The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
501–600
98 works
c. 585–590
Latin
In Gloria Martyrum
Gregory of Tours · c. 538 – 594
A hundred and six short chapters on relics and what they did: oil that flowed, a candle that would not go out, thieves struck down, and a Jewish man who took an icon and was found out by the blood it wept.
c. 585–588
Syriac
John of Ephesus · c. 507 – c. 588
Church history by a bishop who was both Justinian's missionary to the pagans of Asia Minor — he claims seventy thousand baptisms — and a Miaphysite imprisoned under a later emperor. The third part was written in confinement and says so.
589
Latin
The Third Council of Toledo
King Reccared and the Visigothic nobility renounce Arianism before seventy-two bishops, the Arian books are ordered burned, and the creed is to be sung at every mass — recited, in the Spanish text, with the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.
c. 583–600
Latin
Leander of Seville · c. 534 – c. 600
A rule written for his own sister Florentina, closing with an unguarded page asking her to pray for him and grieving that their brother died before the conversion; and the sermon preached at Toledo when the Goths came over, which is pure jubilation.
c. 590
Latin
John of Biclaro · c. 540 – c. 621
A continuation of Victor of Tunnuna covering 567 to 590, by a Goth who studied at Constantinople and was exiled for ten years by an Arian king before the conversion he lived to record.
c. 560–599
Greek
Anastasius I of Antioch · d. 599
Homilies and short treatises by a patriarch deposed by one emperor for resisting Justinian's late Christology and restored by another at Gregory the Great's request, including a sermon on the transfiguration and a defence of the impassibility of the Word.
590
Latin
Regula Pastoralis
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Who should take pastoral charge, how he should live, and — in the long third part — how the same truth must be spoken differently to the poor and the rich, the joyful and the grieving, the reticent and the talkative.
590–592
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Forty sermons on the gospel readings of the Roman year, preached during plague and siege, several of them dictated when he was too ill to speak.
c. 579–591
Latin
Moralia in Iob
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Thirty-five books begun as conferences for fellow monks in Constantinople, reading Job at three levels — historical, allegorical, and moral — and using it to map the interior life.
593
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540 – 604
Twenty-two sermons on the throne vision and the temple, broken off unfinished when the Lombards reached the walls of Rome. Gregory stops mid-book and tells the congregation he can no longer take pleasure in exposition, because everywhere he looks the city is a ruin and the people gone.
593–594
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Four books of miracle stories about Italian holy men, the second devoted entirely to Benedict, and the fourth to the fate of souls after death.
c. 593–594
Greek
Evagrius Scholasticus · c. 536–c. 594
A history from Ephesus in 431 to 594, covering the christological councils, the Persian wars, and an eyewitness account of the plague.
c. 573–594
Latin
Decem Libri Historiarum
Gregory of Tours · c. 538–594
Ten books from creation to the author's own day, dominated by the murderous politics of the Merovingian royal family, told in a Latin the author apologises for.
c. 590–600
Latin
Columbanus · c. 543–615
A severe Irish rule for the monasteries he founded across Gaul and Italy, paired with a penitential assigning a specific penance to each named sin.
c. 597
Old Irish
Amra Choluim Chille
Dallán Forgaill
A lament for Columba composed at his death in language so compressed and archaic that medieval Irish scribes had to gloss almost every word. He studied the books of Solomon, it says, and Ireland is a harp without its string.
590–604
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Over eight hundred surviving letters administering the estates of the Roman church, negotiating with Lombards, and instructing the mission he sent to England.
c. 500–600
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
Sermons for the festivals and the special sabbaths rather than for the weekly cycle, including a sequence of seven for the weeks of consolation after the fast of the ninth of Av, working through Isaiah's comfort ye, comfort ye my people.
c. 595–613
Latin
Columbanus · c. 543–615
Letters to three popes and to his own monks, defending the Irish Easter calculation and addressing the bishop of Rome with startling directness.
81–98 of 98 matching · 1780 in the Library