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The capitular text of the Responsiones of pope Gregory I to St. Augustine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Margaret Deanesly
Margaret Deanesly
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

In the course of an article on these Responsiones in this Journal (x. (1559) 1–49), it was suggested that a text of these replies, long known to canonists as the ‘capitular’ text, was older than that in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede; and, also, that the fifth Responsio in the Bedan text, which contains the long controverted permission to marry within the third and fourth generation, was an interpolation made, possibly, if not probably, by the priest Nothelm. Nothelm had corresponded with Bede over many years, and he later became archbishop of Canterbury. The writers of the article did not know at the time that Dom Paul Meyvaert had in preparation an edition of the Responsiones based on the text as found in canonical collections. The publication of this edition is much to be desired; but, meanwhile, it seems permissible to point out that the ‘capitular’ text is found in the oldest MSS. and that the Bedan text is never found in any MS. earlier than Bede's Ecclesiastical History, written in 731. If it had been, the question of priority could not, of course, have arisen.

Type
Notes and Studies
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , October 1961 , pp. 231 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1961

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References

page 232 note 1 ‘Les “Responsiones” de S. Gregoire le Grand à S. Augustin de Canterbéry’, in Rev. d'Hist. Ecclès., liv (1959), 879–94Google Scholar. As to his criticism on p. 884, I should like to say that I had not seen a photostat of die Responsiones in Lucca MS. 490 at the time the article on them in this Journal appeared; I regret misunderstanding Mansi's rubric about the two texts of the Responsiones (J. D. Mansi, Sacronun conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 1764, tom. X, col. 415). The rubric runs: Celebrem Gregorii ad Augustinum epistolam iterum exhibeo, quac licent eadem est cum superiori, adhuc tamen illa integrior est, et variantibus abundat. Illam olim in meo conciliorum supplemento vulgavi ex Lucca 490, sed nescio quo fato acciderit, ut foedis erroribus vitiata in publicum prodierit. Recensitam igitur illam, ad eundem codicem sedulo ac diligenter correctam nunc iterum profero. On consulting the Sacrorum Conciliorum et decretorum collectio … a P. Labbeo, G. Cossartio, S.J. presbyteris … Supplementum, J. D. Mansi, Lucca 1748Google Scholar, tom, i, to see which text Mansi had found ‘foedis erroribus vitiata’, neither text appears to have been bound in with the tome. Lucca MS. 490, however, as the photostat shows, has the capitular text.

page 232 note 2 Dom Meyvaert, op. cit, 881 n. 6, refers to 16 MSS. not cited elsewhere, but none of them is early. None in his list is eighth century, 2 are ninth, 4 tenth, one ‘tenth to fourteenth’, 4 twelfth, 3 thirteenth and 2 fifteenth. Although an early text may be found copied even in a fifteenth-century MS., it is normally the earlier MSS. that throw most light on the history of the text.

page 232 note 3 For a detailed description of the contents of this MS., see the article in this Journal (x. 44); it contains the Excarpsus Cummeani, the most widely used on the Continent of all the Celtic penitentials.

page 233 note 1 See, for a MS. with uncial rubrics from Echternach, Lowe, Eng. Uncial, 9, and Pl. xxxviii (b). The copyist of the Copenhagen MS. seems ill at ease with the Latin of a text neither scriptural nor liturgical.

page 233 note 2 The Copenhagen MS. has ‘us’ for ‘os’ a few times, suggesting a Frankish (Merovingian) sound-shifting and, perhaps, origin in a house like Tours, unconnected with Anglo-Saxon missionaries, for the spread of penitentials on the Continent preceded their advent and was not limited to houses they founded. McNeill and Gamer (Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 26) find that their use was later in north Italy than among the Franks, and later (early ninth century) among the Visigoths. The Excarpsus (ibid., 98) was perhaps taken to Bobbio by bishop Cummean before 744.

page 233 note 3 Ibid., 886. Dom Meyvaert speaks of the gap in the text as a ‘rasura’. Cf., for the vacant space, MGH., Ewald and Hartmann, Gregorii I papae Reg. Epist., ii. 335 n.c., which says of this MS at ‘tertia uel’: ‘om. spacio uacua relicto’.

page 233 note 4 Ibid., 886. He also calls attention to the note in this MS. which runs: ‘Addens quia in anglorum gente et cognatis libere misceatur’ as not in the Bedan text. It is however found in the Copehagen MS. of the capitular text: ‘Addens quia in anglorum gente nuuercis et cognatis libere misceantur’. It appears to be an early scribal gloss on the capitular text.

page 234 note 1 See this Journal, X. 6–9.