Funeral Oration on Flacilla

Contents

1. 877Gregory begins by noting that his bishop, who had rightly kept silence in the first grief, now asks for a sermon, though silence suits mourners best.
2. 879Gregory would have preferred silence while grief is fresh, but obeys, citing Ecclesiastes and Proverbs on a time to weep, and says the present loss is greater than any evil recorded before.
3. 881Gregory calls the whole empire to lament the empress, a woman in whom every virtue met, raised to the throne as the emperor's helper and his equal in kindness, piety and justice.
4. 883Gregory laments that the empress died at Skotoumis in Thrace, lists the virtues lost with her, and asks whether this blow so soon after the death of her daughter is a punishment for the growth of heresy.
5. 885Gregory recalls the empress's body entering Constantinople amid crowds, cloud and tears, then turns from lament to consolation: the good they seek has not perished but lives in the palace above.
6. 887The empress now dwells in the hidden palace of heaven; the saints longed to leave the flesh, and life in the body is a round of bodily needs like a mill, which Solomon calls a leaking jar and a house not our own.
7. 889Life's desires are a leaking jar; the empress has exchanged an earthly kingdom for the heavenly one, which Christ promises to those who feed, clothe and visit the needy, as she did and more, freeing prisoners.
8. 891Through the empress's intercession condemned men were spared; Gregory praises her humility and her love for her husband, and her rejection of Arianism as idolatry of a creature, in the faith of the one Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.