Summary
Gregory speaks of the ‘Fathers’ of the Old Testament, who saw the Creator with ‘uplifted souls’ (j: ix.xxxii.48, p. 489.8). This vision gives them high authority as prophets (j: xvi.liii.66, p. 837; ix.xxxi.47, p. 489). He does not attribute the same standing of Fathers to the Christian writers who had gone before him, but he treats a number of them as having some authority. He had a substantial knowledge of Augustine, whom he recommends to one of his correspondents (Letterx.16, ccsl, p. 845.30, to Innocent, Prefect of Africa, July 600). Among the Greeks, he mentions the Cappadocians Gregory Nazianzen and Basil; he knew of Ignatius of Antioch, Epiphanius, Cyprian, Hilary of Poitiers, Jerome and Ambrose.
It is difficult to judge how common such knowledge would have been. Gregory says that he searched in vain for Eusebius' Gesta Martyrum in the Lateran and other Roman libraries. There were evidently difficulties in obtaining certain works. On the other hand, a full picture of the intellectual life of Cassiodorus'; day earlier in the sixth century indicates an active sponsorship of authors who were commissioned to write on suitable texts, the collecting of subscriptions to pay for the copying of manuscripts. Cassiodorus could look to a readership among the administrative class for whom his letters were intended, and the monks for whom he wrote his Institutiones.
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- The Thought of Gregory the Great , pp. 7 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986