Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond

by Brian Murdoch

The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the middle ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother's land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the
problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope with it. Brian Murdoch traces the story's probable origins in medieval England or France, and its later appearance in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, down to Thomas Mann and beyond.

286 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2012

About the author

Brian Oliver Murdoch FRHistS is an English philologist who is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He specializes in the study of early Germanic and Celtic literature, on which he has authored and edited several influential works.

He has published monographs, articles, editions and edited collections on early medieval heroic and biblical literature, mainly German, English and the Celtic languages, plus a comparative study of the legend of Hero and Leander. He has also published extensively on the literature and songs of of the World Wars, most recently on the theme of Everyman in German war-plays. He has translated from classical and medieval Latin and from medieval and modern German, notably Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front (1994) and The Way Back (2019).