"With the Lombards invading Italy, and Slavs invading Illyria, and very active slave-dealers at work, the number of men and women who reached Rome and carried a papal letter, to sort out a legal or personal problem at home, is quite surprsing, considering the slowness and the very real dangers of often long journeys in boats or on horseback. ... [T]hey came from all over the civilized world, many briefly appearing on the stage, their mission quite often not reported later on."--Page 4 of cover.

-- Robert Somerville, Columbia University

During the time Gregory the Great served as Pope of the Catholic Church, from 590-604 AD, he sent more than 850 letters to contacts throughout the known world - often using travellers as letter-bearers. However it was a time of warfare in Italy, with invading bombards, and trade in slaves was lucrative - with agents quick to capture defenceless travellers. Official communication, like imperial or papal orders were sent via postal channels, by horsemen or fast boats, these too were often blocked by enemy armies.This book studies some forty Latin letters sent by Pope Gregory, copies of which are included in a manuscript held in the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne. It can be compared with a manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and was, Professor Martyn argues, probably copied in a 10th century scriptorium in Fleury-sur-Loire, France. Many of the letters, reproduced in this book in Latin and English, deal with the Pope's attempts to sort out longstanding problems in Naples and Sicily and to save Rome from the Lombards.This unique Melbourne manuscript, with its colourful initials and rubrication of the titles comprises a series of folios removed in the 17th century and used by musicians in Worcester Cathedral to protect their musical scores. Rebound in the 20th century and put up for sale in London, the manuscript was purchased by the Classics Department of the University of Melbourne in the 1970s.

This translation of the "Registrum epistularum" of Gregory the Great, the first complete version in English, will provide all medievalists access to one of the most important documentary collections to have survived from the period. All fourteen books of the letters are presented in three volumes, each with a preface of its own but sharing the introduction found in the first volume.

This book relies on original research on Pope Gregory the Great, and on Leander, evident in Saint Leander, Archbishop of Seville, edited and translated by John R. C. Martyn (Lexington Books, New York, 2009). It starts with Gregory’s letters, translated into English, to Leander, who became a very close friend. Their childhood years and very similar upbringings are followed by their years together in Constantinople, where Leander played a key role in the greatest of Gregory’s works, his Commentary on Job. Their similar literary skills evident in their works are then discussed, and their theological influence, in Italy and Spain, followed by their very similar attitudes to nuns and abbesses, to heresies, schisms and monks, and to Classical Studies and music. The book ends with the overall similarities in their lives and in their deaths, both struck by gout. Gregory and Leander were two extraordinary men, who played a major part in spreading the Christian Church, both of them very much on the side of women.

This translation of the "Registrum epistularum" of Gregory the Great, the first complete version in English, will provide all medievalists access to one of the most important documentary collections to have survived from the period. All fourteen books of the letters are presented in three volumes, each with a preface of its own but sharing the introduction found in the first volume.

The Letters of Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, have long been viewed as an indispensable resource for scholars of the early medieval period. John Martyn’s knowledge of these letters is well nigh unsurpassed, In this book he turns his attention to a hitherto neglected subject; those letters of Pope Gregory which pertain to nuns and convents. Despite the fact that scholarship on the Middle Ages has in the last thirty years been transformed by feminist contributions, and there has developed, as a result, a heightened awareness of the presence of women in medieval life, both secular and religious, only two of the thirty-six letters identified by Martyn have previously been discussed by scholars. This edition of the letters in both Latin and English is therefore of inestimable value to scholars and will act as a spur for further research. This sizeable collection of letters are analysed in company with other, better-known, writings about nuns from Gregory’s dialogi. In the introduction Martyn argues that his upbringing, dominated by his mother and four devout aunts, might reasonably have inculcated in him a deep and abiding concern for women, the religious in particular. This is evidenced by his friendships with Theoctista and Gordia, the sisters of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, and with his wife, the pious Constantina. and with a number of abbesses, including Respecta (from Marseilles) and Talasia (from Autun). Gregory’s deep interest in the religious life of women, and his concern for their safety and wellbeing, are apparent throughout the letters. Martyn’s translations are clarified and enhanced by a commentary.