Gregory the Great as Intermediary Figure between East and West: The Eleventh-Century Manuscript Context of the Old EnglishDialogues

Abstract

Eleventh-century England, especially its reform-minded clerics, exhibited both interest in and wariness toward the anchoritic aspects of the eastern ascetic tradition. This article argues that two eleventh-century manuscripts of the Old English Dialogues reflected these concerns by making Gregory the Great into a teacher of eastern asceticism through an association between the Dialogues and other ascetic texts understood as eastern, the Admonitio ad filium spiritualem and the Verba Seniorum. Doing so gave the eastern texts an unimpeachable lineage that ran through Gregory and Benedict of Nursia, and as a consequence subtly altered the use of the translatio studii such that in these manuscripts it provides justification for past texts as well as present ones. By considering these texts together instead of separately, it becomes apparent how the prefaces of the Dialogues and its accompanying eastern ascetic texts connect through shared descriptions of instruction, and consequently how the prefaces of the eastern texts make space to insert Gregory into the chain of transmission and translation from the East to England.