Gregory the Great’s ichonography as a device of auctoritas and Caroligian gnoseology

This paper explores the imagery of Gregory the Great not merely as a hagiographic portrait, but as a sophisticated philosophical manifesto of the Carolingian Renaissance. It interprets this iconography as a device of political and spiritual legitimization that transcends simple religious narrative. Between the 9th and 10th centuries, the iconography of the Pontiff underwent a crucial mutation: shifting from the figure of the wise author (scriba) to that of the divinely inspired mediator (dictans). As scholarship has highlighted, this retrospective “branding” strategy was essential for presenting Roman chant as a unified product guaranteed by a celestial auctoritas, thereby making the Imperial liturgical reform indisputable (Levy 1998). The divine inspiration responds to the gnoseological and epistemological urgencies of the time. In an academic context rediscovering Boethian thought, the image of the dove guarantees that musica instrumentalis is not a fallible human invention, but the faithful echo of the harmony of the cosmos (musica mundana) and the liturgical inheritance of Rome (DiCenso et al. 2017). The discussion further examines key symbols: from the role of the scribe-witness, who validates the supernatural origin of knowledge, to the function of the iconographic “curtain”, which delimits the epistemic boundary between Revelation and the Sign. From this perspective, the birth of neumatic notation appears as a necessity to graphically fix the divine “breath” and preserve it from the corruption of time (Rankin 2018). Ultimately, it is argued that Gregorian iconography was the decisive tool for transforming an administrative reform into an ontological truth, shaping the intellectual identity of the medieval West.