Further Parallels to the ‘Hadrianum' from St. Gregory the Great's Commentary on the First Book of Kings

Abstract

A previous study entitled ‘Liturgical Prayers of Pope Gregory I’ sought to establish links between some 80 prayer formulae of the Hadrianum and the recognized authentic works of Saint Gregory the Great. That study, begun and completed several years ago, did not take into account — unfortunately as now appears — works about which there had been controversy in the past and whose Gregorian authenticity was not unanimously accepted. For this reason no parallel texts were given from the Commentary on the First Book of Kings. But Dom P. Verbraken has recently shown in two convincing articles that hesitations concerning St. Gregory's authorship of the Commentary are not justified. Even though the diffusion of this work in the Middle Ages was a very restricted one, there can be no real doubt that it was written by St. Gregory himself. This conclusion was by itself a sufficient stimulus to set about analyzing the Commentary on Kings with a continual eye on the text of the Hadrianum, and the result has not been unrewarding: a new set of parallels can be added to those already published in the previous article, and in addition six new prayers inserted in the list. The very fact that such loca parallela can be found in the Commentary would seem in itself a further proof of the Gregorian authenticity of this work. A few texts have also been taken from the beginning of the Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, also attributed to St. Gregory.