Definition
A responsis (Latin: "one concerned with answers") is an ecclesiastical law term denoting an official whose function was to receive questions on church matters and deliver authoritative responses or counsel. The office-holder acted as a kind of institutional answerer — a designated intermediary through whom ecclesiastical decisions, interpretations, or advice were formally conveyed.
The term carries two closely related but distinguishable functions recorded in historical sources:
1. Conveyor of answers: One who transmitted official responses from a church authority to those who had submitted questions or petitions — a messenger or relay function within ecclesiastical administration.
2. Counselor on ecclesiastical matters: One who, when consulted, gave substantive answers, counsel, or advice on church questions — a more active advisory role.
The office is also designated by two recognized Latin synonyms found in canonical and historical sources: responsalis (emphasizing the answering function) and apocrisiarius (the Greek-derived term more common in Eastern ecclesiastical usage, later adopted in Western church administration). When the advisory and deliberative function is emphasized over mere transmission, the term a consiliis appears as an alternative.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Responsalis: The Latin form stressing the answering or responding role; used interchangeably with a responsis in most historical sources.
Apocrisiarius (also spelled apucrisarius, apocrisiaris): The Greek-rooted equivalent, denoting a representative or legate who carried responses between ecclesiastical authorities, notably between the papacy and imperial courts. Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum treats this as the primary term and cross-references a responsis and responsalis to it.
A consiliis: A variant designation applied when the function emphasized was the giving of counsel and advice rather than mere transmission of answers.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in sources dealing with medieval canon law, ecclesiastical administration, and the history of church governance — not in common law materials or modern statutory texts. Researchers encountering a responsis in a legal or historical document should recognize it as a term of ecclesiastical office, not a procedural Latin phrase.
The critical navigational point: the term does not appear as an independent doctrinal concept with its own body of rules or cases. It appears as a descriptor of an office or role within church institutional structure. Research should therefore pivot from the term itself to the office it names — tracing the apocrisiarius/responsalis function through canon law histories and ecclesiastical glossaries rather than common law digests or case reporters.
Spelling variation is a significant trap in historical sources. The apocrisiarius form appears variously as apocrisarius, apucrisarius, apocrisiaris, and apocrisiarius across different manuscript traditions and printed editions. Black's own two editions spell it differently from each other. Researchers searching digitized historical corpora must account for these variants.
The office has genuine historical significance in the relationship between papal and imperial authority in late Roman and early medieval Europe — the apocrisiarius served as a permanent papal representative (essentially a nuncio) at the Byzantine imperial court, making the term relevant to legal-historical research on church-state relations, not merely internal church administration.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st Ed.) presents the entry in a form that appears corrupted or truncated in surviving print sources — the a responsis definition is partially merged with an unrelated maxim (a piratis aut latronibus capti liberi permanent) in the typeset record, suggesting a compositor error in the original. Researchers using digitized versions of the first edition should treat this entry with caution and cross-check against the second edition.
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) provides the cleaner and more authoritative definition of the two, explicitly naming all three synonyms (responsalis, apucrisarius, a consiliis) and directing readers to Spelman's "Apocrisiarius" as the primary authority. This cross-reference is the most useful pointer in the entry: Henry Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum is the classical source for this term in English legal-antiquarian scholarship, and any serious research on the office should begin there.
The historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning but differ in completeness. Neither edition develops the doctrinal or historical significance of the office beyond identification — for substantive treatment, researchers must go beyond the dictionary to canonical sources and ecclesiastical histories.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Ecclesiastical Law; Canon Law Administration; Apocrisiarius.