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English Correspondence

St Boniface, tr. Kylie, 1911

Letter 10: Boniface Commends Himself to the Love of Nothelm, Archbishop of Canterbury. He…

To Archbishop Nothelm, dearly beloved master, wearing the robes of the highest priestly office, Boniface, poor servant of the servants of God, sends greetings of undying love in Christ.

I beseech your holy clemency with my most earnest entreaties, that you should deign to remember me in your holy prayers, and seek to make secure in a harbourage of unshakeable rock the ship of my mind buffeted by the waves of many storms among the people of Germany, and that, just as your predecessor, Archbishop Berhtwald of honoured memory, bestowed his parental love upon me when I was leaving my native country, so I may be bound to you in fraternal communion by a spiritual bond and tie of love, and together with my comrades in the mission may deserve to be joined always with you in the unity of the Catholic faith and the sweetness of spiritual affection.

Likewise I earnestly beg you to have sent to me a copy of that letter wherein, it is said, are contained the questions of Augustine, the first bishop and first missionary of the English, and the replies of the Pope Saint Gregory. Among other points, it mentions that the faithful of the third degree of relationship are allowed to marry. Would you examine too, with all possible care, whether this letter can be proven to be that of Saint Gregory or not, because it was not found with other copies of the Pope’s letters, so the librarians say, in the library of the Roman Church?

Moreover, I seek your advice about a sin which I have committed unwittingly, by yielding to a man in regard to his marriage. The case was this: A man took a woman’s son at baptism, as often happens, and raised him for his own son, and when the boy’s mother afterwards became a widow he married her. This the Romans claim is a sin, and a mortal sin at that, and require divorce under such circumstances. They declare that during the time of the Christian emperors a crime of this sort was to be punished by death or perpetual exile. Wherefore, if you can find this counted such a great sin in the decisions of the Catholic Fathers or in canon law or in Holy Scripture itself, inform me of the reference, that I may understand by my own judgment whose authority supports this decree; I can in no way comprehend why in one case spiritual kinship in marriage is such a great sin, when all of us become in baptism sons and daughters of Christ and the Church, and thereby brothers and sisters.

I must ask you also to tell me in what year from the birth of Christ, the first missionaries sent by Saint Gregory came to England. Farewell.

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