Boniface, Incest, and the Earliest Extant Version of Pope Gregory I's Libellus responsionum (JE 1843)

• Autores: Michael D. Elliot
• Localización: Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte.: Kanonistische Abteilung, ISSN 0323-4142, Vol. 131, 2014, págs. 62-111
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The Libellus responsionum is aeeepted by most seholars today as an authentie work of Pope Gregory I, with the exeeption of its chapter on ineest, whieh is believed to eontain a telling interpolation.

    Doubt eoneeming the Libellus's ineest ehapter can be traeed baek to the mid-eighth eentury, when it was eited by St Bonifaee (and by at least one prominent Frankish or Bavarian aristoerat) as allowing marriage between a nephew and his aunt. But Bonifaee was in fact misreading The Libellus, whose incest chapter clearly prohibits such marriages. Indeed, there is nothing in the incest chahapter that is inconsistent with either Gregory's thinking or the legal standards of the time. Boniface was therefore wrong to doubt the authenticity of the incest chapter, as has been most recent scoholarship. The incest chapter does not contain an interpolated passage; rather this passage is herein shown to have been present in the earliest extant version of the Libellus, which (contrary to the conclusions of Paul Meyvaert's research) must have been the so-called Capitula version. The early transmission of the Capitula version is traced through two seventheentury talian canon law collections. lt was probably via these collections that the various forms of the Libellus entered England and Francia, where Bede and Boniface finally encountered them.

    An attempt is made to reconstruct the early transmission of the Libellus within the early AngloSaxon church. Boniface is shown to have been familiar with multiple versions of the Libellus, at least one ofwhich omitted the offending passage from the incest chapter; this may explain why Boniface continually expressed doubt about the authenticity of that passage throughout the later years of his career on the Continent.