What made Pope Gregory I “great”? If the Middle Ages had no difficulty recognizing Gregory as one of its most authoritative points of reference, modern readers have not always found this question as easy to answer. As with any great figure, however, there are two sides to Gregory – the historical and the universal. The contributors to this handbook look at Gregory’s “greatness” from both of these angles: what made Gregory stand out among his contemporaries; and what is unique about Gregory’s contribution through his many written works to the development of human thought and described human experience.
Contributors include: Jane Baun, Philip Booth, Matthew Dal Santo, Scott DeGregorio, George E. Demacopoulos, Bernard Green, Ann Kuzdale, Stephen Lake, Andrew Louth, Constant J. Mews, John Moorhead, Barbara Müller, Bronwen Neil, Richard M. Pollard, Claire Renkin, Cristina Ricci, and Carole Straw.
Dr Bronwen Neil holds the Burke Senior Lectureship in Ecclesiastical Latin at Australian Catholic University, and is Assistant Director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies. She has published widely on Maximus the Confessor, Pope Martin I, Anastasius Bibliothecarius and Pope Leo I.
Matthew Dal Santo took his PhD at the University of Cambridge. From 2007 to 2011, he was a Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History. He is the author of Debating the Saints’ Cult in the Age of Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2012).
Students and academics in the fields of church history, the history of Late Antiquity, bishops of Rome, episcopal responsibilities, and the history of the western church, especially in relation to Byzantium.