1 A Cooperative Correspondence: the letters of Gregory the Great * Richard Matthew Pollard Of all of Gregory’s writings, there is perhaps no passage more striking than in the prologue to his Dialogues, where he paints a vivid, wistful picture of his present life as pope in a near poetic nautical metaphor: Indeed my troubled mind recalls how once it was in the monastery […] but now, in pastoral duties, endures the agitations of worldly men. […] And so I weigh what I now bear, I weigh what I have lost; and when I look upon what I have surrendered, what I bear is made heavier. For look: now I am struck by the waves of a great sea, and in the ship of my mind I am hammered by the winds of a fierce storm, and when I recall my previous life, as if I have sighted the shore with a backward glance, I sigh. And what is still harder to bear, as I am savaged and roiled by immense waves: I now can scarcely see the harbour I left behind. 1 This passage underlines Gregory’s fond memories for his time spent at his monastery on the Caelian hill, “the happiest time of his life”, 2 contrasted with the weight of papal duties, which Gregory feels he bears alone. Yet Gregory did not pilot the little boat of the papacy all by himself. Like the popes that preceded him, and those that followed, the success of Gregory’s “voyage” was dependent, far more than usually realised, on the abilities of numerous colleagues. Their legacy is hidden, but a careful study of the letters produced by the papacy offers a glimpse of where they worked, who they were, and what abilities they possessed. Such an investigation also allows us to make a broader assessment of education, and the functioning of the papacy, in Rome c.600 than would be possible looking at Gregory alone. *** It is a seemingly arcane feature of Latin prose style that will offer the most help in identifying the men behind Gregory, namely Latin prose-rhythm. 3 Prose rhythm was an rhetorical embellishment that involved arranging words at the end of sentences into particular rhythmical patterns. By Gregory’s day, it had a very long history in Latin literature: prose-rhythm been used by Latin writers since before Cicero, who himself used rhythm extensively while also describing its practice in detail in his De Oratore. 4 In antiquity, the rhythm was based on syllable quantities (“longs” and “shorts”, * This essay had a long and sometimes painful genesis. I would like to thank Matthew Dal Santo and Bronwen Neil for their help and patience in the reshaping process. Further gratitude goes to Julian Hendrix for his comments on a much earlier version. Finally, this essay would have taken a very different direction were it not for the anonymous readers. 1 Gregory, Dial., 1, Prol. 3--4 (SC 2θ0μ12)μ “Infelix quippe animus meus ... meminit qualis aliquando in monasterio fuit ... At nunc ex occasione curae pastoralis saecularium hominum negotia patitur ... Perpendo itaque quid tolero, perpendo quid amisi; cumque intueor illud quod perdidi, fit hoc gravius quod porto. Ecce etenim nunc magni maris fluctibus quatior atque in navi mentis tempestatis validae procellis inlidor, et cum prioris vitae recolo, quasi post tergum reductis oculis viso litore suspiro. Quodque adhuc est gravius, dum immensis fluctibus turbatus feror, vix iam portum valeo videre quem reliqui.” Cf. Ep. 5.53a (eds Paul Ewald and Ludwig Hartmann, MGH Epp. 1 [Berlin, 1891], pp. 353--58, at 354, ll.5--13). 2 Robert Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), p. 12. 3 On Latin prose-rhythm and its history in antiquity, see now Steven Oberhelman, Prose Rhythm in Latin Literature of the Roman Empire: First Century B.C. to Fourth Century A.D. (Lewiston, 2003). 4 Cicero, De Oratore 3.42--51 (ed. Augustus Samuel Wilkins [Oxford, 1902], pp. 228--236); Cicero, Orator 50-- 71 (ed. Augustus Samuel Wilkins [Oxford, 1903], pp. 164--188). On Cicero’s use of prose-rhythm, see Thaddäus Zielinski, Das Clauselgesetz in Ciceros Reden. Grundzüge einer oratorischen Rhythmik (Leipzig,