[2] Whether or not this is true, there are other, strong signs that the Capitula Dacheriana was produced in ecclesiastical circles that had rather less connection to Theodore's Canterbury than with Irish and Celtic centres.

[3] The A-recension of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis, believed to have been compiled before 725,[4] is the earliest work known to have drawn on the Paenitentiale Theodori tradition, relying on none other than the Capitula Dacheriana version.

[8] Scholars since have generally sided with Levison in viewing the Paenitentiale Umbrense as the product of Anglo-Saxon England, and more specifically of a student working in Northumbria.

As described above, the material that the discipulus had managed to obtain (probably indirectly) from Eoda was based largely on Theodore's responses to rulings found in the Paenitentiale Cummeani.

Indeed, the last fifteen chapters (= Book II) treats several subjects aligned strongly with the "penitential" genre, for example food avoidance, marital relations and mental illness, while Book I contains chapters dealing with subjects more commonly associated with canon law collections, namely baptism, heresy, and ordination.

The prologue runs as follows, with the relevant portion in bold: A student in Northumbria, humbly, to all catholics in England, particularly to the doctors of souls: salutary redemption in Christ the lord.

First of all, I have, dear [brothers], held it a worthy enough thing to lay bare to your Love’s blessedness whence I have gathered the poultices of this medicine which follows, lest (as often happens) through copyists’ decrepitude or carelessness that law [lex] should be left hideously confused which God once, in a figurative way, handed down through his first legislator and ultimately to the Fathers [de secundo patribus] in order that they might make it known to their sons, so that the following generation might learn [of it], namely penance, which the lord Jesus, after being baptized, proclaimed to us, having [as yet] no medicine, as above all the substance [prae omnibus ... instrumentum] of his teaching, saying, 'Do you all penance', etc.

Accordingly, the greater part of these [remedies] Eoda the priest, of blessed memory, known to some as 'Christianus', is said (by trustworthy report) to have received under instruction from the venerable master [antestite] Theodore.

And these are buttressed [In istorum quoque adminiculum est] by what divine grace likewise delivered to our unworthy hands, [namely] things which the aforementioned man came to learn from a widely known Irish booklet, concerning which the elder [senex] is said to have given this opinion: [that] an ecclesiastic [ecclesiasticus homo] was the author of that book.

Many others also, not only men but also women, enkindled by him with an inextinguishable passion for these [remedies], in order to slake their thirst hurried with burning desire to crowd round a person of undoubtedly singular knowledge in our age.

On account of which, brothers, through him who was crucified and who by the shedding of his blood confirmed what mighty things he had preached while living, I beg your Love's [pacis] most obliging kindness that, if I have herein perpetrated any misdeed of rashness or negligence, in consideration of the utility of this [work] you defend me before him with the merit of your intercessory prayer.

And, as I truly fear, if I do something beyond my talents, yet may the good intentions [benevolentia] of so necessary a work [as this] seek from him pardon for my crimes, with you as [my] advocates — for all of whom equally and without jealousy I labor, insofar as I am able.

The context makes it obvious that the libri secundi highlighted in bold above refers to nothing other than the Scottorum libellus mentioned several times previously.

[15] The Corbie redaction of the Vetus Gallica was very successful and very soon after its creation it was enjoying wide circulation in France, Germany, Bavaria and northern Italy.

In 1851 Hermann Wasserschleben would be convinced by the large number of manuscripts containing the Half Form of the Paenitentiale Umbrense, as well as by a single seventeenth century apograph of MS Cb4 exhibiting the two-book format, that the work must have originally been composed with two distinct parts; he was therefore persuaded to ignore the evidence of his two earliest manuscripts (W7 and W9) and print the Paenitentiale Umbrense with a two-book format.

The textual tradition of the Paenitentiale Umbrense has not been studied closely since the work of Finsterwalder, and so the evidence (or rather the lack thereof) for their assumptions about priority of the two-book format have gone unexamined.

[17] Wilhelm Levison countered this argument by demonstrating that the prologue and epilogue share remarkably similar style, and therefore must have been composed by the same individual.

Both Wz2 and V5 are fragmentary at their ends, and so may have once contained the epilogue (it is impossible now to be sure either way); while both Cb4 and W7 have (as Levison pointed out)[22] simply replaced the prologue with copies of the Libellus responsionum so as to make the latter seem like part of the former.

); a brief tract explaining the reason for the flood;[85] De eo quod non nocet ministerium ministrantis sacerdotis contagium uitę (= Collectio canonum Hibernensis [B version] c. 2.12);[86] Canones Hibernenses VI; Capitulare legibus addenda a.

803; Lex Salica emendata; two forged letters purporting to represent a discussion between Pope Gregory I and Bishop Felix of Messina (on consanguinity, the Anglo-Saxons, and the nature of the Pope's Libellus responsionum);[87] Theodulf, Capitulare I (fragmentary);[88] Paenitentiale Ecgberhti (fragmentary: beginning partway through c. 2); Pseudo-Jerome, De duodecim triduanis Note that reports of the presence of Paenitentiale Umbrense and/or Canones Gregorii excerpts in the tenth-century Collectio 77 capitulorum as found in Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 217 and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 3853 are in error.

The majority of extant manuscripts of the Paenitentiale Theodori originate in either Burgundy, northeastern France, and the region of the Rhine and Main rivers.

[149] The most likely candidate for the introduction of the Paenitentiale Umbrense to the Continent is Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon missionary and a competent canonist who work tirelessly to reform the Frankish, German and Bavarian churches in the first half of the eighth century.

It was also probably Boniface who was responsible for introducing the Paenitentiale Umbrense to the Corbie redaction of the Collectio canonum vetus Gallica, in whose creation he seems to have played some part.

Towards the end of the eighth century, Paul the deacon, in his Historia Langobardorum c. 5.30, testified to Theodore's reputation as a promulgator of penitential canons.

[152] It is perhaps significant that four of the five Collectio canonum vetus Gallica witnesses that contain an appended copy of the Half Form of the Paenitentiale Umbrense — Br7, K1, P10, St2 — are those from Mordek's 'North French' class.

[155] However, whereas the manuscripts of the 'North French' tradition preserve more or less intact the series of mainly penitential texts appended to the Collectio canonum vetus Gallica (Synodus II Patricii, Paenitentiale Umbrense, etc.

[156] It is, for example, the only manuscript from outside the 'North French' group to contain in its appendix the Synodus II Patricii, the Isidorian Epistula ad Massonam, the canons of the council of Rome in 595 (Pope Gregory I's Libellus synodicus), and the Paenitentiale Umbrense.

According to Mordek,[157] fols 80–195 of P6 (which contain the Collectio canonum Sancti Amandi, the Libellus responsionum, Pope Gregory II's letter for Boniface beginning Desiderabilem mihi, the Half Form of the Paenitentiale Umbrense, the canons of the council of Rome in 721, and the canons of the council of Rome in 595) are likely a copy — modified with the help of a Collectio Hispana of either the Gallican or Pseudo-Isidorian form — of fols 128–266 of P26.