1. Leander was bishop of Seville from 584 to 600; he met Gregory in Constantinople (between 579 and 585) and received this letter, accompanying a copy of the Moralia, in 595.
2. This famous phrase, servus servorum Dei, appears in a letter Gregory wrote before becoming pope (Registrum Epistolarum appendix 1 [MGH ed., vol. 2, p. 437, line 16]); it was later taken to epitomize the humble style of Gregory's papacy. Its inclusion here may be an insertion by another, admiring hand.
3. The same sentiment recurs almost verbatim at Mor.35.20.49 (quoted in the appendix to this volume) and in the opening paragraph of Gregory's Dialogues 1.Prol.,1; all three texts were written early in Gregory's papacy.
4. Note that Gregory treats the text of Job as something to be heard; whether or not late antique readers vocalized their text, they still conceived reading as an aural, rather than a visual, experience. Cf. J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York 1962) 18-20.
5. Cf. Wisdom 10.21 and Numbers 22.28.
6. The literal sense is suspect to Gregory only when the text is itself fundamentally figurative in expression, as in the examples that follow. Gregory nowhere questions the literal truth of a scriptural text, but his sensitivity to the figurative habits of scriptural writers makes him anything but a fundamentalist.
7. Job 9.13.
8. Job 7.15.
9. Job 3.3.
10. Job 3.5.
11. Job 3.7.
12. Job 7.19.
13. Job 6.7.
14. Job 7.20.
15. Job 13.26.
16. Job 27.6.
17. "As if they said to us": Gregory uses this kind of represented speech abundantly throughout the Moralia to summarize his interpretation of a passage. Just as here, the pattern is for him to quote texts, discuss them in detail, then present a summary restatement with some rubric like, "It is as if it were said . . . ."
18. Job 31.16-20.
19. The act of writing is also conceived as a matter of speech rather than of manual labor; a writer like Gregory dictated to professional scribes whose manual labor made the manuscripts that contained his works.
20. Hebrews 12.6.
21. Deuteronomy 16.21.
22. Literally, "the jarrings of metacismus": a kind of abuse of euphony in the employment of the letter M, reproved by grammarians; see T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces (Stockholm, 1964), 162-8.
23. Donatus (fl. 4th cent.) was the most famous of Latin grammarians; Gregory does not deny the value of good grammar, but insists on keeping pedantry in its place. A fastidious scholar could find much in the Latin Bible to displease a taste for grammatical nicety; numerous Christian writers were at pains to insist that the Word of God was immune to such criticisms on principle. This passage, however, has been much discussed; see H. de Lubac, Exegese Medievale (1959-64), 3.53-77.
24. For biblical texts generally, Gregory uses what would later be known as the Vulgate, largely, but not entirely, the work of Jerome (d. 420 A.D.). The new version gradually overcame the liturgical conservatism that clung to earlier, less accurate Latin translations. For the text of Job itself, Gregory uses the last, best version of Jerome, made from the original text; this version marked a significant improvement over earlier Latin versions (including one by Jerome himself) that depended almost entirely on the very unsatisfactory version contained in the Greek Septuagint. In some cases, Gregory's scriptural citations do not match exactly any surviving version; they may represent readings contained in manuscripts now lost or may be the slight mistakes that arise from citing texts from memory.
25. Genesis 36.33. Some very old Greek and Latin manuscripts of Genesis explicitly insert a gloss at the Genesis text to identify Jobab with Job, but the identification is not a probable one.
26. Numbers 12.3.
27. John 19.26.
28. Cf. Luke 24.13ff.
29. 2 Corinthians 13.3.
30. Psalm 77.1.
31. Exodus 3.6.
32. This difficult sentence depends on our remembering the figurative sense in which Christian readers are still under the Law and the literal sense in which they are no longer bound by it.
33. Isaiah 23.4.
34. By laymen, Gregory may well have in mind laymen who voluntarily live according to the discipline of the clerical orders; such lay ascetics were not uncommon in his time. Cf. J.J. O'Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley 1979) 107-116.
35. Ezechiel 14.14.
36. Matthew 17.19.
37. Psalm 41.9.
38. Job 31.13.
39. Job 31.32.
40. Job 29.9.
41. Job 29.25.
42. Job 31.17.
43. Job 1.22.
44. Job 1.8.
45. Job 1.9, 11; this citation does not quite agree with the Vulgate text Gregory regularly uses; cf. note 24 to the letter to Leander above.
46. Cf. Job 42.10.
47. Job 42.9-10.
48. Jeremiah 30.14.
49. Jeremiah 30.15.
50. John 5.14.
51. 2 Corinthians 12.7.
52. John 9.2-3.
53. Ephesians 4.15.
54. Colossians 1.24.
55. Isaiah 61.10.
56. Job 13.3-4.
57. Psalm 8.3.
58. Gregory owes his translations of Hebrew names and words to the writings of Jerome; they are often surprisingly accurate, but scarcely to be relied on philologically.
59. Cf. Job 42.8-10: "[The Lord said to Eliphaz:] 'To Job you must go for your ransoming, with seven bulls and seven rams to offer in burnt-sacrifice; he, my servant, shall intercede for you, and for his sake your folly shall be pardoned, that spoke amiss of me when he spoke the truth. So away they went, Eliphaz the Themanite, Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the Naamathite, and did the Lord's's bidding. For Job's sake the Lord pardoned them; and, as he prayed for these friends of his, the Lord relented at the sight of his penitence. So he gave back to Job twice over all that he had lost."
60. Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: cf. Mor. 1.7.12 (based on Isaiah 11.2).
61. Apocalypse 1.11.
62. Proverbs 9.1.
63. Romans 11.25-26.
64. Isaiah 61.7.
65. Apocalypse 6.11.
66. Truth (Veritas) is often personified to stand for Christ in attributing scriptural quotations in the Moralia.
67. Acts 1.7.
68. "Ad loquendi initium, diu loquendo, pervenimus."
69. History = literal sense, as often in Gregory.
70. Book One treats Job 1.1 - 1.5 three times over in sequence, once literally, once allegorically, once morally.
71. Job 30.29.
72. 2 Peter 2.7-8.
73. Philippians 2.15.
74. Apocalypse 2.13.
75. Canticle 2.2.
76. Romans 16.19.
77. 1 Corinthians 14.20.
78. Matthew 10.16.
79. Acts 2.3.
80. Ecclesiastes 7.19.
81. Psalm 36.27.
82. Ecclesiastes 9.18.
83. James 2.10.
84. 1 Corinthians 5.6.
85. Matthew 13.22.
86. Cf. Matthew 19.16-30, esp. 27: "Then Peter answered and said to him, 'Behold we have left everything behind and followed you.'"
87. Expdis 32.6, quoted at 1 Corinthians 10.7.
88. Luke 16.24.
89. The original meaning of the phrase translated 'pro octava' is doubtful: it may have meant 'for a lyre that has eight strings,' but it is probably a rubric for the choirmaster. The exegetical tradition that Gregory inherits (see, e.g., Ambrose On Luke, 5.6) takes the number eight symbolically as Gregory does and gives the phrase a preponderantly allegorical meaning.
90. 1 Corinthians 4.5.
91. Matthew 10.22, 24.13.
92. Isaiah 53.4.
93. 1 Corinthians 1.24.
94. Proverbs 8.12.
95. John 8.7.
96. Psalm 44.5.
97. Isaiah 11.3. In Isaiah, the text refers to the 'root of Jesse,' which early Christians read as a prophetic reference to Christ; since Job stands for Christ in the allegorical reading of the present passage, what is said of the root of Jesse elsewhere may also be taken as said of Job. This passage of Isaiah recurs in the moral exegesis of this passage: cf. 1.27.38 infra.
98. [7x7] + 1 = 50; the jubilee was celebrated every fifty years.
99. The "continent" are those vowed to a religious life marked by a restraint of bodily appetites, particularly the sexual.
100. Ezechiel 14.14-20; cf. Gregory's Preface, section 5 supra.
101. Jewish converts to Christianity are meant.
102. Animals often draw ambivalent interpretation from early exegetes; compare the interpretation given to the ox and ass in paragraph 23 below. For explicit discussion, see Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.15.4.
103. Matthew 23.24.
104. Matthew 27.15-25.
105. Cf. Genesis 24.61.
106. Romans 6.21.
107. Mixed breed: communa animalia. What Gregory knows of camels seems limited to a vague description of the kind found in ancient writers of natural history and the two Old Testament passages forbidding that they be eaten: Leviticus 11.4 and Deuteronomy 14.7.
108. Proverbs 7.22.
109. Deuteronomy 25.4.
110. Luke 10.7.
111. Deuteronomy 22.10.
112. Ezechiel 23.20.
113. The common Latin translation given for the Hebrew name Jerusalem was visio pacis, 'vision of peace.'
114. Isaiah 1.3.
115. Matthew 23.15.
116. Matthew 11.28-29.
117. Genesis 49.14-15.
118. 1 Corinthians 1.26-27.
119. Zachariah 6.12.
120. Matthew 14.16.
121. Matthew 15.32.
122. John 6.27.
123. Romans 14.5.
124. 1 Corinthians 7.40.
125. Romans 14.5.
126. Lamentations 4.4.
127. Isaiah 55.1.
128. John 7.37.
129. Isaiah 5.13.
130. Luke 13.26.
131. Luke 13.26.
132. The scriptural allusion intended here is not clear or precise.
133. Gregory already has the characteristically western belief in the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, which gave rise to the addition of the filioque to the Nicene creed, over which the Latin and Greek churches would quarrel bitterly; see J.J. Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago 1974) 183-198.
134. Luke 18.8.
135. Ecclesiastes 1.18 [LXX].
136. Sirach 2.14.
137. Gregory must be thinkinf of the perfect love that banishes fear (implied by "comes to its end"): John 4.18.
138. For us: nobis. The personal dimension of the moral sense is introduced emphatically. The excursion into Isaiah that follows is important and thematic for Gregory.
139. Isaiah 11.2-3.
140. Cf. Galatians 6.2.
141. Philippians 3.20.
142. Cf. 1.27.38 supra.
143. 2 Kings 4.5-6.
144. Proverbs 4.23.
145. Lamentations 1.5.
146. Psalm 141.4.
147. Jeremiah 41.5-7.
148. Jeremiah 41.8.
149. Psalm 55.7.
150. Genesis 3.15 [LXX].
151. Exodus 30.34-35.
152. Exodus 30.36.
153. Canticle 3.6.
154. Leviticus 1.6.
155. Sirach 2.16.
156. Luke 22.28.
157. Genesis 37.23.
158. Cf. Exodus 29.22, Leviticus 3.9.