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| Pope Gregory the Great |
This blog post begins examining interpretations
of the rich man and Lazarus parable in the Middle Ages.
As Besserman notes, “To begin by trying to assess the place of the
Bible in medieval culture is like trying to apprehend the oxygen in the air we
breathe . . . . [I]t was a constant component of the mental life of medieval
men and women” (Besserman 1988: 4). The language and content of the Bible began
to permeate most literature, art, and music, as well as many areas of everyday
life. This environment brought rich and expansive developments in the
afterlives of parables, with the Rich Man and Lazarus being one of the four
parables that received the most attention (the others were the Prodigal Son,
Good Samaritan, and Wise and Foolish Virgins).
When we start talking about biblical interpretations of the
parables in the medieval period, the writings/sermons of Pope Gregory (the
Great) are a great place to start.
Gregory was born into an aristocratic family in Rome. His
father was a Roman senator, and Gregory initially followed his father in an
administrative career. Upon his father’s death, however, Gregory used his
inheritance to found seven monasteries on his family’s lands and became a monk.
In 579, however, Pope Pelagius II compelled him to be one of the seven deacons
of Rome and then appointed him as papal ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople. Gregory returned to Rome
in 586 and, upon Pope Pelagius’s death in 590, became the first monk to be
selected as pope.
Gregory was an influential pope who extended his duties to
secular and even military roles, negotiating, for example, peace with the
Lombards who besieged Rome in 592-3. He is also famous for the evangelization
of England, sending approximately forty missionaries to Canterbury in 597. Gregory
vigorously defended the authority of the Bishop of Rome, promoted monasticism,
and made significant changes to church liturgy and music (e.g., the Gregorian
chant is attributed to him). In addition, Gregory devoted vast sums to charity
to help those in need, and he combatted “heretics” such as the Pelagians,
Donatists, and Arians (see McKim 2007: 486).
Gregory’s contributions to the interpretation of the
parables primarily stem from his homilies on the Gospels that were written
during the first three years of his papacy. His interpretive approach to
Scripture establishes a typical pattern for medieval interpreters in the West. Gregory
insists that the historical or literal meaning of Scripture is foundational,
but he prefers to dwell on the three “spiritual” senses of Scripture that
reflect the divine mystery and the limits of human understanding: (a) the
allegorical, (b) the anagogical (which prophesies the future), and (c) the
tropological (the ethical/moral sense). Scripture, he believes, nurtures
Christians at many levels: It is like a river in which a lamb could walk and an
elephant could swim (Moralia, Letter to
Leander). The proper response to this divine mystery is to ascend from the
“simpler historical sense to the more obscure spiritual senses” (Hauser and
Watson 2009: II, 96).
Gregory’s homilies are directed to both clergy and laity, so
they are less complex than many of his other works.
The next post will examine how Gregory allegorizes the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, as well as how Gregory interprets its
moral implications.
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