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This chapter examines writers on purgatory in the sixth and seventh centuries, including Julianus Pomerius, Caesarius of Arles, and Gregory the Great. It also examines ideas about postmortem purgation as expressed in minor works of the seventh century including De ordine creaturarum and in visions of the afterlife and in hagiography. It concludes by looking at rituals of sacramental purification, especially baptism and penance, and discusses purgation in funeral liturgies, burial practices, and prayers for the dead.

Although a few important elements remain shrouded in mystery, the history of the filioque in the West is a relatively well documented phenomenon. Although there are a few scattered references to the relationship of Son and Spirit in the writings of the apologists, the story of filioque begins with Tertullian, as Latin theology began to link the understanding of God’s very nature (i.e., the theology) and the biblical revelation that the Holy Spirit is given to the Church by both the Father and the Son. Although the Latin fathers (e.g., Ambrose) increasingly used language that could be thought to support the filioque, it was Augustine of Hippo who first explicitly spoke of the Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son, and who later became the patristic authority for the orthodoxy of the filioque. By the seventh century not only was the filioque part of the creed in many parts of the West, but also considered part of the apostolic faith.

In the modern era, Gregory the Great is often depicted as a man at the border, poised between the Roman and the Germanic worlds, between East and West, and above all, perhaps, between the ancient and medieval epochs. Certainly, in stationing Gregory at the frontier, this chapter begins to acknowledge the immense future influence of his account of Benedict of Nursia, as of all his writings, in the medieval Catholic Church and beyond. However, this acknowledgement is frequently based on the assumption that Gregory, as a hinge figure engaged in cultural transmission, has no original point of view. Gregory tends to be typecast as a ‘moral’ thinker, whose assimilation of the texts of Augustine of Hippo and John Cassian was of critical import — but who was himself less capable of analytical or innovative thought, and who therefore concentrated his energies on reducing the complexities of earlier patristic writings for consumption by a future medieval audience. This chapter also looks at Gregory's views on monasticism and asceticism.

Discusses the actions and policies of Gregory the Great as Pope between 590 and 604 and the significance of his papacy for the western Church. With the western provinces of the Empire now dismembered into barbarian kingdoms, Gregory's policy as bishop of Rome was to establish his office as the only locus of real authority in the Latin west. He had also to devote much effort to the administration of property left to the Church outside Italy, behaving as the head of an international investment corporation. Gregory tolerated variations in the liturgy and held that heretics and Jews should only be converted by teaching and persuasion, but urged a harsh policy against paganism. He was a strong believer in the cult of relics and made no distinction between popular and elite religion. He adhered to the two‐ natured Christology of the Council of Chalcedon, and relations with Constantinople were always strained. Gregory's letters are the main source for the mission to the Anglo‐Saxons in Britannia led by the Roman monk Augustine, but despite later legends this was not the decisive event in the conversion of the future land of England.

Gregory the Great made his own the insight sketched by Julianus Pomerius in his handbook for bishops and developed by Benedict of Nursia in a monastic context: that the speech of the ruler, when properly applied, can bind up all divisions within the body of the faithful. Gregory pursued a language of authority that would carry all before it with a degree of concentration undreamt of by earlier writers. Augustine of Hippo had denied that the quantification of the ways of power was possible; his subsequent readers had tentatively moved to reverse his verdict, but only with Gregory does one find a writer prepared to stake all on the performance of the moral ruler, and to enumerate in detail how this might be possible. Gregory was prepared to take the risk of claiming to be morally qualified to lead, to shoulder all the burdens of the faithful, to act as the servant of the servants of God.

The introduction sets out the tension between faith-based belief and rationalist scepticism in the hagiographical literature of the early Byzantine empire, circa 500–700. Taking this tension as a cue to re-examine modern representations of religious life in the late antique world, especially the period’s widely proclaimed Christian piety, the introduction revisits Prof. Peter Brown’s thesis that holy men, saints and miracles embodied the significant historical shifts of late antiquity. The introduction argues that, because of the defence of the saints’ miracles the text contains, Gregory the Great’s Dialogues on the Miracles of the Italian Fathers is an apposite to begin this revision of the historiography. By placing Pope Gregory and his apology for the saints in a wider context, the introduction argues that Gregory was very much a part of a common thought world that joined Italy to Constantinople and the wider eastern empire.

The eighth and final chapter briefly surveys the history of posthumous salvation after Augustine. Central is a story told about Pope Gregory the Great (sixth century), who supposedly uttered a prayer for the salvation of the pagan Roman emperor Trajan, who had lived in the second century. In Eastern Orthodoxy, this prayer is often combined with that of Thecla for Falconilla as two examples of God's mercy even upon dead pagans. In the west, because of Augustine's influence, the story is retold to include the resurrection of the body of Trajan, since without physical baptism, no one who lived after Christ can be saved.

This chapter develops a plausible representation of the way that chants might have been made that would be a way into a critical account of them as sung language. Its objective is genetic criticism — an objective well suited to the study of a tradition whose products are not appropriately regarded as autonomous works. It discusses a phenomenon that is more symptomatic than instrumental: the identification of Gregory the Great as the author of the plainchant. It describes the important points of Frederic C. Bartlett's theory on remembering, especially as they might illuminate the problem about oral transmission.

In assessing the reading which went into Ruotger's creation of his image of Bruno, the Bible (including St Paul), the classics, the Rule of St Benedict, and the early Christian poets and hagiographers have all been given full value by scholars; but the Christian Latin fathers, or more particularly Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great, have been underrated. This chapter explores the influence of Augustine and Gregory on Ruotger's work. Ruotger was significantly influenced at least by Augustine's Christian Doctrine and City of God, and even more by Gregory the Great's Letters and Pastoral Care.

Three interpretations of the book are examined and the way in which they generated alternative trajectories for subsequent Jewish thinking in writings such as in the Testament of Job and the Zohar. The history of Christian exegesis is pursued through Gregory the Great, Aquinas, and Calvin before concluding in William Blake. Throughout, the different underlying assumptions about providence are noted, in particular, the reasons behind the modern retreat from agent‐specific notions of directional providence.

This chapter opens by analysing the appeal of imperial (or ‘Catholic’) Christianity to post-Roman rulers and the role of Catholic Christianity in incorporating such rulers into a broader political and ideological culture strongly influenced by Constantinople. Emphasis is placed on the development of Christian teaching and doctrine, the cult of the saints, monasticism, and the Christianisation of concepts of gender and sexuality. The chapter closes by revealing elements of resistance and scepticism to Christian teachings, and the survival of secular traditions and modes of thought.

This chapter argues that Gregory, like Cassian, understands the Holy Spirit as the reformer of thoughts, desires, and affections, as well as the former of virtues. Gregory is also a devoted student of Augustine; he is interested in Augustine’s anthropology and theories of interpretation of Scripture. Gregory modifies some elements of Cassian’s theology (like the eight principal vices and seven deadly sins) in order to make it harmonize with other well-known themes (like the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit), but he preserves the main tenets of Cassian’s ascetic pneumatology. Like Leo, Gregory is also concerned to form lay Christians, though unlike Leo, Gregory was a professed monk. This chapter argues that reformation of desire is a key theme for Gregory (as also for Cassian and Augustine). Correlatively, Gregory’s ascetic pneumatology is focused on the way in which the Holy Spirit engages Christians in a dialogue of desire.

This chapter deals with children born of a union considered by ancient Romans as incestuous, mainly from a legal point of view, since we lack any evidence about their social life, with one exception (Digest 23.2.57a: Flavia Tertulla's children). Romans did not doubt that such an union could result in viable descendants, in spite of Pope Gregory the Great's letter to Augustine of Canterbury, and they were only worried about kinship terms for these children. For imperial jurists, from Gaius down to Justinian, these children were not to be treated differently from the other illegitimate children (spurii). But under Justinian's reign, the legislation worsened the plight of incestuous children, mainly due to the development of a policy of deterrence towards potential incestuous pairs.

This chapter opens by observing that late medieval clergymen had another source available to them as they ministered to sick and suffering Christians: consolation literature. The chapter examines the history of consolation in the Christian West in order to show the ancient origins—both pagan and Christian—of the wisdom contained in late medieval works of consolation. The discussion proceeds chronologically, focusing first on ancient pagan consolation literature, then on ancient Christian sources, and finally on medieval and late medieval works of consolation. Key figures include Cicero, Seneca, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Johannes von Dambach, and Jean Gerson. The chapter also demonstrates how the Christian consolation literature consistently offered numerous explanations for suffering, only one of which was divine punishment for sin.

This chapter examines Gregory the Great’s doctrine of hell. Gregory’s account of postmortem punishment reveals how as pope he declares dogma, as a scholar he expounds theology, and as a preacher he tells exemplary tales. His flair for paradox allowed him to pursue difficult analyses by combining opposed pairs to explain, for example, how the pains of hell could confound the damned and gratify the saints. If “things are images through which we consider the nature of their causes,” then Gregory’s statement articulates a cosmos in which a just Judge corrects all wrongs and rewards all righteousness. The balance he asserts between continuity and contrast in his punishments links the lives of sinners to their pains after death, still haunted by their old obsessions. The disorder in the desires of the damned distorts their perceptions of reality, but the confusion they suffer in hell can be understood outside. Through paradox, chaos becomes order.

This chapter discusses the copies of works by Augustine (his Commentary on the Gradual Psalms, in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek M.p.th.f. 17) and Gregory I (his Homilies on the Gospels, in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek M.p.th.f. 45) that were produced at Karlburg and Kitzingen respectively. It refutes the notion that patristic writings in general were characterized by misogyny, or a view of women as “the devil’s gateway.” While some writings by Augustine, Gregory and other Fathers of the Church did participate in an anti-female discourse, female scribe-authors worked to identify those works that did not do so but were, like the two studied in this chapter, broadly gender-egalitarian and easily open to feminist readings (for instance in their treatments of Eve, Mary Magdalen, and other female saints). The chapter also shows how the spiritual content of these two patristic biblical commentaries functioned in the devotional life of the women’s monasteries, where the psalms were chanted several times a day at regular intervals, and the gospel passages (pericopes) associated with Gregory’s Roman church were read in regular rotation over the liturgical year.