the Lombards, a Christian interpretation ofthe Lombard past which also re-imagined Lombard-Carolingian relations, Paulagain returned to the letania septiformis.65 In this passage, just after the worstflood since Noah, converting Gregory into a hero of biblical proportions, Pauloffered a more amplified description of the organization of the seven-foldlitany.

He ordained that a letania septiformis should be offered, but while they wereimploring God, eighty of them within the space of one hour fell suddenly tothe earth and gave up the ghost. The letania septiformis was so calledbecause all the people of the city were divided by the blessed Gregoryinto seven parts to intercede with the Lord. In the first troop indeed wasall the clergy; in the second, all the abbots with their monks; in the third,all the abbesses with their companies; in the fourth, all the children; inthe fifth, all the laymen; in the sixth, all the widows; in the seventh, allthe married women. And we omit to say anything more concerning theblessed Gregory because some years ago with the help of God wecomposed his life in which, according to our slender ability, we sketchedin writing what was to be told.66

In this text, again following Gregory of Tours, Paul listed each of the groupsinto which the people of the city were divided with the exception of theregional presbyters who had accompanied each cortège. But even here, thespecific details concerning where each group met and their final destinationwere omitted. Paul did refer the reader to his vita Gregorii, meaning the twotexts were meant to be read together.67 However, even together muchinformation was ignored most especially concerning the itineraries. AlthoughPaul emphasized real life action, constructing an image of Gregory from hispractical pastoral activity unlike the miracle-laden Whitby vita, his truncatedand doubled description dissassociated the letania septiformis from its social

65Goffart, Narrators of Barbarian History, 394–399 and 424–431; McKitterick, History andMemory, 66–77; and on transmission Chiesa and Stella, “Paulus Diaconus,” 491–495.

66Paul the Deacon,Historia Langobardorum 3.24 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptoresrerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum Saec. VI-IX, ed. L. Bethmann and G. Waitz [Hanover, Hahn1878]): Qui dum septiformem laetaniam fieri ordinasset, intra unius horae spatium, dum hi Deumdeprecarentur, octuaginta ex eis subito ad terra corruentes, spiritum exalarunt. Septiformis autemlaetania ideo dicta est, quia omnis urbis populus a beato Gregorio in septem partes deprecaturusDominum est divisus. In primo namque choro fuit omnis clerus, in secundo omnes abbates cummonachis suis, in tertio omnes abbatissae cum congregationibus suis, in quarto omnes infantes,in quinto omnes laici, in sexto universae viduae, in septimo omnes mulieres coniugatae. Ideoautem de beato Gregorio plura dicere obmittimus, quia iam ante aliquod annos eius vitam Deoauxiliante texuimus. In qua quae dicenda fuerant iuxta tenuitatis nostrae vires universadiscripsimus.

67Paul the Deacon, Storia dei Longobardi, trans. Lidia Capo (Vicenza: Fondazione LorenzoValla, 1992), 479–480.

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and urban contexts, which set the stage for the reimagination of theprocession.68

Approximately seventy-five years after the death of Paul the Deacon, Johnthe Deacon wrote the first vita of Gregory at Rome between 873 and 876.Ostensibly, this vita sought to remedy centuries of Roman silence concerningGregory and to provide a proper life to be read on his feast day.69 At thesame time, with the help of Anastasius Bibliothecarius, John articulated animage of Rome that was at once classical and Christian. In John’s vitareplete with references to the senatus populusque Romanus (SPQR)—“theSenate and Roman people,” long a popular shorthand for Rome—Gregoryemerges as a liturgical reformer who had “fit together into a one volumebook the Gelasian codex concerning the solemnities of masses,” anidealization possibly based on the so-called Gregorian sacramentary.70 Byusing the vita of Paul as well as, possibly, the Lateran archive, Johnconstructed an ideal Christian leader—a paragon of all churchly virtues whowould restore classical order in Christian Rome.71

More concretely, the vita might have served to buttress John VIII’s papalauthority as well as a more expansive image of Rome’s grandeur. Indeed,John’s Gregory could have served in a number of contexts: constructingRoman authority in opposition to the Byzantine empire; articulating a visionof a Roman, not a Frankish, empire; and serving polemically during theFormosan conflict—a disputed papal election in which John VIII was elected

68On the relations between the lives of Gregory, Limone, “La tradizione scritta della ‘VitaGregorii Magni’ di Paolo Diacono,” 887–902; Paul the Deacon, Vita Sancti Gregorii Magni, ed.Tuzzo, vii–xi; Judic, “À propos de la “messe de saint Grégoire,” 78–81; 84–85; and BoeschGajano, “La memoria della santità,” 339–342.

69John the Deacon, vita Gregorii praefatio (PL 75 col. 61B). On John, see Girolama Arnaldi,“Giovanni Immonide e la cultura a Roma al tempo di Giovanni VIII,” in Bullettino dell’Istitutostorico italiano per il Medio Evo 68 (1956): 48–75 on the “idea of Rome”; Girolama Arnaldi,“Giovanni Immonide e la cultura a Roma al tempo di Giovanni VIII: una retractio,” in Europamedievale e mondo bizantino: contatti effettivi e possibilità di studi comparati: tavola rotondadel XVIII Congresso del CISH, eds. Girolama Arnaldi and Guglielmo Cavallo (Rome: Nellasede dell’Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 1997), 163–177; Ferruccio Bertini, “Giovanni Immonides ela cultura a Roma nel IX secolo,” in Roma nell’alto Medioevo, vol. 2 (Spoleto: Centro Italianodi Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2001), 897–917; and Lucia Castaldi, “Giovanni Immonide, diaconoromano,” in Enciclopedia Gregoriana, 156–157.

70John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 1.39 (PL 75 col. 79B), on which see Carrie E. Beneš, “WhoseSPQR? Sovereignty and Semiotics in Medieval Rome,” Speculum 84 (2009): 876–877; andJohn the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 2.17 (PL 75 col. 94A): Gelasianum Codicem de missarumsolemniis . . . in unius libri volumine coarctavit, on which see Mews, “Gregory the Great, theRule of Benedict,” 126–127. On John’s vita, see Claudio Leonardi, “La ‘Vita Gregorii’ diGiovanni Diacono,” in Roma e l’età carolingia: atti delle Giornate di studio (Rome:Multigrafica editrice tipografica, 1976), 381–93; and Claudio Leonardi, “Pienezza ecclesiale esantità nella ‘Vita Gregorii’ di Giovanni Diacono,” Renovatio 12 (1977): 51–66.

71Bronwen Neil, “The Politics of Hagiography in Ninth-Century Rome,” in Text andTransmission in Medieval Europe, ed. Chris Bishop (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007),58–75.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 19

instead of an overly ambitious Formosus. The Formosan schism itself may haveformed part of an ongoing struggle over the control of the memory of both SaintBenedict and Gregory. Formosus appears to have gained the support of MonteCassino founded by Saint Benedict, where Paul may have written his vita. Thissupport in turn may have spurred John the Deacon to write a vita to counterPaul’s version. In the end, one may not be able to elucidate the specificpolitical conditions in which John wrote or the specific stimuli that spurredhim. Nonetheless, his vita Gregorii betrays notable contrasts with that ofPaul specifically concerning the letania septiformis, which suggests that Johncontested the monastic image of Gregory’s memory. Ultimately, the RomanJohn the Deacon appears to have won this battle as his life of Gregorybecame standard by the twelfth century, despite its length and demands uponthe reader.72

Unlike Paul who relied exclusively on Gregory of Tours, John claimed tohave turned to the papal archive grounding his portrayal directly on thewords of Gregory, himself, eschewing any mediation, perhaps an act ofmemory one-upmanship. In fact, John relied almost exclusively on theHadrianic anthology of the registrum epistularum for Gregory’s letters, fromwhich, it would seem, he quoted the entire 603 proclamation, including boththe sermon and processional organization.73 In John’s account, while theplague raged, a reluctant Gregory, elevated to the bishop’s throne by theRoman clergy, Senate and people (clerus, senatus populusque Romanus),took up his pastoral duties, preached a stirring sermon of repentance, andthen called the populace to a procession.74

72Leonardi, “Pienezza ecclesiale e santità,” 57–59, suggests papal-Byzantine relations; Arnaldi(1956), “Giovanni Immonide e la cultura a Roma,” Frankish vs Roman empire. On theFormosan schism and memory, see Conrad Leyser, “Charisma in the Archive: RomanMonasteries and the Memory of Gregory the Great, c. 870–940,” in Le scritture dai monasteri:Atti del II seminario internazionale di studio “I monasteri nell’alto Medioevo,” ed. Flavia DeRubeis and Walter Pohl (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2003), 207–26, whoseargument was amended in part by Leyser, “The Memory of Pope Gregory the Great in the NinthCentury,” fn17, allowing still however the possibility of a battle over memory. Forlin Patrucco,“Registrum Epistularum,” also suggests troubles with Holy Roman emperor. According toBoesch Gajano, “La memoria della santità,” 342–7, John’s VGregorii was unusable hagiography,but still widely diffused, on which see Lucia Castaldi, ed., Iohannes Hymmonides diaconusRomanus, Vita Gregorii I Papae (B. H. L. 3641–3642), vol. 1: La tradizione manoscritta(Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004). See Hans-Albert Wilhelmi, Die “Vita GregoriiMagni” des Johannes Diaconus: Schwerpunkte ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Neuried: Ars Una,1998), on the influence, citation, and use of John’s Vita Gregorii.

73John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii praefatio (PL 75 col. 62C): archival work and 1.41-3 (PL 75col. 79C-81A): the procession. On the limits of John’s archival research, see Castaldi, “Registrumepistularum,” 87–97; Costambeys and Leyser, “To be the neighbour of St Stephen,” 267; andLeyser “The Memory of Pope Gregory the Great in the Ninth Century,” 7–11.

74John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 1.40 (PL 75 col. 79B).

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Let the litany of the clergy leave from the church of the holy John the Baptist;the litany of men from the church of the holy martyr Marcellus; the litany ofmonks from the church of the holy martyrs John and Paul; the litany of nunsfrom the church of the blessed martyrs Cosmas and Damian; the litany ofmarried women from the church of the blessed first martyr Stephen; thelitany of widows from the church of the martyr Vitale; the litany of thepoor and the children from the church of the blessed Cecilia, a martyr.75

Authorized by his archival research, John filled in some of the gaps left by Paul,whose apocalyptic frame John nonetheless maintained. In this case, John addedthe churches at which the seven groups first gathered according to theorganizational scheme outlined in the register version. This overstated returnto the archive may well have lent greater authority to John’s text. As JacquesDerrida commented, “There is no political power without control of thearchive, if not of memory.”76 Certainly, John’s supposed research created asense of historical precision, which has been much appreciated by modernscholars.77 Remarkably, though, despite this conscientious research, Johnstill omitted the common destination of the seven groups. And, mostinterestingly, even though he replaced Gregory of Tours’ and Paul’s 590-version with the 603-register version, John still placed his procession in590.78 Seemingly, a need to counter Paul’s monastic memory led him toignore the register version’s chronological indication. Even a re-descriptionpotentially based on the Lateran archive itself could conspicuously deviatefrom the original.Indeed, directly on the heels of this passage, John summarily sketched the

procession in terms that clearly imitate but also contradict the abbreviateddepiction in Paul: “Therefore, then, a great multitude of every age, sex, andprofession came on the appointed day to beseech the Lord according to theinjunction of the priest Gregory.”79 While Paul limited himself to priests and

75John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 1.42 (PL 75 col. 80D-81A): Litania clericorum exeat abecclesia sancti Joannis Baptistae; litania virorum ab ecclesia sancti martyris Marcelli; litaniamonachorum ab ecclesia sanctorum martyrum Joannis et Pauli; litania ancillarum Dei abecclesia beatorum martyrum Cosmae et Damiani; litania feminarum conjugatarum ab ecclesiabeati primi martyris Stephani; litania viduarum ab ecclesia martyris Vitalis; litania pauperum etinfantium ab ecclesia beatae Caeciliae martyris.

76Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4fn1, cited and discussed by Aleida Assmann, CulturalMemory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2011), 328–329.

77According to Leyser, “Charisma in the Archive,” John’s extensive use of Gregory’s lettersaimed to conjure Gregory himself.

78Barone, “Gregorio Magno e la vita religiosa,” 22.79John the Deacon, Vita Gregorii 1.43 (PL 75 col. 81A): Igitur dum magna multitudo omnis

aetatis, sexus atque professionis, juxta praeceptionem levitae Gregorii, die constituta, Dominumrogatura venisset.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 21

monks, John expanded Paul’s monastic Rome to encompass non-clericalprofessions (along with the rest of Rome’s citizens, a shorthand common toboth). Even as John contested Paul’s restricted vision and despite hisarchival authority, this abridged précis functions much as did Paul’s: it de-contextualized the procession and compressed its organizational complexity.John might have sought to outshine Paul or even Paul’s interpolator, but inthe end the result is much the same. From Gregory of Tours to John theDeacon, the letania septiformis was continually re-written in order tobuttress different images of Gregory—whether apocalyptic preacher,monastic icon, or renovator of a classical and Christian Rome—according tothe context and needs of the author in question. In each case, the actualprocession proved malleable, an event to be re-shaped as the memory ofGregory and his pontificate was re-imagined.

After these historical and biographical texts (and especially after the work ofJohn the Deacon), liturgical and legendary texts had a role to play in there-fashioning of the memory of letania septiformis. In the liturgicalre-invention, the letania maior (the major litany), an entirely distinctprocession, and letania septiformis eventually merged. In the mid-ninthcentury, Amalarius, as noted, reproduced the register-announcement of theletania septiformis as a type of letania maior. This liturgical confusionwould only intensify.80 In the mid-tenth century, a liturgical manual nowtitled Ordo Romanus L (OR L) noted that Gregory I instituted the majorlitany (letania maior) on April 25 as a seven-fold procession in whichthe participants were arranged according to the organizational scheme of theletania septiformis of 603. In addition, the liturgical order stipulated that theparticipants should not ride on horseback or wear ornate attire—rather theyshould don hairshirts and cover themselves in ashes.81 As a generic liturgicalmanual, OR L did not specify the destination of the letania septiformis/maior—an omission which the extended itinerary of the letania maior wouldfill by the thirteenth century if not sooner.

According to Gregory I, himself, the late-sixth-century letania maiorconsisted of a procession from S. Lorenzo in Lucina to St Peter’s, whoseparticipants supplicated the Lord with hymns and spiritual chants—no seven-

80E.g. Ps.-Bede, Homilia XCVII: De majori litania (PL 94 col. 499A-D), cited by Hill, “TheLitaniae maiores and minores,” 246fn94. Perhaps inspired by Amalarius, this undated medievalhomily describes a septiform procession (a letania septiformis) to St. Peter’s as a letania maior.Jean Leclerq, “Le IIIe livre des homélies de Bède le Vénérable,” Recherches de théologieancienne et médiévale 14 (1947): 211–218, suggests a composition date of the 8th-9th centuryor after, while the collection stems from the 12th or 13th century.

81OR L.35: Andrieu, ed., Les Ordines Romani, 5:72–79 (date) and 5:314-315 (text). On theordines and OR L, see Vogel, Medieval Liturgy, 135–55, 187-190, 230-237: Aimé-GeorgesMartimort, Les ‘Ordines,’ Les Ordinaires et Les Cérémoniaux (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 15–47;and Palazzo, A History of Liturgical Books, 175–185.

22 CHURCH HISTORY

fold categorization provided, no itinerary or date given, no hairshirts or ashesrequired.82 Sometime during the course of the seventh century, the majorlitany would eventually take place annually on April 25 and its itinerarywould expand greatly: starting from S. Lorenzo in Lucina, exiting the citythrough the Porta Flaminia to the north, continuing to the Milvian Bridge,before making its way south again to St. Peter’s.83 However, the late-eighth-century Hadrianum, the version of the Gregorian sacramentary that outlinedthis itinerary, did not spell out the participants. It was only concerned withprayers and their locations, not people. Thus, by the tenth century there was,on the one hand, a liturgical manual (OR L) arranging the participants in theletania maior on the model of the letania septiformis and, on the other, asacramentary that sketched only the itinerary of the letania maior thatterminated at St. Peter’s. In due course, the two would fuse, resulting in aprocession (known as the major litany) organized like a letania septiformisbut following the timing and itinerary of the letania maior.One final detail remains. In the first half of the thirteenth century,

Bartholomew of Trent recounted a number of apparitions of the archangelMichael. During the letania maior instituted in the face of the plague—asthe letania septiformis and letania maior have completely merged by thispoint—Gregory saw the archangel atop of the turrets of Hadrian’smausoleum sheath his sword, signaling that Gregory’s prayer had beenheard. For that reason, Gregory then constructed a church in the mausoleum,which in turn christened the tomb as the Castle of Saint Angel, folding themonumental sepulcher into a Christian vision of Rome.84 With this legend,all of the elements of the medieval image of the procession are in place:Gregory, Paul, and John provided a dramatic literary frame; liturgical textscontributed a wholly invented itinerary; and Bartholomew of Trent added the

82Gregory I, Registrum epistularum, appendix IV. On the major litany see, Baldovin, UrbanCharacter of Christian Worship, 139–140, 158–166; Saxer, “L’utilisation par la liturgie del’espace,” 963–964 and idem, Sainte-Marie-Majeure: une basilique de Rome dans l’histoire dela ville et de son église, Ve-XIIIe siècle (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2001), 133–136; Hill,“The Litaniae maiores and minores”; Susan Twyman, “The Romana Fraternitas and UrbanProcessions at Rome in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Pope, church, and city: essaysin honour of Brenda M. Bolton, ed. Frances Andrews, Christoph Egger, and Constance M.Rousseau (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 211–217; and Joseph Dyer, “Roman Processions of the MajorLitany (litaniae maiores) from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century,” in Roma Felix: Formation andReflections of Medieval Rome, eds. Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Carol Neuman de Vegvar(Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007), 113–137.

83Le sacramentaire grégorien, 1.211-213 #100.84Bartholomew of Trent, Liber epilogorum in gesta sanctorum, ed. E. Paoli (Florence: SISMEL

Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), 119: CLXI De apparitione sancti Michaelis. See Boesch-Gajano, “Lamemoria della santità,” 337 n. 79 and 348; and Robert Godding, “Leggenda di Gregorio Magno,” inEnciclopedia Gregoriana, 202-203. For a similar transformation of a Gregorian legend, see GordonWhatley, “The Uses of Hagiography: The Legend of Pope Gregory and the Emperor Trajan in theMiddle Ages,” Viator 15 (1984): 25–63.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 23

archangel Michael. In all of these disparate versions and portrayals, onlyGregory construed as an ideal and idealized Christian bishop remainedconstant.

Finally, Jacobus de Voragine put all the pieces together in his wildly popularLegenda aurea (written ca. 1270) in an account that explicitly depended onboth Paul the Deacon, and so also Gregory of Tours, and John the Deacon.85

At the beginning of his version, Jacobus rapidly delineated the broadcontext, flood and plague, in response to which Gregory instituted aprocession—though not seemingly the letania septiformis.

When [Gregory] had [yet] to be consecrated and the plague was devastatingthe people, he preached to the people, in organizing a procession heinstituted litanies, and he exhorted everyone to pray zealously to the Lord.Even while the entire populace pleaded with God, however, the plaguedisseminated itself so that in one hour eighty men died; but Gregory didnot at all cease to admonish the people not to desist from prayer untildivine mercy should banish the plague.86

After this first procession, Gregory attempted to flee Rome to avoid assumingthe throne of Peter. A reluctant and so worthy Gregory was eventuallydiscovered and consecrated pontiff much to his dissatisfaction. Afterlamenting the burden, Gregory turned his attention back to matters at hand.

The plague was still ravaging Rome, and Gregory ordained the processionwith litanies through the circuit of the city in the accustomed way during acertain Easter season. An image of Blessed Mary ever Virgin—the one atRome, so they say, was painted by Saint Luke, who was not only aphysician, but a distinguished painter, and that it was a perfect likeness ofthe Virgin—carried at the head of the procession. And behold! The entireinfection and turbulence of the air yielded to the image as if fleeing fromit and being unable to withstand its presence: behind the image thereremained a wonderful serenity and purity in the air. We are also told thatthe voices of angels were heard around the image, singing

85On the Golden Legend, see Jacques Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragineand the Golden Legend, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton, 2014).

86Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, 2nd ed., vol. 1, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Florence:SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1998), 288: XLVI De sancto Gregorio: Cum ergo benedici deberetet lues populum deuastaret, sermonem ad populum fecit, processionem faciens litanias instituit et utomnes deum attentius exorarent admonuit. Cum igitur deum omnis congregatus populus exoraret,in tantum lues ipsa deseuit ut in una hora octoginta homines spiritu exhalarent, sed nequaquamcessauit populum admonere ut ab oratione nunquam desisterent donec pestem ipsam diuinamiseratio propulsaret.

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Regina coeli laetare, alleluia,Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia!To which the blessed Gregory promptly added:Ora pro nobis, Deum rogamus, alleluia!Then Gregory saw an angel of the lord standing atop the castle ofCrescentius, wiping a bloody sword and sheathing it. Gregory understoodthat the plague had ceased, as, indeed, happened. Following from whichthe castle was called the Castle of the Angel.87

Jacobus split the 590-performance of the letania septiformis into twoprocessions. The first procession was a failure, heavily inflected byapocalyptic elements ultimately derived from Gregory of Tours. In thehighly elaborate and exaggerated second procession held sometime inproximity to Easter (perhaps April 25 on which day the letania maior wastraditionally performed), the actual letania septiformis was distorted beyondrecognition. Most likely Gregory had marched with the clergy departingfrom Ss. Cosmas and Damian in 590 and from the Lateran in 603. In theGolden Legend, however, Gregory made a circuit of the entire cityprocessing by the mausoleum of Hadrian or the Castle of Crescentius(subsequently Castle of the Angel) seemingly on his way to St. Peter’s.More impressively, even though undifferentiated marchers chanted thelitanies, Gregory alone, bearing a Lukan icon of the Virgin Mary—an iconwhich miraculously filtered the air, cleansing the city of the plague, a featexpressed by the angel sheathing his bloody sword—came to represent allof the various groups of people mourning and marching through the city: atthat moment Gregory was Rome.88

87Jacobus, Legenda Aurea, 1:289–290: Sed quia adhuc Romam pestis supradicta uastabat, moresolito processionem cum litaniis per ciuitatis circuitum quodam paschali tempore ordinauit, in quaymaginem beate Marie semper uirginis, que adhuc, ut aiunt, est Rome, quam Lucas arte medicus etpictor egregius formasse dicitur et eidem uirgini simillima per omnia perhibetur, ante processionemreuerenter portari fecit. Et ecce, tota aeris infectio et turbulentia ymagini cedebat ac si ipsamymaginem fugeret et eius presentiam ferre non posset sicque post ymaginem mira serenitas etaeris puritas remanebat. Tunc in aere, ut fertur, iuxta ymaginem audite sunt uoces angelorumcanentium ‘Regina celi letare, alleluia, quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia, resurrexit, sicutdixit, alleluia’. Statimque beatus Gregorius quod sequiter adiunxit: “Ora pro nobis, rogamus,alleluia”. Tunc Gregorius uidit super castrum Crescentii angelum domini qui gladiumcruentatum detergens in uaginam reuocabat; intellexitque Gregorius quod pestis illa cessasset etsic factum est. Unde et castrum illud castrum angeli deinceps uocatum est.

88On the icon, see Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era ofArt trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 47–59; and Gerhard Wolf,Salus populi Romani: die Geschichte römischer Kultbilder im Mittelalter (Weinheim: VCH Actahumaniora, 1990).

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 25

Shortly after the Legenda aurea was written, images of Gregory marching atthe head of a letania septiformis/maior were painted, all highlighting theclimatic moment in which the angel sheathed his sword.89 Such imagerywould become especially popular after the cycles of bubonic plague in thefourteenth century. To offer one notable example: Les Très Riches Heures deJean, Duc de Berry by the Limbourg brothers depicts a long processionexiting the walls of Rome. Gregory with his arms stretched to the skyimplores the heavens for relief, as monks, priests, and nuns fall dead allaround him.90 This poignant image reveals nothing about the historicalGregory, whose Lateran colleagues seemingly did not appreciate hismonastic habit, but does indicate a great deal about the subsequent re-inventions of the letania septiformis.

Later in the Legenda aurea, Jacobus returned again to the processioseptiformis (seven-fold procession) in a disquisition on the Greater andLesser Litanies.

The first [Greater] litany has been known in three ways: first, the GreaterLitany [letania maior]; second, it is called the Septiform Procession[processio septiformis]; and third, it is called Black Crosses. It is calledthe Greater Litany for three reasons: first, for the one who instituted it,namely, Gregory the Great pope of the city of Rome; second, the placewhere it was instituted, namely, Rome, mistress and head of the worldbecause of the body of the prince of the apostles and of the apostolic see;and third, the occasion of its institution, which was a great and widespreaddisease . . . The Greater Litany is called the Septiform Procession becauseSaint Gregory arranged the processions according to seven orders orclasses. In the first order was the clergy; second, all the monks andreligious men; third, the women religious; fourth, all the children; fifth, allthe laymen; sixth, all the widows and unmarried women; and seventh,married women.91

89On the images, see Mollaret and Brossollet, “La procession de saint Grégoire”; and V. Cerruti,“Iconografia di Gregorio Magno (I temi devozionali): 1. Apparizione dell’angelo sopra la MoleAdriana durante la processione contro la peste,” in Enciclopedi Gregoriana, 175–176.

90Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, trans.Victoria Benedict (New York: George Braziller, 1969), 73–74; and J. R. C. Martyn, “Four Notes onthe Registrum of Gregory the Great,” Parergon 19 (2002): 16–17, 22–23.

91Jacobus, Legenda aurea, 1:473–474: Prima igitur letania tripliciter uocatur: primo letaniamaior, secundo dicitur processio septiformis, tertio dicitur cruces nigre. Dicitur autem letaniamaior propter tres causas, scilicet ratione illius a quo instituta est, scilicet a magno Gregoriopapa urbis Rome, ratione loci in quo instituta est, quia Rome que est domina et caput mundi exeo quod ibi est corpus principis apostolorum et apostolica sedes, ratione cause pro qua institutaest, quia pro magno et grauissimo morbo . . . Secundo dicitur processio septiformis ex eo quodbeatus Gregorius processiones quas tunc faciebat per septem ordines disponebat. Nam in primoordine erat omnis clerus, in secundo omnes monachi et religiosi, in tertio omnes sanctimoniales,in quarto omnes infantes, in quinto omnes laici, in sextos omnes uidue et continentes, in septimoomnes conuigate.

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In his description of the procession that ended the plague, Jacobus lumped allthe marchers together. By contrast, in this outline, he proffered theorganizational scheme from the 590-version as reported by Gregory of Toursas amended by Paul, and so without the distribution of presbyters, but withthe addition of unmarried women to the group of widows. Here, Jacobussimply identified the letaniae septiformis with the letania maior, even as healso changed the original procession, yet again.In these several versions, the letania septiformis was dismembered and

dispersed into three distinct descriptions. Some of the most prominentfeatures of the original processional regulations have been largely occluded—for example, every hint of the topographical organization of the startingchurches disappeared, for which reason the procession was called septiformin the first place; while the distribution of the inhabitants of Rome intodifferent categories only appeared in an entry entirely separate from theactual performance of the plague procession and was presented as only oneetiology among three possibilities. In each depiction in the Legenda,Gregory was the core as once again the letania septiformis played a role therepresentation of episcopal and papal power.92

IV. THE LETANIA SEPTIFORMIS IN MODERN SCHOLARSHIP

In the late-nineteenth century, Ferdinand Gregorovius, who initiated themodern scholarly study of this procession, fashioned the letania septiformisof 590 into the precise moment when ancient Rome died and medievalRome was born:

The whole population thus joined in penitential procession, and while theymarched among the ruins of the deserted city, and made the air re-echowith their solemn chants, they seemed to bear the phantom of ancientRome herself to the grave, and to inaugurate the dreary centuries whichwere now to follow. The procession of 590 may in truth be regarded asthe beginning of Rome’s Middle Ages.93

With muted masses falling dead in the streets, Gregory persevered leading aprocession to St. Peter’s to entreat God’s mercy. En route, as Gregorycontinually encouraged the flagging efforts of the decimated crowds, thearchangel Michael alighted upon Hadrian’s mausoleum and sheathed aflaming sword to signal the end of the plague—which christened the

92Sherry L. Reames, The Legenda aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History (Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 44–70, 197–210.

93Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, trans. AnneHamilton (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894–1906), 32–33.

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 27

mausoleum as the Castle of the Angel, a symbol of the end of classical Romeand the conversion of the city. Though compelling, this description fuses detailsfrom the bishop of Tours and the register-version. Gregorovius provides thedate (August 29) and location (S. Sabina) from the register-version, butfollows the group divisions of Gregory of Tours. In addition, Gregoroviusignored the destination indicated in both, St. Maria Maggiore. Instead,Gregorovius followed the itinerary of the Legenda aurea and embellished hisportrayal with the archangel legend, which he contends was an ancienttradition that pre-dated the tenth century, though it first appeared in textsfrom the twelfth- or thirteenth-century.94

Beginning with Thomas Hodgkin, English language scholarship has oftenemployed a similarly dramatic rendering of this procession as an omen bothauguring an overwhelmingly successful epispopacy and foreshadowingGregory’s eventual place in the historical imagination. Hodgkin, however,restricted his depiction of the letania of 590 to the account from Gregory ofTours, noting but declining to authenticate the later tradition according towhich the procession took place on April 25—a date based on interferencefrom the letania maior. Even so, Hodgkin could not resist the “beautifullegend . . . [that] the imagination of much later ages coupled . . . with thissolemn act of intercession,” explicitly following Gregorovius’s treatment ofthe later legend concerning the archangel Michael.95

In his overwhelmingly influential biography, Frederick Homes Duddenoffered his own poetic evocation of the procession. A mournful processiontook place in “the dim twilight of the spring morning” of April 25, accordingto seventh-century tradition:

Pale-faced, emaciated, and clad in deepest mourning, the people movedslowly through the desolate streets towards the great basilica on theEsquiline. As the seven trains of priests and mourners wound through thecity scarcely a sound was heard save the tramp of feet, and sobs and criesfor mercy, and over all the doleful chant of the Kyrie Eleison, deepeningin fervor as one person after another dropped plague-stricken from theranks. For Death kept step with the moving crowds . . . Thus at length theChurch of the Mother of God was reached, and here again Gregoryaddressed to the people an earnest exhortation to prayer and penitence,promising that if they would have faith the pestilence should cease.96

Dudden then continued with the archangel Michael legend, whose supposedfootprint relics were once kept in S. Maria Aracoeli, and added the poignant

94Gregorovius, Rome in the Middles Ages, 2:33–34fn1.95Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892–1899), 301.96Frederick Holmes Dudden, Gregory the Great, His Place in History and Thought, vol. 1

(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905), 219.

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image of Gregory with the Lukan icon of the Virgin listening to the Reginacoeli laetare echo from above. Although the archangel and the Lukan iconare acknowledged as later and invented traditions, the repeated amplificationand embellishment of the original procession, often narrated in sentimentallanguage by the historians themselves, nearly transports it from history to myth.In other late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century biographies, the letania

septiformis figured as an essential element in the transition from Late Antiquityto the Middle Ages. For example, Hartmann Grisar distinguished firmlybetween the account by the bishop of Tours and the register-version, butdivided the participants according sex, age, and condition, an image whichseems to come from John the Deacon. Similarly, Grisar could not resist thelater legends, which he considered historically unfounded, to conjure up atouching image of barefoot participants covered in ashes moving slowlythrough the city hushed by sepulchral silence—the very picture of papalpiety.97 Not every subsequent history or biography pursued the path forgedby Gregorovius. Pierre Batiffol, for one, remained close to the text ofGregory of Tours, focusing on the procession of 590, leaving aside both theregister-homily and later legends.98

More recent descriptions of the procession have also been more circumspectconcerning the later legendary accretions—even so, the image of the processionfrom Les Très Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry graces the cover of arecent companion to Gregory the Great, a visual summary of his legacy.99

That is to say, the letania septiformis remains a favored moment, oftenrecounted in biographies especially. Perhaps no longer the very tipping pointfrom Antiquity to the Middle Ages, but still a decisive demonstration ofGregory’s pastoral care: a “moving and spectacular demonstration of faith”with a devastated and ghostly Rome filled by the chanting of Kyrie eleison;a real and symbolic re-figuration the city, which would be conflatedwith another procession and amplified by legends.100 Other recentbiographies maintain the traditional date of April 25 from the seventhcentury, embroider their accounts with the archangel Michael legend, or eventender novel embellishments.101 While, at times, liturgical and historical

97Hartmann Grisar, San Gregorio Magno (590–604), trans. A. de Santi (Rome: Desclée, 1904),24–31.

98Pierre Batiffol, Saint Grégoire le Grand, 3rd ed. (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1928), 52–53.99R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1997), 4fn12. Neil and Dal Santo, eds., A Companion to Gregory the Great.100Richards, Consul of God, 41–42 (quote); Boesch Gajano, Gregorio Magno, 56–58; and

Barbara Müller, Führung im Denken und Handeln Gregors des Grossen (Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 2009), 114–118.

101Carole Straw, Gregory the Great (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1996), 12–3; and a bitmore imaginatively, Alessandro Minutella, Il monaco pastore: San Gregorio Magno

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 29

analyses of the letania seem to confound the letania septiformiswith the letaniamaior.102

That is, over the years, a handful of issues marks descriptions of thisprocession: one, a confusion of Gregory of Tours and the register-homily;two, a rather eloquent mytho-poetic emphasis on the later legends; and three,a conflation of the letania septiformis with the letania maior. It must benoted, though, that these very issues consistently reappear in historicalscholarship in part because medieval sources present a truly tangled historyof the letania septiformis. In general, the letania septiformis no longer servesas the inauguration of medieval Rome, but rather as the pious prologue toand as a symbol of the pontificate of Gregory I “the Great.” Notwithstandingits (only) relative demotion, the letania septiformis remains for manyscholars an ecclesiastically organized world marching through the city,claiming Rome for the church in the very moment of its performance.103 Itstill features prominently in accounts of the city of Rome under Gregory.104

Gregory’s contemporaries in the Lateran curia, who both ignored theprocession and under-appreciated its organizer, might have been quitesurprised that the procession would eventually come to symbolize such apivotal moment in the pontificate of Gregory and in the history of Rome, ifnot also in the history of Europe.

V. CONCLUSION

Over the long centuries, portrayals of the letania septiformis became icons ofGregory’s leadership—symbols both of his pastoral care and of thetransformation of the city of Rome. Indeed, poignant descriptions of thisprocession remain a staple of scholarly literature on Gregory. However,neither Gregory himself nor this seven-fold procession was much appreciatedby his Roman clerical contemporaries. For centuries, Roman sources keptsilent concerning the procession and so the memory of the letaniaseptiformis either persisted outside Rome in the work of Gregory of Tours orlanguished in the Lateran archives. Processions by nature are ephemeralconstructions of civic life that impact urban consciousness only to the extent

(Palermo: Nuova Ipsa, 2003), 114–119; and Philippe Henne, éGrégoire le Grand (Paris: Cerf,2007), 63.

102Baldovin, Urban Character of Christian Worship, 260 (with 139-140 and 158-159 n. 66), onwhich see Saxer, “L’utilisation par la liturgie de l’espace,” 2.960-964.

103Girolamo Arnaldi, Le origini dello stato della Chiesa (Turin: Utet, 1987), 32; and Latham,“The Making of a Papal Rome.”

104Charles Pietri, “La Rome de Grégoire,” Gregorio Magno e il suo tempo, 1: 9–10, and PaniErmini, “La Roma di Gregorio Magno,” 21–22.

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that they are remembered. So the letania could not transform Rome, or thememory of Rome, until it returned to Rome from the outside or was“rediscovered” in the archives.Gregory of Tours inaugurated this process even before Gregory I had died—

or perhaps shortly thereafter if the passage was interpolated—by framing theletania septiformis with apocalyptic devastation and conflating, perhaps, theseven-fold litany with the Gallic rogation processions. Over a century and ahalf later, Paul the Deacon pared the passage from Gregory of Tours into acondensed depiction of the letania septiformis as a monastic image of Rome.In the late-ninth century, John the Deacon contested that monastic image. Tosupport his vision, John supposedly turned to the Lateran archives where hefound the 603 iteration, which an anonymous member of the curial staff hadconserved in a gap in between indictions in the Hadrianic compilation ofGregory’s letters. Though he cited the 603 proclamation in full, John alsooffered an abbreviated summary of the procession—one which comprisedthe city in more generalized terms—and confused its chronology by placingthe 603 version in 590. Following the literary transformations of the letania,several medieval liturgical scholars and transmitters (or creators) of legendsalso contributed to the re-writing of the letania—the final, most extendedform of which the Legenda aurea presented at length and in multipleversions. As the original letania septiformis lost its historical foundation, itseems to have gained greater imaginative power. Indeed Hodgkin sagelynoted, “In later days Pope Benedict XIV fixed the legend for ever inmemories of all pilgrims to Rome, by erecting that statue of St. Michaelwhich has now stood for a century and a half on the summit of ‘Castle ofSant’ Angelo.’”105

During his lifetime and immediately afterwards, Gregory’s Romancontemporaries did not consider him the sort who could or would becomethe linchpin of Antiquity and the Middle Ages as a much laterhistoriographical imagination would have it. He was only constructed assuch in an extended retrospective process, which began already in medievalsources stretching from Gregory of Tours to Jacobus de Voragine andbeyond. In many of these sources, the letania was also re-imagined andembellished, so that it evolved into the pivot of Gregory’s pontificate, if notalso of an entire historical era. That is, the figure of Gregory the Great, andthe letania septiformis that he instituted, became a core feature of the“imagined community” of Latin Christendom.106 If the memory of Gregoryplayed a role in the invention of the Middle Ages, the prominence of theletania septiformis in that remembrance was equally inventive.

105Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, 5.302.106Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).

INVENTING GREGORY “THE GREAT” 31