Pere Maymó Capdevila: Germanic Identities in the Gregorian Dialogues (and Letters)

Sixth-century Italy was quite a convulse place to live. Justinian’s conquest in 553 had restored imperial rule on a devastated land for some fifteen years after half century of Ostrogothic reign; then, the Lombard invasion split the territory in a mosaic of opposed dominions, which caused serious problems to the coexistence of Romans, Byzantines and Germanics. That was the situation when Gregory the Great came to the throne of Peter, and he described it from his particular point of view throughout his writings, where political division also had a reflection in literary topics.In this paper, we will try specifically to clarify the pontiff’s regard about the Germanics.On the one hand, we find the Dialogorum patrum Italicorum libri IV, a hagiographical work composed in 593-594, just when king Agilulf was besieging Rome. The Dialogues provide us with information of its society, where population with varied ethnic and cultural origins lives forcibly together; but it also becomes a reinterpretation in the light of the Gregorian thought which establishes categories for every role of the play according to his identity and personality. On the other hand,this conception contrasts with that expressed in the Registrum epistularum libri XIV, in which the pontiff adopteddifferentattitudes before Germanic addressees. These selected epistles cover all his episcopate from 590 to 604 and we may see how he changes his mind depending on the circumstances and manages to collaborate with those who are formally his enemies.