The ‘Dialogues’ of Gregory the Great

Summary

The Dialogi of Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604, was one of the most influential works of the early Middle Ages. It was written in the form of an instructive conversation with a junior colleague, and its purpose seems to have been to collect tales about the lives of the early saints which would be of benefit to the literate clergy. They were urged to emulate the moral examples it contained and to use them for the general edification of the faithful. Book IV of the work, however, is concerned less with the saints’ lives than with the souls of ordinary Christians, and it is in this book that two early examples are to be found which describe apparitions of the deceased to the living. The two stories are significant, and probably influential in terms of the later development of the Miracula strand of medieval ghost story, in that they are not hagiographic accounts of saintly episodes but stories which use the extraordinary – the appearance after their death of ordinary people – to uphold and exemplify theological or moral points which the writer wishes to emphasise. In the first story, the spirit of Paschasius the Deacon explains that he is being required to labour after death at the public baths so as to purge the minor sin of his support for a schismatic candidate for the papacy. In the second story the spirit of a former administrator of the public baths explains why it continues to frequent (in effect, to ‘haunt’, albeit in a non-threatening fashion) a place familiar to it in life. The common motif of the public baths as the scene to which the spirits of the Christian dead are attached might well be an extension of the belief in the classical world that sources of fresh water were numinous places, frequented by minor deities.

The Spirit of Paschasius the Deacon

Book IV, Chap. XL

When I was younger, and still lived a secular life, I heard from the older people about Paschasius, a deacon of the Roman church (whose sound and eloquent books of the Holy Ghost are still available to us). They said that he was a man who led a remarkably holy life.