patristic · letter · 601 · Latin
DISPUTED — this document is not what it claims to be, or its attribution is contested. See the summary.
Gregory the Great's answers to nine questions Augustine of Canterbury sent back from England: what a bishop should do with offerings, whether cousins may marry, what to do about pagan temples — famously, do not pull them down, but sprinkle them and put altars in them, since a people cannot be led from all its habits at once. Bede copies the whole thing into his first book.
⚠ AUTHENTICITY DISPUTED: the letter is attacked as a later compilation and defended as substantially Gregory's; Bede had it by 731 and the missionary policy in it matches Gregory's letter to Mellitus, which is not in doubt