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168 Doctor of Souls, Doctor of the Body: Whitby Vita Gregorii 23 and Its Exegetical Context BRIAN BUTLER It has been a privilege and a pleasure to study under Dr Jennifer O’Reilly, and I am deeply honoured to contribute this paper to the celebration of her illustrious career. Narrating the miracles of Pope Gregory the Great, the early eighthcentury Whitby Vita Gregorii includes a chapter that reveals the saint as a doctor of souls and the body (‘medicus . . . animarum . . . et corporum’).1 This chapter tells how ‘a certain king, I think of the Lombards, though I do not clearly remember his race’ (‘rex quidam, quem puto Langobardorum fuisse, qui non evidenter cuius esset gentis reminiscor’) marched against Rome, intent on its destruction.2 Gregory’s eloquence and instruction calmed the king, who promised that he would never again lead an army against the city while Gregory was pope and he was king: So, through the agency of the man of God, ‘The streams of the river made glad the city of God’ and in it ‘he sanctified his tabernacle’. God did indeed ‘help her with his countenance’; so that though ‘the heathen raged’ against the city that was once the mistress of the world, yet through this one man of God ‘the kingdoms were moved’. And not without reason, for ‘the most High uttered his voice and the earth trembled ’. (Psalm 45 (46): 4–6) [Sicque per Dei virum illius fluminis impetus letificavit civitatem Dei qua scilicet in eo sanctificavit Deus tabernaculum sum et adiuvabit eum Deus vulto suo, ut conturbate gentes contra olim dominam orbis per unum hominem Dei inclinata sunt regna. Nec immerito: per quem dedit vocem suam altissimus et mota est terra.] After this, says the Whitby hagiographer, the king became sick and appealed to the pope, ‘for as a result of Gregory’s teaching he had taken the pope as his mentor’ (‘qui illum sibi magistrum ex predicta eius elegit Doctor of Souls, Doctor of the Body 169 doctrina’). Learning that the king had lived on milky foods as a boy in the Alps, the pope advised him to return to that diet, thus curing him. The author concludes: ‘In some of these stories we give the sense only, lest, as he himself [Gregory] says concerning the acts of the saints in the book which he wrote, by quoting their rustic speech we might fail to offer spiritual truths’ (‘Hec igitur sensu in quibusdam proferimus, ne ut ipse de sanctorum ait actibus que scripsit, rustice dicentes nil spiritale dicamus’). The Whitby writer is less concerned with the historicity of his stories than he is with their spiritual message, viewing them as channels of spiritual truth. Vita Gregorii 23’s concluding sentence echoes Gregory’s prologue to Book 1 of the Dialogues, in which the pope points out that he does not always use the exact words in which he receives a story but, to retain its spiritual content, adapts the words to his own language to suit his style.3 The author of the Vita Gregorii feels that it is acceptable to attribute miracles to Gregory inaccurately if their use is motivated by love, and later calls on Gregory’s Regula Pastoralis 3.10 to support his argument that, if the miracles of one saint are mistakenly attributed to another, the reader should not be disturbed since we are all members of the body of Christ.4 Scholars continue to debate Gregory’s own attitude towards the historical accuracy of miracle-stories that he reports.5 Gregory regards miracles as signs from God and uses these stories to teach moral and spiritual lessons, and it would appear that his acceptance of their historical truth was not dependent upon scientific criteria, but rather upon the moral character of the witness or witnesses involved. Once such moral credentials were established , the reality of the events could be welcomed in a spirit of Christian faith. For this reason Gregory is careful to cite witnesses for his miraclestories and, likewise, Bede, another careful Northumbrian student of Gregory’s works, provides witnesses for far more of his miracles then he does for political events.6 Though the Whitby writer does not here follow Gregory and Bede in citing his sources, the approach to literal truth in the Vita Gregorii is well within traditional practice; there is no reason for thinking that the writer’s didactic ambitions may be far from those of Gregory or Bede.7 Indeed, the opening words...

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