page_title: Gregory of Agrigento
section_title: Hagiography
hierarchical_section_title: Gregory of Agrigento / Hagiography
caption_attribution_description: Свт. Григорий, еп. Акрагатский. Миниатюра из Минология Василия II. 976-1025 гг. (Vat. gr. 1613. Fol. 203)
context_page_description: Gregory was the bishop of Agrigento from 590 until at least 603 and a correspondent of Pope Gregory I. He is the probable subject of two semi-legendary saint's lives and possible author of a commentary on Ecclesiastes, although both of these identifications have been questioned.
context_section_description: A life of Gregory was written by Leontios of the monastery of San Saba in Rome. Its full title is An Account of the Life of Saint Gregory, Bishop of the Church of Agrigento. It is a lengthy work in Greek. It was translated into Latin in the 18th century by Stefano Antonio Morcelli. Its two most recent editors disagree regarding the date of its composition and its relative historicity. Albrecht Berger assigns it to the period between 750 and 828 on the grounds that it relies on the Donation of Constantine (unknown before the mid-8th century). He rejects an early date on the grounds that there is no evidence for Greek-speaking monasteries in Rome before 649. John Martyn, arguing from correspondences between the biography and the papal letters, assigns it an early date of around 640. Leontios is by some said to have died in 688, providing a terminus ante quem if he is the author.
  The editors' assessments of Gregory's biography's historical value also differ. For Berger, "though it has a historical core, [it] is in large parts legendary." He does not think that the historical person at the core was the bishop. For Martyn, it is "an important, contemporary document on the cities, clergy and people of Agrigento, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome during" the papacy of Gregory I and one of very few 7th-century sources on Sicily. There are contradictions in the biography and in the account in the Synaxarion of Constantinople. The latter has him alive during the patriarchate of Makarios II and the reign of the Emperor Justinian II (685–711) over a century later. The biography depicts him as a contemporary of the monothelite controversy, which began in 629. When he is arrested in Agrigento, the Emperor Justinian intervenes with the pope to secure his release. The biography depicts the Sicilian episcopate as supporting Gregory against the papacy and in general has an anti-papal tone. Morcelli, in his Latin edition, argued that the anti-papal tone stemmed from some pamphlets directed against Gregory I that circulated in Rome after his death. To Morcelli, it was evidence of the early date of the biography.
  The biography of Gregory survives in twenty manuscripts. Besides the original work of Leontios (BHG 707), there is also a biography (BHG 708) by Niketas David Paphlagon (fl. c. 900). This was the text used by the compiler Simeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century. It was one of only 14 texts out of 148 that Simeon left intact and did not rework, and one of only seven that he promised the reader would give them pleasure to read. There are also two shorter reworkings of Leontios' biography, one (BHG 707p) attributed to Mark, hegoumenos of San Saba, and another (BHG 708f) anonymous.
  Gregory's feast is celebrated on 23 or 24 November in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is on 24 November in the work of Simeon Metaphrastes. It was introduced to the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Caesar Baronius on 23 November. The popularity of Gregory's cult can be gauged by the large number of surviving iconographic representations of him.
caption: Gregory depicted in the Menologion of Basil II (c. 1000)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACDSee Pro 6", "Image DateTime": "2016:03:09 23:54:00", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "159", "EXIF SubSecTime": "26", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1075", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "753"}