Gregorius, Moralium in Job (Vat.lat.577)
A commentary on the biblical Book of Job, the Moralia (LIBER MORALIUM) is Gregory’s longest work and his magnum opus, conceived as an encyclopedic manual of committed Christian life. Taking the Old Testament narrative as a cue for reflections on morality and divine justice, Gregory (detail, spatial, paratext) uses the story of Job to plumb the exegetical depths of Christian wisdom and uncover spiritual teachings for a virtuous life. For Gregory and his readers, the mystical meaning of scripture exceeds its literal presentation; he maintained that hidden below the surface of the written word, a deeper spiritual significance could be discerned through moral and allegorical interpretation. Understanding God to be Job’s ultimate author, Gregory insists that scripture transcends all forms of knowledge, and throughout the commentary, he reminds the reader that words are the cryptic vehicles of divine truth and that a good life is one of “lived reading or study” (manuscript). Through this contemplation of text, Gregory proposed to find the true meaning of the Word.
Gregory’s popularity in Renaissance Rome was founded on the perceived duality of his character. For Italy’s humanists, Gregory was both the inheritor of classical antiquity as well as a hero of Christian piety, and his writings were regarded as a fundamental basis for the interpretation of Holy Scripture. For the papacy, he represented a ripe symbol of pontifical authority, one which was easily shaped into the image and policies of his successors. Few other theological works have shared the influence of the Moralia, whose popularity was immediate and widespread; it was widely read throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as an authority of spiritual enlightenment. Out of all of Gregory’s writings, none other was more widely dispersed during the Renaissance or better suited to the themes of the papal library than the Moralia. Not only was Gregory’s written legacy broadly circulated in the medieval sourcebooks and patristic florilegia (medieval collections of literary extracts, or anthologies) but by the fifteenth century, the Moralia in particular proliferated into all important academic, monastic, and private collections. Humanists also spurred the production of new manuscripts and printed editions across the intellectual centers of Western Europe.
Gregory’s prominent place in Raphael’s Disputa complements his literary presence in the Julian collection, which included several editions of his letters and homilies and at least two copies of the Moralia, one of which survives today in the Vatican Library. In the fresco, Gregory appears in the guise of Julius II (detail, spatial) to the left of the altar (detail, spatial) with eyes raised to behold the mystery unfolding before him; a labeled volume (detail, spatial) of the Moralia (LIBER MORALIUM) rests at his feet. Like many of its companions, the imagined book had a real counterpart in the Bibliotheca Iulia: BAV MS Vat.lat.577. An ornate humanistic manuscript which includes Books XIX-XXXV of Gregory’s text, Vat.lat.577 once belonged to the collection of Cardinal Filippo Calandrini, brother of Pope Nicholas V, before it was claimed for the library of Julius II. The text is richly ornamented with illuminated initials and tangled bianchi girari (white vine tendrils)(manuscript), and its pages find striking affinities in Raphael’s painting.
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The golden interlace (manuscript) that frames the opening of the text mirrors the golden knots and coils that characterize the altar (detail) in Raphael’s fresco, beside which the labeled Moralia appears. Notably, Raphael did not include the altar (detail, spatial) in his original plans for the painting; the first version of the altar, evident from early drawings, included placards of text, which Raphael later replaced in the fresco with the glittering cloth. The table appears relatively late in preliminary studies, entering the composition only with the patristic authors. One might speculate about the message of the altar’s planned titulus, but it is enough to observe its emphasis at the center of the image, just below the convergence of the perspectival rays. The substitution of a written inscription with the pattern of golden interlace is thus significant and suggests that the manuscript and the painting participate in mutual relationship of meaning, elucidated by Gregory’s writings. These visual parallels between the manuscript and painting also indicate that the Sacrament of the Altar (paratext) carries distinctly Gregorian connotations here; the power of the Eucharist as an instrument of cosmic justice in Gregory’s writings is an integral dimension of its representation in the fresco.
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As he reflects on the virtues and their functions, Gregory describes the harmony of fortitude (detail, spatial, manuscript), prudence (detail, spatial, manuscript), and temperance (detail, spatial, manuscript), which, “joined mutually to one another,” form the basis for justice. Gregory’s position echoes that of both Plato and Aristotle (detail, spatial), and his definition might be seen to mirror the description of the virtues in Raphael’s Jurisprudence. In the lower registers, Justinian and Gregory IX perform the literary exercise of justice: the former assembled the corpus iuris civilis (civil law) (detail, spatial), while the latter compiled the critical text of the corpus iuris canonici (canon law) (detail, spatial). Above, Raphael’s personifications of fortitude, prudence, and temperance are crowned by justice (detail, spatial, manuscript), who appears in the ceiling’s tondo overhead.
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Gold (paratext) in the Moralia is a favorite metaphor for illumination through Holy Scripture. For Gregory, “gold” refers variously to sanctity or virtue or righteousness, and over and over in the long text, it appears in conjunction with divine inspiration. Throughout the Moralia, “gold” penetrates all that is good, making it into a sacred vessel of the Word, and in the penultimate book of his magnum opus, Gregory concludes: “For by the term ‘gold’ in Holy Scripture is designated the innermost brightness of the Divine” (manuscript). Thus, according to Gregory’s system, as the mind is raised in contemplation of the divine, it takes the reciprocal form of heavenly light (detail, spatial, manuscript), which is signified by the properties of gold in the written word and the natural world alike. Within this scheme, Gregory tells us, the saints humbly receive the talents of God, which are transfused to them just as light reaches the golden prongs of an encrusted gem. In the Disputa, the hierarchy of golden pigment begins from the top down: gilt and yellow beams flicker down from heaven’s dome and Christ’s scintillating mandorla: passing through the Trinity (detail, spatial), it touches the saints (detail, spatial) assembled along the cloudbank of Christ’s court, finally illuming the altar cloth and the vestments of select theologians.
Raphael’s use of gold in the painting is deliberate, corresponding to the holiest bodies. The glittering interlace of the altar follows from the golden monstrance, whose color and shape are in turn received from the ascending spiritual forms of the Holy Spirit (detail, spatial), Christ the sun (detail, spatial), and the dome of heaven (detail, spatial). Perhaps not by coincidence, in the Moralia gold is a favorite metaphor for illumination through Holy Scripture, which Gregory deems the highest of all colors and metals. For Gregory, “gold” refers variously to sanctity, virtue, or righteousness, but it appears always in conjunction with divine inspiration;time and again in the long text, Gregory compares gold’s sparkle to the mind of mankind (manscript).
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In the Disputa, Gregory the Great appears to the left of the altar, on the side of the Jurisprudence. Gregory compared in his Moralia the moderation of virtue to the tightening or loosening of a bow (detail, spatial, manscript), an analogy he extended to the operation of justice, and which evokes the relationship of the northern and southern walls. In the Parnassus, a figure at the right of the jamb emphatically directs our gaze to the Jurisprudence; at the crest of the mountain, Apollo (detail, spatial) plays his lira, reminiscent of Gregory’s analogy and the theme of justice as harmony.
Tracy Cosgriff, The College of Wooster
Further Reading
Buddensieg, Tilmann. “Gregory the Great, the Destroyer of Pagan Idols: The History of a Medieval Legend Concerning the Decline of Ancient Art and Literature.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965): 44-64.
Cosgriff, Tracy. “The Library of Julius II and Raphael’s Art of Commentary.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 22.1] (2019): 59-91.
DelCogliano, Mark. Moral Reflections on the Book of Job: Preface and Books 1-5, vol. 1, trans. by Brian Kerns. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2014.
Fehl, Philipp. “Raphael’s Reconstruction of the Throne of St. Gregory the Great.” Art Bulletin 55.3 (1973): 373-379.
Kessler, Stephan C. “Gregory the Great (c. 540-604).” In Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity, ed. Charles Kannengiesser, 1336-1368. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Künzle, Paul. “Zur obersten der drei Tiaren auf Raffaels ‘Disputa.’” Römische Quartalschrift 7 (1962): 226-249.
Kuzdale, Ann. “The Reception of Gregory in the Renaissance and Reformation.” In A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo, 359-382. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
La tramissione dei testi latini del medioevo, Te.Tra. 5: Gregorius I Papa, ed. Lucia Castaldi. Florence: Sismel and Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013.
Straw, Carole. Gregory the Great. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996.
Wingfield, Kim Butler. “Networks of Knowledge: Inventing Theology in the Stanza della Segnatura.” Studies in Iconography 38 (2017): 174–221.
Young, Frances. Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.