Papal letter
The Libellus responsionum (Latin for "little book of answers") is a papal letter (also known as a papal rescript or decretal) written in 601 by Pope Gregory I to Augustine of Canterbury in response to several of Augustine's questions regarding the nascent church in Anglo-Saxon England. The "Libellus" was reproduced in its entirety by Bede in his "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum", whence it was transmitted widely in the Middle Ages, and where it is still most often encountered by students and historians today. Before it was ever transmitted in Bede's "Historia", however, the "Libellus" circulated as part of several different early medieval canon law collections, often in the company of texts of a penitential nature.
The authenticity of the "Libellus" (notwithstanding Boniface's suspicions, on which see below) was not called into serious question until the mid-twentieth century, when several historians forwarded the hypothesis that the document had been concocted in England in the early eighth century. It has since been shown, however, that this hypothesis was based on incomplete evidence and historical misapprehensions. In particular, twentieth-century scholarship focused on the presence in the "Libellus" of what appeared to be an impossibly lax rule regarding consanguinity and marriage, a rule that (it was thought) Gregory could not possibly have endorsed. It is now known that this rule is not in fact as lax as historians had thought, and moreover that the rule is fully consistent with Gregory's style and mode of thought. Today, Gregory I's authorship of the "Libellus" is generally accepted. The question of authenticity aside, manuscript and textual evidence indicates that the document was being transmitted in Italy by perhaps as early as the beginning of the seventh century (i.e. shortly after Gregory I's death in 604), and in England by the end of the same century.
Creation.
The "Libellus" is a reply by Pope Gregory I to questions posed by Augustine of Canterbury about certain disciplinary, administrative, and sacral problems he was facing as he tried to establish a bishopric amongst the Kentish people following the initial success of the Gregorian mission in 596.
Modern historians, including Ian Wood and Rob Meens, have seen the "Libellus" as indicating that Augustine had more contact with native British Christians than is indicated by Bede's narrative in the "Historia Ecclesiastica". Augustine's original questions (no longer extant) would have been sent to Rome around 598, but Gregory's reply (i.e. the "Libellus") was delayed some years due to illness, and was not composed until perhaps the summer of 601. The "Libellus" may have been brought back to Augustine by Laurence and Peter, along with letters to the king of Kent and his wife and other items for the mission. However, some scholars have suggested that the "Libellus" may in fact never have reached its intended recipient (Augustine) in Canterbury. Paul Meyvaert, for example, has noted that no early Anglo-Saxon copy of the "Libellus" survives that is earlier than Bede's "Historia ecclesiastica" (c. 731), and Bede's copy appears to derive not from a Canterbury file copy but rather from a Continental canon law collection. This would be strange had the letter arrived in Canterbury in the first place. A document as important to the fledgling mission and to the history of the Canterbury church as the "Libellus" is likely to have been protected and preserved quite carefully by Canterbury scribes; yet this seems not to have been the case. Meyvaert therefore suggested that the "Libellus" may have been waylaid on its journey north from Rome in 601, and only later arrived in England, long after Augustine's death. This hypothesis is supported by the surviving manuscript and textual evidence, which strongly suggests that the "Libellus" circulated widely on the Continent for perhaps nearly a century before finally arriving in England (see below). Still, the exact time, place, and vector by which the "Libellus" arrived in England and fell into the hands of Bede (and thence his "Historia Ecclesiastica") is still far from certain, and scholars continue to explore these questions.
Title.
Gregory does not appear to have provided the "Libellus" with a title. This is not unusual since the work is a letter and Gregory was not in the habit of titling his many letters. "Libellus responsionum" is the name given the letter by Bede in his "Historia Ecclesiastica", and most modern commentators translate Bede's nomenclature as "Little book of answers" or "Little book of responses". "Libellus" can also be translated as "letter"; thus "Letter of answers" is another possible translation.
Contents.
The "Libellus" consists of a series of responses ("responsiones") by Gregory to "certain jurisprudential, administrative, jurisdictional, liturgical and ritual questions Augustine was confronted with as leader of the fledgling English church". The numbering and order of these responses differ across the various versions of the "Libellus" (see below). But in the most widely known version (that reproduced in Bede's "Historia Ecclesiastica") there are nine responses, each of which begins by re-stating or paraphrasing Augustine's original questions. Gregory's first response addresses questions about the relationship of a bishop to his clergy and vice versa, how gifts from the laity to the church should be divided amongst the clergy, and what the tasks of a bishop were. The second response addresses why the various northern European churches of which Augustine was aware had differing customs and liturgies, and what Augustine should do when he encounters such differences. The third response was in answer to questions about the proper punishment of church robbers. The fourth and fifth responses deal with who might marry whom, including whether it was allowed for two brothers to marry two sisters, or for a man to marry his step-sister or step-mother. The sixth response addresses whether or not it was acceptable for a bishop to be consecrated without other bishops present, if the distances involved prevented other bishops from attending the ceremony. The seventh response deals with relations between the church in England and the church in Gaul. The eighth response concerns what a pregnant, newly delivered, or menstruating woman might do or not do, including whether or not she is allowed to enjoy sex with her husband and for how long after child-birth she has to wait to re-enter a church. The last response answers questions about whether or not men might have communion after experiencing a sexual dream, and whether or not priests might celebrate mass after experiencing such dreams. An additional chapter, not included by Bede in his "Historia" is known as the "Obsecratio": it contains a response by Gregory to Augustine's request for relics of the local British martyr Sixtus. Gregory responds that he is sending relics of Pope Sixtus II to replace the local saint's remains, as Gregory has doubts about the actual saintly status of the British martyr. Although the authenticity of the "Obsecratio" has occasionally been questioned, most modern historians accept that it is genuine.
Later use.
In the early seventh century an augmented version of the Dionysian conciliar and decretal collections was assembled in Bobbio, in northern Italy. To this canon law collection — known today as the "Collectio canonum Dionysiana Bobiensis" —there was appended at some time a long series of additional papal documents and letters, including the "Libellus responsionum" and "Libellus synodicus". Some scholars date the addition of this series of documents to as early as the seventh century. Klaus Zechiel-Eckes has even suggested the first half of the seventh century as the date for when the addition was made, that is only shortly after the "Bobiensis"’s initial compilation and at most only fifty years after Gregory's death. If Zechiel-Eckes's dating is correct, it would make the "Collectio Bobiensis" the earliest surviving witness by far to the "Libellus".
How and when the "Libellus" eventually reached England is not clear. It is not known if the original letter ever reached Augustine, its intended recipient. Bede assumed that it had, though he is rather vague on specifics at this point. On the strength of Bede's word alone many later historians have claimed that the "Libellus" reached Augustine in a timely fashion; however, as mentioned above, recent scholarship has brought this assumption into serious question. In any event, some version of the letter seems to have been available in England by the late seventh century, for it was then that it was quoted by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, in a series of judgments known today as the "Paenitentiale Theodori". It is possible that Theodore found a copy of the "Libellus" already at Canterbury; however, given that no one in England previous to Theodore's archiepiscopacy seems to have known of the "Libellus", it is equally plausible that the "Libellus" was one of the texts that Theodore brought with him from Italy when he arrived in Canterbury in 669. It is known that Theodore brought numerous books with him from Italy, and that at least one of these books was a canon law collection very much like the one prepared at Bobbio some decades earlier (i.e. the "Bobiensis"). Elliot has speculated that Theodore introduced a "Bobiensis"-type collection to Canterbury in the second half of the seventh century, and thereby finally delivered the "Libellus" (as part of the "Bobbiensis") to its originally intended destination. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that it was only shortly after Theodore's tenure at Canterbury that Anglo-Saxons begin to demonstrate knowledge of the "Libellus".
Bede inserted the entire text of the "Libellus" into book I of his "Historia Ecclesiastica" (completed ca. 731), where it makes up the bulk of chapter 27. Bede also appears to have relied upon the "Libellus" while writing his prose "Vita Sancti Cuthberti" in about the year 720. Where Bede acquired his copy of the "Libellus" is not known, but it seems that by the early eighth century it was beginning to be read widely throughout northern England.
In the later Middle Ages, the text of the "Libellus" was used to support the claims of the monks of the Canterbury Cathedral chapter that the chapter had always included monks, back to the founding of the cathedral by Augustine. But the "Libellus" does not explicitly say that the cathedral chapter should be composed of monks, only that the monks that were members of the chapter should live in common and have some other aspects of monastic life.
Controversy over authenticity.
Twentieth-century scholarship's focus on the doubt expressed by Boniface regarding the authenticity of the "Libellus" has led to the widely held belief that a general atmosphere of suspicion surrounded the "Libellus" in the Middle Ages. In fact, Boniface appears to have been the only medieval personality to have ever expressed doubt about the authorship of this letter. As missionary to the Germanic peoples of Europe and legate of the papal see, Boniface spent much of his later life in Continental Europe, where he encountered many canonical traditions that were unfamiliar to the Anglo-Saxons and that appeared to Boniface out of step with his knowledge of church tradition. The "Libellus" represented one such tradition. Boniface in fact had very practical reasons for questioning the "Libellus". He had witnessed its recommendations being exploited by certain members of the Frankish nobility who claimed that the "Libellus" permitted them to enter into unions with their aunts, unions Boniface considered to be incestuous. Eager to get to the bottom of this controversy, in 735 Boniface wrote to Nothhelm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting Nothhelm send him Canterbury's own copy of the "Libellus"; presumably Boniface hoped that Canterbury (being the one-time residence of Augustine) possessed an authentic copy of the "Libellus", one that perhaps preserved more ancient readings than the copies then circulating in France and Bavaria, and would therefore serve as a corrective to the Continental copies and the incestuous nobles who relied upon them. Boniface also requested Nothhelm's opinion on the document's authenticity, for his own inquiries at the papal archives had failed to turn up an official "registered" copy of the letter there. His failed attempt to locate a "registered" papal copy of the "Libellus" presumably suggested to Boniface the possibility that the document was spurious and had in fact not been authored by Pope Gregory I.
Boniface had specific concerns about the wording of the "Libellus". At least three versions of the "Libellus" were circulating on the Continent during Boniface's lifetime, all of these within collections of canonical and penitential documents. Boniface is known to have encountered (perhaps even helped produce)