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The Canterbury Edition of the Answers of Pope Gregory I to St. Augustine1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Margaret Deanesly
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus, University of London
Paul Grosjean
Affiliation:
Bollandiste

Extract

During the war, many learned books published on the continent missed notice in England, among them one which advanced the study of the Responsiones supposedly sent by pope Gregory I in answer to the queries of St. Augustine: Responsiones included by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica (i. xxvii). This unnoticed book, entitled Die Quellen zur Angelsachsenmission Gregors des Grossen: eine historiographische Studie, by Suso Brechter, Münster, 1941 (Beiträge zur Geschichte des altem Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens, Heft 22), was not reviewed in the English Historical Review nor (so far as the present writers know) in other periodicals. There is no copy of it in the British Museum nor the Cambridge University Library, and, though the Bodleian has a copy, it was, up till August 1956, uncut.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1959

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References

page 1 note 2 Ed. C. Plummer, Oxford 1896, i, 48–62. In ii, 45–6, Plummer noted that Boniface had queried the authenticity of the Responsiones, but held that this did not prove that Nothelm had not found them in Rome. He noted that, of the different versions of the Responsiones, that in the Historia Ecclesiastica was certainly the earliest. Levison (17 and 139) accepted the authenticity of the Responsiones; but neither Dom Brechter's book nor Paul Grosjean's review of it had reached him. Dom Brechter, now archabbot of St. Ottilie, summarised his arguments for the unauthenticity of the Responsiones and showed that the Responsiones had no direct effect on St. Boniface's work in Germany, in his ‘Das Apostolat des hl. Bonifatius und Gregors d. Gr. Missions-Instructionen für England’, in the Fulda centenary volume, Sankt Bonifatius, 1954, 22–33; for an appreciative notice of this article, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill in E.H.R., lxxi (1956), 634.

page 2 note 1 See no. 1327: ed. Dekkers and Gaar, in Sacris Erudiri, iii (1951).

page 2 note 2 For the contents of the collections of papal letters, see Brechter, 8–9; for the list of letters sent by Gregory with reference to Augustine, and the question whether the Responsiones should be included among them in spite of their non-appearance in RCP., Ibid., 5–8. R = the Hadrianic Register; C=Cologne MS. 92; P=a smaller coll. See E. & H., i. p. viii-xxvi.

page 2 note 3 Tangl, Ep. 33.

page 3 note 1 See Levison, 17 n. 1; B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, 1940, 207. Mr. Colgrave does not refer to the dating of the prose life: but the dedication is to bishop Eadfrith, who died in 721; see A. Hamilton Thompson, Bede. Essays, 128 n. 2. It is perhaps not certain that all the Responsiones reached Jarrow at the same time; archbishop Theodore's three sets of biblical glosses appear to have been scribally combined in one manuscript only in some monastery north of the Alps; see below, 10. The way Bede introduces the quotation in his Life of St. Cuthbert, however, implies that he knew of a series of Gregorian answers to Augustine: Gregorius, cum sciscitanti per litteras Augustino … respondit. See below, for the different editions of the Responsiones taken to Jarrow before 721 and in 731.

page 3 note 2 See L. Santifaller, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Beschriebstoffe im Mittelalter, 1953, 168 n. 4. See this work also for the nature of Gregory's register, as kept by the scrinium on papyrus rolls (volumina) or codices, 35–6 and 168.

page 4 note 1 Bede shows knowledge of this preface, which cannot but be the prologue, Per dilectissimos, in 731, as we show below, 33; the authorship of Gemmulus at this early date is impossible.

page 4 note 2 We believe that John the Deacon used a truncated version of some canonical MS., but certainly from a ‘later version’, allowing marriage in the third generation: see P.L., lxxv. col. 101, and, for truncated MSS. App. B, in particular, Lucca 490.

page 4 note 3 See the record of the council of Hertford, 673, in HS., iii. 121, printed from Vesp. A. XIV, of the eleventh century; the passage is incorporated in the HE. Cf. Hefele-Leclercq, iii. pt. i, 310.

page 4 note 4 Though Wilfrid may have brought a notary from abroad.

page 5 note 1 i. 346. Esmein outlines the late Roman and early medieval history of the impediments to marriage at greater length than the modern authorities on the subject: but see also the article on Consanguinité by G. Oesterlé in the Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique published under the direction of R. Naz, tome iv, 1949; and de Clercq, Carlo, La Législation religieuse franque de Clovis à Charlemagne, Étude sur les Actes de Conciles et les Capitulaires, les Statuts diocésains et les Règles monastiques (507–814), Louvain and Paris 1936 ( =Univ. de Louvain. Recueil de travaux publiés par les membres des Conférences d'Histoire et de Philologie. 2e série, 38e fascicule).Google Scholar

page 5 note 2 Cf. Lex Baiwariorum, xv. 10: Quodsi maritus et mulier mortui fuerint et nullus usque ad septimum gradum de propinquis et quibuscunque parentibus invenitur, tunc illas res fiscus adquirunt, in M.G.H. Leg. Nat. Germ. v. pt. ii, 430.

page 5 note 3 Cf. Liber iudiciorum sive Lex Visigothorum, edita ab Reccessvindo rege a. 654, renovata ab Ervigio a. 681: lib. iv. i. 7: Successionis autem gradus septem constituti sunt, quia ulterius per rerum naturam nec nomina inveniri nec vita succedentibus propagari potest, in M.G.H. Leg. Nat. Germ. i. 173.

page 5 note 4 Esmein, i. 341 n. 3: ‘The reckoning by Roman law in a collateral line consists, as is known, in going back from one of the collaterals to the common author, and then redescending from this last to the other collateral, and to as many degrees as one goes through in the process.’ As many degrees are counted as persons counted upwards and downwards in the family tree, less one: for a ‘generation’, or degree of propinquity, implies the step from one generation to another, e.g. from son to father is one generation.

page 6 note 1 Esmein, i. 339–40.

page 6 note 2 See Laws of Æthelberht, cc. 34–53, and Laws of Alfred, cc. 44–55, in Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, 9, 87, as compared with tariff for cutting off the arm to the elbow, to the shoulder, or the finger, a primo nodo, a secundo nodo, in M.G.H. Leg. Nat. Germ. v. 124 (the Leges Alamannorum).

page 6 note 3 Lex Visig. lib. iv, tituli i to vi: the names of persons related in the first six grades are all given. M.G.H., Leg. Nat. Germ., i, 171–2. Cf., for the prohibition by the Council of Paris of 568–70, of marriage with an amita or matertera, C. de Clercq, op. cit., 132.

page 6 note 4 Bosworth and Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, under Cneo, Cneow, and Cneores. Dr. Florence Harmer has kindly pointed this out to us.

page 6 note 5 Esmein, i. 344.

page 7 note 1 Esmein, i. 341–3.

page 7 note 2 Ibid., 347; cf. Theodore's penitential in HS, iii. 201: In tertia propinquitate carnis licet nubere secundum Grecos, in quinta secundum Romanos: tamen in quarta (first cousins) non solvunt, postquam factum fuerit. Ergo in quinta generatione conjungantur; quarta, si inventi fuerint, non separentur. See also Ibid. iii. 51, for Boniface's query to pope Zacharias in 742, about a marriage in tertia generatione, with other canonical impediments.

page 7 note 3 M.G.H. Capit. regum Franc., ed. A. Boretius, i. 37: Decretum Compendiense, i. Si in quarta progenie fuerint conjuncti, non separamus. ii. In tertia vero si reperti fuerint, separentur. (C. de Clercq, 139, comments on this use of the Germanic computation.)

page 7 note 4 Ibid. 40. In tercio genuculo separantur, et post penitentiam actam, si ita voluerint, licentiam habeant aliis se conjungere. In quarta autem conjunctione si inventi fuerint, eos non separamus, sed penitentiam eis iudicamus. C. de Clercq, 140–1, assigns no date to this decretum or pseudocapitulary, and regards it as a comment, perhaps of Lombard origin, which served to elaborate the decisions of Compiègne.

page 8 note 1 Esmein, i. 341–2; Hefele-Leclercq, iii, pt. i. 597; Mansi, xii, col. 263.

page 8 note 2 Hefele-Leclercq, iii. pt. ii. 852.

page 8 note 3 Tangl, Epp. 26, 33; cf. E. & H., ii. 332 n.

page 8 note 4 Tangl, Ep. 28.

page 8 note 5 Lex Ribuaria 57, c. 3, in M.G.H., Leg. Nat. Germ. iii. pt. ii, 105. Cf. Esmein, i. 345 n. 5.

page 8 note 6 Ibid. i. 346. He says, the calculations by generations appeared in two of the Responsiones attributed to pope Gregory I, ‘but they are very probably apocryphal’.

page 9 note 1 See Bosworth and Toller, s.v. cneow.

page 9 note 2 See Wright, T. and Wuelcker, R. P., Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 1884: i. 44 from the eighth-century Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 144, a book conjectured by the editors to emanate from the school of Canterbury; i. 140, Tribus, cneores; i. 173, Generatio, cneores; i. 410, Familia, cneoris. Cf. also H. Sweet, The Oldest English Texts, in Early Eng. Text Soc. Orig. Ser. 83, for the Vespasian Psalter (Cotton MS. Vesp. A. 1) of c. A.D. 1000, as translating generatio: cneorisse (200), in ðusend cneorissa (338), ðis is cneoris (216); used for cognatio, cneoris heara (290); for sanguinis, cneorissa. See also in W. W. Skeat's Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions, 1871–87, 24–5, from C.C.C.C. MS. 140, Mt. i. i. Liber generationis, cneorisse-boc; from Lindisfarne gloss, boc cneurise; 26–7, omnes generationes, Mt. i. 17, C.C.C.C. MS. 140 ealle cneoressa, Lind. gloss, alle cneuresa; 102–3, Mt. xii. 39, mala generatio, C.C.C.C. MS. 140 yfel cneoris, Lind. gloss, cneorisso yflo.Google Scholar

page 9 note 3 W. M. Lindsay, The Corpus Glossary, 144, 157; from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 144.

page 9 note 4 B. Thorpe, Ancient Laws, 1840, 75: not quoted in Attenborough, Laws.

page 9 note 5 A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, 1925, 95–7 æfre ne geweorðe þæt Cristen man gewifige in VI manna sibfæce on his agenum cynne, þæt is binnan feorþan cneowe. Cf. Bosworth and Toller under cneow: In þam priddan cneowe mid Grecum mot man. wif nima, in fiftan cneowe mid Romanum: in tertio propinquitatis gradu apud Graecos virb licet uxorem ducere, in quinto apud Romanos.

page 10 note 1 See Anal. Boll., lx (1942), 288.

page 10 note 2 See B. Bischoff's Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der Lateinische Exegesis in Frühmittelalter, in Sacris Erudiri, vi. pt. 2 (1954). The biblical glosses include three series of writings on the Pentateuch, and two series on the first and second gospels. Bede was acquainted with Theodore's commentaries (see 191), which had probably existed first in separate parts, and been combined in the archetype of Milan MS. Ambros. M. 79 by some scribe working in a monastery north of the Alps. Prof. Bischoff is going to publish the Bible glosses of the school of Canterbury elsewhere (192).

page 10 note 3 For the Canterbury school, see especially Bischoff, 191–4.

page 11 note 1 Tribus enim modis impletur omne peccatum, videlicet suggestione, delectatione, consensu. Suggestio quippe fit per diabolum, delectatio per carnem, consensus per spiritum; quia et primam culpam serpens suggessit: HE. i. c. xxvii.

page 11 note 2 See HE., ii. 54–5, and Levison, 17 n. 1.

page 11 note 3 P.L., lxxvi. col. 1135.

page 11 note 4 P.L., xciii. col. 14. Cf. HE., ii. 54 ff. Bede quotes as examples, the temptations of Joseph, David, Judas and Job. Levison's argument (17 n. 1) that the Responsiones must have been composed earlier than Bede wrote this Commentary, c. 709, is irrelevant, as it was not Bede's source. His reference to the appearance of the Responsiones in a Copenhagen MS. which he tentatively dates as c. 700 is of great interest. See App. A.

page 12 note 1 P.L., lxxvii. col. 409.

page 12 note 2 See P.L., lxxxiii, col. 667 for lib. iii. c. vi, a long discourse De tentamentis somniorum, ending Non esse peccatum quando nolentes imaginibus nocturnis illudimur: sed tunc esse peccatum, si antequam illudamur, cogitationum affectibus praeveniamur … Qui nocturna illusione polluitur, quamuis etsi extra memoriam turpium cogitationum sese persentiat inquinatum, tamen hoc, ut tentaretur, culpae suae tribuat, suamque immunditiam statim fletibus tergat. The author of Responsio IX may have had access to the Sententiarum libri iii, but the verbal borrowing is not close enough to render this certain.

page 12 note 3 P.L., lxxxiii, coll. 662, 663, 665.

page 13 note 1 It is of some interest that a Nothelm, king of the south Saxons, appears in a charter of (?) 692 as granting land to his sister to found a monastery. Miss Whitelock, while regarding the date of the charter as a later addition, finds that ‘there is no good reason to reject the document as a whole’ (English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, 446). It is not unlikely that a priest of London used by abbot Albinus to make researches in Rome, and to be his oral messenger and document-carrier to Bede, should have been a promising young cleric, trained with especial care: perhaps a member of the South Saxon royal house, commended as a boy to the familia of London or Canterbury. Cf. the references for Nothelm in W. G. Searle's Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum, 1897, 360; and his Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings and Nobles, 1899, 271, for Nunna Nothelm, king of Sussex, in the genealogy of the kings of Sussex.

page 13 note 2 M.G.H. ii. 332: Ep. xi. 56a. The editors (331–2 n.) give a list of the MSS. consulted.

page 13 note 3 HE. ii. c. i: Plummer, i. 76.

page 13 note 4 We are indebted to Dr. Káre Olsen for sending us a rotograph of the folios containing the Responsiones: sec App. B.

page 14 note 1 The question of the text was further complicated by the excision of Responsio V (the marriage Responsio) in Lucca 490, Bede, and some other MSS., in deference to the doubts raised about it by Boniface (see above, 8). We cannot accept Dom Brechter's suggestion that a ‘curial recension’ watering down the ‘Gregorian’ decisions was ever made, by Gemmulus or anyone at the scrinium: but some MSS. were undoubtedly mutilated, or left unfinished so as to avoid the difficulty about the decision on lawful marriage.

page 15 note 1 The date of this council is doubtful, but it was presided over by bishop Aunacharius of Auxerre, who died c. 603. See Hefele-Leclercq, iii. pt. i, 215 n.

page 15 note 2 The Hispana has some Gallican and Frankish canons, but they are those of councils in the Rhone valley or Provence (Agde, Vaison, etc.), where communication with Spain was easy and normal. See F. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts (Maas.) i, 680–1; FL. i. 68.

page 15 note 3 See App. A.

page 15 note 4 See App. A. Wasserschleben believed the Excarpsus to be the penit. of Cummian itself, and printed it, as the Paenitentiale Cummeani (460–95), thus misleading several generations of scholars who quoted it as Cummian's. McNeill and Gamer discuss its relation to other penitentials and print part of the preface in translation, under the heading The Pseudo-Cummian Penit. (MG., 266–70).

page 16 note 1 N.K.S. 58, f. 87. Wass., 460 n. 1 notes the MSS. which have the preface complete or in part. The list of seasons when penance is not done might be deemed useful in any penit., and occurs also in the Rheims penit. (Wass., 500), and the Paris penit. (MG., 279).

page 16 note 2 The Frankish scribe used u for o, as here, and sometimes o for u, a fairly common usage at the date.

page 16 note 3 See FL. i. 63, for the patristric sententiae in the Hibernensis; 68, for the sententiae attributed to the council of Agde. For papal sententiae and a sententia canonum, see C. Silva Tarouca, Fontes Hist. Ecc. 1930, i. 29–30.

page 16 note 4 For a short description of Visig. contraction marks, such as are found in the Orationale Mozarabicum, written before A.D. 732 and in Spain, see Lowe, iv (Italy), on Verona MS. lxxxix (84), p. 32. The omitted m, mostly at line-ends, marked by a line with a dot above, is sometimes found in N.K.S. 58: but not p for per: or the more distinctively Visig. forms described by Dr. Lowe in A contrib. to the history of early Latin minuscule and to the dating of Visig. MSS., in SB. der Königl. Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Phil.-hist. Klasse, Jahrgang 1910, 12 Abhandlung. Dr. Paul Lehmann also concluded that the use of certain Visig. contraction marks in N.K.S. 58 did not show Visig. provenance: Dr. Káre Olsen kindly referred us to Dr. Lehmann's conclusions in ‘Skandinavische Reisefrüchte’, printed in Nordisk Tidskrift för Bok- och Biblioteksväsen, xxi (Uppsala 1934), 171. There he questions the assertion of Ellen Jørgensen that the MS. is of Spanish provenance; it contains certain canons from the collection of bishop Martin of Braga, and other canons of Spanish councils, but also of Frankish ones: while the uncial hand, of the early eighth century, with its contractions and spelling, is by no means typically Spanish, he concludes that the MS. is of West Frankish origin.

page 17 note 1 See Schiaparelli, 42–3, for Lucca 490, ff. 303; and Lowe, iii. 303b. For MSS. showing Visig. influence, see also descriptions, ibid, iii, of Milan, Ambros. B. 31, L. 99, O. 212; Modena, Axchiv. Capit. O. i. 17, and Monte Cassino, Archiv. della Badia, 4 and 19; iv, Turin, Bib. Nat. A. 11. 2, Verona 1 (i) Append, frag, ii; v, Paris, Bib. Nat. Lat. 8901, 9427, 10233, 12048, Bib. Nat. Nouv. acquis. lat. 260 (written in N. Spain), 2243 (Luxeuil minuscule), 1628, 1629; vi. France (see introd. p. xxix, for a short description of the writing centres of France, which were, in time, Luxeuil, Corbie, and, in the early ninth century, Tours: ‘the southern centres manifestly lag behind in creating the new minuscule of France; Visig. influence is evident’): see, from Toulouse, Paris Bib. Nat. Lat. 8901; Albi, 29 (written in Visig. Spain).

page 17 note 2 Ibid. iv. 32.

page 17 note 3 Ibid. v. Paris 12048.

page 17 note 4 Miss Jørgensen, in the preface to her Catalogus, states that the New Royal Collection (Ny Kongelig Samling) was instituted in 1830 at Copenhagen and gradually increased: but that unfortunately nothing is known of the provenance of very many codices in the collection. Dr. Káre Olsen informs us that N.K.S. 58 was acquired by the Library between 1785 and 1830, and has no indication of the scriptorium from which it emanated nor of its later possessors. For a history of the New Royal Collection, not however mentioning N.K.S. 58, see Petersen, C. S., Det Kongelige Biblioteks Haandskrift-Samling, Copenhagen 1928. N.K.S. 58 may have been among the MSS. acquired by the philologist, Madvig, from a bookseller, and presented to the Library.Google Scholar

page 17 note 5 FL. i. 57; MG. 44. For penitentials, see also Cabrol, Diet, d'archéol. chrét. xiv. col. 234.

page 18 note 1 T. P. Oakley, Eng. Penit. Discipline, 1923, 22–4.

page 18 note 2 MG. 85, n. 79.

page 18 note 3 Ibid. 87; extracts from Jerome and Augustine appear in the Hibernensis (see FL. i. 63), where the patristic sections are taken from a book of sententiae.

page 18 note 4 MG. 148.

page 18 note 5 Ibid. 214; cf. also 223. Cf. below, 21.

page 18 note 6 This looseness illuminates the readiness of scribes and readers through the Middle Ages to accept as authentic the whole libellus of the Responsiones, of which the earlier Respp. have the best claim to be regarded as authentic. In the case of the penit. known as the Canones Gregorii, similarly, the first three of the 193 rules are Gregorian, the remainder not: see FL. i. 55.

page 18 note 7 ‘A pupil of the men of the Humber’, i.e. Monkwearmouth-Jarrow. Apparently, after studying with them, he went on to study at Canterbury.

page 19 note 1 The ‘discipulus Humbrensium’ refers to Theodore's use of a libellus Scottorun in his preface, and to his approval of certain commutations of penance allowed in this libellus: see MG., 183, 190.

page 19 note 2 See MG., 194, 201, 206.

page 19 note 3 B. Colgrave, Eddius Stephanus's Life; Theodore had appointed three bishops not of Wilfrid's parochia but picked up elsewhere, 49; Wilfrid asked that the new bishops should be chosen from his own clergy, 63.

page 19 note 4 ‘Etiamsi beatae memoriae Theodorus, summi sacerdotii gubernacula regens, Hibernensium globo discipulorum (ceu aper truculentus molosorum catasta ringente vallatus) stipetur, limato perniciter grammatico dente (jactura dispendii carens) rebelles phalanges discutit, et … terga dantes, latebras antrorum atras, triumphante victore, praepropere petunt.’ M.G.H., Auct. Antiq., xv. 493, in Ep. v, to Ehfridus.

page 19 note 5 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 320, saec. x-xi; the sextet, however, here written as a prose heading, must have been of much earlier origin.

page 20 note 1 Printed M. R. James, Descriptive Cat. Corpus Christi College Cambridge, ii. 136; HS. iii. 203, n. 21; and Kunstmann, Lateinischen Poenitential Buecher der Angelsachsen, 1844 (henceforth, Kunstmann), 105. For rhyming verses in the same metre as the sextet, preserved among the correspondence of Boniface, see Tangl, Epp. 140 and 147. It is of interest that pope Gregory III (731–40) in his letter to Tatwine, archbishop of Canterbury, ordered all the bishops of Britain to acknowledge him as ‘speculatorem atque primatem totius insulae’; see HS. iii. 312.

page 20 note 2 See P. Grosjean's article on the Hisperica Famina, ‘Confusa Caligo’, in Celtica, Dublin, iii (1955), 37–48 and in Anal. Boll., lxxvi (1958), 379–87.

page 20 note 3 Haedda's name is written also as Heddi, Etha, Eata, Eadhaed; see HS. iii. 173 n.: for Æada, the craftsman who made the ‘coffret de Mortain’ in the last years of the seventh century, see Anal. Boll., lxxiii. 279.

page 20 note 4 M.G.H., Auct. Antiq., xv. 496.

page 20 note 5 See Ibid., 497: si peregrini triste reficis corculum … transmitte sermunculos.

page 21 note 1 For Brussels MS. 363, copied from an Irish archetype, see App. B; for a version of Theodore's penit. meant for Germany, below, 23; for MSS. with both Theodore's penit. and the Respp., App.B. Kunstmann printed the penit. for the Germans: but though he printed the ‘Te nunc sancte speculator’ with it (25), he apparently took the verse from Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 320, as did HS. See also MG., 435.

page 21 note 2 See MG., 266, 437.

page 21 note 3 See Traube's, L.Perrona Scottorum, Munich 1900 (SB. der phil.-hist. Classe, Band xxx), 490 ff., and Paul Grosjean in ‘Notes d'hagiographie celtique’, Anal. Boll., lxxv (1957), 379–420, for the early history of Péronne.Google Scholar

page 21 note 4 In N.K.S. 58, Paris 1603, Brussels 363.

page 21 note 5 ‘Notes d'hagiographie celtique’, Anal. Boll., lxxv (1957), 393 n.

page 21 note 6 There are indications of communication between Irish monks at Nivelles and ‘transmarine regions’, probably Britain, but, again, at too early a period. St. Gertrude, foundress of Nivelles, received Foilanus and Ultanus, brothers of Furseus and, earlier, monks in East Anglia, and gave them- for a monastery the Roman villa later known as Fosse; she died in 659. See, for the transmission of writings, the Vita Gertrudis, ed. Krusch, in M.G.H., Ser. rer. mérov., ii, 457, and, for the chronology of Foilanus and Ultanus, Grosjean in Anal. Boll., lxxv (1957), 379–99.

page 21 note 7 See C. Nordenfalk, On the age of the earliest Echternach manuscripts, in ‘Acta Archaeologica’ (Copenhagen) iii (1932), 57–62, which deals mainly with illuminated MSS. An Echternach psalter in ‘uncialis Merovingica’ survives as the Stuttgart psalter: the use of an uncial hand at Echternach is of interest in connexion with the uncial hand of N.K.S. 58 (see App. A). Another famous Echternach MS., now Paris 10837, ‘s described in the A. SS. Nov. ii, pt. 2, p. x as the primary source of the west European edition of the Hieronymian Martyrology. This has certain Irish affinities to the (shortened) Irish martyrology known as the Martyrology of Tallaght (ed. Lawlor and Best, Hen. Bradshaw Soc, lv (1918): and see, for the occurrence of St. Feuillen's name in the Catal. Sanct. Hiberniae, P. Grosjean in Anal. Boll, lxxiii, 315 n. 5. Paris 10837 is written in an Anglo-Saxon hand of before c. 750, and has notes made by St. Willibrord on f. 39.

page 22 note 1 See Levison, 55; also the HE. v. c. x.

page 22 note 2 He was not the Ecgberht who became archbishop of York in 735, for he died in 729 (Levison, 21, 52).

page 22 note 3 Archbishop Ecgberht, in his penit., quoted Theodore's and paraphrased one of the Responsiones (see P.L., lxxxix. col. 423). See also MG., 237; for a discussion of the penit. works which have at times been attributed to Ecgberht, HS. iii. 413–16, and for the text, Ibid., 416–31; there is a reference to pagan practices on the kalends of January 424, but the canon of Auxerre is not quoted.

page 22 note 4 See Levison, passim, and A. Grieve's Willibrord, 1923, 43, 129. Levison, 52, describes Ecgberht as bishop.

page 23 note 1 For 3 MSS. of the text, see MG., 438; for authorship and a trans., Ibid., 271–3; for the text, Wass., 433–5, Kunstmann, 176–7; HS. iii. 226–7.

page 23 note 2 Munich 3853 (olim 153); MG., 438, 446.

page 23 note 3 The canon of Auxerre about the kalends of Jan. is quoted from it by Kunstmann, 76. Neither Theodore nor the ‘discipulus Humbrensium’ had access to the collection of French canons which contained the council of Auxerre, 578; but when the A-S. missionaries wrote new penits., adding to Cummian, Theodore, etc., selections from continental sources, they often included this canon. The Pseudo-Bede ii (the Albers text) has a shortened reference to it, as have the Burgundian penit. and Regino's Ecc. Discip.; see MG., 229, 277 n. 10, 305, 318.

page 23 note 4 MG., list 26 MSS. of the Excarpsus, 437–8.

page 23 note 5 An extant MS. whose similarity of contents suggests some relationship to N.K.S. 58 is Paris 1455: see App. B.

page 23 note 6 See Brechter, 217.

page 24 note 1 Mansi, xii. col. 263: Si quis de propria cognatione vel quam cognatus habuit, duxerit uxorem anathema sit: which implied the 7 degrees of kinship of Roman law. Signatories included: Sedulius, episcopus Brittanie de genere Scottorum, and Fergustus, episcopus Scotiae Pictus.

page 24 note 2 HS. iii. 201, c. 25.

page 24 note 3 ‘Nam Theodosius imperator etiam patrueles, fratres et consobrinos vetuit inter se coniugii convenire nomine.’ See Esmein, i. 339. The council of Clermont, 535, prohibited marriage with named relations, not by degrees of propinquity.

page 25 note l Tangl, Ep. 26, 45.

page 26 note 1 Gregory spoke of the emperor Constantine I and the emperor Maurice, as ruling ‘in Romana republica’ (Ep. xi. 37; Ep. v. 30), and of ‘lex mundana’ and ‘lex humana’, passim, but his letters have no example of the phrase quoted.

page 26 note 2 A parallel to this non-Gregorian phrase is the use of ‘debeant’ in the sense of ‘may’ (si debeant duo germani fratres singulas sorores accipere: which occurs both in the early and later texts). Gregory almost always used ‘debere’ in the classical sense of ‘ought’, not ‘may’: cf. E. & H., i. 248, i. 12: church vessels and goods dispersed in Sicily ought (debeant) to be kept safely. Again, the scholastic comment ‘of such a marriage there could be no children’ is untrue in fact, and apparently drawn from some source other than those used by Gregory. The early text of the pronouncement on marriage, though antedating the insertion by Nothelm, may go back only to some pronouncement given at Canterbury, about marriage to a ‘noverca’, when king Eadbald married his ‘noverca’: ‘At vero post mortem Æthelberhti, cum filius eius Eadbald regni gubernacula suscepisset magno tenellis ibi adhue Ecclesiae crementis detrimento fuit … sed et fornicatione pollutus est … ita ut uxorem patris haberet.’ Plummer, i. 90.

page 27 note 1 The E. & H. footnotes to the text of Resp. V quote only Bede, and Paris 3182, 3846 and 3848B. For omissions or mutilations of the marriage judgment in both the early and the later text, see App. B. The text of such important MSS. as Ambros. S. 33. sup. and Lucca 490 is incomplete (‘mancus’).

page 27 note 2 The Fulda Sankt Bonifatius, 29.

page 27 note 3 Tangl, Ep. 33.

page 27 note 4 Ibid., Ep. 26.

page 27 note 5 When Boniface inquired how far the kin extended, Gregory II wrote (Ep. 28, of 732): Progeniem vero suam quemque ad septimam observare decernimus generationem.

page 28 note 1 Plummer i. 43, 44. He derived this date from Gregory's letter to Augustine after he had started, and the commendatory letter to (Aetherius) of Aries. He had no dated letter to show him when king Æthelberht was baptised: see below, 34.

page 28 note 2 Boniface requested archbishop Ecgberht of York (Tangl, Ep. 75) to have extracts etc. copied for him from ‘opusculis Bedan lectoris’, adding to his request the famous passage describing Bede as endowed with spiritual understanding and illuminating Ecgberht's province as a candle; another letter of the same date, to abbot Huaetberht of Wearmouth (Tangl, Ep. 76) describes Bede in very similar terms: ‘rogamus ut aliqua de opusculis sagacissimi investigatoris scripturarum Bedan monachi, quem nuper in domo Dei apud vos vice candellae ecclesiasticae scientia scripturarum fulsisse audivimus. conscripta nobis transmittere dignemini.’ It is incredible that a young lector, of the third minor order, should have written treatises on the scriptures, much less obtained such a reputation as this.

page 28 note 3 Cf. Forcellini, Lexicon, under Lector and Lego, 4: ‘item significat docere, enarrare, interpretari’. Bede was ordained deacon in 687, when aged nineteen, and priest in 702–3 (Bede. Essays, ed. A. H. Thompson, 4–14): there is no evidence that he wrote on the scriptures before receiving the priesthood, but ‘Ex quo tempore accepti presbyteratus usque ad annum aetatis meae lvii, haec (the list of Bede's works) in scripturam sanctam meae meorumque necessitati ex opusculis uenerabilium patrum breuiter adnotare, siue etiam ad formam sensus et interpretationis eorum super adicere curavi’. (Plummer, i. 357.) In Bede's prefatory letters commending some work of exegesis to bishop Acca of Hexham (709–32) and in Acca's letters to Bede, requesting him to write a particular commentary, or thanking him, and in a letter to Nothelm, the words ‘exponere’, ‘expositio’, ‘explanare’, ‘interpretari’ occur frequently: they are the correct contemporary terms to describe Bede's exegetical work, and they are covered by the classical meaning of ‘lector’: see P.L., xci., coll. 9–12, 499, 715, 807; xcii., coll. 301, 303–4.

page 28 note 4 E. & H. ii. 337, lines 40–51. They also print the variants given by the Maurists in their conflated edition (M).

page 29 note 1 In Paris 3846, which we have collated from a rotograph, the Obsecratio has been inserted, from some canonical collection, into the later text of the libellus, which sometimes had the sections headed Interrogatio: Responsio, and numbered. The Obsecratio was not thus headed, though it was numbered VIII. The text runs:

f. 255. ‘VII INT. Qualiter debemus cum gallearum atque brittaniarum episcopis agere RP Gg. In gallearum episcopis … peruersi auctoritate corrigantur. VIII Obsecro ut reliquiae sancti sixti martyris nobis transmittantur. Gregorius. Fecimus quae petisti quatenus populus qui in loco quodam sancti sixti martyris corporis (sic) dixerunt uenerari quod tuae fraternitate (sic) nee uirum (sic) nec ueraciter sanctum uidetur certa sanctissimi et probatissimi martiris beneficia suscipiens colore (sic) incerta non debeat mihi tamen uidetur quia si corpus quod a populo esse cuiusdam martyris esse (sic) creditur Nullus (sic) illic miraculis coruscat et neque aliquid (sic) de antiquioribus exsistunt (earlier, existunt) qui se a parentibus passionis eius ordinem audisse fateantur Ita reliquiae quas petistis eorum condensę, sunt ut locus in quo praefatum corpus iacet modis omnibus obstruatur Nec permittatur populus certum deserere et incertum uenerari. VIIII Si prignans (sic) mulier …’

The text of the Obsecratio Augustini from N.K.S. 58, f. 95v, runs: ‘Obsecro ut reliquie sancti Syxti nobis transmittantur. Fecimus que petisti ut quatenus populo qui in loco martyris corpus dicitur uenerare (sic) quia (sic) tue fraternitati uerum sancta (sic) sit. uidetur /fol. 96r/ incertum sanctissimi et probatissimi martyris beneficia suscipiens. colerc incerta non debeat. Mihi tamen uidetur quasi (sic) corpus quod a populo esse cuius (sic) martyris creditur. nullis hie miraculis corruscare. et neque aliquis de antiquioribus (sic) existunt. qui se a parentibus passionis eius ordinem audisse fateantur. Ita reliquie quas petistis (sic) seorsum conditç sunt, ut locus in quo prefatum corpus /fol. 96v/ modis omnibus obstruatur. nee permittatur populus certum deserere. et incertum venerari. VI. CAPITULO. Requisisti. si debent duo germani fratres.’ etc.

This text has been carefully checked: the writing is so clear that no letter is in doubt. All the MSS. have doubtful readings at ‘uerum sancta sit uidetur’.

page 29 note 2 See A. SS. November ii. pt. 2, for 6 August 419–21.

page 30 note 1 As to the question whether the tomb of some martyr in the east of Britain could have been continuously venerated by a diminishing number of Christian Romano-Britons, right down to the coming of Augustine, though without any exact knowledge of his passion, and without such knowledge passing to the Celtic Christians of the west, the following fragments of information, and the assertions of Gildas, have some bearing. Bede speaks of cures at the shrine of St. Alban persisting till Augustine's day, implying a small Christian congregation at this most famous martyrium. The place-name Papworth (southern Cambridgeshire) implies that the Anglo-Saxons found a Christian papa (an honourable title at the date: perhaps not merely a village priest, as in nineteenth century Russia); they had no word ‘papa’ of their own. Gildas wrote (M.G.H. Chron. Min. iii. 31) that there were many martyrs in Britain in the persecutions, besides Alban, Julius and Aaron: ‘quorum nunc corporum sepulturae et passionum loca, si non lugubri divortio barbarorum quam plurima ob scelera nostra civibus adimerentur, non minimum intuentium mentibus ardorem divinae caritatis incuterent, ceterosque utriusque sexus diversis in locis summa magnanimitate in acie Christi perstantes dico’. Gildas also speaks of the rebuilding of churches and martyria in Britain after the persecutions: ‘basilicas sanctorum martyrum fundant, construunt, perficiunt’. Nevertheless, though it has been suggested that some titulus or inscription lies behind the dubious ‘martyr Sixtus’ of the Obsecratio, the complete absence of evidence that Augustine ever dedicated a church or an altar with the true relics of Sixtus II forbids the assumption that the Obsecratio was, in fact, sent by Augustine to Gregory.

page 30 note 2 E. & H. Ep. iv. 30.

page 30 note 3 E. & H. i. 423. There are several other references to the relics of or dedications to St. Lawrence in Gregory's letters, and no reference to St. Sixtus. This appears to show that in his day in Rome the veneration of the Valerianic martyrs was chiefly associated with the feast of St. Lawrence, though the natale of St. Sixtus was also commemorated in the sacramentaries on 6 August.

page 31 note 1 See Gamber, Klaus, Wege zur Urgregorianum: Erörterung der Grundfragen und Rekonstruktionsversuch des Sacramentars Gregors d. Gr. vom Jahre 592. 1956. Beuron, Texte und Arbeiten, 1 Abt. Heft. 45, p. 5.Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 See Gregorii magni Dialogi, ed. U. Moricca, 1924, 265. For this church of St. Sixtus, a title church, see Huelsen, C., Le Chiese di Roma nel medio evo, 1927, 470–1Google Scholar, and for its occurrence in the subscriptions to the council of Rome, 595, Ibid. 126.

page 31 note 3 See Hist. Franc, i. c. 30: M.G.H. Scriptores, Nova ed. i. pt. i, 22. Though the feasts of SS. Sixtus and Lawrence were no doubt kept in the Gauls and among the Franks, the earliest Gallican sacramentaries have no special masses for them: see The Bobbio Missal, ed. Wilmart, A., Lowe, E. A. and Wilson, H. A., 1924Google Scholar, and Das Sakramentar in Schabcodex der Bibl. Ambrosiana, Dold, A., 1952.Google Scholar

page 31 note 4 Anal. Boll. xxvi. 82: A. SS. November ii. pt. ii. 584. The dedication is suggested as that of the basilica of St. Lawrence in the via Tiburtina. (For the 34 medieval churches of St. Lawrence in Rome, see Huelsen, op. cit., 280–97.)

page 31 note 5 Ibid., xxiii. 136, 166, 175, 186; xxiv. 427; xxviii. 439; xxx. 152, 203, 209; xxxiv. 262; xiii. 335; xliii. 331, 339; xlvii. 259, 274; li. 338, 347.

page 31 note 6 Ibid., i. 42–58: p. 36 ‘Le martyre du pontife a lieu peu de jours avant celui de S. Laurent, son archidiacre. Ici le lien est le plus intime. L'histoire des deux saints peut s'intituler Passio SS. Sixti et Laurentii. Elle est suivie de la Passion de S. Hippolyte.’ Cf. Ibid., xxiv. 435.

page 31 note 7 Ibid., xxiv. 435; xxvi. 85; xxvii. 175; xxviii. 427.

page 31 note 8 Ibid., lix. 269; li. 116.

page 31 note 9 R. I. Best and H. J. Lawlor, Martyrology of Tallaght, 60, 62.

page 31 note 10 Anal. Boll, xxviii. 427. For other legendaries with the passion of St. Sixtus, but no separate one of St. Lawrence, see Ibid., xxvii. 175; xxx. 216; lx. 272.

page 31 note 11 Ibid., li. 386.

page 31 note 12 This was embroidered at Winchester at the command of the lady Ælflæd in the tenth century and offered at the shrine of St. Cuthbert: see Battiscombe, C. F., Relics of Saint Cuthbert, 1956, 13, 395–6.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 Epigrammata Damasiana, ed. A. Ferrua, 255.

page 32 note 2 Anal. Boll, xlviii. 22. His relics were placed by bishop Maximian of Ravenna a.d. 550 in a church he built.

page 32 note 3 The name ‘Sixtus’ appears to have been fairly common in the third and early fourth centuries: the first bishop of Reims was a Sixtus and others are known; but the commemoration of more than one Sixtus in a martyrology can be due to a confused doubling of Sixtus II. Cf. the Commentary on the Hieronymian martyrology by Hippolyte Delehaye in A. SS. November ii. 427–30: on 9 August Sixtus II is listed with his companions, and again ‘in colonia Tusciae’ in a list of popes.

page 32 note 4 E. & H. ii. 332–3, before Ep. xi. 56a.

page 33 note 1 One apparently in his day extant as an original at Canterbury, one only obtainable as copied into Gregory's Register at Rome: the original went to Alexandria. Only Nothelm was conversant with MS. material both at Canterbury and Rome: see below, 35. The letter to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, mentions Gregory's joy at the baptism, at Christmas 597, of ten thousand English. The lack of a reference to Æthelberht's baptism has occasioned doubts as to whether it was accomplished thus early. It may as probably be due to Gregory's inability at the moment to remember Æthelberht's name.

page 33 note 2 Gregory in his letters frequently used ‘capitula’ of the specific matters submitted to him for decision. The word was in frequent use by the papal notariat, and well known to Nothelm.

page 34 note 1 Ep. xi. 35: Remeantes igitur dilectissimus filius noster Laurentius et Petrus monachus (returning whence they had set out with Augustine in 596).

page 34 note 2 Ep. xi. 37, 22 June 601.

page 34 note 3 In HE. i. c. xxv, and ii. c. v, his brief account of Bertha's history, and his reference to her death.

page 34 note 4 Virgilius was then archbishop of Arles, Aetherius bishop of Lyons. Bede's mistake probably arose from his ascription of Gregory's letter to ‘Aetherio coepiscopo nostro' (no see mentioned), to Aetherius as of the see of Aries (HE. i. c. xxiv). Bede gives the detailed final dating, not found in the summary form of this letter in the Register (Ep. vi. 50). Nothelm would have sent Bede a copy of the Canterbury version, which Augustine possibly retained as a useful introduction to any bishop in his journey through France, 596–7.

page 35 note 1 This word and Bede's ‘nec mora’ must have struck Boniface as he was seeking to establish the authenticity or otherwise of the suspect decision about marriage in the Responsiones: see above, 28, n. 1 for his query about the date of Augustine's arrival. Boniface had the Bedan text of the Responsiones in the HE., and it is of interest that he made the first chronological inquiry about the date of an event by the era of the Incarnation, and made it in the course of inquiring into the authenticity of the Responsiones. When did these things happen, the arrival of the missionaries, the consecration of Augustine, the sending of the Responsiones? All very quickly, apparently, for Bede wrote ‘continuo … nec mora’. Did Boniface doubt? It is of interest also that he was apparently trying to disprove (or prove) the authenticity of a document by internal evidence. He may well have had, like Bede, the early text of the Responsiones before he received Nothelm's (later) version in the HE.

page 36 note 1 See E. & H. ii. 302–24.

page 36 note 2 Tangl, Ep. 54.

page 36 note 3 See Gemmulus' letter to Boniface of 742–3, Tangl, Ep. 54. Boniface had told Nothelm in 735 that the Responsiones were not to be found in the Register ‘ut adfirmant scriniarii’: Tangl, Ep. 33.

page 37 note 1 Aldhelm thus showed that he was acquainted with the Hisperica Famina, by suddenly introducing into his text some very rare words which occur in one and the same passage in the Hisperica Famina. See Grosjean, P., ‘Confusa Caligo’ in Celtica, Dublin, III (1955), 47.Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 The MSS. containing the Obs. Aug., none of which (according to the catalogues and such texts as we have been able to verify) have any other heading than ‘Obsecratio Augustini’, include N.K.S. 58, Ambros. S. 33. sup., Paris 3846, Brussels 363, Corpus Christi College Cambridge 320.

page 37 note 3 P.G. xxxi. 906. In manuscript cats., the title Interrogationes et Responsiones more often refers to the work of St. Basil than St. Gregory. It is likely that the MS. sent up to Bede had: ‘Interrogatio’ before each query and ‘Gregorius respondit’ before each answer, as in the early Petrograd MS., and the Moore MS., which Plummer used: see O. Arngart (later O. Anderson), in The Leningrad Bede, in ‘Early Eng. Manuscripts in Facsimile’, vol. ii. 13. In Lucca 490 there are no headings, but this is exceptional in MSS. of the later text; E. & H. notice in footnotes (332–8), the MSS. which have ‘Interrogatio’ and either ‘G. respondit’ or ‘Responsio’; Bede described the whole tractate as ‘libellus responsionum’, HE. ii. c. i.

page 38 note 1 Tangl, Ep. 75. Boniface asked Ecgberht: ‘sis mihi consiliarius et adiutor in inquirendis et investigandis regulis ecclesiasticis iudiciorum Dei; et ut me, non ludivaga sermonum voce, sed serie rogantem ac discentem esse scias et me non arrogantem vel superbum aut proprio iudicio plus iusto placentem aestimes’.

page 38 note 2 That is: if the quotation from Responsio I in the prose life were not a later insertion by Bede himself. No medieval writer regarded his work as finally completed: see L. M. J. Delaissé's study of the various additions and emendations by the author himself in the autograph MS. of the Imitation de Jésus le Christ, publications of ‘Scriptorium’, ii, Brussels, 1956, and, also dealing with the author's alterations of his own text: Emonds, H., Zweite Auflage im Altertum, Leipzig 1941. There is, however, no MS. evidence to support a late insertion of c. xvi in the prose Life. B. Colgrave, the editor of the Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, examined the MSS. of the prose Life, and deals (45–6) with certain short passages missing in certain MSS.: the quotation from Responsio I is not, however, among them.Google Scholar

page 38 note 3 See below, 42.

page 39 note 1 Ep. vi. 50a, of 23 July 596. This letter is not in any of the redactions of Gregory's Register (RCP.). Moreover, though the entries in the Register are in summary form, this has the detailed dating which suggests that it was copied from an original at Canterbury.

page 39 note 2 HE., Plummer, i. 44, 62, 64, 66, 70; the letters to Aetherius, Virgilius, Augustine, Mellitus, Æthelberht. As to the possibility that in Gregory's original Register letters were copied in full, and not in summary as in the Hadrianic and later Registers, Dr. Leo Santifaller kindly informs us that there is no evidence to decide this much disputed point: it is accepted that originals (on papyrus) may well have been preserved at Canterbury in some cases.

page 39 note 3 He actually had gout at the time, and may not have answered for this reason.

page 39 note 4 Ep. ix. 37, the letter to Æthelberht, hardly reads like one of congratulation to a king recently received (cf. Gregory's letter to Reccared, Ep. ix. 228): it is, rather, a letter adjuring.Æthelberht to hasten the conversion of his subjects, as to which Gregory seems, in his letter to Bertha, to be far from satisfied. It has been argued that the later date for the conversion is supported by the omission of Æthelberht's name from Gregory's letter to Eulogius: but this, the outlandish name of the king of a very distant realm, may have been omitted as of no interest to Eulogius.

page 39 note 5 It is unlikely that any Responsio represents a papal reply given orally to a visitor. At this early date no collection of quasi-canonical material would include any ‘vivae vocis oraculum’: a papal sententia would have been given in writing.

page 39 note 6 Quoted by Bede in c. xvi of his prose Life of St. Cuthbert: see Colgrave, B., Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, 1940, 208.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 For episcopal monasteries in Gaul in the time of St. Patrick, see Paul Grosjean, ‘Notes d'hagiographie celtique’, in Anal. Boll., lxxv. 159–61.

page 40 note 2 See Wormald, F., The Miniatures in the Gospels of St. Augustine, 1948, 2. This is the only survivor of all the mass books taken by Augustine to England, or sent to him there by pope Gregory. It is an illuminated gospel book, an altar book, and probably owes its preservation in the Danish raids to its being saved with the Christ Church relics and treasure, and not left to perish in the bibliotheca.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 Wege zum Urgregorianum, Beuron 1956. The writer deals with the question whether Augustine could have taken this pontifical sacramentary (20).Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 Dom Henry Ashworth's paper entitled ‘St. Gregory and the Gregorianum’ given at the Patristic Conference at Oxford in 1955 (Studio Patristica, ii. 3–16) dealt with the passages which can be attributed to St. Gregory on the grounds of language and style; cf. his article in Ephemerides Liturgicae, LXXII (1958), 3943, entitled: ‘Did St. Augustine bring the Gregorianum to England?’.Google Scholar

page 41 note 3 Duchesne, L., Origines du culte chrétien, ed. 1898, 95.Google Scholar

page 42 note 1 Duchesne, Origines, 99, writes of Theodore's concessions later to the Scots, in the use of the Gallican rite in England. The oldest A-S liturgical books do not contain the Roman Liturgy in a pure form: ‘Ils abondent en détails gallicans.’

page 42 note 2 Ep. xi. 38, and Ep. xi. 40.

page 42 note 3 This letter has the detailed address and dating which suggest that it was copied from an original at Canterbury: it was a letter of the utmost importance, canonical and political, to Augustine, for it gave the number of bishops to be consecrated for the provinces of London (Canterbury) and York. Gregory, in appointing London and York, rather than Canterbury and York, must have been following some old Notitia of British cities, probably with the metropolitan cities of the two provinces named, even as they are named in the old Notitia of Gallican cities that has survived along with the Notitia Dignitatum (ed. O. Seeck, 262). That such notitiae survived from Roman times in the Vatican Library, and that Gregory would therefore have had access to them, has been shown by Mr. Wade-Evans, in The Emergence of England and Wales, 61–2. (A similar case of the naming of the see from an old. Roman city is that of Tongres: the bishop certainly resided at Maestricht.) Ep. xi. 39 would of course have been written on papyrus; in the copying of the directions for later use, on parchment, the word ‘London’ for Augustine's see would have been changed to Canterbury, where the see was by now firmly established, and whence a provincial bishop had been established in the old Roman capital.

page 43 note 1 See above, 13.