GREGORY OF ELVIRA, Saint. - He flourished in the 4th century; he was a bitter defender of Nicaea and an implacable opponent of Hosius of Cordoba on account of the "blasphemy of Sirmium" (357); later a decided partisan of Lucifer of Cagliari, involved in the intransigent protest against the synodals of Alexandria (362); finally head of the Luciferians after the death of the bishop of Cagliari (370-71). G. drew particular attention to himself after the works of P. Batiffol and A. Wilmart reconstructed his important literary legacy.
He is the first known bishop of Elvira (near Granada). A constant defender of the "homousios," he also became an opponent of Priscillianism. His theology has personal values and values of a pioneer in not a few questions.
His works are known: De fide orthodoxa contra Arianos, a powerful defense of the "homousios"; Tractatus de epitalamio, that is, 5 homilies on the Song of Songs, the oldest Latin commentary in which for the first time in the West the marriage between Christ and the Church is set forth; the so-called Tractatus Origenis de libris S. Scripturae, that is, 20 treatises rediscovered in 1900 by P. Batiffol and A. Wilmart which treat the Old Testament with allegorical exegesis and liveliness of style; De arca Noe, concerning the Church figured by it; Expositio in Ps. 92.
The personality of G. stands out more and more in patristics as that of an accurate and felicitous coiner of Trinitarian formulae. He is the first representative of homiletic preaching in the Latin Church; a pioneer in suggestive doctrinal points (such as Christ and the Church, represented by the Song of Songs, the doctrine of the 7 capital sins in antithesis to the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, the beauty of the humanity of Christ). Later, prominent patristic figures such as Apringius of Beja, Isidore of Seville, Beatus of Liébana, etc., drew inspiration from G.