The Responsa and Method

As Augustine’s mission took root in Kent, he sent back to Rome a list of practical and pastoral questions, and Gregory answered them in a document known as the Libellus responsionum (“the little book of answers”), preserved by Bede. Its most celebrated passage is a directive Gregory sent in 601: the pagan temples of the English were not to be destroyed but cleansed and converted into churches, and the people’s customary festivals were to be redirected to Christian feasts rather than abolished — for “he who would climb to a lofty height must go by steps, not leaps.” This accommodationist, gradualist missionary method is one of Gregory’s most influential legacies, though the Libellus’s exact authenticity has been debated.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Pope of Rome; Great Hierarch)

The Libellus Responsionum

Once established in Kent, Augustine faced a host of practical questions that no Roman precedent quite answered: how a new and isolated bishop should govern; what to do about differing liturgical customs between Rome and Gaul; questions of marriage law among the newly converted; and questions of ritual purity drawn from the Old Testament that the English converts pressed. He sent these questions to Gregory, and Gregory’s replies were gathered into the document Bede reproduces in full as the Libellus responsionum — the “little book of responses” — a set of answers (the responsa or interrogationes Augustini) covering church order, the disposition of offerings, marriage within forbidden degrees, and the ritual questions of menstruation, childbirth, and communion (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.27; trans. Colgrave and Mynors 1969; Markus 1997, 187–199; Meyvaert 1971).

The answers are notable for their pastoral moderation. On the ritual-purity questions in particular, Gregory consistently distinguishes the inner reality of sin from mere physical states, refusing to bar women from church or communion for natural bodily processes and insisting that what matters is the disposition of the heart, not external ceremonial defilement. The tone throughout is gentle, accommodating, and concerned to bind tender consciences neither too loosely nor too harshly — the same pastoral art the Pastoral Rule sets out in principle (see The Art of Souls).

The Letter on the Temples

The most famous of Gregory’s instructions to the English mission is not part of the Libellus proper but a letter Gregory sent in 601 to the abbot Mellitus as he set out to join Augustine, with directions to be passed to Augustine. Bede preserves it (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.30; Gregory, Register 11.56; trans. Colgrave and Mynors 1969 and Martyn 2004). In it Gregory reverses, or refines, an earlier and harsher instruction: the idol-temples of the English are not to be destroyed, but only the idols within them; the temples themselves are to be sprinkled with holy water, furnished with altars and relics, and turned into churches — so that the people, “seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, may put away error from their hearts and, knowing and adoring the true God, may resort the more readily to the places they are accustomed to.” Likewise, since the people are used to sacrificing many oxen to demons at their festivals, some solemnity should be substituted: on the feasts of the dedication or of the martyrs whose relics are placed there, let them build booths and hold religious feasting, killing animals now “to the praise of God” rather than to idols.

Gregory states the principle plainly: “for it is doubtless impossible to cut away everything at once from hardened minds, since one who strives to ascend to the highest place must rise by steps or paces and not by leaps” (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.30; trans. Colgrave and Mynors 1969). This is the heart of the Gregorian missionary method: not the violent eradication of a pagan culture but its gradual conversion and re-consecration — meeting people where they are, redirecting their existing devotion and customs toward the true God, and trusting time and grace to complete what cannot be done by force.

The Method Assessed

This accommodationist method has been much admired and much discussed. It is, on one reading, a model of missionary wisdom and pastoral patience, and it stands in deliberate contrast to the earlier, sterner advice (also recorded by Bede) to destroy the temples outright; Gregory evidently thought better of that counsel and sent the gentler instruction after it. Scholars note that the principle of “steps, not leaps” is thoroughly characteristic of Gregory’s whole pastoral outlook — the same condescension to human weakness, the same adaptation of the medicine to the patient, that governs the Pastoral Rule (Markus 1997, 187–199; Mayr-Harting 1991, 78–93). It would echo through the later history of Christian mission as a charter for inculturation.

It also carries a tension that observers East and West have noted: the line between baptizing a custom and absorbing a paganism is not always easy to draw, and the method assumes a confident discernment about which elements of a culture may be re-consecrated and which must be cast out. Gregory himself drew the line firmly at the idols and the sacrifices to demons, which were to be abolished; it was the buildings, the gatherings, and the festal joy that were to be redeemed (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 1.30). The Orthodox tradition has its own long practice of consecrating times, places, and customs — the blessing of waters, the sanctification of the agricultural year, the building of churches on former pagan sites — and Gregory’s instruction belongs recognizably to that broad pattern of the Church taking up and transfiguring the natural religiosity of a people.

The Question of Authenticity

The authenticity of the Libellus responsionum has been one of the more debated questions in Gregorian scholarship. [Disputed: some earlier scholars doubted whether Gregory wrote the *Libellus* at all, noting that it does not appear in his official *Register*, that certain of its rulings sit oddly with positions taken elsewhere, and that it survives chiefly through Bede and in canon-law collections; others — notably Paul Meyvaert in a series of studies — defended its substantial authenticity as a genuine work of Gregory, while allowing that its transmission and arrangement are complex. The current consensus, following Meyvaert, accepts the *Libellus* as essentially Gregorian, though the textual history is intricate (Meyvaert 1971; Markus 1997, 187–199). The temple-letter of *Register* 11.56, by contrast, is securely in Gregory's *Register* and is not in doubt]. For the purposes of this guide, the temple-letter — the clearest statement of the method — rests on the firm ground of the Register, while the Libellus is treated as the substantially authentic body of pastoral answers that the great majority of scholars now accepts.

See Also

References

  • Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People 1.27 (the Libellus responsionum) and 1.30 (the letter on the temples). Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
  • Gregory the Great. The Letters of Gregory the Great (Register) 11.56 (the temple-letter to Mellitus). Trans. John R. C. Martyn. 3 vols. Toronto: PIMS, 2004.
  • Meyvaert, Paul. “Bede’s Text of the Libellus Responsionum.” In England Before the Conquest, ed. P. Clemoes and K. Hughes, 15–33. Cambridge, 1971; and related studies on the authenticity of the Responsa. (The defence of Gregorian authorship.)
  • Markus, R. A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 187–199. (The Libellus, the temple-letter, and the missionary method.)
  • Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. London: Batsford, 1991, 78–93. (The Gregorian method and its application.)