298 NOTES AND STUDIES

32. And perhaps also 160, 15 sk 8 , where the is difficult, till you see it is a quotation from 2 Cor. ix. 7.

The second apparatus is very extensive, but in view of the rich textual tradition I cannot see that it could have been cut down considerably.

There are opportunities in plenty for differing from the editor over

details in this edition, and one is tempted also to a different opinion in

one or two more important respects, but as a whole it is a solid work, that has given patristic scholars one more firm starting-point for the

investigation of the theology and the Greek language of the fourth

century. Albert Wifstrand Albert Wifstrand

BEDE AND THE LIBELLUS SYNODICUS OF GREGORY THE GREAT

In his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (= HE) Bede treats of the

life and writings of St. Gregory the Great in the first chapter of Book ii.

After describing Gregory's major works Bede makes a cursory allusion

to a series of opera minora which had also come to his notice: 'Excepto libellolibello responsionum quern ad interrogationes sancti Augustini primi

Anglorum gentis episcopi scripsit, ut et supra docuimus, totum ipsum libellum his inserentes historiis,1 libello quoque synodico, quern cum

(cum om. al.) episcopis Italiae de necessariis ecclesiae causis utillimum

conposuit, et familiaribus ad quosdam litteris.'2 We wish to concern

ourselves here with the second work, the Libellus Synodicus, for its

identity has given rise to some discussion.

The Maurists thought Bede was alluding to the Acts of the Roman

Synod of 595: 'eorum meminisse videtur Beda lib. II hist. c. 1' is the

comment they make in their edition of these Acts in the Opera Omnia

of Gregory.3 This suggestion was repeated by L. Hartmann in his cri

tical edition of Gregory's Registrum, but, it would seem, without over

much conviction: 'huius synodi [of 595] mentionem facit Gregorius

1 = HE. i. 27. The Libellus Responsionum will form the subject of a separate study to be published elsewhere. In view of recent discussions centring around this document it may be worth saying here that a full investigation into the

manuscript tradition (over 100 manuscripts survive) has allowed the question to be completely renewed. The Libellus, except for an interpolated passage in the Responsio on marriage, is unquestionably an authentic Gregorian work.

Already by Bede's time it had a long history of textual transmission and reached him by a circuitous route and in a very corrupt state.

1 C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Opera Historica, i (Oxford, 1896), pp. 76-77.

3 S. Gregorii Papae I Opera Omnia, ii (Paris, 1705), Appendix ad Epistolas S. Gregorii, cols. 1288-92; cp. col. 1287 n. a.

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NOTES AND STUDIES 299

ep. V. 62 ... et ut Maurini putant Beda HE II. 1 his verbis: libello

quoque synodico etc.'1

C. Plummer makes no reference to this conjecture of the Maurists.2

Following the lead given by J. Smith,3 an earlier editor of Bede's HE,

he identifies libellus synodicus with epistola synodica or the letter sent by

a newly consecrated patriarch to the holders of the other primatial sees

as a witness to the orthodoxy of his faith. Bede therefore, according to

Plummer, is alluding to Gregory's Synodical Epistle, a document that

has survived both in the Registrum and in the Life of Gregory by John

the Deacon.

Dom G. Morin did not consider either of the above solutions satis

factory.4 He was aware that at this point the manuscripts of HE gave variant readings: some wrote 'libello synodico quern cum episcopis Italiae ... conposuit', but others, and among them the very early Moore

manuscript at Cambridge, omitted the preposition cum: 'libello

synodico quern episcopis Italiae . . . conposuit'. Dom Morin thought that whichever reading one adopted, the Synodical Epistle of Gregory must be eliminated since this letter could not be considered as having been drafted conjointly with the bishops of Italy, or as addressed to

them; nor indeed did it seem concerned 'de necessariis ecclesiae

causis'. In his opinion the claim of the Maurist editors was hardly more

convincing. Would Bede really have granted the imposing title Libellus

Synodicus Synodicus to a short text containing no more than a mere half-dozen

canons belonging to a rather insignificant council?: 'beaucoup de

metropolitains et de papes ont tenu des conciles d'une importance incontestablement plus grande, sans que personne ait songe a leur

attribuer autant de "libelli synodici" qu'ily a eu de ces conciles.' It was

also 'une chose peu conforme au langage des anciens, que de presenter les decisions d'un concile comme l'oeuvre personnelle de tel ou tel

membre de l'assemblee, lors meme que ce dernier cut eu dans leur

redaction une part preponderante'. Dom Morin thought these a priori reasons would be confirmed by a textual analysis of HE. ii. 1. For

although 'a s'en tenir a l'etat des manuscrits, il est . . . difficile, sinon

impossible, de se prononcer d'une fa

300 NOTES AND STUDIES

which omitted the cum was a lectio difficilior and Dom Morin concluded:

'il est assez probable qu'il faut plutot lire "quem episcopis" que "quem cum episcopis".' Bede therefore had in mind a work of Gregory drawn

up not with the bishops of Italy but for their benefit.

With the ground thus cleared Dom Morin set about hunting for new

and more likely candidates. His first quarry was the Liber Diurnus.1

The arguments favouring the identification of this document with the

LibellusLibellus Synodicus were set forth in detail in his earlier paper. But hardly had this article come from the press 'que mes yeux sont tombes sur un

autre document qui semble se preter beaucoup plus naturellement a

une identification avec l'opuscule signale par Bede. Quoique cette

nouvelle solution soit de tout point moins interessante que la premiere, il suffit qu'elle paraisse plus conforme a la verite historique pour que

je me fasse un devoir de la communiquer sans retard au lecteur.'2 The

find, this time, was, surprisingly, not a work that went officially under

Gregory's name, but under that of his predecessor, Pelagius II; the long

dogmatic letter to the bishops of Istria on the question of the Three

Chapters. Dom Morin, however, thought this new identification plausible since there had existed a tradition, a first trace of which can be found

in the History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon, which rendered

Gregory responsible for drafting this document while he was still a

deacon of Pelagius. But Dom Morin nowhere explains what evidence had

led him to suggest that Bede had actual knowledge of this dogmatic

letter; and if he did have evidence to satisfy himself, what guarantee have we that the rumours current in Italy in Paul the Deacon's time

were also going the round of the Northumbrian monasteries in Bede's

own day ?

Dom Morin's two papers appeared in 1894 and he was thus unable to

make use of C. Plummer's critical edition of HE (1896), with its long introduction on the history of the text. Plummer distinguished two

main types of text, the type, chiefly represented by the early Moore

manuscriptthe earliest Bede manuscript known to us (737)and the

C type with its earliest witness Cotton, Tiberius C. II (s. VIII ex.), at

the British Museum. Plummer hesitated as to which type of text was

the earlier, but tended to give preference to the type, making the

Moore manuscript the basis of his edition.3 Dr. R. A. B. Mynors has

recently penetrated farther into the textual history of HE, drawing on sources not known to Plummer, and thinks there is ground for

1 Op. cit., pp. 197-208.

2 'Le "Libellus Synodicus" de S. Gregoire, Nouvelle Solution', in Rev. Ben.Ben. xi (1894), pp. 271-3.

3 Plummer, op. cit. i, pp. lxxxix sq.; cp. pp. xcvi-xcvii.

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NOTES AND STUDIES 301

considering the C type as the earlier text of Bede's work.1 On the point at issue here all we need say is that the most important witnesses of the

type (the Moore Bede and the Leningrad Bede2) omit the preposition

cum,cum, whereas the C type reads 'quem cum episcopis Italiae'. Plummer

evidently considered this omission in to be a mere lapsus, since on

the strength of its presence in other manuscripts, he inserted the word

in his edition. From a purely textual point of view it is not always easy to decide

which reading we should prefer. Even if it were proved beyond doubt

that the C type has preserved the earlier version this need not imply that preference should be given automatically to all readings of C where

they differ from M.3 Dom Morin, as we saw, considered the reading of

a lectio difficilior. Yet in this particular instance there need be no real

hesitation for Bede has himself provided a clue to the small textual

problem as well as to the real nature of the Libellus Synodicus. It is

a pity that neither Dom Morin nor Plummer thought at this point of

consulting Bede's Chronica Maiora. A passage from this work enables

us to identify with certainty the Libellus Synodicus with the Acts of the

Roman Synod of 595, thus confirming the conjecture of the Maurists

and at the same time certifying the authenticity of the reading cum

episcopis episcopis in the C text of HE. The following quotations should make

this clear:

Chronicon*Chronicon* HE ii. 1

Gregorius Romanae ecclesiae

Pontifex et doctor eximius, anno

Mauricii imperii XIII, indictione libello quoque

XIII, synodum episcoporum XXIII synodico quem cum episcopis Italiae

ad corpus beati apostoli Petri con

gregans de necessariis ecclesiae de necessariis ecclesiae causis utilli

decernit. mum conposuit

The entry in the Chronicon proves that Bede had at his side the Acts

of the Synod for it re-echoes the opening words of the document itself:

1 Cp. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. ix. The Moore Bede (Copen

hagen, 1959), pp. 33-37, 'The early circulation of the text', by R. A. B. Mynors. 2

Cp. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. ii, The Leningrad Bede (ed. O. Arngart) (Copenhagen, 1952), pi. 28 a. ii. 9'cum' is an interlinear addition

probably by the 'small hand, approximately contemporary with those of the

MS.' of which Arngart speaks in his introduction p. 29. 33 Even where there is an apparent omission in the text. This remark,

however, has special reference to quotations which Bede makes from other

documents and in particular from the Libellus Responsionum which reached him

in a corrupt version (cp. above, p. 298, n. 1). 4 Bedae Chronica Maiora, ed. Th. Mommsen, MGH, Chronica Minora, iii,

p. 309, n. 530. Mommsen gives a marginal reference to HE. ii. 1.

621.2

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302 NOTES AND STUDIES

"... temporibus . . . eiusdem domni imperii Mauricii anno tertio decimo, indictione tertia decima, quinto die mensis Iulii, Gregorius papa coram sacratissimo beati Petri apostoli corpore cum episcopis et

omnibus Romanae ecclesiae presbyteris residens . . . dixit etc.'1 Nor is

there anything surprising here, for although the acts of this synod were

not preserved in the copies of the Registrum, they were widely circu

lated in early canonical collections and were also sometimes found in

manuscripts of Gregory's homilies.2 In an uncial manuscript of moderate

size the six canons of the synod, together with the two long lists of

signatures at the end, might well have filled a half-dozen or more folios.3

This would amply justify Bede calling the document a Libellus Syno dicus.dicus. Bede, moreover, was equally justified in considering the Libellus

as Gregory's work. The document presents the decisions as those of

Gregory: Gregorius dixit..., a fact clearly recognized by the titles given to it in the canonical collections: 'Incipit Decretum Gregorii Papae',4

'Incipiunt decreta synodica Gregorii Papae',5 ,Sancti Gregorii Papae Romani decretorum capitula sex'6 are a few examples. Our conclusion

is therefore that, on the evidence of Bede's own words, we must identify the Libellus Synodicus of HE. ii. 1 with the Acts of the Roman Synod of 595. Paul Meyvaert Paul Meyvaert

1 MGH, Epist. i (v. 57a), pp. 362-3. 2 F. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts,

i (Graz, 1870), p. 302 (no. 296. 4), gives a list of ten canonical collections con taining the Acts of the Synod of 595; cp. also MGH, Epist. i, p. 362, for the manuscripts of Gregory's Homilies which also include these Acts.

The text of the Acts, including the signatures, occupies 120 lines of the MGH edition; the eighth Responsio of the Libellus Responsionum (134 lines in MGH) takes up a full 12 folios in the small uncial manuscript, Copenhagen Ny kgl. 58 (s. vm in. [15*5 X 11 5 cm.]); this helps to form some estimate.

4 Cp. Maassen, op. cit., pp. 477 and 632. 5 In some manuscripts of the Pseudo-Isidore collection; cp. P. Hinschius,

DecretalesDecretales Pseudo-Isidorianae (Leipzig, 1863), P- xxxviii, n. 1. 6 Maassen, op. cit., p. 461.

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