Editing Benedict of Nursia (section)

==Hagiography==
Apart from a short poem attributed to Mark of Monte Cassino,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ampleforthjournal.org/V_027.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.ampleforthjournal.org/V_027.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title=The Autumn Number 1921 |website=The Ampleforth Journal}}</ref> the only ancient account of Benedict is found in the second volume of [[Pope Gregory&nbsp;I]]'s four-book ''Dialogues'', thought to have been written in 593,<ref name=ford/> although the authenticity of this work is disputed.<ref name="dialogues book two">''Life and Miracles of St. Benedict'' (''Book II, Dialogues''), tr. Odo John Zimmerman, O.S.B. and Benedict 
, O.S.B. (Westport, CT: [[Greenwood Publishing Group|Greenwood Press]], 1980), p. iv.</ref>

Gregory's account of Benedict's life, however, is not a biography in the modern sense of the word. It provides instead a [[Hagiography|spiritual portrait]] of the gentle, disciplined abbot. In a letter to Bishop Maximilian of Syracuse, Gregory states his intention for his ''Dialogues'', saying they are a kind of ''floretum'' (an ''anthology'', literally, 'flower garden') of the most striking miracles of Italian holy men.<ref name="fn_4">See [[Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster|Ildephonso Schuster]], ''Saint Benedict and His Times'', Gregory A. Roettger, tr. (London: [[Verlag Herder|B. Herder]], 1951), p. 2.</ref>

Gregory did not set out to write a chronological, historically anchored story of Benedict, but he did base his anecdotes on direct testimony. To establish his authority, Gregory explains that his information came from what he considered the best sources: a handful of Benedict's disciples who lived with him and witnessed his various miracles. These followers, he says, are Constantinus, who succeeded Benedict as [[Abbot]] of Monte Cassino, [[Honoratus]], who was abbot of Subiaco when St. Gregory wrote his ''Dialogues'', [[Valentinian III|Valentinianus]], and [[Pope Simplicius|Simplicius]].

In Gregory's day, history was not recognised as an independent field of study; it was a branch of grammar or rhetoric, and ''historia'' was an account that summed up the findings of the learned when they wrote what was, at that time, considered history.<ref name="fn_6">See Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, ed., ''Historiography in the Middle Ages'' (Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 1–2.</ref> Gregory's ''Dialogues'', Book Two, then, an authentic [[Hagiography#Medieval England|medieval hagiography]] cast as a conversation between the Pope and his deacon Peter,{{efn|name=Colgrave|For the various literary accounts, see Anonymous Monk of Whitby, ''The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great'', tr. [[Bertram Colgrave|B. Colgrave]] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 157, n. 110.}} is designed to teach spiritual lessons.<ref name=ford/>