PETER. I confess that I am well pleased with that you say, for I know most assuredly that the life, and not the miracles, are to be considered; but yet, seeing such miracles as be wrought do give testimony of a good life, I beseech you, if any more be yet remaining, that you would, with the examples and virtuous lives of holy men, feed mine hungry soul.
GREGORY. Desirous I am, to the honour of our blessed Saviour, to tell you some things now concerning the miracles of the man of God, venerable St. Benedict: but to do it as it ought, this day is not sufficient; wherefore we will here make a pause, and to handle this matter more plentifully, take another beginning.
The End of the First Book
[Footnotes moved to the end and combined with editorial notes]
1. Introduction, p. 4. Similarly in the letter addressed to Leander of Seville, prefixed to the Moralia, or Exposition of the Book of Job (composed before his elevation to the papacy), St. Gregory had written : "Now that the times are disturbed through multiplied evils, the end of the world being at hand, we ourselves, who are believed to be devoted to the inner mysteries, are involved in external cares." Cf. below, Bk. III. chap. 38 ; Bk. IV. chap. 41.
2. Chapter I. p. 7. Funda, more correctly Fundi (the translator is somewhat casual in his rendering of the Latin names of places), is the modern Fondi, in the province of Caserta, between Terracina and Formia. Cf. Horace, Sat. I. 5, 34-36. Honoratus is celebrated in the Roman Martyrology on January 16.
3. Chapter II. p. 9. For Totila, see below, Bk. II. chap. 14. He was king of the Ostrogoths in Italy from 541 to 552.
4. Ibid, p. 10. In 553, after the death of Totila's successor, Teias, Leutharand Butilin (here called Buccellinus), chiefs of the Alamanni, who were subject to the king of the Franks, invaded Italy in support of the scattered remnants of the Goths. Butilin ravaged Campania in 554, until defeated and slain by Narses at the battle of Capua. See Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, V. bk. vi. chap. I.
5. 4 Kings 2. 12
6. Chapter IV. p. 15. The province of Valeria included the cities of Reate (Rieti) and Tibur (Tivoli), and the modern province of Aquila (Abruzzi). St. Equitius is commemorated on March 7. It is uncertain whether the monastery quod appellatur Balneum Ciceronis was at Tusculum, or (as seems more probable from the context) on the site of the present abbey of San Domenico Abbate near Isola del Liri in the diocese of Sora.
7. Ibid. p. 16. Amiternum, an ancient Sabine town, the birthplace of Sallust, is some five miles from the modern city of Aquila ; its site is occupied by the village of San Vittorino. Two letters of Cassiodorus, written in the name of King Theodoric, refer to this Basilius, who, together with another Roman noble named Praetextatus, was imprisoned for practising magical arts, but made his escape. Theodoric ordered that he should be recaptured, and examined by a board of five persons, one of whom was the patrician Symmachus ( Cf. Bk. IV. chaps. 13 and 30). See Hodgkin, The Letters of Cassiodorus, pp. 246, 247. Baronius places these events in the year 504 or thereabouts. Nothing is known of the subsequent fate of Basilius, to which St. Gregory refers ; he is evidently not the same person as the Basilius mentioned by Boe'thius, in the De Consolatione Philosophiae, as one of his accusers.
8. John 4, 53.
9. Ibid. p. 18. Castorius (or Castus) was a military officer (magister militum), who shared in the defence of Rome against the Lombards, and is mentioned with high praise by St. Gregory himself in a letter of 595 to the Emperor Mauritius (Registrum, Epist. v. 36, ed. Ewald and Hartmann, i. p. 317). For "Bishop of Reatino" (Reatinae antistes ecclesiae) read "Bishop of Reate" (Rieti). The Bishop of Rome mentioned in this chapter is probably Pope Symmachus I. (498-514), for whom see below, Bk. IV. chap. 40.
10. Ibid. p. 19. Julianus is described in the Latin text as being then defensor (of the Church of Rome). The Defenders of the various Churches were ecclesiastical lawyers, clerics appointed to look after the interests of the Church. See Moroni, Dizionario di Erudiziotie storico-ecclesiastica, xx. pp. 38 et seq., and St. Gregory, Registrum, Epist. v. 26, ed. Ewald and Hartmann, i. p. 307.
11. Luke 16, 15.
12. 2 Kings, 16 and 19.
13. Ibid. p. 22. Valentinus was the second Abbot of Sant' Andrea, the monastery into which St. Gregory converted his palace on the Caelian Hill.
14. Ibid. p. 23. The Lombards came into the province of Valeria in 571, three years after their first appearance in Italy.
15. Chapter VII. pp. 26, 27. For Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse, see Bk. III. chap. 36. The "Abbey which is hard by the city of Nepi" is the monastery "called Suppentonia," mentioned in the next chapter. There were a number of early mediaeval monasteries on Mount Soracte ; the one presided over by Nonnosus was, perhaps, that traditionally associated with St. Sylvester, which was afterwards in the eighth century refounded by Carloman the Frank.
16. John 5, 17. 28
17. Chapter VIII. p. 29. Suppentonia is the modern Castel Sant' Elia, between Nepi and Civita Castellana. Anastasius is commemorated on January n.
18. Gen. 21, 12.
19. Gen. 27, 29.
20. Gen. 22, 17.
21. Gen. 25, 21.