The Letters of Gregory the Great and Cassiodorus’ ‘Variae’

The authorship of the letters included within the ‘Registrum’ of Gregory the Great has been a matter of scholarly debate for decades, since it is unclear whether the pope left all administrative documents to his secretaries, writing only personal letters, or drafted the whole of his correspondence himself. A study of the occurrences of eleven expressions attested only or almost only in the letters of Cassiodorus and Gregory can contribute to a better knowledge of both the circulation of the ‘Variae’ in sixth-century Italy and the authorship of the letters included within the ‘Registrum’. Those who wrote Gregory’s correspondence in all likelihood used the ‘Variae’ as a model, closely imitating a few sentences, which are present in both letter collections within similar documents. Moreover, these expressions are not evenly distributed throughout the ‘Registrum’, but occur mostly (or solely) in letters written in a short time-span and addressed to a single recipient or group of recipients. It is therefore possible to identify at least two different secretaries who drafted a few administrative letters on behalf of the pope, as well as to show that the ‘Variae’ circulated in the Lateran chancery during the papacy of Gregory the Great.