Dialogues: On the Miracles of the Italian Fathers - Couverture souple

Gregory The Great; Ex Fontibus Company

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1635489954 ISBN 13 : 9781635489958

Editeur : Ex Fontibus Company, 2016

Synopsis

In the late sixth century, St. Gregory the Great was torn from his small monastic community an elevated to the papacy. As Bishop of Rome, he was responsible not only for spiritual affairs but also for the temporal affairs of the city and much of the Italian peninsula—food, the provisioning of the ineffective army, and negotiations with the fierce Lombard invaders. His Dialogues begin as he tells his deacon Peter that he no longer has time or opportunity to go forth in spirit to seek the face of God in contemplative prayer. Peter, hoping to console him, declares that nobody in this tumultuous age enjoys close communion with God.

Peter’s good-natured despair rouses Gregory to develop, through a series of stories in rebuttal to Peter’s claim, a theology of intimacy with God while immersed in temporal affairs. Monks, politicians, busy bishops and farmers—all have worked miracles, have become “one spirit with God” through love, and have even glimpsed his light in prayer. Gregory’s crowning achievement, the Life of St. Benedict forms the second of the four books, while his stirring depiction of various Eucharistic miracles gives a theology in story of the marriage between heaven and earth. By the end of the Dialogues, we may hope that Gregory convinced himself; he certainly will convince the reader.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Gregory's complete Dialogues, including the life of Saint Benedict. Having witnessed the endless string of disasters that shattered his beloved Italy in the late 6th century A.D., Pope Saint Gregory the Great set down in the Dialogues a sequence of tales to reassure his contemporaries that the tumults of their world were no barrier to contact with God and eternal life.

Peter, Gregory's interlocutor, laments that he has never heard of in Italy who has lived a life of intimate communion with God. The world seems far too busy for that. To the contrary, Gregory offers a litany of stories of Italian saints--from Honoratus of Funda who pinned a great rock to a mountainside to prevent it from crushing an abbey, to the holy virgin Tarsilla who received a vision of Pope Felix immediately before her death. Several of these stories are well known even to this day, while others, like the story of Florentius and his ill-fated bear, are merely strange and picturesque.

Perhaps most importantly, Gregory's Dialogues contain an entire book dedicated to the life of Saint Benedict of Nursia. This portion of the Dialogues represents the most detailed and lengthy biography of Benedict from a near contemporary and is the source of many of the stories told about this important saint.

The Dialogues served a higher function than simple folk-history--they were a spiritual exhortation to Gregory's worn and weary countrymen. To modern readers, these tales of visions, miracles and extraordinary Christian virtue paint a vivid portrait of daily life amid the wreckage of once-prosperous Roman Italy. In addition, the Dialogues offer a glimpse into the theology of one of the great minds of the Church during the time when Roman authority ebbed forever in the West and ecclesiastical authority emerged to fill the void.

Published by Ex Fontibus Co.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Ex Fontibus Company
• Date d'édition: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1635489954
• ISBN 13: 9781635489958
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 326
• Éditeur: Saint-George Joseph
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg