On the Origin of the Pastoral Care | De origine Regulae pastoralis
Oxford, St John’s College, MS 28, fol. 6v [By permission of the President and Fellows of St John's College Oxford]
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Introduction to the Source
To the best of my knowledge, this text has not been previously edited or translated. I have found it in two English manuscripts that were produced centuries apart and that bear no direct relation to one another: Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 28 (s. x med. and x3/4 or x/xi; the Pastoral Care is in the slightly later part), fol. 6v and Oxford, Merton College, MS 16, (s. xiv ex., xv1), fol. 139va. The text must certainly exist in more manuscript witnesses of the Pastoral Care, from a range of times and—one assumes, given the text’s continental origin—of places.
Introduction to the Text
This short preface to Pope Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis (Pastoral Rule or Pastoral Care) offers an unusual account of the genesis of that text, composed—so the preface says—during travel that Gregory undertook through Gaul in an attempt to avoid becoming pope. By contrast, the standard narrative of the Pastoral Care’s origin sees it completed presumably in Rome, not long after Gregory’s papal inauguration, and sent off thence to John, bishop of Ravenna. (History supports the second version of events: Gregory was first in Constantinople, then Rome, prior to assuming the papacy.) Gregory’s initial reluctance to become pope is a constant in both origin stories, however, even if he is more active in his escapism in the preface presented here. The tally noted in the preface extends Gregory’s time in office by four months. He was pope from September 3, 590 to March 12, 604: thirteen years, six months (not ten months), and nine days. The etymology of Gregory’s name is sound.
The preface also alludes to a second alternate history of the Pastoral Care, one that is introduced in a more displaced way: “And others think that…” This origin story is vague with its mentions of an “emperor of the Goths” and a “demented leader of the Romans,” but these could be references to Justin II, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire (r. 565-74), and Leovigild, the Visigothic king with whom he contended. (Justin II notably suffered from mental illness.) This would place the text’s purported composition sometime between 565 and 574; for context, Gregory entered monastic life in 574.
Further Reading
Godden, Malcolm. “Prologues and Epilogues in the Old English Pastoral Care, and Their Carolingian Models.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 110, no. 4, 2011, pp. 441-73.
St. Gregory the Great. The Book of Pastoral Rule. Translated by George Demacopoulos. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007.
Neil, Bronwen and Matthew Dal Santo, editors. A Companion to Gregory the Great. Brill, 2013.
Credits
Transcription by Alexandra Reider, Translation by Alexandra Reider, Encoded in TEI P5 XML by Danny Smith