Dialogues

Gregory wrote the Dialogues about 593, three years after he became pope. The second book is given wholly to Benedict. Gregory says at its opening that he could not learn everything about him and that what he tells comes from four of Benedict’s disciples, whom he names: Constantinus and Simplicius, who succeeded him as abbots; Valentinianus, who had charge of the monastery at the Lateran; and Honoratus, abbot in Gregory’s day of the monastery where Benedict began.

That places the book within living memory of Benedict and gives it named informants. It is also a collection of miracle stories meant to show the power of God in the saints of Italy, and it follows the pattern of such stories: almost every chapter is a wonder, often compared with one from Scripture. It gives no dates. The few facts that can be tied to other evidence are the places, Subiaco and Monte Cassino, and the visit of the Gothic king Totila, who reigned in the 540s.