CLEMENT, a noble Roman citizen, was connected by birth with the family of the Caesars. His father Faustus was a near relation and a foster brother of the reigning emperor, and had married one Mattidia, likewise Caesar’s kinswoman. From this union had sprung two elder sons, Faustinus and Faustinianus, who were twins, and our hero Clement, who was born many years after his brothers. At the time when Clement first comes before our notice, he is alone in the world. Many years ago, when he was still an infant, his mother had left home to escape dishonourable overtures from her husband’s brother, and had taken her two elder sons with her. Not wishing to reveal his brother’s turpitude to Faustus, she feigned a dream which warned her to leave home for a time with her twin children. Accordingly she set sail for Athens. After her departure her brother-in-law accused her to her husband of infidelity to her marriage vows. A storm arose at sea, the vessel was wrecked on the shores of Palestine, and she was separated from her children, whom she supposed to have been drowned. Thus she was left a lone woman dependent on the charity of others. The two sons were captured by pirates and sold to Justa the Syrophoenician woman mentioned in the Gospels, who educated them as her own children, giving them the names Aquila and Nicetas. As they grew up they became fellow-disciples of Simon Magus, whose doctrines they imbibed. Eventually however they were brought to a better mind by the teaching of Zacchaeus, then a visitor to those parts; and through his influence they attached themselves to S. Peter, whom they accompanied from that time forward on his missionary circuits. They were so engaged at the moment when the narrative, to which we owe this account of their career, presents them to our notice.

Their father Faustus, as the years rolled on and he obtained no tidings of his wife and two elder children, determined after many fruitless enquiries to go in search of them himself. Accordingly he set sail for the East, leaving at home under the charge of guardians his youngest son Clement, then a boy of twelve years. From that time forward Clement heard nothing more of his father and suspected that he had died of grief or been drowned in the sea.

Thus Clement grew up to man’s estate a lonely orphan. From his childhood he had pondered the deep questions of philosophy, till they took such hold on his mind that he could not shake them off. On the immortality of the soul more especially he had spent much anxious thought to no purpose. The prevailing philosophical systems had all failed to give him the satisfaction which his heart craved. At length—it was during the reign of Tiberius Caesar—a rumour reached the imperial city, that an inspired teacher had appeared in Judaea, working miracles and enlisting recruits for the kingdom of God. This report determined him to sail to Judaea. Driven by stress of wind to Alexandria and landing there, he fell in with one Barnabas, a Hebrew and a disciple of the Divine teacher, and from him received his first lessons in the Gospel. From Alexandria he sailed to Caesarea, where he found Peter, to whom he had been commended by Barnabas. By S. Peter he was further instructed in the faith, and from him he received baptism. He attached himself to his company, and attended him on his subsequent journeys.

At the moment when Clement makes the acquaintance of S. Peter, the Apostle has arranged to hold a public discussion with Simon Magus. Clement desires to know something about this false teacher, and is referred to Aquila and Nicetas, who give him an account of Simon’s antecedents and of their own previous connexion with him. The public discussion commences, but is broken off abruptly by Simon who escapes from Caesarea by stealth. S. Peter follows him from city to city, providing the antidote to his baneful teaching. On the shores of the island of Aradus, Peter falls in with a beggar woman, who had lost the use of her hands. In answer to his enquiries she tells him that she was the wife of a powerful nobleman, that she left home with her two elder sons for reasons which she explains, and that she was shipwrecked and had lost her children at sea. Peter is put off the right scent for the time by her giving feigned names from shame. But the recognition is only delayed. Clement finds in this beggar woman his long-lost mother, and the Apostle heals her ailment.

Aquila and Nicetas had preceded the Apostle to Laodicea. When he arrives there, they are surprised to find a strange woman in his company. He relates her story. They are astounded and overjoyed. They declare themselves to be the lost Faustinus and Faustinianus, and she is their mother. It is needless to add that she is converted and baptised. After her baptism they betake themselves to prayer. While they are returning, Peter enters into conversation with an old man whom he had observed watching the proceedings by stealth. The old man denies the power of prayer. Everything, he says, depends on a man’s nativity. A friend of his, a noble Roman, had had the horoscope of his wife cast. It foretold that she would prove unfaithful to him and be drowned at sea. Everything had come to pass in accordance with the prediction. Peter’s suspicions are roused by the story; he asks this friend’s name, and finds that he was none other than Faustus the husband of Mattidia. The reader’s penetration will probably by this time have gone a step farther and divined the truth, which appears shortly afterwards. The narrator is himself Faustus, and he had repre­sented the circumstances as happening to a friend, in order to conceal his identity. Thus Clement has recovered the last of his lost relatives, and the ‘recognitions' are complete. One other incident however is necessary to crown the story. Faustus is still a heathen. But the failure of Mattidia’s horoscope has made a breach in the citadel of his fatalism, and it is stormed by S. Peter. He yields to the assault and is baptised.

This romance of Clement’s life was published within two or three generations of his death—at all events some years before the close of the second century. It is embodied in two extant works, the Clementine Homilies, and the ClementineRecognitions, with insignificant differences of detail. Yet it has no claim to be regarded as authentic; and we may even question whether its author ever intended it to be accepted as a narrative of facts.

But though we may without misgiving reject this story as a pure fiction, discredited by its crude anachronisms, yet in one respect it has guided us in the right direction. It has led us to the doors of the imperial palace, where we shall have occasion to stay for a while. Our investigations will bring us from time to time across prominent members of the Flavian dynasty; and a knowledge of the family genealogy is needed as a preliminary.

The founder of the Flavian family was T. Flavius Petro a native of the second-rate provincial town Reate, who had fought in the civil wars on the side of Pompeius, but after the battle of Pharsalia aid down his arms and went into business. His son Sabinus was a pure civilian. Apparently a thrifty man like his father before him, he amassed some money and married a lady of superior rank to himself, Vespasia Polla, by whom he had three children, a daughter who died an infant in her first year' and two sons who both became famous in history—the elder, T. Flavius Sabinus, who held the City prefecture for several years, and the younger, T. Flavius Vespasianus, who attained to the imperial throne.

T. Flavius Sabinus, the elder brother, was prefect of the City at the time of the Neronian persecution and retained this office with one short interruption until his death. The name of his wife is not known. Having been deprived of the City prefecture by Galba and restored by his successor, he was put to death by Vitellius on account of his near relationship to the rival aspirant to the imperial throne. He left two sons, T. Flavius Sabinus and T. Flavius Clemens. The elder, Sabinus, married Julia the daughter of the emperor Titus. He held the consulate in A.D. 82, and was put to death by Domitian, because on his election to this office the herald had inadvertently saluted him as emperor instead of consul. The younger brother Clemens married Domitilla, the daughter of Domitian’s sister. Of her I shall have to speak presently. With this married couple we are more especially concerned, as they appear—both husband and wife—to have been converts to Christianity, and are intimately connected with our subject.

T. Flavius Vespasianus, the younger son of the first mentioned Sabinus, became emperor in due time and reigned from A.D. 69 to A.D. 79. He married Flavia Domitilla, a daughter of one Flavius Liberalis, a quaestor’s clerk and a native of Ferentum. From her name she would seem to have been some relation of her husband, but this is not stated. She is the first of three persons in three successive generations bearing the same name, Flavia Domitilla, mother, daughter, and grand-daughter. By her Vespasian appears to have had seven children, but four must have died in infancy or childhood. Only three have any place in history—two sons, T. Flavius Vespasianus and T. Flavius Domitianus, the future emperors, known respectively as Titus and Domitian, and a daughter Domitilla. Both the wife Domitilla and the daughter Domitilla died befor A.D. 69, when Vespasian ascended the imperial throne. Either the mother or the daughter—more probably the latter—attained to the honours of apotheosis, and appears on the coins as DIVA DOMITILLA. This distinction had never before been conferred on one who died in a private station, but it served as a precedent which was followed occasionally

The emperor Titus was twice married. By his second wife he left a daughter Julia, who, as we have seen, became the wife of her father’s first cousin, the third Sabinus. The emperor Domitian took to wife Domitia Longina. A son, the offspring of this marriage, died in infancy, was received into the ranks of the gods, and appears on the coins as DIVUS CAESAR. There are reasons also for believing that another child was born of this union; but if so, it did not survive long. The sister of the two emperors, Flavia Domitilla, likewise was married. Her husband’s name is not recorded, but she left a daughter called after her. This third Flavia Domitilla, the grand­daughter of Vespasian, was wedded, as I have already mentioned, to her mother’s first cousin Flavius Clemens, and became famous in Christian circles.

Of this union between Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla two sons were born. They were committed by the emperor Domitian to the tuition of the distinguished rhetorician Quintilian; and we learn incidentally that the influence of their father Flavius Clemens procured for their tutor the honour of the consular fasces. When they were little children, the emperor had designated them as his successors in the imperial purple, and had commanded them to assume the names Vespasianus and Domitianus. They appear to have been still very young at the time of Domitian’s death; and as we hear nothing more of them, they must either have died early or retired into private life. More than a hundred and seventy years later than this epoch, one Domitianus, the general of the usurper Aureolus (A.D. 267), is said to have boasted that he was descended from Domitian and from Domitilla. If this boast was well founded, the person intended was probably the son of Clemens and Domitilla, the younger Domitian, whom the historian confused with his more famous namesake the emperor. A glance at the genealogical tree will show that no one could have traced his direct descent both from the emperor Domitian and from Domitilla; for the Domitilla here mentioned cannot have been the wife of Vespasian. Moreover, there is no record of the emperor Domitian having any children except one, or perhaps more than one, who died in earliest infancy.

Who then was this Clement of Rome, the assumed writer of the Epistle to the Corinthians and the leading man in the Church of Rome in the ages immediately succeeding the Apostolic times? Recent discoveries in two different directions—the one literary, the other archaeological—have not only stimulated this enquiry but have furnished more adequate data for an answer to it.

In the first place, the publication of the lost ending to the genuine epistle (A.D. 1875) has enabled us to realize more fully the position of the writer. The liturgical prayer in the concluding part, the notices respecting the bearers of the letter, and the attitude assumed towards the persons addressed, all have a bearing upon this question. Then secondly, the recent excavations in the Cemetery of Domitilla&n at Rome have thrown some light on the surroundings of the writer and on the society among which he lived. The archaeological discovery is hardly less important than the literary; and the two combined are a valuable aid in solving the problem.

Before attempting to give the probable answer to this question, it may be well to dispose of other solutions which have been offered from time to time.

1. Origen, without any misgiving, identifies him with the Clement mentioned by S. Paul writing to the Philippians as among those ‘fellow labourers whose names are in the book of life’ This was a very obvious solution. As Hermas the writer of the Shepherd was identified with his namesake who appears in the salutations of the Epistle to the Romans, so in like manner Clement the writer of the Epistle was assumed to be the same with the Apostle’s companion to whom he sends greeting in the Epistle to the Philippians. It is not improbable that others may have made this same identification before Origen. At all events many writers from Eusebius onward adopted it after him. But we have no reason to suppose that it was based on any historical evidence, and we may therefore consider it on its own merits. So considered, it has no claim to acceptance. The chronological difficulty indeed is not insurmountable. A young disciple who had rendered the Apostle efficient aid as early as A.D. 61 or 62, when St Paul wrote to the Philippians, might well have been the chief ruler of the Roman Church as late as A.D. 95 or 96, about which time Clement seems to have written the Epistle to the Corinthians, and might even have survived the close of the first century, as he is reported to have done. But the locality is a more formidable objection. The Clement of S. Paul’s epistle is evidently a member of the Philippian Church; the Clement who writes to the Corinthians was head of the Roman community, and would seem to have lived the whole or the main part of his life in Rome. If indeed the name had been very rare, the identification would still have deserved respect notwithstanding the difference of locality; but this is far from being the case. Common even before this epoch, especially among slaves and freedmen, it became doubly common during the age of the Flavian dynasty, when it was borne by members of the reigning family.

2. A wholly different answer is given in the romance of which I have already sketched the plot. Though earlier than the other authorities which give information about Clement, it is more manifestly false than any. Its anachronisms alone would condemn it. The Clement who wrote the epistle in the latest years of Domitian could not have been a young man at the time of Christ’s ministry, nearly seventy years before. Moreover it is inconsistent with itself in its chronology. While Clement’s youth and early manhood are placed under Tiberius, the names of his relations, Mattidia and Faustinus, are borrowed from the imperial family of Hadrian and the Antonines. The one date is too early, as the other is too late, for the genuine Clement.

3. A third solution identifies the writer of the epistle with Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian, who held the consulship in the year 95, and was put to death by the emperor immediately after the expiration of his term of office. This identification never occurred to any ancient writer, but it has found much favour among recent critics and therefore demands a full discussion. To this question it will be necessary to return at a later point, when it can be considered with greater advantage. At present I must content myself with saying that, in addition to the other difficulties with which this theory is burdened, it is hardly conceivable that, if a person of the rank and position of Flavius Clemens had been head of the Roman Church, the fact would have escaped the notice of all contemporary and later writers, whether heathen or Christian.

4. Ewald has propounded a theory of his own. He believes that Clement the bishop was not Flavius Clemens himself, but his son. No ancient authority supports this view, and no subsequent critic, so far as I am aware, has accepted it. This identification is based solely on a parallelism with the story in the Homilies and Recognitions. As Clement’s father Faustus (Faustinianus) is there described as a near kinsman of Tiberius, so was Flavius Clemens a near kinsman of Domitian. As Mattidia, the wife of Faustus, is stated herself to have been a blood relation of Tiberius, so was Flavia Domitilla, the wife of Flavius Clemens, a blood relation of Domitian. The parallelism might have been pressed somewhat farther, though Ewald himself stops here. Lipsius, though using the parallel for another purpose, points out that Faustus in this romance is represented as having two sons besides Clement, just as Flavius Clemens is known to have had two sons, and that in this fiction these two are said to have changed their names to Aquila and& Nicetas, just as in actual history the two sons of Flavius Clemens are recorded to have taken new names, Vespasianus and Domitianus. This parallel however, notwithstanding its ingenuity, need not occupy our time; for the identification which it is intended to support is chronologically impossible. The two sons of Flavius Clemens were boys under the tuition of Quintilian when this rhetorician wrote his great work (about A.D. 90). They are described by Suetonius as young children when their father was put to death (A.D. 95 or 96), or at all events when they were adopted by Domitian as his successors. Indeed this will appear from another consideration, independently of the historian’s testimony. Their grandmother was the sister of Titus and Domitian, born A.D.A.D. 51 respectively. It has been assumed that she was younger than either, because her name is mentioned after her brothers; but this assumption is precarious. At all events she died beforeA.D. 69, leaving a daughter behind her. Having regard to these facts, we cannot with any probability place the birth of this daughter, the third Flavia Domitilla, before A.D. 60 or thereabouts; so that her sons must have been mere striplings, even if they were not still children, at the time when their father died and when the Epistle of the Roman Church to the Corinthians was written. But the writer of this epistle was evidently a man of great influence and position, and it is a fair inference that he had passed middle life, even if he was not already advanced in years. Ewald’s theory therefore may safely be discarded.

5. A fifth answer is supplied by the spurious Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, which are followed by De Rossi. These persons are there related to have reminded Clement the bishop that ‘Clement the consul was his father’s brother.’ He is thus represented to be the grandson of Sabinus the City prefect, and son of&n Sabinus the consul; for no other brother of Flavius Clemens is mentioned elsewhere except Flavius&n Sabinus the consul. Indeed the language of Suetonius seems to imply two sons, and two only, of the elder Sabinus. Moreover this answer is open to the same chronological objection as the last, though not to the same degree. As these Acts are manifestly spurious and cannot date before the fifth or sixth century, and as the statement is unconfirmed by any other authority, we may without misgiving dismiss it from our consideration.

Hitherto the object of our search has eluded us. Our guides have led us to seek our hero among the scions of the imperial family itself. But the palace of the Caesars comprised men of all grades; and considering the station of life from which the ranks of the Christians were mainly recruited, we should do well to descend to a lower social level in our quest.

The imperial household occupied a large and conspicuous place in the life of ancient Rome. The extant inscriptions show that its members formed a very appreciable fraction of the whole population of the city and& neighbourhood. Not only do we find separate columbaria, devoted solely to the interment of slaves and freedmen of a single prince or princess, as Livia or Claudius for instance; but epitaphs of servants and& dependants of the imperial family are strewn broadcast among the sepulchral monuments of the suburbs. Obviously this connexion is recorded as a subject of pride on these monumental inscriptions. The ‘verna’ or the ‘servus’ or the ‘libertus’ of Caesar or of Caesar’s near relations did not wish the fact to be forgotten. Hence the extant inscriptions furnish a vast amount of information, where extant literature is comparatively silent. The most elaborately organized of modern royal establishments would give only a faint idea of the multiplicity and variety of the offices in the palace of the Caesars. The departments in the household are divided and subdivided ; the offices are numberless. The ‘tasters' are a separate class of servants under their own chief. Even the pet dog has a functionary assigned to him. The aggregate of imperial residences on or near the Palatine formed a small city in itself; but these were not the only palaces even in Rome. Moreover the country houses and estates of the imperial family all contributed to swell the numbers of the ‘domus Augusta.’ But, besides the household in its more restricted sense, the emperor had in his employ a countless number of officials, clerks, and servants of every degree, required for the work of the several departments, civil and military, which were concentrated in him, as the head of the state.

Only a small proportion of these numerous offices were held by Romans. The clever, handy, versatile Greek abounded everywhere. If the Quirites looked with dismay on an invasion which threatened to turn their own Rome into a Greek city, assuredly the danger was not least on the Palatine and in its dependencies. But the Greeks formed only a small portion of these foreign ‘dregs’, which were so loathsome to the taste of the patriotic Roman. We have ample evidence that Orientals of diverse nations, Egyptians, Syrians, Samaritans, and Jews, held positions of influence in the court and household at the time with which we are concerned. They had all the gifts, for which the multifarious exigencies of Roman civilization would find scope.

It is just here, among this miscellaneous gathering of nationalities, that we should expect Christianity to effect an early lodgement. Nor are we disappointed in our expectation. When S. Paul writes from his Roman captivity to Philippi about midway in Nero’s reign, the only special greeting which he is commissioned to send comes from the members ‘of Caesar's household’. We may safely infer from the language thus used that their existence was well known to his distant correspondents. Obviously they were no very recent converts to Christianity. But we may go further than this. I have given reasons elsewhere, not absolutely conclusive indeed but suggesting a high degree of probability, that in the long list of greetings which four years earlier (A.D.58) the Apostle had sent to the Roman Church, we have some names at least of servants and dependants of the imperial family.

More than thirty years had rolled by since the Epistle to the Romans was sent from Corinth, when Clement wrote his letter to the Corinthians in the name of the Roman Christians and from Rome. For a quarter of a century or more the Roman Church had enjoyed comparative peace, if not absolute immunity from persecution. During he reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and in the early years of Domitian, there is every reason to believe that Christianity had made rapid advances in the metropolis of the world. In its great stronghold—the household of the Caesars—more especially its progress would be felt. Have we not indications of this in Clement’s letter itself?

At the close of the epistle mention is made of the bearers of the letter, two members of the Roman Church, Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito, who are despatched to Corinth with one Fortunatus. In an earlier passage of the epistle these delegates are described as ‘faithful and prudent men, who have walked among us (the Roman Christians) from youth unto old age unblameably’. Now the date of this epistle, as determined by internal and external evidence alike, is about A.D. 95 or 96; and, as old age could hardly be predicated of persons under sixty, they must have been born as early as the year 35, and probably some few years earlier. They would therefore have been young men of thirty or thereabouts, when S. Paul sent his salutation to the Philippians. It is clear likewise from Clement’s language that they had been converted to Christianity before that time. But their names, Claudius and Valerius, suggest some important considerations. The fourth Caesar reigned from A.D. 41 to A.D. 54, and till A.D. 48 Messalina was his consort. Like his two predecessors, Tiberius and Gaius, he was a member of the Claudian gens, while Messalina belonged to the Valerian. Consequently we find among the freedmen of the Caesars and their descendants both names, Claudius (Claudia) and Valerius (Valeria), in great frequency. Moreover they occur together, as the names of parent and child (C.I. L.vi. 4923),

 

 

or of husband and wife (C. I. L. vi. 8943),

 

VALERIA . HILARIA

NVTRIX

OCTAVIAE . CAESAR1S . AVGVSTI

HIC . REQVIESCIT . CVM

TI . CLAVDIO . FRVCTO . VIR0 . SVO . CARISSIM0,

 

where the Octavia, whom this Valeria nursed, is the ill-fated daughter of Claudius and wife of Nero. To these should be added another inscription (C. I. L. x. 2271),

D . M .

CLAVDI . GEMELLI

ANNIS . XIX

VALERIVS. VITALIS

HERES.B.M .

not only for the connexion of the names Claudius and Valerius, but because Vitalis (elsewhere written Bitalis C. I. L. vi. 4532, where likewise it is mentioned in the same inscription with a Valeria) may possibly be connected with Vito (Bito).

The same combination likewise occurs in C. I. L. vi. 4548,

 

CLAVDIAE . PIERIDI . ET

FILIAE . E1VS

M . VALERIVS

SECVNDIO. FEC.

as also in C. I. L. vi. 15174,

DIIS . MAN . SACR.

TI . CLAVDI . ONESIMI. FEC.

VALERIA . ATHENAIS

CONIVGI. SVO . KARISSIMO,

 

and again in C. I. L. vi. 15304,

 

DIIS . MANIBVS

TI. CLAVDII . TI. F . QV1

VALERIANI

VIXIT. ANN . VIIII . MENS . VI

D . VALERIVS . EVTYCHES,

 

and likewise in C. I. L. vi. 15351,

 

CLAVDIAE . AMMIAE

L . VALERIVS . GLYCON . FEC.

COIVGI . CARISSIMAE.

 

Probably many other examples also might be found, exhibiting this same combination of names. The connexion of persons bearing the name Valerius, Valeria, with the household of Messalina is patent in several cases, either from the context of the inscription or from the locality in which it is found (see C. I. L. vi. p. 909). Of the Jewish origin of many slaves and freedmen of the imperial palace I have already spoken. This appears in the case of one CLAVDIA SABBATHIS (C. I. L. vi. 8494), who erects a monument to her son described as a ‘slave of our Caesars’. The name here clearly betrays its Jewish origin, and indeed we find it in other places borne by Jews. Elsewhere likewise we meet with evidence of the presence of Jews among slaves and dependants of the Valerian gens. All these facts combined seem to invest the opinion which I have ventured to offer, that these messen­gers who carried the Roman letter to Corinth were brought up in the imperial household, with a high degree of probability. When S. Paul wrote from Rome to the Philippians about A.D. 62, they would be, as we have seen, in the prime of life; their consistent course would mark them out as the future hope of the Roman Church; they could hardly be unknown to the Apostle; and their names along with others would be present to his mind when he dictated the words, ‘They that are of Caesar’s household salute you.’ The Claudia of 2 Tim. iv. 21 likewise was not improbably connected with the imperial palace.

Hitherto we have not risen above the lower grades in the social scale. But it is the tendency of religious movements to work their way upwards from beneath, and Christianity was no exception to the general rule. Starting from slaves and dependants, it advanced silently step by step, till at length it laid hands on the princes of the imperial house ’. Even before S. Paul’s visit to Rome the Gospel seems to have num­bered at least one lady of high rank among its converts. Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Plautius the conqueror of Britain, was arraigned of ‘foreign superstition’ before the Senate and handed over to a domestic tribunal, by which however she was acquitted. Many years earlier her friend Julia, the daughter of Drusus, had been put to death by the wiles of Messalina. From that time forward she cherished a life-long grief, and never appeared in public except in deep mourning. These two traits combined—the seriousness of demeanour and the imputation of a strange religion—had led many modern critics of repute to suppose that she was a convert to Christianity. This surmise, which seemed probable in itself, has been converted almost into a certainty by an archaeological discovery of recent years.

The earliest portion of the catacombs of Callistus, the so-called crypt of Lucina, shows by its character and construction that it must have been built in the first century of the Christian Church. Its early date appears alike in the better taste of its architecture and decorations and in its exposure above ground. But in this crypt a sepulchral inscription has been found belonging to the close of the second or beginning of the third century, unquestionably bearing the name Pomponius Graecinus, though somewhat mutilated; while other neighbouring monuments record the names of members of the Pomponian gens or of families allied to it. It is clear therefore that this burial place was constructed by some Christian lady of rank, probably before the close of the first century, for her fellow-religionists; and that among these fellow-religionists within a generation or two a descendant or near kinsman of Pomponia Graecina was buried. De Rossi, to whom we owe this discovery and the inferences drawn from it, himself goes a step farther. The name Lucina does not occur elsewhere in Roman history, and yet the foundress of this cemetery must have been a person of rank and means, to erect so costly a place of sepulture and to secure its immunity when erected. He suggests therefore that Lucina was none other than Pomponia Graecina herself, and that this name was assumed by her to commemorate her baptismal privileges, in accordance with the early Christian language which habitually spoke of baptism as an ‘enlightening’. Without following him in this precarious identification, which indeed he puts forward with some diffidence, we shall still find in his archaeological discoveries a strong confirmation of the conjecture, to which the notice in Tacitus had given rise, that Pomponia was a Christian.

The death of her friend Julia took place in A.D. 43; the charge of ‘foreign superstition’ was brought against her in A.D. 57; and she herself must have died about A.D. 83, for she is stated to have worn her mourning for her friend forty years. We are thus brought into the reign of Domitian. But some reasons exist for supposing that she was related to the Flavian family. In the Acts of SS. Nereus and Achilleus we are told that Plautilla was sister of Flavius Clemens the consul, and mother of Domitilla the virgin. This statement is accepted by De Rossi and others. Plautilla would thus be the daughter of Vespasian’s brother, Sabinus the City prefect; and, as his wife’s name is not otherwise known, De Rossi weds him to a supposed daughter of Aulus Plautius and Pomponia Graecina, whom he designates Plautia, and who thus becomes the mother of Plautilla. This theory however is somewhat frail and shadowy. The Acts of Nereus and Achilleus are, as I have already stated, late and devoid of authority; the existence of Domitilla the virgin, as distinguished from Domitilla the wife of Flavius Clemens, is highly questionable; and Plautia herself, who does not appear outside this theory, is a mere critical postulate to account for the name of Plautilla. Still it remains possible that the Plautilla of these Acts was not a pure fiction; and in this case De Rossi’s handling of the pedigree, which thus links together the Pomponian and Flavian families, is at least plausible. A connexion of another kind between these families is a matter of history. The two brothers, Sabinus and Vespasian, both served under Aulus Plautius in Britain as his lieutenants.

But, whether from the upward moral pressure of slaves and freedmen in the household itself or through the intercourse with friends of a higher social rank like Pomponia Graecina, the new religion before long fastened upon certain members of the imperial family itself with tragic results. The innate cruelty of Domitian had a merciless and unscrupulous ally in his ever growing jealousy. Any one who towered above his fellows in moral or intellectual stature, or whose social or official influence excited his suspicions, was at once marked out for destruction. Philosophers and men of letters, nobles and statesmen, alike were struck down. Ladies of rank were driven into banishment. In such cases the most trivial charge was sufficient to procure condemnation. The adoption of an unrecognized religion or the practice of foreign rites was a convenient handle. I have spoken elsewhere of the persecution against the Jews in this reign and of its indirect consequences to the Christians. But the Jewish religion at all events was tolerated by the law. The profession of Christianity enjoyed no such immunity. A charge was brought by the emperor against Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla his wife—the former his first cousin, the latter his niece. A childless monarch, he seems to have scanned his own relations with especial jealousy. The brother of Flavius Clemens, a man of consular rank, had been put to death by Domitian some years before. Clemens himself was the emperor’s colleague in the consulship, and had only just resigned his office, when he found himself the victim of his cousin’s malignity. His two children had been designated by the emperor as his successors in the purple, and bidden to assume the names Vespasianus and Domitianus accordingly. The charge against him, so Suetonius reports, was the flimsiest possible. Dion Cassius tells us more explicitly that the husband and wife alike were accused of atheism', and connects this charge with the adoption of Jewish rites and customs. This combination can hardly point to anything else but the profession of Chris­tianity. Judaism, as distinguished from Christianity, will not meet the case, both because Judaism was a religion recognized by law and because ‘atheism’ would be out of place in this case. Indeed the authorities used by Eusebius—notably Bruttius—seem to have stated this distinctly, at least of the wife. Clemens himself was put to death; Domitilla was banished to one of the islands, Pontia or Pandateria. Of the husband Suetonius speaks as a man of ‘utterly contemptible indolence? This inactive temperament may have been partially hereditary; for his father Sabinus, the City prefect, is said to have been deficient in energy. But it is much more likely to have been the result of his equivocal position. He would be debarred by his principles from sharing the vicious amusements which were popular among his fellow countrymen, and he must have found himself checked again and again in his political functions by his religious scruples. To be at once a Roman consul and a Christian convert in this age was a position which might well tax the consistency of a sincere and upright man. The Christian apologists in these early times are obliged constantly to defend themselves against the charge of indifference to their political and civil duties.

But any shadow of doubt, which might have rested on the Christianity of Clemens and Domitilla after the perusal of the historical notices, has been altogether removed (at least as regards the wife) by the antiquarian discoveries of recent years.

Among the early burial places of the Roman Christians was one called the Coemeterium Domitillae. This has been identified beyond question by the investigations of De Rossi with the catacombs of the Tor Marancia near the Ardeatine Way. With characteristic patience and acuteness the eminent archaeologist has traced the early history of this cemetery; and it throws a flood of light on the matter in question. Inscriptions have been discovered which show that these catacombs are situated on an estate once belonging to the Flavia Domitilla who was banished on account of her faith. Thus one inscription records that the plot of ground on which the cippus stood had been granted to P. Calvisius Philotas as the burial place of himself and others,EX INDVLGENTI FLAVIAE DOMITILL[AE]. Another monumental tablet is put up by one Tatia in the name of herself and her freedmen and freed­women. This Tatia is described as [NVJTRIX SEPTEM LIB[ERORVM].DIVI VESPASIAN[I ATQUE]. FLAVIAE DOMITIL[LAE]. VESPASIANI NEPTIS, and the sepulchre is stated to be erectedEIVS BENEFICIO, i.e. by the concession of the said Flavia Domitilla, to whom the land belonged. A third inscription runs as follows...FILIA FLAVIAE DOMITILLAE [VESPASI]ANI NEPTIS FECIT GLYCERAE L .This last indeed was not found on the same site with the others, having been embedded in the pavement of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome: but there is some reason for thinking that it was transferred thither at an early date with other remains from the Cemetery of Domitilla. Even without the confirmation of this last monument however, the connexion of this Christian cemetery with the wife of Flavius Clemens is established beyond any reasonable doubt. And recent excavations have supplied further links of evidence. This cemetery was approached by an above ground vestibule, which leads to ahypogaeum, and to which are attached chambers, supposed to have been used by the custodian of the place and by the mourners assembled at funerals. From the architecture and the paintings De Rossi infers that the vestibule itself belongs to the first century. Moreover the publicity of the building, so unlike the obscure doorways and dark underground passages which lead to other catacombs, seems to justify the belief that it was erected under the protection of some important personage and during a period of quiet such as intervened between the death of Nero and the persecution of Domitian. The underground vaults and passages contain remains which in De Rossi’s opinion point to the first half of the second century. Here also are sepulchral memorials, which seem to belong to the time of the Antonines, and imply a connexion with the Flavian household. Thus one exhibits the monogram of a FLAVILLA; it will be remembered that the father of Flavius Clemens and brother of Vespasian bore this name T. Flavius Sabinus; and De Rossi therefore supposes that we have here the graves of actual descendants, grandchildren or great grandchildren, of this Flavius Sabinus, through his son Flavius Clemens the Christian martyr. In illustration of the name Titiane again, he remarks that three prefects of Egypt during the second century bore the name Flavius Titianus, and that the wife of the emperor Pertinax was a Flavia Titiana. We may hesitate to accept these facts as evidence that the persons in question were actual descendants of the imperial house; but if not, the names will at all events point to connexions or retainers of the family. The restoration of another inscription, SEPVLCRVM FLAVIORVM, which is followed by a cruciform anchor and therefore points to a Christian place of sepulture, may indeed be correct, but it is far too uncertain to be accepted as evidence.

Connected also with this same cemetery from very early times was the cultus of one Petronilla. Here, between the years 390 and 395, Pope Siricius erected over her tomb a spacious basilica with three aisles, of which very considerable remains have been laid bare by recent explorations. The tomb itself was a very ancient sarcophagus bearing the inscription

AVR . PETRONILLAE . FILIAE . DVLCISSIMAE .

This Petronilla for some reason or other was the patron saint of the Carolingian kings of France. To commemorate the alliance between king Pepin and the Papacy, the reigning pope Stephen 11 undertook to translate the remains of S. Petronilla to the Vatican; and this pledge was fulfilled by his brother and immediate successor Paul I (A.D. 758). Her new resting-place however at the Vatican was not a recent erec­tion, but an imperial mausoleum, already some centuries old, as De Rossi has shown. This Church of S. Petronilla, and with it the ancient sarcophagus which had been transferred from the Cemetery of Domitilla, perished in the ruthless and wholesale vandalism, which swept away the original basilica of Constantine with other priceless memorials of early Christendom, to make room for the modern Church of S. Peter in the sixteenth century. This Petronilla in legendary story was called the daughter of S. Peter. Some modern critics have sought to explain this designation by a spiritual fatherhood, just as the same Apostle speaks of his ‘son Marcus’ (1 Pet. v. 13). But the legend has obviously arisen from the similarity of the names Petros, Petronilla, and thus it implies a natural relationship. The removal of her sarcophagus to the Vatican, and the extraordinary honours there paid to her, are only explicable on this supposition. Of this personage De Rossi has given a probable account. It had been remarked by Baronius, that the name Petronilla is connected etymologically not with Petros but with Petronius; and De Rossi calls attention to the fact, which has been mentioned already, that the founder of the Flavian family was T. Flavius Petro. This Petronilla therefore, whom the later legend connects with S. Peter, may have been some scion of the Flavian house, who, like her relations Fl. Clemens and Fl. Domitilla, became a convert to Christianity. The name Aurelia suggests a later date than the Apostolic times, and points rather to the age of the Antonines than to the age of S. Peter. If, as seems to have been the case, it was given in its contracted form AVR., this indicates an epoch, when the name had already become common, being borne by the imperial family, just as under similar circumstances we have CL. for CLAVDIVS and FL. for FLAVIVS. Even the simple fact of a conspicuous tomb bearing the name Petronilla, and the dedication to a 'darling daughter’, would have been a sufficient starting-point for the legend of her relationship to S. Peter, when the glorification of that apostle had become a dominant idea.

Of the connexion of Nereus and Achilleus, the legendary chamberlains of Domitilla, with this basilica of Petronilla, I shall have occasion to speak presently. Still more interesting is the slab bearing the name AMPLIATVS, as raising the question whether this may not be the very person named in S. Paul’s salutations to the Romans; but, except that the form of the letters and the character of the surroundings betoken a very early date, and thus furnish additional evidence that this locality was a primitive burial-place of the Christians, it has no direct bearing on the question before us. The name itself is common.

The account which I have given will suffice as an outline of the principal facts which De Rossi has either discovered or emphasized, and of the inferences which he has drawn from them, so far as they bear on my. subject. He has also endeavoured to strengthen his position by other critical combinations; but I have preferred to pass them over as shadowy and precarious. Even of those which I have given, some perhaps will not command general assent. But the main facts seem to be established on grounds which can hardly be questioned ; that we have here a burial place of Christian Flavii of the second century; that it stands on ground which once belonged to Flavia Domitilla; and that it was probably granted by her to her dependents and co-religionists for a cemetery. There is reason for believing that in the earliest ages the Christians secured their places of sepulture from disturbance under the shelter of great personages, whose property was protected by the law during their life time, and whose testamentary dispositions were respected after their death.

With the blood of Clemens the cup of Domitian’s iniquities overflowed. The day of retribution came full soon. His hand had long been reeking with the noblest blood of Rome; but his doom was sealed, when he became a terror to men in humbler walks of life. His own domestics no longer felt themselves safe from his jealous suspicions. Among these the conspiracy was hatched, which put an end to his life. It is worth observing that both Suetonius and Philostratus connect his fate directly with his treatment of Clemens and Domitilla. The chief assassin at all events was one Stephanus, a steward and freedman of Domitilla. This is stated by all our authorities. Carrying his left arm bandaged as if it were broken, he went in to the emperor’s presence with a dagger concealed in the wrappings, engaged his attention with a pretended revelation of a conspiracy, and while Domitian was reading the document, plunged the dagger into his body. The wound was not fatal. Domitian grappled with the assassin in mortal conflict, tried to wrench the dagger from his hand, and with gashed fingers strove to tear out his eyes. Meanwhile the other accomplices, gladiators and servants of the household, entered. The tyrant was despatched by seven wounds, but not before Stephanus had been slain in the fray. The motives which led Stephanus to play the assassin’s part are differently stated. Suetonius says that he had been accused of peculation. The account of Philostratus puts another complexion on his act. He compares the feat to the glorious achievements of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The emperor had desired Domitilla to wed another man only three days after he had murdered her husband; the assassination was an act of vengeance for this indecent refinement of cruelty. Bandaged as I have described, he went up to Domitian and said ‘I wish to speak to you, Sire, on an important matter.’ The emperor took him aside. ‘ Your great enemy Clement,’ continued Stephanus, is not dead, as you suppose, but is I know where, and he is arraying himself against you.’ Saying this, he smote him. Then ensued the death struggle, which he describes in language closely resembling the narrative of Suetonius, though obviously not taken from this author. The two representations of Stephanus’ motive are not irreconcilable, and may perhaps be accepted as supplementary the one to the other. Philostratus’ account of the words uttered by Stephanus, when he dealt the blow, cannot, I think, be a pure fiction. The reference to Clement, as still living, has a Christian ring. If it does not report the language actually used by Stephanus over his victim, it doubtless represents the thoughts aroused by the incident in the minds of Christians at the time. Philostratus might well have derived his account from some Christian source. But was Stephanus himself a Christian? If so, the still untamed nature of the man, goaded by the menace of personal danger or stung to a chivalrous resentment of his mistress’ wrongs, asserted itself against the higher dictates of his faith. There is no ground for charging Domitilla herself with complicity in the plot.

The tyrant’s death brought immediate relief to the Christians. As the victims of his cruelty, and indirectly as the avengers of his wrongdoings, they might for the moment be regarded even with favour. A late writer, who however seems to have drawn from some earlier source, tells us that the senate conferred honours on Stephanus, as ‘having delivered the Romans from shame.’ If so, the honours must have been posthumous, for he himself had passed beyond the reach of human praise or blame. The dead could not be revived, but the exiles were restored to their homes”. Domitilla would find herself once more in the midst of her dependants, free to exercise towards them a kindly generosity, which was nowhere more appreciated by ancient sentiment than in the due provision made for the repose of the dead. In this respect she seems not to have confined her benefactions to her coreligionists, but to have provided impartially likewise for her domestics who still remained pagans. But her banishment was not forgotten. The sufferings of herself, if not of her husband, were recorded by one Bruttius—whether a heathen or a Christian historian, I shall consider presently—who would seem to have been in some way allied with her family. Even after the lapse of three centuries Paula, the friend of Jerome, was shown in the island of Pontia the cells in which she ‘suffered a protracted martyrdom.’ This language however is a flourish of rhetoric, since she cannot have remained an exile more than a few months, except by her own choice. What became of her two young sons, Vespasianus and Domitianus, who had been destined to the imperial purple, we know not. Their Christian profession, by discountenancing political ambition, would disarm suspicion, and they would be suffered to live unmolested as private citizens. Mention has been made already of a Domitian who appears in history some generations later, and may have been a descendant of one of them.

But before we pass away from this subject a question of some interest bars our path and presses for a solution. Besides the Domitilla of history, the wife of Flavius Clemens, of whom I have already spoken, ecclesiastical legend mentions another Domitilla, a virgin niece of this matron, as an exile to one of the islands and a confessor for the faith. Were there then really two Domitillas—aunt and niece—who suffered in the same way? Or have we here a confusion, of which a reasonable explanation can be given?

The story of Domitilla the virgin, as related in the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, runs as follows:

Domitilla, the daughter of Plautilla and niece of Clemens the consul, was betrothed to one Aurelian. The preparations had already been made for the wedding, when her chamberlains Nereus and Achilleus, converts of S. Peter, succeeded in persuading her to renounce Aurelian and to prefer a heavenly bridegroom to an earthly. So Domitilla receives the veil at the hands of her cousin Clement the bishop. Aurelian, enraged at being thus rejected, instigates Domitian to banish her to the island of Pontia for refusing to sacrifice. She is accompanied thither by Nereus and Achilleus. They there have an altercation with two disciples of Simon Magus, Furius and Priscus, who denounce the ill-treatment of their master by S. Peter. The question is referred to Marcellus, a former disciple of Simon Magus and a son of Marcus the City prefect. He writes a long letter in reply, relating how he had been converted by S. Peter’s miracles; and he adds an account of the death of Petronilla, S. Peter’s daughter, with her companions. Here again it was a question between marriage and virginity, and Petronilla had chosen the latter, though at the cost of martyrdom. But before Marcellus’ letter arrived at its destination, Nereus and Achilleus had been put to death by the machinations of Aurelian. Their bodies were brought back to Rome and buried in the plot of Domitilla by one Auspicius their disciple. Information of these facts is sent to Rome to Marcellus by Eutyches, Victorinus, and Maro, likewise their disciples. These three again are denounced by Aurelian, and put to death by the emperor Nerva for refusing to offer sacrifice. Hereupon Aurelian fetches&n mitilla from Pontia to Terracina, where she falls in with two other maidens Euphrosyne and Theodora, who were betrothed to two young men Sulpicius and Servilianus. She persuades them to follow her example, and to repudiate the marriages which awaited them. In this case the intended bridegrooms likewise acquiesce, and are converted to Christianity. Aurelian now attempts to overpower her by violence, but is seized with a fit and dies before two days are over. His brother Luxurius avenges his death. Sulpicius and Severianus are beheaded; while Domitilla, Euphrosyne, and Theodora, are burnt to death in their cells.

The story of S. Petronilla, as told by Marcellus in these Acts, is as follows :

Petronilla was bed-ridden with paralysis. Titus remonstrated with S. Peter for not healing his daughter. He replied that her sickness was for her good, but that, as an evidence of his power, she should be cured temporarily and should wait upon them. This was done; she rose and ministered to them, and then retired again to her bed. After her discipline was completed, she was finally healed. Her beauty attracted Flaccus the Count, who came with armed men to carry her away and marry her by force. She asked a respite of three days. It was granted. On the third day she died. Then Flaccus sought her foster-sister Felicula in marriage. Felicula declined, declaring herself to be a ‘virgin of Christ.’ For this she was tortured and put to death.

The legend of S. Petronilla then, as told in the Acts, appears to be due to a combination of two elements; (1) The story in the Manichean writings that S. Peter miraculously healed his daughter (whose name is not given) of the palsy. This story seems to be suggested by the incident in Mark 1 . 29 sq, Luke 4. 38 sq. (a) The discovery of a sarcophagus in the Cemetery of Domitilla with the inscription AVR . PF.TRONILLAE . FILIAE . DVLCISSIMAE. The identification with S. Peter’s daughter would naturally arise out of this inscription, which was supposed to have been engraved by the Apostle’s own hand.

These Acts are evidently late and inauthentic. The details of the story betray their fictitious character, and are almost universally rejected. But the question still remains whether the main fact—the virginity and persecution of a niece of Flavius Clemens—may not be historical. This opinion is maintained by many who reject the story as a whole; and it receives some countenance from statements in earlier and more authentic writers.

Domitilla, the wife of Flavius Clemens, whom Domitian banished, when he put her husband to death, is stated by Dion to have been a relation of Domitian, but he does not define her relationship. We infer however from Quintilian that she was his sister's daughter; and this is confirmed by inscriptions, which more than once name one Domitilla as VESPASIANI NEPTIS. This point therefore we may consider as settled. Philostratus, a much inferior authority, as read in his present text, says that she was Domitian's sister, but either he has blundered or (as seems more probable) his transcribers have carelessly substituted. His sister she cannot have been ; for the only daughter of Vespasian who grew up to womanhood had died before her father.

On the other hand Eusebius, speaking of the defeat of Flavius Clemens, says nothing at all about a wife of Clemens, but mentions a niece (a sister’s daughter) of Clemens, as being exiled at the same time. In other words the banished Domitilla of Eusebius bears the same relationship to Clemens, which the banished Domitilla of contemporary authorities and of the Roman historian bears to Domitian. Have we not here the key to the confusion ?

Eusebius gives his authority. He refers in the Chronicle to one Bruttius or Brettius. In the History on the other, hand he does not mention any name, but states in general terms that even historians unconnected with the Christian faith had not shrunk from recording the persecution under Domitian and the martyrdoms resulting from it. We may infer however from the context, as well as from the parallel passage in the Chronicle, that he had in his mind chiefly, though perhaps not solely, this same chronicler Bruttius.

Who then was this Bruttius ? When did he live ? Was he a heathen or a Christian writer ? He is cited as an authority three times by Malalas. The first passage relates to the legend of Danae, which Bruttius explains in a rationalistic sense, and where he identifies Picus with Zeus. In the second passage, referring to the conquests of Alexander, he describes him as subduing all the kingdoms of the earth, while in the context there is an obvious allusion to the prophecy of Daniel. The third contains the notice of the banishment of the Christians under Domitian with which we are more directly concerned. Thus Bruttius in his chronography covered the whole period from the beginnings of history to the close of the first Christian century at least. The Bruttian family attained their greatest prominence in the second century. One C. Bruttius Praesens was consul for the second time in A.D. 139; and among the friends and correspondents of the younger Pliny we meet with a Praesens, who doubtless belonged to this same family and may have been this same person. Critics not uncommonly, following Scaliger, identify Pliny’s friend with the chronographer mentioned by Eusebius and Malalas, but for this identification there is no sufficient ground. A second C. Bruttius Praesens, appa­rently a son of the former, was also twice consul A.D. 153 and 180. He was the father of L. Bruttius Crispinus, whose name appears in the consular fasti for A.D. 187, and of Bruttia Crispina, who became consort of the emperor Commodus. A third C. Bruttius Praesens, who held the consulate in A.D. 217, seems also to have been his son. The family continued to hold a distinguished position after this date, for we find the name more than once in the consular lists. The chronographer might have been any one of the persons already named, or he might have been an entirely different person, perhaps some freedman or descendant of a freedman attached to the house. The extant inscriptions suggest that there was a numerous clientele belonging to this family. It is a curious coincidence, if it be nothing more, that De Rossi has discovered, in immediate proximity to and even within the limits of the Cemetery of Domitilla, the graves of certain members of the Bruttian clan, especially one BRVTTIVS CRISPINVS. There is indeed no direct indication that these were Christian graves, but the locality suggests some connexion, or at least explains how Bruttius the chronographer should have taken a special interest in the career of Domitilla. But was not this Bruttius himself a Christian? Eusebius indeed, as we have seen, in his History speaks generally of his authorities for the persecution under Domitian as unconnected with Christianity, while we learn from his Chronicle that the most important of these authorities was Bruttius. It would appear then that he regarded Bruttius as a heathen, though this inference is not absolutely certain. But was he well acquainted with the facts? Had he the work of Bruttius before him, or did he only quote it at second hand ? I believe that the latter alternative is correct. We have seen that Malalas three times refers to Bruttius as his authority. It is highly improbable that he at all events should have been directly acquainted with the work of Bruttius; and the conjecture of Gutschmidt that he derived his information from Julius Africanus seems very probable. But, if Malalas owed this notice of the persecution of Domitian to Africanus, why may not Eusebius also have drawn it from the same source ? He was cer­tainly well acquainted with the chronography of Africanus, whom he uses largely in his Chronicle and of whose writings he gives an account in his History. On the other hand he never mentions Bruttius except in the Chronicle, and there only in this single passage relating to Domitilla.

This consideration must affect our answer to the question whether Bruttius was a heathen or a Christian writer. Eusebius, as we have seen, seems to have set him down as a heathen; but, if he was unacquainted with the work itself, his opinion ceases to have any value. The references in Malalas appear to me to point very decidedly to a Christian writer. The first is an attempt to explain heathen mythology by Euhemeristic methods, a common and characteristic expedient in the Christian apologists and chronographers. The second evidently treats the empire of Alexander as fulfilling the prophecy of the third beast, the leopard, in Daniel. We cannot indeed feel sure that the more obvious references to Daniel were not due to Africanus or to Malalas himself, but the part of Bruttius is inseparable from the rest. The direct reference to the Christians in the third passage needs no comment. Thus Bruttius would appear to have been a precursor of Africanus and Eusebius, as a Christian chronographer.

But, if the notice had already passed through two hands before it reached Eusebius, the chances of error are greatly increased. Now it is a suspicious fact (which I have already noticed), that in Eusebius the niece Domitilla, the virgin of ecclesiastical legend, bears exactly the same relationship to Clement which the aunt Domitilla, the widow of authentic history, bears to Domitian in classical authorities. Must we not suspect then, that by some carelessness the relationship has been transferred from the one to the other ?

But, besides the difficulty of the relationship, there remains the difference of locality. Dion makes Pandateria her place of exile, while Eusebius and Christian writers banish her to Pontia. These were two neighbouring islands in the Tyrrhene sea. They were both used as places of exile for members of the imperial family during the first century. To the former were banished Julia the daughter of Augustus, Agrippina the wife of Germanicus, and Octavia the wife of Nero; to the latter, Nero the son of Germanicus was exiled by Tiberius, and the sisters of Caligula by their brother. The two are constantly mentioned together, and a confusion would be easy. Though Dion’s account of this transaction is generally the more authentic, yet I am disposed to think that on this point he has gone wrong. Bruttius, who is the primary authority for Pontia, seems to have lived before Dion, and may perhaps be credited with a special knowledge of Domitilla’s career. This locality likewise is confirmed by the fact that three centuries later Jerome’s friend Paula, visiting the island of Pontia, was shown the cells which Domitilla occupied in her exile”. Not much stress however can be laid on such a confirmation as this. The cicerone of the fourth century was at least as complaisant and inventive as his counterpart in medieval or modern times.

It should be observed that neither Eusebius nor Jerome says anything about the virginity of this Domitilla, which occupies so prominent a place in the later legend. It is a stale incident, which occurs in dozens of stories of female martyrdoms. Yet in this instance it is not altogether without a foundation in fact. Philostratus relates of the historical Domitilla, that Domitian attempted in vain to force her to a second marriage immediately after the death of Clemens. As the true Domitilla thus cherishes the virginity of widowhood, so the legendary Domitilla retains the virginity of maidenhood, despite the commands of the same tyrant.

The existence of this younger Domitilla depends on Eusebius alone. All later writers—both Greek and Latin—have derived their information from him. If he breaks down, the last thread of her frail life is snapped. But strong reasons have been given for sus­pecting a blunder. The blunder however is evidently as old as Eusebius himself (as the comparison of his two works shows) and cannot have been due to later copyists of his text He may have inherited it from Africanus or Africanus’ transcribers, or he may have originated it himself. The true history of the relations of Nereus and Achilleus to Domitilla is beyond the reach of recovery without fresh evidence. The later legend, as we have seen, makes them her chamberlains. This however seems to have been unknown to Damasus (A.D. 366—384), whose inscription, placed in the Cemetery of Domitilla, implies that they were soldiers of the tyrant who refused to be the instruments of his cruelty, and resigned their military honours in consequence. Of their connexion with Domitilla it says nothing. Perhaps this connexion was originally one of locality alone. There were, we may conjecture, two prominent tombs bearing the names NEREVS and ACHILLEVS in this Cemetery of Domitilla; and a romance writer, giving the rein to his fancy, invented the relation which appears in their Acts. Whether this Nereus was the same with or related to the Nereus of S. Paul’s epistle (Rom. XVI. 15), it were vain to speculate. Exactly the same problem has presented itself already with regard to Ampliatus, who was likewise buried in this cemetery.

Having solved the question of the two Domitillas, we find ourselves confronted with a similar problem affecting the persons bearing the name Clemens. Clement the consul and Clement the bishop—should these be identified or not ? Until recent years the question was never asked. Their separate existence was assumed without misgiving. But latterly the identification has found considerable favour. A recent German writer can even say that ‘later Protestant theology almost without exception has declared itself for the identification’. I suppose the remark must be confined to German theological critics; for I cannot find that it has met with any favour in England or France. Even as restricted to Germans, it seems to be much overstated. But a view which reckons among its supporters Volkmar and Hilgenfeld and has been favourably entertained by Lipsius and Harnack, not to mention other writers, has achieved considerable distinction, if not popularity. On this account it claims a consideration, to which it would not be entitled by its own intrinsic merits.

The two personalities, which this theory seeks to combine, are definite and well authenticated. On the one hand there is the consul, a near relative of the emperor, who was put to death towards the close of Domitian’s reign on some vague charge. These facts we have on strictly contemporary authority. The nature of the charge is more particularly defined by a later historian Dion in a way which is strictly consistent with the account of the contemporary Suetonius, and which points, though not with absolute certainty, to Christianity. Moreover it is distinctly stated that his wife suffered banishment for the same crime. But recent archaeological discovery has made it clear that she at all events was a Christian. This Clement then died by a violent death; and, if a Christian, may be regarded as a martyr. On the other hand there is a person of the same name holding high official position, not in the Roman State, but in the Roman Church, at this same time. His existence likewise is well authenticated, and the authentication is almost, though not quite, contemporary. In the tradition which pre­vailed in the Roman Church a little more than half a century later, when Irenaeus resided in Rome, he is represented as the third in the succession of the Roman episcopate after the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul. Consistently with this notice, an epistle, which bears traces of having been written during or immediately after the persecution of Domitian, has been assigned to him by an unbroken tradition. He is mentioned as the writer of it by Dionysius of Corinth, who flourished about A.D. 170, and who represents the city to which the letter was addressed. His hand in it is also recognized by two other writers of the same age, Hegesippus and Irenaeus. Probably not without reference to this letter, he is described by one who professes to have been his contemporary, Hermas the author of the Shepherd, as the foreign secretary of the Roman Church. Partly no doubt owing to this same cause, he had become so famous by the middle of the second century, that a romance was written in Syria or Palestine giving a fictitious account of his doings and sayings. But he was not a martyr. Some centuries later indeed a story of his martyrdom was invented; but the early Church betrays no knowledge of any such incident. The silence of Irenaeus who devotes more space to Clement than to any other Roman bishop and yet says nothing on this point, though he goes out of his way to emphasize the martyrdom of Telesphorus, would almost alone be conclusive.

Hitherto we have seen nothing which would suggest an identification, except the fact that they both bore the same name Clemens, and both lived in Rome at the same time. In every other respect they are as wide apart, as it was possible for any two persons to be under the circumstances.

Yet the mere identity of names counts for little or nothing. Was not Pius the Christian bishop contemporary with Pius the heathen emperor, though no other namesake occupied the papal chair for more than thirteen centuries and none known by this name ever again mounted the imperial throne? Did not Leo the First, pope of Rome, flourish at the same time with Leo the First, emperor of Rome, both busying themselves in the great doctrinal questions of the day? Was not one Azariah high priest, while another Azariah was king, in Jerusalem, though the name does not ever occur again in the long roll either of the sacerdotal or of the regal office? Was not one Honorius pope ‘alterius orbis,’ while another Honorius was pope of Rome, though the see of Canterbury was never again occupied by a namesake and the see of Rome only after half a millennium had past? But indeed history teems with illustrations. Yet the examples of duplication, which I have given, were a thousand times more improbable on any mathematical doctrine of chances than the coincidence of the two Clements in the respective positions assigned to them—this being an extremely common name.

Only one authority, if it deserves the name, seems to confuse the two. The Clementine romance, which we find incorporated in the existing Homilies and Recognitions, and to which I have already alluded, must have been written soon after the middle of the second century. The hero Clement, the future bishop of Rome, is here represented as sprung from parents who were both scions of the imperial house. Does not this look like a counterpart of Flavius Clemens and Domitilla? But what is the value of this coincidence? This romance probably emanates from a distant part of the world. The local knowledge which it possesses is confined to the easternmost shores of the Mediterranean. Of Rome and of Roman history it betrays gross ignorance. It is full of anachronisms. It makes his father and mother relatives not of Domitian, but of Tiberius. Its hero cannot be identified with Flavius Clemens, who was the son of Flavius Sabinus, for it gives to his father the name Faustus or Faustinianus.

What account then shall we give of this ascription of imperial relationships to Clement the bishop? It is the confusion of ignorance. The writer, presumably an Ebionite Christian in the distant East, invents a romance as the vehicle of certain ideas which he desires to disseminate. For his hero he chooses Clement, as the best known name among the leading Christians of the generation succeeding the Apostles. His Epistle to the Corinthians had a wide circulation, and appears to have been in the hands of the writer himself. But of this Clement he knows nothing except that he was bishop of the Roman Church. A vague rumour also may have reached him of one Clement, a member of the imperial family, who had professed the faith of Christ. If so, he would have no scruple, where all else was fiction, in ascribing this imperial relationship to his hero. Where everything else which he tells us is palpably false, it is unreasonable to set any value on this one statement, if it is improbable in itself or conflicts with other evidence.

The confusion however did not end with this Clementine writer. Certain features were adopted from this romance into the later accounts of Clement the bishop. Thus the name of his father Faustinus and the discipleship to S. Peter are borrowed in the Liber Pontificalis; but no sign of an identification appears even here, and some of the facts are inconsistent with it. Not a single authenticated writer for many centuries favours this identity. The silence of Irenaeus is against it. The express language of Eusebius, as also of his two translators Jerome and Rufinus, contradicts it. Rufinus indeed speaks of Clement as a ‘martyr,’ and possibly (though this is not certain) this martyrdom may have been imported indirectly by transference from his namesake Flavius Clemens. But this very example ought to be a warning against the identification theory. Confusion is not fusion. The confusion of ancient writers does not justify the fusion of modern critics.

But it is urged in favour of this fusion that Christian writers betray no knowledge of the consul as a Christian, unless he were the same person as the bishop. This ignorance however, supposing it to have existed, would not in any degree justify the identification, if the identification presents any difficulty in itself. But is it not burdened with this great improbability, that a bishop of Rome in the first century should not only have held the consular office, but have been so intimately connected with the reigning emperor, as to have sons designated for the imperial purple, and that nevertheless all authentic writers who mention Clement the bishop should have overlooked the fact? Is it easy to conceive for instance that Irenaeus, who visited Rome a little more than half a century after the consul’s death, who gives the Roman succession to his own time, and who goes out of his way to mention some facts about Clement, should have omitted all reference to his high position in the state? In short, the argument to be drawn from ignorance in Christian writers is far more fatal to the identification than to its opposite. Moreover, we may well believe that the husband’s Christianity was less definite than the wife’s— indeed the notices seem to imply this—and thus, while Domitilla (though not without some confusion as to her relationship) has a place in Christian records as a confessor, Flavius Clemens has none as a martyr.

Again it is urged that, just as Christian writers betray entire ignorance of the consul, so heathen writers show themselves equally ignorant of the bishop. This reciprocity of ignorance is supposed in some way or other to favour the identity. Yet it is difficult to see why this conclusion should be drawn. Heathen writers equally ignore all the Roman bishops without exception for the first two or three centuries, though several of these were condemned and executed by the civil government. Not one even of the Apostles, so far as I remember, is mentioned by any classical writer before the age of Constantine.

But, besides the difficulty of explaining the ignorance of Christian writers, supposing the bishop to have stood so near the throne, a still greater objection remains. This is the incompatibility of the two functions, which would thus be united in one person. It would have strained the conscience and taxed the resources of any man in that age to reconcile even the profession of a Christian with the duties of the consular magistracy; but to unite with it the highest office of the Christian ministry in the most prominent Church of Christendom would have been to attempt a sheer impossibility, and only the clearest evidence would justify us in postulating such an anomaly.

Then again what we know of Clement the consul is not easily reconcilable with what we know of Clement the bishop. I have already referred to the martyrdom of the former as inconsistent with the traditions of the career of the latter. But this is not the only difficulty. According to ancient testimony, which it would be sceptical to question, Clement the bishop is the author of the letter to the Corinthians. This letter however declares at the outset that the persecution had been going on for some time; that the attacks on the Church had been sudden and repeated; that this communication with the Corinthians had been long delayed in consequence; and that now there was a cessation or at least a respite. The language of the letter indeed—both in the opening reference to the persecution and in the closing prayers for their secular rulers—leaves the impression that it was written immedi­ately after the end of the persecution and probably after the death of Domitian, when the Christians were yet uncertain what would be the attitude of the new ruler towards the Church. At all events it is difficult to imagine as the product of one who himself was martyred eight months before the tyrant’s death.

But a still graver and to my mind insuperable objection to the theory, which identifies the writer of the epistle with the cousin of Domitian, is the style and character of the document itself.

Is it possible to conceive this letter as written by one, who had received the education and who occupied the position of Flavius Clemens; who had grown up to manhood, perhaps to middle life, as a heathen; who was imbued with the thoughts and feelings of the Roman noble; who about this very time held the most ancient and honourable office in the state in conjunction with the emperor; who lived in an age of literary dilettantism and of Greek culture; who must have mixed in the same circles with Martial and Statius and Juvenal, with Tacitus and the younger Pliny; and in whose house Quintilian lived as the tutor of his sons, then designated by the emperor as the future rulers of the world? Would not the style, the diction, the thoughts, the whole complexion of the letter, have been very different? It might not perhaps have been less Christian, but it would certainly have been more classical—at once more Roman and more Greek—and less Jewish, than it is.

The question, whether the writer of this epistle was of Jewish or Gentile origin, has been frequently discussed and answered in opposite ways. The special points, which have been singled out on either side, will not bear the stress which has been laid upon them. On the one hand, critics have pleaded that the writer betrays his Jewish parentage, when he speaks of ‘our father Jacob,’ ‘our father Abraham’; but this language is found to be common to early Christian writers, whether Jewish or Gentile. On the other hand, it has been inferred from the order ‘day and night’, that he must have been a Gentile; but examples from the Apostolic writings show that this argument also is quite invalid. Or again, this latter conclusion has been drawn from the mention of ‘our generals', by which expression the writer is supposed to indicate his position as ‘before all things a Roman born’. But this language would be equally appropriate on the lips of any Hellenist Jew who was a native of Rome. Setting aside these special expressions however, and looking to the general character of the letter, we can hardly be mistaken, I think, in regarding it as the natural outpouring of one whose mind was saturated with the knowledge of the Old Testament. The writer indeed, like the author of the Book of Wisdom, is not without a certain amount of Classical culture; but this is more or less superficial. The thoughts and diction alike are moulded on ‘the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms.’ He is a Hellenist indeed, for he betrays no acquaintance with the Scriptures in their original tongue : but of the Septuagint Version his knowledge is very thorough and intimate. It is not confined to any one part, but ranges freely over the whole. He quotes profusely, and sometimes his quotations are obviously made from memory. He is acquainted with traditional interpretations of the sacred text. He teems with words and phrases borrowed from the Greek Bible, even where he is not directly quoting it. His style has caught a strong Hebraistic tinge from its constant study. All this points to an author of Jewish or proselyte parentage, who from a child had been reared in the knowledge of this one book'.

It has been remarked above, that Jews were found in large numbers at this time among the slaves and freedmen of the great houses, even of the imperial palace. I observe this very name Clemens borne by one such person, a slave of the Caesars, on a monument, to which I have already referred for another purpose,

D. M.

CLEMETI . CAESAR

VM N. SERVO . CASTE

LLARIO . AQVAE . CL AVDIAE . FECIT . CLAV DIA . SABBATHIS . ET . SI BI . ET . SVIS,

 

for his nationality may be inferred from the name of his relative Sabbathis, who sets up the monument. And elsewhere there is abundant evidence that the name at all events was not uncommon among the dependants of the Caesars about this time. Thus we read in a missive of Vespasian DE . CONTROVERSY ... VT . FINIRET . CLAVDIVS . CLEMENS . PROCVRATOR . MEVS . SCRIPSI .Ei. In another inscription we have, EVTACTO . AVG . LIB . PROC . ACCENSO . DELAT . A. DIVO . VESPASIANO . PATRI . OPTIMO . CLEMENS FILIVS; in another, CLEMENS . AVG . AD . SVPELECT; in another, D. M . SEDATI . TI . CL . SECVNDINI . PROC . AVG . TABVL . CLEMENS . ADFINIS ; in another, PRO . SALVTE . T CAESARIS . AVG . F . IMP . VESPASIANI . TI . CLAVDIVS . CLEMENS . FECIT; in another , T . VARIO . CLEMENTI . AB . EPISTVLIS . AVGVSTOR, this last however dating in the reign of M. Aurelius and L. Verus A. D. 161—169; while in another, found in the columbarium of the Freedmen of Livia, and therefore perhaps belonging to an earlier date than our Clement, we read , IVLIA . CALLITYCHE . STORGE . CLAVD1 . EROTIS . DAT . CLEMENTI . CON- IVGI . CALLITYCHES. I venture therefore to conjecture that Clement the bishop was a man of Jewish descent, a freedman or the son of a freedman belonging to the household of Flavius Clemens the emperor’s cousin. It is easy to imagine how under these circumstances the leaven of Christianity would work upwards from beneath, as it has done in so many other cases; and from their domestics, and dependants the master and mistress would learn their perilous lessons in the Gospel. Even a much greater degree of culture than is exhibited in this epistle would be quite consistent with such an origin; for amongst these freedmen were frequently found the most intelligent and cultivated men of their day. Nor is this social status inconsistent with the position of the chief ruler of the most important church in Christendom. A generation later Hermas, the brother of bishop Pius, unless indeed he is investing himself with a fictitious personality, speaks of himself as having been a slave; and this involves the senile origin of Pius also. At a still later date, more than a century after Clement’s time, the papal chair was occupied by Callistus, who had been a slave of one Carpophores an officer in the imperial palace. The Christianity which had thus taken root in the household of Domitian’s cousin left a memorial behind in another distinguished person also. The famous Alexandrian father, who flourished a century later than the bishop of Rome, bore all the three names of this martyr prince, Titus Flavius Clemens. He too was doubtless a descendant of some servant in the family, who according to custom would be named after his patron when he obtained his freedom.

The imperial household was henceforward a chief centre of Christianity in the metropolis. Irenaeus writing during the episcopate of Eleutherus (circ. A.D. 175—189), and therefore under M. Aurelius or Commodus, speaks of the faithful in the royal court in language which seems to imply that they were a considerable body there. Marcia, the concubine of this last-mentioned emperor, was herself a Christian, and exerted her influence over Commodus in alleviating the sufferings of the confessors. At this same time also another Christian, Carpophores, already mentioned, whose name seems to betray a servile origin, but who was evidently a man of considerable wealth and influence, held some office in the imperial household. A little later the emperor Severus is stated to have been cured by a physician Proculus, a Christian slave, whom he kept in the palace ever afterwards to the day of his death : while the son and successor of this emperor, Caracalla, had a Christian woman for his foster-mother. Again, the Christian sympathies of Alexander Severus and Philip, and the still more decided leanings of the ladies of their families, are well known. And so it continued to the last. When in an evil hour for himself Diocletian was induced to raise his hand against the Church, the first to suffer were his confidential servants, the first to abjure on compulsion were his own wife and daughter.

I have spoken throughout of this Clement, the writer of the letter, as bishop of the Roman Church. But two questions here arise; First, What do we know from other sources of his date and order in the episcopal succession ? and Secondly, What was the nature of this episcopal office which he exercised.

1.The first of these questions will be more fully answered in a later chapter, on the Roman Succession, where the various problems offered by the discrepancies in the early lists are discussed. It will be sufficient here to sum up the results, so far as they affect our answer.

Confining ourselves then to the earliest names, we are confronted with three different representations which assign three several positions to Clement. Not counting the Apostles, he is placed third, first, and second, in the series respectively.

(I) The first of these appears among extant writers as early as Irenaeus, who wrote during the episcopate of Eleutherus (about A.D. 175—190). The order here is Linus, Anacletus, Clemens, Euarestus", the first mentioned having received his commission from the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul. But some years earlier than Irenaeus, the Jewish Christian Hegesippus had drawn up a list of the Roman succession. He was well acquainted with Clement’s letter and visited both Corinth and Rome—the place from which and the place to which it was addressed. He arrived there soon after the middle of the second century, during the episcopate of Anicetus (c. A.D. 160) and remained till the accession of Eleutherus. We should expect therefore that his list would not differ essentially from that of Irenaeus, since his information was obtained about the same time and in the same place. Elsewhere I have given reasons, which seem to me to be strong, for believing that his list is preserved in Epiphanius. If this suppo­sition be correct, after the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul came Linus, then Cletus, then Clemens, then Euarestus. Thus these two earliest lists are identical, except that the same person is called in the one Cletus and in the other Anacletus. This is the order likewise which appears in Eusebius and in Jerome after him. It is adopted during the fourth century by Epiphanius in the East, and by Rufinus in the West. Altogether we may call it the traditional order. Indeed none other was ever current in the East.

(II) The Clementine romance emanated, as I have already said, from Syria or some neighbouring country, and betrays no knowledge of Rome or the Roman Church. A leading idea in this fiction is the exaltation of its hero Clement, whom it makes the depositary of the apostolic tradition. The author’s ignorance left him free to indulge his invention. He therefore represented Clement as the immediate successor of S. Peter, consecrated by the Apostle in his own life time. Though the date of this work cannot have been earlier than the middle of the second century, yet the glorification of Rome and the Roman bishop obtained for it an early and wide circulation in the West. Accordingly even Tertullian speaks of Clement as the immediate successor of S. Peter. This position however is not assigned to him in any list of the Roman bishops, but only appears in this father as an isolated statement.

(III) The Liberian list dates from the year 354, during the episcopate of the pope by whose name it is commonly designated. It gives the order, Linus, Clemens, Cletus, Anacletus, Aristus; where Clemens is placed neither first nor third but second, where the single bishop next in order is duplicated, thus making Cletus and Anacletus, and where the following name (a matter of no moment for our purpose) is abridged from Euarestus into Aristus. This list appears with a certain show of authority. It was illustrated by Furius Filocalus, the calligrapher whom we find employed in the catacombs by Pope Damasus the successor of Liberius. Moreover it had a great influence on later opinion in Rome and the West. It coincides in some respects with the list of the African fathers Optatus and Augustine. It was followed in many of its peculiarities by the catalogues of the succeeding centuries. It influenced the order, of the popes in the famous series of mosaics in the basilica of S. Paul at Rome. It formed the ground-work of the Liber Pontificalis, which was first compiled in the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, but revised from time to time, and which, though not strictly official, had a sort of recognition as a summary of the Papal history. But quite independently of its subsequent influence, this Liberian Catalogue claims consideration on its own account. It is circumstantial, it is early, and it is local. On these three grounds it challenges special investigation.

It is circumstantial. It gives not only the names of the several bishops in succession, but also their term of office in each case. The duration is precisely defined, not only the years but the months and days being given. Moreover it adds data of relative chronology. It mentions the imperial reigns during which each bishop held office, and also the consulships which mark the first and last years of his episcopate.

It is early. The date already mentioned (A.D. 354) gives the time when the collection was made and the several tracts contained in it assumed their present form; but it comprises much more ancient elements. The papal list falls into two or three parts, of which the first, comprising the period from the accession of Peter to the accession of Pontianus (A.D. 230), must have been drawn up in its original form shortly after this latter date.

It is local. Bound up in this collection is another treatise, a ‘chronicle’, which on good grounds is ascribed to Hippolytus. Moreover there is somewhat strong, though not absolutely conclusive evidence, that Hippolytus drew up a catalogue of the Roman bishops, and that this catalogue was attached to the chronicle. Moreover the date at which (as already mentioned) the first part of the papal list ends, the episcopate of Pontianus (A.D. 230—235), coincides with the termination of this chronicle, which was brought down to the r3th year of Alexander (A.D. 234). Thus incorporated in this Liberian document, we apparently have the episcopal list of Hippolytus, who was bishop of Portus, the harbour of Rome, and was closely mixed up with the politics of the Roman Church in his day. At all events, if not the work of Hippolytus himself, it must have been compiled by some contemporary, who like him had a direct acquaintance with the affairs of the Roman Church.

If this were all, the Liberian list would claim the highest considera­tion on the threefold ground of particularity, of antiquity, and of proximity. But further examination diminishes our estimate of its value. Its details are confused; its statements are often at variance with known history; its notices of time are irreconcilable one with another.

It has obviously passed through many vicissitudes of transcription and of editing, till its original character is quite changed. This is especially the case with the more ancient portion. This very sequence of the earliest bishops, so far as we can judge, is simply the result of blundering. Whether and how far Hippolytus himself was responsible for these errors, we cannot say with absolute confidence; but examination seems to show that the document, which was the original groundwork of this list, gave the same sequence of names as we find in Irenaeus and Eusebius and Epiphanius, and that any departures from it are due to the blunders and misconceptions of successive scribes and editors.

These results, which I have thus briefly gathered up, will be set forth more fully in their proper place. If they are substantially correct, the immediate problem which lies before us is simple enough. We have to reckon with three conflicting statements, so far as regards the position of Clement in the Roman succession—a tradition, the Irenaean— a fiction, the Clementine—and a blunder, the Liberian, or perhaps the Hippolytean. Under these circumstances we cannot hesitate for a moment in our verdict. Whether the value of the tradition be great or small, it alone deserves to be considered. The sequence therefore which commends itself for acceptance is, Linus, Anacletus or Cletus, Clemens, Euarestus. It has moreover this negative argument in its favour. The temptation with hagiologers would be great to place Clement as early as possible in the list. Least of all would there be any inducement to insert before him the name of a person otherwise unknown, Cletus or Anacletus.

Nor can the tradition be treated otherwise than with the highest respect. We can trace it back to a few years later than the middle of the second century. It comes from Rome itself. It was diligently gathered there and deliberately recorded by two several writers from different parts of Christendom. At the time when Hegesippus and Irenaeus visited the metropolis, members of the Roman Church must still have been living, who in childhood or youth, or even in early manhood, had seen Clement himself.

But, besides the sequence of the names, we have likewise the durations of the several episcopates. It will be shown, when the time comes, that the numbers of years assigned to the early bishops in lists as wide apart as the Eusebian and the Liberian can be traced to one common tradition, dating before the close of the second century at all events. If the reasons which I shall give be accepted as valid, the tradition of the term-numbers was probably coeval with the earliest evidence for the tradition of the succession, and was recorded by the pen of Hegesippus himself. This tradition assigns twelve years to Linus, twelve to Cletus or Anacletus, and nine to Clement. As the accession of Linus was coeval, or nearly so, with the martyrdom of the two Apostles, which is placed about A.D. 65 (strictly speaking A.D. 64 or A.D. 67), the accession of Clement would be about A.D. 90. Thus, roughly speaking, his episcopate would span the last decade of the first century. This agrees with the evidence of Clement’s epistle itself, which appears to have been written immediately after, if not during, the persecution, i.e. A.D. 95 or 96.

2.The discussion of the first question has paved the way for the consideration of the second, What was the position which Clement held? Was he bishop of Rome in the later sense of the term ‘bishop’? and, if bishop, was he pope, as the papal office was understood in after ages ?

We have seen that tradition—very early tradition—gives by name the holders of the episcopal office in Rome from the time of the Apostles’ death. The tradition itself is not confused. Linus, Cletus or Anacletus, and Clemens, are bishops in succession one to the other. The discrepancies of order in the later papal lists do not require to be explained by any hypothesis which supposes more than one person to have exercised the same episcopal office simultaneously; as for instance the theory which represents them as at the same time leading members of the Roman presbytery, the term ‘bishop’ being understood in the earlier sense, when it was a synonym for ‘presbyter?; or the theory which supposes Linus and Cletus to have been suffragans under S. Peter during his life-time; or the theory which suggests that Clement, though ordained bishop before Linus and Cletus, yet voluntarily waived his episcopal rights in their favour for the sake of peace; or lastly the theory which postulates two distinct Christian communities in Rome—a Jewish and a Gentile Church—in the ages immediately succeeding the Apostles, placing one bishop as the successor of S. Peter at the head of the Jewish congregation, and another as the successor of S. Paul at the head of the Gentile, and supposing the two communities to have been afterwards fused under the headship of Clement. However attractive and plausible such theories may be in themselves, their foundation is withdrawn, and they can no longer justify their existence, when it is once ascertained that the tradition of the Roman succession was one and single, and that all variations in the order of the names are the product of invention or of blundering.

The value of the tradition will necessarily be less for the earlier names than for the later. Though, so far as I can see, no adequate reason can be advanced why Linus and Anacletus should not have been bishops in the later sense, as single rulers of the Church, yet here the tradition, if unsupported by any other considerations, cannot in­spire any great confidence. But with Clement the case is different. The testimony of the succeeding ages is strong and united. Even the exaggerations of the Clementine story point to a basis of fact

By this Clementine writer indeed he is placed on a very high eminence. Not only is the episcopal office, which he holds, monarchical; but he is represented as a bishop not of his own Church alone, but in some degree also of Christendom. S. Peter is the missionary preacher of the whole world, the vanquisher of all the heresies ; and S. Clement, as his direct successor, inherits his position and responsibilities. But over the head of the pope of Rome (if he may be so styled) is a still higher authority—the pope of Jerusalem. Even Peter himself—and a fortiori Peter’s successor—is required to give an account of all his missionary labours to James the Lord’s brother, the occupant of the mother-see of Christendom.

The language and the silence alike of Clement himself and of writers in his own and immediately succeeding ages are wholly irreconcilable with this extravagant estimate of his position². Even the opinion, which has found favour with certain modem critics, more especially of the Tubingen school, that the episcopate, as a monarchical office, was developed more rapidly at Rome than elsewhere, finds no support from authentic testimony. Whatever plausibility there may be in the contention that the monarchical spirit, which dominated the State, would by contact and sympathy infuse itself into the Church, known facts all suggest the opposite conclusion. In Clement’s letter itself—the earliest document issuing from the Roman Church after the apostolic times—no mention is made of episcopacy properly so called. Only two orders are enumerated, and these are styled bishops and deacons respectively, where the term ‘ bishop ’ is still a synonym for ‘presbyter’. Yet the adoption of different names and the consequent separation in meaning between ‘ bishop ’ and ‘ presbyter ’ must, it would seem, have followed closely upon the institution or development of the episcopate, as a monarchical office. Nevertheless the language of this letter, though itself inconsistent with the possession of papal authority in the person of the writer, enables us to understand the secret of the growth of papal domination. It does not proceed from the bishop of Rome, but from the Church of Rome. There is every reason to believe the early tradition which points to S. Clement as its author, and yet he is not once named. The first person plural is maintained throughout, ‘We consider,’ ‘We have sent.’ Accordingly writers of the second century speak of it as a letter from the community, not from the individual. Thus Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, writing to the Romans about A.D. 170, refers to it as the epistle ‘which you wrote to us by Clement’; and Irenaeus soon afterwards similarly describes it, ‘ In the time of this Clement, no small dissension having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church in Rome sent a very adequate letter to the Corinthians urging them to peace .’ Even later than this, Clement of Alexandria calls it in one passage ‘ the Epistle of the Romans to the Corinthians', though elsewhere he ascribes it to Clement. Still it might have been expected that somewhere towards the close mention would have been made (though in the third person) of the famous man who was at once the actual writer of the letter and the chief ruler of the church in whose name it was written. Now however that we possess the work complete, we see that his existence is not once hinted at from beginning to end. The name and personality of Clement are absorbed in the church of which he is the spokesman.

This being so, it is the more instructive to observe the urgent and almost imperious tone which the Romans adopt in addressing their Corinthian brethren during the closing years of the first century. They exhort the offenders to submit ‘ not to them, but to the will of God ’. ‘Receive our counsel,’ they write again, ‘and ye shall have no occasion of regret’ . Then shortly afterwards; ‘But if certain persons should be disobedient unto the words spoken by Him (i.e. by God) through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger, but we shall be guiltless of this sin’. At a later point again they return to the subject and use still stronger language ; ‘Ye will give us great joy and gladness, if ye render obedience unto the things written by us through the Holy Spirit, and root out the unrighteous anger of your jealousy, according to the entreaty which we have made for peace and concord in this letter; and we have also sent unto you faithful and prudent men, that have walked among us from youth unto old age unblameably, who shall be witnesses between you and us. And this we have done, that ye might know, that we have had and still have every solicitude, that ye may speedily be at peace.’ It may perhaps seem strange to describe this noble remonstrance as the first step towards papal domination. And yet undoubtedly this is the case. There is all the difference in the world between the attitude of Rome towards other churches at the close of the first century, when the Romans as a community remonstrate on terms of equality with the Corinthians on their irregularities, strong only in the righteousness of their cause, and feeling, as they had a right to feel, that these counsels of peace were the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and its attitude at the close of the second century, when Victor the bishop excommunicates the Churches of Asia Minor for clinging to a usage in regard to the celebration of Easter which had been handed down to them from the Apostles, and thus foments instead of healing dissensions. Even this second stage has carried the power of Rome only a very small step in advance towards the assumptions of a Hildebrand or an Innocent or a Boniface, or even of a Leo: but it is nevertheless a decided step. The substitution of the bishop of Rome for the Church of Rome is an all important point. The later Roman theory supposes that the Church of Rome derives all its authority from the bishop of Rome, as the successor of S. Peter. History inverts this relation and shows that, as a matter of fact, the power of the bishop of Rome was built upon the power of the Church of Rome. It was originally a primacy, not of the episcopate, but of the church. The position of the Roman Church, which this newly recovered ending of Clement’s epistle throws out in such strong relief, accords entirely with the notices in other early documents. A very few years later—from ten to twenty—Ignatius writes to Rome. He is a staunch advocate of episcopacy. Of his six remaining letters, one is addressed to a bishop as bishop; and the other five all enforce the duty of the churches whom he addresses to their respective bishops. Yet in the letter to the Church of Rome there is not the faintest allusion to the episcopal office from first to last. He entreats the Roman Christians not to intercede and thus by obtaining a pardon or commutation of sentence to rob him of the crown of martyrdom. In the course of his entreaty he uses words which doubtless refer in part to Clement’s epistle, and which the newly recovered ending enables us to appreciate more fully; ‘Ye never yet,’ he writes, ‘ envied any one,’ i.e. grudged him the glory of a consistent course of endurance and self-sacrifice, ‘ye were the teachers of others.’ They would therefore be inconsistent with their former selves, he implies, if in his own case they departed from those counsels of self-renunciation and patience which they had urged so strongly on the Corinthians and others. But, though Clement’s letter is apparently in his mind, there is no mention of Clement or Clement’s successor throughout. Yet at the same time he assigns a primacy to Rome. The church is addressed in the opening salutation as ‘she who hath the presidency in the place of the region of the Romans.’ But immediately afterwards the nature of this supremacy is defined. The presidency of this church is declared to be a presidency of love. This then was the original primacy of Rome—a primacy not of the bishop but of the whole church, a primacy not of official authority but of practical goodness, backed however by the prestige and the advantages which were necessarily enjoyed by the church of the metropolis. The reserve of Clement in his epistle harmonizes also with the very modest estimate of his dignity implied in the language of one who appears to have been a younger contemporary, but who wrote (if tradition can be trusted) at a somewhat later date. Thou shalt therefore, says the personified Church to Hermas, ‘write two little books,’ i.e. copies of this work containing the revelation, ‘and thou shalt send one to Clement and one to Grapte. So Clement shall send it to the cities abroad, for this charge is committed unto him, and Grapte shall instruct the widows and the orphans; while thou shalt read it to this city together with the presbyters who preside over the church.’ And so it remains till the close of the second century. When, some seventy years later than the date of our epistle, a second letter is written from Rome to Corinth during the episcopate of Soter (about A.D. 165—175), it is still written in the name of the Church, not the bishop, of Rome; and as such is acknowledged by Dionysius of Corinth. ‘We have read your letter’, he writes in reply to the Romans. At the same time he bears a noble testimony to that moral ascendancy of the early Roman Church which was the historical foundation of its primacy; ‘This hath been your practice from the beginning; to do good to all the brethren in the various ways, and to send supplies to many churches in divers cities, in one place recruiting the poverty of those that are in want, in another assisting brethren that are in the mines by the supplies that ye have been in the habit of sending to them from the first, thus keeping up, as becometh Romans, a hereditary practice of Romans, which your blessed bishop Soter hath not only maintained, but also advanced,’ with more to the same effect

The results of the previous investigations will enable us in some degree to realize the probable career of Clement, the writer of the epistle; but the lines of our portrait will differ widely from the imaginary picture which the author of the Clementine romance has drawn. The date of his birth, we may suppose, would synchronize roughly with the death of the Saviour. A few years on the one side or on the other would probably span the difference. He would be educated, not like this imaginary Clement on the subtleties of the schools, but like Timothy on the Scriptures of the Old Testament. He would indeed be more or less closely attached to the palace of the Caesars, not however as a scion of the imperial family itself, but as a humbler dependent of the household. When he arrived at manhood, his inward doubts and anxieties would be moral rather than metaphysical. His questioning would not take the form ‘Is the soul immortal?’ but rather ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ He would enquire not ‘To what philosophy shall I betake myself—to the Academy or to the Lyceum or to the Porch?’, but ‘Where shall I find the Christ?’ How soon he dis­covered the object of his search, we cannot tell; but he was probably grown or growing up to manhood when the Messianic disturbances among the Jews at Rome led to the edict of expulsion under Claudius (about A.D. 52) ’. If he had not known the name of Jesus of Nazareth hitherto, he could no longer have remained ignorant that one claiming to be the Christ had been born and lived and died in Palestine, of whom His disciples asserted that, though dead, He was alive—alive for evermore. The edict was only very partial in its effects’. It was not seriously carried out; and, though some Jews, especially those of migratory habits like Aquila and Priscilla, were driven away by it, yet it did not permanently disturb or diminish the Jewish colony in Rome. Meanwhile the temporary displacements and migrations, which it caused, would materially assist in the diffusion of the Gospel.

A few years later (A.D. 58) the arrival of a letter from the Apostle Paul, announcing his intended visit to Rome, marked an epoch in the career of the Roman Church. When at length his pledge was redeemed, he came as a prisoner; but his prison-house for two long years was the home and rallying point of missionary zeal in Rome. More especially did he find himself surrounded by members of Caesar’s household. The visit of Paul was followed after an interval (we know not how long) by the visit of Peter. Now at all events Clement must have been a Christian, so that he would have associated directly with both these great preachers of Christianity. Indeed his own language seems to imply as much. He speaks of them as ‘the good Apostles’—an epithet which suggests a personal acquaintance with them. The later traditions, which represent him as having been consecrated bishop by one or other of these Apostles, cannot be literally true; but they are explained by the underlying fact of his immediate discipleship. Around these great leaders were grouped many distinguished followers from the distant East, with whom Clement would thus become acquainted. Peter was attended more especially by Mark, who acted as his interpreter. Sylvanus was also in his company at least for a time. Paul was visited by a succession of disciples from Greece and Asia Minor and Syria, of whom Timothy and Titus, Luke and Apollos, besides Mark who has been already mentioned, are among the most prominent names in the history of the Church.

Then came the great trial of Christian constancy, the persecution of Nero. Of the untold horrors of this crisis we can hardly doubt, from his own description, that he was an eyewitness. The suspenses and anxieties of that terrible season when the informer was abroad and every Christian carried his life in his hand must have stamped themselves vividly on his memory. The refined cruelty of the tortures— the impalements and the pitchy tunics, the living torches making night hideous with the lurid flames and piercing cries, the human victims clad in the skins of wild beasts and hunted in the arena, while the populace gloated over these revels and the emperor indulged his mad orgies—these were scenes which no lapse of time could efface. Above all—the climax of horrors—were the outrages, far worse than death itself, inflicted on weak women and innocent girls.

As the central figures in this noble army of martyrs, towering head and shoulders above the rest, Clement mentions the Apostles Peter and Paul; for I cannot doubt that he speaks of both these as sealing their testimony with their blood. Whether they died in the general persecution at the time of the great fire, or whether their martyrdoms were due to some' later isolated outbreak of violence, it is unnecessary for my present purpose to enquire. There are solid reasons however—at least in the case of S. Paul—for supposing that a considerable interval elapsed.

The Christian Church emerged from this fiery trial refined and strengthened. Even the common people at length were moved with pity for the crowds of sufferers, whom all regarded as innocent of the particular offence for which they were punished, and against whom no definite crime was alleged, though in a vague way they were charged with a universal hatred of their species. But on more thoughtful and calm-judging spirits their constancy must have made a deep impression. One there was, whose position would not suffer him to witness this spectacle unmoved. Flavius Sabinus, the City prefect, must by virtue of his position have been the instrument—we cannot doubt, the unwilling instrument—of Nero’s cruelty at this crisis. He was naturally of a humane and gentle nature. Indifferent spectators considered him deficient in promptitude and energy in the exercise of his office. Doubtless it imposed upon him many duties which he could not perform without reluctance; and we may well suppose that the attitude and bearing of these Christians inspired him at all events with a passive admiration. This may have been the first impulse which produced momentous consequences in his family. Thirty years later his son Flavius Clemens was put to death by another tyrant and persecutor—a near relation of his own—on this very charge of complicity with the Christians.

On the death of the two Apostles the government of the Roman Church came into the hands of LINUS, the same who sends greeting to Timothy on the eve of S. Paul’s martyrdom. The name Linus itself, like the names of other mythical heroes, would be a fit designation of a slave or freedman; and thus it suggests the social rank of himself or his parents. An early venture, or perhaps an early tradition, makes him the son of Claudia whose name is mentioned in the same salutations. If so, he, like so many others, may have been connected with the imperial household, as his mother’s name suggests. But the relationship was perhaps a mere guess of the writer, who had no better ground for it than the proximity of the two names in S. Paul’s epistle. Modern critics are not satisfied with this They have seen in Pudens who is mentioned in the same context the husband of Claudia; and they have identified him with a certain Aulus Pudens, the friend of Martial, who married the British maiden Claudia Rufina. Before following these speculations farther, it should be observed that the interposition of Linus between Pudens and Claudia removes any presumption in favour of their being regarded as man and wife. The only ground, on which such a relationship could still be maintained, is the statement of the Apostolic Constitutions, which would make Linus their son; and even then the order would be strange. Their son however he cannot have been ; for, as the immediate successor of the apostles in the government of the Roman Church, he must have been thirty years old at least at the time of the Neronian persecution (A.D. 64), and probably was much older. Yet the epigram of Martial, celebrating the marriage of Pudens and Claudia, was not written at this time, and probably dates many years later. But not only is the oldest tradition respecting Claudia ignored by this hypothesis. It equally disregards the oldest tradition respecting Pudens, which attributes to him wholly different family relations, a wife Sabinella, two sons Timotheus and Novatus, and two daughters Pudentiana and Praxedis. I do not say that these traditions are trustworthy; but they have at least a negative value as showing that antiquity had no knowledge whatever of this marriage of Pudens and Claudia. Several English writers however have gone beyond this. Not content with identifying the Pudens and Claudia of S. Paul with the Pudens and Claudia of Martial, they have discovered a history for the couple whom they have thus married together. It had been the fashion with the older generation of English critics to regard this Claudia as the daughter of the British king Caractacus; and some more adventurous spirits considered Linus to be none other than Llin, a person appearing in British hagiography as the son of Caractacus. The discovery however, in the year 1722, of an inscription at Chichester gave another direction to these speculations. This inscription records how a certain temple was erected to Neptune and Minerva [EX .] AVCTORITATE . [TI.] CLAVD[I . CO]GIDVBNI . R . LEGA[TI] . AVG . IN . BRIT., by a guild of smiths, DONANTE . AREAM . [PVD]ENTE . PVDENTINI . FIL. The British king Cogidubnus, who is here designated a legate of Augustus is doubtless the same whom Tacitus mentions as a faithful ally of the Romans during the campaigns of Aulus Plautius and Ostorius Scapula (A.D. 43—51); and he appears to have taken the name of his suzerain, the emperor Claudius. Assuming that this Cogidubnus had a daughter, she would probably be called Claudia; and assuming also that the name of the donor is correctly supplied PVDENTE, we have here a Pudens who might very well have married this Claudia. This doubtful Pudens and imaginary Claudia are not only identified with the Pudens and Claudia of Martial, for which identification there is something to be said, but also with the Pudens and Claudia of S. Paul, which seems altogether impossible. The chronology alone is a fatal objection. Martial only came to Rome about the year 65 ; the epigram which records the marriage of Pudens and Claudia did not appear till A.D. 88; and the epigram addressed to her as a young mother, if indeed this be the same Claudia, was published as late as A.D. 96. To these chronological difficulties it should be added that Martial unblushingly imputes to his friend Pudens the foulest vices of heathendom, and addresses to him some of his grossest epigrams, obviously without fear of incurring his displeasure. Under these circumstances it is not easy to see how this identification can be upheld, especially when we remember that there is not only no ground for supposing the Pudens and Claudia of S. Paul to have been man and wife, but the contrary, and that both names are very frequent, Claudia especially being the commonest of all female names at this period. Here is an inscription where a married pair, connected with the imperial household, bear these same two names;

 

Tl. CL. TI. LIB. PVDENS

ET . CL . QV1NTILLA

FILIO . DVLCISSIMO.

 

In this inscription we have the basis of a more plausible identification ; and probably a careful search would reveal others bearing the same combination of names. But we are barred at the outset by the improbability that the Pudens and Claudia of S. Paul were man and wife.

Of the episcopate of this Linus absolutely nothing is recorded on trustworthy authority. Even the Liber Pontificalis can only tell us— beyond the usual notice of ordinations—that he issued an order to women to appear in church with their heads veiled; and he alone of the early Roman bishops is wholly unrepresented in the forged letters of the False Decretals. On the other hand he acquires a certain prominence, as the reputed author of the spurious Acts of S. Peter and S. Paul, though we learn from them nothing about Linus himself.

Of Linus’ successor in the direction of the Roman Church we know absolutely nothing except the name, or rather the names, which he bore. He is called ANaCLETUS or CLETUS in the several authorities. Anacletus is found in Irenaeus; Cletus, though among extant writings it appears first in Epiphanius, would seem to have been as old as Hegesippus. His original designation probably was Anacletus, ‘the blameless,’ which, though it occurs but rarely, represents a type of names familiar, among slaves and freedmen. As a slave’s name it appears on a Roman inscription, found in London and now preserved in the Guildhall. It occurs likewise, not indeed as a slave’s name, but perhaps a freedman’s, in a more interesting inscription of the year A.D. 101 found in Central Italy, among the Ligures Baebiani, in connexion with a ‘Flavian estate’ L . VIBBIO . ANENCLETO . FVND . FLAViANi. And a few other examples of the name appear elsewhere, but it is not common. If this were his original name, Cletus would be no inappropriate substitution. Over and above the general tendency to abbreviation, a designation which reminded him of his Christian ‘calling' would commend itself; whereas his own name might jar with Christian sentiment, which bids the true disciple, after doing all, to call himself an ‘unprofitable servant'. Had not S. Paul, writing to this very Roman Church, called himself as an apostle of Christ, and his readers as a people of Christ ? On the other hand the word KLYTÓS is not such as we should expect to find adopted as a proper name, except in its Christian bearing. But, whatever may have been the origin of the second name, there can be no reasonable doubt that the two are alternative designations of the same person. The documents which make two persons out of the two names are comparatively late, and they carry on their face the explana­tion of the error—the fusion of two separate lists.

The tradition, as I have already mentioned, assigns a duration of twenty-four years to the episcopates of Linus and Anacletus, twelve to each. Probably these should be regarded as round numbers. It was a period of steady and peaceful progress for the Church. In a later writer indeed we stumble upon a notice of a persecution under Vespasian; but, if this be not altogether an error, the trouble can only have been momentary, as we do not find any record of it elsewhere. On the whole the two earlier Flavian emperors—father and son—the conquerors of Judea, would not be hostilely disposed to the Christians, who had dissociated themselves from their Jewish fellow-countrymen in their fatal conflict with the Romans. When Clement succeeded to the government of the Church, the reign of Domitian would be more than half over. The term of years assigned to him in all forms of the tradition is nine ; and here probably we may accept the number as at least approximately correct, if not strictly accurate. If so, his episcopate would extend into the reign of Trajan. The most trustworthy form of the tradition places his death in the third year of this emperor, which was the last year of the century.

Domitian proved another Nero. The second persecution of the Church is by general consent of Christian writers ascribed to him. It was however very different in character from the Neronian. The Neronian persecution had been a wholesale onslaught of reckless fury. Domitian directed against the Christians a succession of sharp, sudden, partial assaults, striking down one here and one there from malice or jealousy or caprice, and harassing the Church with an agony of suspense. In the execution of his cousin, the consul, Flavius Clemens, the persecution culminated; but he was only one, though the most conspicuous, of a large number who suffered for their faith”

In the midst of these troubles disastrous news arrived from Corinth. The old spirit of faction in the Corinthian Christians, as it appears in S. Paul’s epistle, had reasserted itself. They had risen up against the duly commissioned rulers of their Church—presbyters who had been appointed by the Apostles themselves or by those immediately so appointed—and had ejected them from their office. It does not appear that any doctrinal question was directly involved, unless indeed their old scepticism with respect to the Resurrection had revived. The quarrel, so far as we can judge, was personal or political. However this may have been, the ejection was wholly unjustifiable, for the persons deposed had executed their office blamelessly. Corinth was an important Roman colony. The communication between Rome and Corinth was easy and frequent. If the journey were rapidly accomplished, it need not take more than a week ; though the average length was doubtless greater. The alliances within the Christian Church were determined to a great degree by political and ethnical affinities. Thus the Churches of Asia Minor were closely connected with the Churches of Gaul, notwithstanding the wide intervening space, because Gaul had been studded at an early date with Greek settlements from Asia Minor'. In the same way the strong Roman element at Corinth attached the Corinthian Church closely to the Roman. It was therefore natural that at this critical juncture the Roman Christians should take a lively interest in the troubles which harassed the Corinthian brotherhood. For a time however they were deterred from writing by their anxieties at home. At length a respite or a cessation of the persecution enabled them totake the matter up. Clement writes a long letter to them, not however in his own name, but on behalf of the Church which he represents, rebuking the offenders and counselling the restoration of the ejected officers.

Clement’s letter is only one of several communications which passed between these two Churches in the earliest ages of Christianity, and of which a record is preserved. Of four links in this epistolary chain we have direct knowledge, (1) The Epistle of S. Paul to the Romans was written from Corinth. It contains the earliest intimation of the Apostle’s intention to visit Rome. It comprises a far larger number of salutations to and from individual Christians, than any other of his epistles. (2) An interval of less than forty years separates the Epistle of Clement from the Epistle of S. Paul. It is addressed from the Romans to the Corinthians. For some generations it continued to be read from time to time in the Corinthian Church on Sundays. (3) We pass over another interval of seventy or eighty years; and we find Soter, the Roman bishop, addressing a letter to the Corinthians. What was the immediate occasion which called it forth we do not know. From the language of the reply it would appear, like the earlier letter of Clement, to have been written not in the name of the bishop, but of the Church of Rome (4) This letter of Soter called forth a reply from Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, written (as we may infer from the language) not long after the letter was received. In this reply he associates the Corinthian Church with himself, using the first person plural ‘we,’ ‘us but whether the address was in his own name or in theirs or (as is most probable) in both conjointly, we cannot say. He reminds the Romans of their common inheritance with the Corinthians in the instruction of S. Peter and S. Paul, saying that, as both Apostles had visited Corinth and preached there, so both had taught at Rome and had sealed their teaching there by martyrdom. He extols the ‘ hereditary ’ liberality of the Roman Christians, and commends the fatherly care of the bishop Soter for strangers who visit the metropolis. He informs them that on that very day—being Sunday—their recent epistle had been publicly read in the congregation, just as it was the custom of his Church to read their earlier letter written by Clement; and he promises them that it shall be so read again and again for the edification of the Corinthian brotherhood.

We have no explicit information as to the result of Clement’s affec­tionate remonstrances with the Corinthians. But an indirect notice would lead to the hope that it had not been ineffectual. More than half a century later Hegesippus visited Corinth on his way to Rome. Thus he made himself acquainted with the condition of the Church at both places. He mentioned the feuds at Corinth in the age of Domitian and the letter written by Clement in consequence. To this he added, ‘And the Church of Corinth remained steadfast in the true doctrine till the episcopate of Primus in Corinth’. The inference is that the Corinthian Church was restored to its integrity by Clement’s remonstrance, and continued true to its higher self up to the time of his own visit. This inference is further confirmed by the fact already mentioned, that Clement’s letter was read regularly on Sundays in the Church of Corinth.

This letter to the Corinthians is the only authentic incident in Clement’s administration of the Roman Church. The persecution ceased at the death of the tyrant. The victims of his displeasure were recalled from banishment. Domitilla would return from her exile in Pontia or Pandateria; and the Church would once more resume its career of progress.

Clement survived only a few years, and died (it would appear) a natural death. We do not hear anything of his martyrdom till about three centuries after his death. Probably in the first instance the story arose from a confusion with his namesake, Flavius Clemens. In its complete form it runs as follows ;

The preaching of Clement was attended with brilliant successes among Jews and Gentiles alike. Among other converts, whom 'he charmed with the siren of his tongue,’ was one Theodora, the wife of Sisinnius, an intimate friend of the emperor Nerva. On one occasion her husband, moved by jealousy, stealthily followed her into the church where Clement was celebrating the holy mysteries. He was suddenly struck blind and dumb for his impertinent curiosity. His servants attempted to lead him out of the building, but all the doors were miraculously closed against them. Only in answer to his wife’s prayers was an exit found ; and on her petition also Clement afterwards restored to him both sight and speech. For this act of healing he was so far from showing gratitude, that he ordered his servants to seize and bind Clement, as a magician. In a phrensied state, they began binding and hauling about stocks and stones, leaving ‘the patriarch’ himself unscathed. Meanwhile Theodora prayed earnestly for her husband, and in the midst of her prayers S. Peter appeared to her, promising his conversion. Accordingly Sisinnius is converted. His devotion to the patriarch from this time forward is not less marked than his hatred had been heretofore. With Sisinnius were baptised not less than 423 persons of high rank, courtiers of Nerva, with their wives and children.

Upon this ‘the Count of the Offices,’ Publius Tarquitianus, alarmed at the progress of the new faith, stirs up the people against Clement. Owing to the popular excitement Mamertinus, the Prefect, refers the matter to Trajan, who is now emperor, and Clement is banished for life ‘ beyond the Pontus' to a desolate region of Cherson, where more than two thousand Christians are working in the marble quarries. Many devout believers follow him voluntarily into exile. There, in this parched region, a fountain of sweet water is opened by Clement, and pours forth in copious streams to slake the thirst of the toilers. A great impulse is given to the Gospel by this miracle. Not less than seventy-five churches are built; the idol-temples are razed to the ground; the groves are burnt with fire. Trajan, hearing of these facts, sends Aufidianus, the governor, to put a stop to Clement’s doings. The saint is thrown into the deep sea with an iron anchor about his neck, so that not so much as a relique of him may be left for the Christians.

These precautions are all in vain. His disciples Cornelius and Phoebus pray earnestly that it may be revealed to them where the body lies. Their prayer is answered. Year by year, as the anniversary of the martyrdom comes round, the sea recedes more than two miles, so that the resting place of the saint is visited by crowds of people dry-shod. He lies beneath a stone shrine, not reared by mortal hands. At one of these annual commemorations a child was left behind by his God-fearing parents through inadvertence, and overwhelmed with the returning tide. They went home disconsolate. The next anniversary, as the sea retired, they hastened to the spot, not without the hope that they might find some traces of the corpse of their child. They found him—not a corpse, but skipping about, full of life. In answer to their enquiries, he told them that the saint who lay within the shrine had been his nurse and guardian. How could they do otherwise than echo the cry of the Psalmist, ‘God is wonderful in His saints?’

These Acts are evidently fictitious from beginning to end. The mention of the ‘ Comes Officiorum ’ alone would show that they cannot have been written before the second half of the fourth century at the earliest. It is therefore a matter of no moment, whether or not the portion relating to the Chersonese was originally written for a supposed namesake Clement of Cherson, and afterwards applied to our hero Clement of Rome. The story must have been translated into Latin before many generations were past; for it is well known to Gregory of Tours (c. A.D. 590) and it has a place in early Gallican service books. By the close of the fourth century indeed S. Clement is regarded as a martyr, being so designated both by Rufinus (c. A.D. 400) and by Zosimus (A.D. 417); and a little earlier, during the episcopate of Siricius (A.D. 384-394), an inscription in his own basilica, of which only fragments remain, seems to have recorded a dedication SANCTO MARTYRI CLEMENTI, though the name has disappeared. But the attribution of martyrdom would probably be due, as I have already said, to a confusion with Flavius Clemens the consul. The fact of the martyrdom being first accepted, the details would be filled in afterwards; and a considerable interval may well have elapsed before the story about the Chersonese was written. We seem to see an explanation of the exile of Clement to this distant region in a very obvious blunder. An ancient writer, Bruttius, mentioned the banishment of Domitilla, the wife of Flavius Clemens, who together with her husband was condemned for her religion, to ‘Pontia’. A later extant Greek chronographer, Malalas, unacquainted with the islands of the Tyrrhene sea, represents this Bruttius as stating that many Christians were banished under Domitian to Pontus or to ‘the Pontus’; and accordingly we find Clement’s place of exile and death elsewhere called ‘Pontus’. In these very Acts he is related to have been banished ‘beyond the Pontus,’ i.e. the Euxine. The ambiguity of ‘the island Pontia,’ and ‘ an island of Pontus,’ would easily lend itself to confusion. It does not therefore follow that, where later writers speak of Pontus or some equivalent as the scene of his banishment and martyrdom, they were already in possession of the full-blown story in the Acts of Clement. Thus it is impossible to say how much or how little was known to the author of the Liber Pontificalis, who records that Clement was martyred in the 3rd year of Trajan and ‘buried in Greece’ (sepultus est in Grecias). The panegyric, which bears the name of Ephraim bishop of Cherson, is certainly based on the Acts of Clement, as we possess them; but except in connexion with the praises of Clement we never hear of this person. If the author of this panegyric really bore the name Ephraim, he cannot have belonged to Cherson; for he speaks of the annual recession of the tide on the anniversary of Clement’s death as a miracle repeated on the spot in his own time. Obviously he is a romancer, living at a distance, whether measured by time or by space. The Chersonese was doubtless a favourite place of banishment in the age when the Acts were composed. A later pope, Martin i, died in exile there (A.D. 655).

This story has a curious sequel. Between seven and eight centuries had elapsed since Clement’s death. Cyril and Methodius, the evangelists of the Slavonian people and the inventors of the Slavonian alphabet, appear on the scene. The more famous of the two brothers, Constantine surnamed the Philosopher, but better known by his other name Cyril, which he assumed shortly before his death, was sent to evangelize the Chazars. He halted in the Crimea, in order to learn the language of the people among whom he was to preach. Being acquainted with the account of Clement’s martyrdom, he made diligent enquiry about the incidents and the locality, but could learn nothing. Successive invasions of barbarians had swept over the country, and wiped out the memory of the event. After praying, however, he was directed in a dream to go to a certain island lying off the coast. He obeyed, and his obedience was rewarded. Arrived there, he and his companions began digging in a mound in which they suspected that the treasure lay, and soon they saw something sparkling like a star in the sand. It was one of the saint’s ribs. Then the skull was exhumed; then the other bones, not however all lying together. Lastly, the anchor was found. At the same time they were gladdened by a fragrance of surpassing sweetness. From this time forward the precious reliques were Cyril’s constant companions of travel in his missionary journeys. After his labours were ended in these parts, he and his brother were sent to convert the Moravians and Bohemians. Here magnificent spiritual victories were achieved. As time went on they were summoned to Rome by the reigning pontiff Nicholas I (A.D. 858—867) to give an account of their stewardship. Nicholas himself died before their arrival, but his successor Adrian II (A.D. 867—872) gave them an honourable welcome. Hearing that they brought with them the remains of his ancient predecessor, he went forth with the clergy and people in solemn procession, met them outside the walls, and escorted them into the city. The bones of Clement were deposited in his own basilica, his long-lost home, after an absence of nearly eight centuries.

Cyril died in Rome, and his body was placed in a sarcophagus in the Vatican. Methodius set forth to resume his missionary labours in Moravia. But before departing, he requested that he might carry his brother Cyril’s bones back with him—this having been their mother’s special request, if either brother should die in a foreign land. The pope consented; but an earnest remonstrance from the Roman clergy, who could not patiently suffer the loss of so great a treasure, barred the way. Methodius yielded to this pressure, asking however that his brother’s bones might be laid in the church of the blessed Clement, whose reliques he had recovered. A tomb was accordingly prepared for Cyril in the basilica of S. Clement, by the right of the high altar, and there he was laid.

The story of the martyrdom and its miraculous consequences is a wild fiction; but this pendant, relating to the translation of the reliques, seems to be in the main points true history. The narrative, which contains the account, has every appearance of being a contemporary document. Indeed there is ground for surmising that it was compiled by Gaudericus bishop of Velitrse, whose cathedral is dedicated to S. Clement and who was himself an eyewitness of the deposition of the bones in Rome. There is also an allusion to the event in a letter written a few years later by Anastasius the Librarian (A.D. 875). An account of the discovery and transportation of the reliques, coinciding with, if not taken from, this narrative, was given by Leo bishop of Ostia, who has been represented as a contemporary, but seems to have lived at least a century later. Again the internal character of the narrative is altogether favourable to its authenticity. The confession that the people of the place knew nothing of the martyrdom or of the portentous miracle recurring annually is a token of sincerity. Moreover there is no attempt to bridge over the discrepancy as regards the locality. The legend of the martyrdom spoke of a submerged tomb; the account of the discovery relates that the bones were found scattered about in a mound on an island. Moreover it is frankly stated that the spot was chosen for digging for no better reason than that it was a likely place. It was, we may suppose, a sepulchral mound on the sea-shore, where bones had been accidentally turned up before. Thus, while there are the best possible grounds for holding that Clement’s body never lay in the Crimea, there is no adequate reason for doubting that the Apostle of Slavonia brought some bones from the Crimea, and deposited them in Rome, believing them to be Clement’s.

The foregoing account has brought us in contact with a historical monument of the highest interest, connected with S. Clement—the basilica bearing his name at Rome. Jerome, writing A.D. 392, after referring to the death of Clement, adds, ‘A. church erected at Rome preserves to this day the memory of his name,’ or perhaps we should translate it, ‘protects to this day the memorial chapel built in his name,’ since ‘memoria’ is frequently used to denote the small oratory or chapel built over the tomb or otherwise commemorative of martyrs and other saints. To the existence of this basilica in Jerome’s time more than one extant inscription bears witness; and indeed his expression ‘usque hodie' shows that it was no recent erection when he wrote. A quarter of a century after this date it is mentioned by Pope Zosimus, who held a court here (A.D. 417) to consider the case of Caelestius the Pelagian. Some generations later we find Gregory the Great delivering more than one of his homilies in this building. And in the succeeding centuries it occupies a position of prominence among the ecclesiastical buildings of Rome.

There can be no doubt that the existing basilica of San Clemente, situated in the dip between the Esquiline and Caelian hills, marks the locality to which S. Jerome refers. Until quite recently indeed it was supposed to be essentially the same church, subject to such changes of repair and rebuilding as the vicissitudes of time and circumstance had required. It preserves the features of the ancient basilica more completely than any other church in Rome; and the archaic character naturally favoured the idea of its great antiquity. The discoveries of recent years have corrected this error.

The excavations have revealed three distinct levels, one below the other. The floor of the existing basilica is nearly even with the surrounding soil, the church itself being above ground. Beneath this is an earlier basilica, of which the columns are still standing and help to support the upper building. It is altogether below the surface, but was at one time above ground, as the existing basilica now is. Thus it was not a crypt or subterranean storey to the present church, nor was it used simultaneously; but was an integral building in itself, disused at some distant epoch and filled up so as to support the present church when erected. Under this earlier basilica is a third and still lower storey. This is occupied partly by solid masonry of tufa, belonging to the regal or republican period, and partly by certain chambers of the imperial age, of which I shall have to speak presently.

The history of the two upper storeys—the disused and the existing basilicas—can be satisfactorily explained. The lower of these, the now subterranean church, belongs to the Constantinian age. It is the same church of which Jerome speaks, though renovated from time to time. On its walls are frescoes representing (among other subjects) the martyrdom and miracles of S. Clement, as related in his Acts. These however are much later than the building itself. They are stated in the accompanying inscriptions to have been given by BENO DE RAPIZA and his wife. But surnames were not used till the tenth century, and even then only sparingly; and this particular surname first makes its appearance in Rome in the eleventh century. Moreover there is in this lower church a sepulchral inscription bearing the date A.D. 1059The lower basilica therefore must have been still used at this comparatively late date. On the other hand the upper church contains an inscription, misread and misinterpreted until re­cently, which ascribes the erection of the new basilica to Anastasius the Cardinal presbyter of the church, whom we know to have been alive as late as A.D. 1125. Between these two dates therefore the change must have taken place. What had happened meanwhile to cause the substitution of the new building for the old?

In A.D. 1084 Rome was stormed and set on fire by Robert Guiscard. ‘Neither Goth nor Vandal, neither Greek nor German, brought such desolation on the city as this capture by the Normans’. From the Lateran to the Capitol the city was one mass of smoking ruins. This was the beginning of that general migration which transferred the bulk of the people from the older and now desolate parts of Rome to the Campus Martius. The level of the ground in the dips of the hills was heaped up with the debris; and thus the old basilica was half buried beneath the soil.

Hence, phoenix like, this new basilica rose out of the bosom of the old. But not only was the general character of the old building retained in the new—the narthex, the semicircular apse, the arrangement of the choir and presbytery. A large portion of the furniture also was transferred thither—the candelabrum, the ambones, the pierced stone fences or transennae. Carved slabs have had their sculptures or their mouldings hewn away to shape them for their new surroundings. Inscriptions from the previous edifice are found in strange incongruous places. One such describes the dedication of an altar during the papacy of Hormisdas (A.D. 514—523) by MERCVRIVS PRESBYTER, who himself afterwards succeeded Hormisdas as Pope John II.

The history of the third and lowest storey, beneath the old Constantinian basilica, is not so easy to decipher. Of the very ancient masonry belonging to regal or republican periods I say nothing, for without further excavations all conjecture is futile. A flight of steps near the high altar led down to some chambers of the imperial times. One of these is immediately below the altar, and this De Rossi supposes to have been the original ‘memoria’ of Clement. Extending to the west of it and therefore beyond the apse of the superposed basilica is a long vaulted chamber, which has evidently been used for the celebration of the rites of Mithras. It is De Rossi’s hypothesis that this chapel originally belonged to the house of Clement and was therefore Christian property; that it was confiscated and devoted to these Mithraic rites in the second or third century, when they became fashionable; that so it remained till the close of the last persecution; and that at length it was restored to the Christians with the general restoration of Church property under Constantine, at which time also the first basilica was built over the ‘memoria’ of the saint.

On these points it is well to suspend judgment. The relation of the Mithraic chapel to the house of Clement more especially needs confirmation. It remains still only a guess; but it is entitled to the con­sideration due even to the guesses of one who has shown a singular power of divination in questions of archaeology. For the rest I would venture on a suggestion. The basilica would most probably be built over some place which in early times was consecrated to Christian worship, whether an oratory or a tomb bearing the name of Clement. But was it not the house, or part of the house, not of Clement the bishop, but of Flavius Clemens and Domitilla? Whether the two Clements, the consul and the bishop, stood to each other in the relation of patron and client, as I have supposed, or not, it is not unnatural that the Christian congregation in this quarter of the city should have met under Clement the bishop in the house of Clement the consul, either during the lifetime or after the death of the latter, seeing that his wife or widow Domitilla bore a distinguished part in the early Roman Church. If so, we have an account of the confusion which transferred the martyrdom of Clement the consul to Clement the bishop. We have likewise an explanation of the tradition that Flavius Clemens lies buried in this same basilica, which is called after his namesake and is said to cover his namesake’s bones. A dedication of a portion of a private house to purposes of Christian worship was at least not uncommon in early Christian times. In the Flavian family it might claim a precedent even in heathen devotion. The emperor Domitian, the head of the clan, converted the house in which he was born into a temple of the Flavian race; and after his tragical death his own ashes were laid there by a faithful nurse.

A truer and nobler monument of the man, even than these architectural remains, is his extant letter to the Corinthians. This document will be considered from other aspects at a later stage. We are only concerned with it here, in so far as it throws light on his character and position in the history of the Church. From this point of view, we may single out three characteristics, its comprehensiveness, its sense of order, and its moderation.

1. The comprehensiveness is tested by the range of the Apostolic writings, with which the author is conversant and of which he makes use. Mention has already been made of his co-ordinating the two Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul in distinction to the Ebionism of a later age, which placed them in direct antagonism, and to the factiousness of certain persons even in the apostolic times, which perverted their names into party watchwords notwithstanding their own protests. This mention is the fit prelude to the use made of their writings in the body of the letter. The influence of S. Peter’s First Epistle may be traced in more than one passage; while expressions scattered up and down Clement’s letter recall the language of several of S. Paul’s epistles belonging to different epochs and representing different types in his literary career. Nor is the comprehensiveness of Clement’s letter restricted to a recognition of these two leading Apostles. It is so largely interspersed with thoughts and expressions from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that many ancient writers attributed this Canonical epistle to Clement. Again, the writer shows himself conversant with the type of doctrine and modes of expression characteristic of the Epistle of S. James. Just as he coordinates the authority of S. Peter and S. Paul, as leaders of the Church, so in like manner he combines the teaching of S. Paul and S. James on the great doctrines of salvation. The same examples of Abraham and of Rahab, which suggested to the one Apostle the necessity of faith, as the principle, suggested to the other the presence of works, as the indispensable con­dition, of acceptance. The teaching of the two Apostles, which is thus verbally, though not essentially, antagonistic, is ‘coincidently affirmed’ bv Clement. It was ‘by reason of faith and hospitality’ that both the one and the other found favour with God. ‘Wherefore,’ he asks elsewhere, ‘was our father Abraham blessed ? was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth by faith?’ With the same comprehensiveness of view he directly states in one paragraph the doctrine of S. Paul, ‘Being called by His will in Christ Jesus, we are not justified by ourselves nor by... works which we wrought in holiness of heart but by our faith’; while in the next he affirms the main contention of S. James, ‘We have seen that all the righteous have been adorned with good works,’ following up this statement with the injunction ‘ Let us work the work of righteousness (justification) with all our strength’. We have thus a full recognition of four out of the five types of Apostolic teaching, which confront us in the Canonical writings. If the fifth, of which S. John is the exponent, is not clearly affirmed in Clement’s letter, the reason is that the Gospel and Epistles of this Apostle had not yet been written, or if written had not been circulated beyond his own immediate band of personal disciples.

2.The sense of order is not less prominent as a characteristic of this epistle. Its motive and purpose was the maintenance of harmony. A great breach of discipline had been committed in the Corinthian Church, and the letter was written to restore this disorganized and factious community to peace. It was not unnatural that under these circumstances the writer should refer to the Mosaic dispensation as enforcing this principle of order by its careful regulations respecting persons, places, and seasons. It creates no surprise when we see him going beyond this and seeking illustrations likewise in the civil government and military organization of his age and country. But we should hardly expect to find him insisting with such emphasis on this principle as dominating the course of nature. Nowhere is ‘the reign of law' more strenuously asserted. The succession of day and night, the sequence of the seasons, the growth of plants, the ebb and flow of the tides, all tell the same tale. The kingdom of nature preaches harmony, as well as the kingdom of grace. ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’ is only a physical type of a moral obligation. We may smile, as we read the unquestioning simplicity which accepts the story of the phoenix and uses it as an illustration; but we are apt to forget that among his most cultivated heathen contemporaries many accepted it as true and others left it an open question. With this aspect of the matter however we are not at present concerned. The point to be observed here is that it is adduced as an illustration of natural law. It was not a miracle in our sense of the term, as an interruption of the course of nature. It was a regularly recurrent phenomenon. The time, the place, the manner, all were prescribed.

3.The third characteristic of the writer is moderation, the sobriety of temper and reasonableness of conduct. This was the practical outcome of the other two. One who takes a comprehensive view of all the elements in the problem before him, and is moreover pervaded by a sense of the principle of harmony and order, cannot well be extravagant or impulsive or fanatical. He may be zealous, but his zeal will burn with a steady glow. This is not a quality which we should predicate of Ignatius or even of Polycarp, but it is eminently characteristic of Clement. The words moderation, occur many times in his epistle. In two several passages the substantive is qualified by a striking epithet, which seems to be its contradiction, ‘intense moderation’. The verbal paradox describes his own character. This gentleness and equability, this ‘sweet reasonableness,’ was a passion with him.

The importance of the position which he occupied in the Church in his own age will have been sufficiently evident from this investigation. The theory of some modern writers that the Roman Christians had hitherto formed two separate organizations, a Petrine and a Pauline, and that they were united for the first time under his direction, cannot be maintained; but it probably represents in an exaggerated form the actual condition of this church. Not separate organizations, but divergent tendencies and parties within the same organization—this would be the truer description. Under such circumstances Clement was the man to deal with the emergency. At home and abroad, by letter and in action, in his doctrinal teaching and in his official relations, his work was to combine, to harmonize, and to reconcile.

The posthumous fame of Clement presents many interesting features for study. Notwithstanding his position as a ruler and his prominence as a writer, his personality was shrouded in the West by a veil of unmerited neglect. His genuine epistle was never translated into the Latin language; and hence it became a dead letter to the church over which he presided, when that church ceased to speak Greek and adopted the vernacular tongue. His personal history was forgotten—so entirely forgotten, that his own church was content to supply its place with a fictitious story imported from the far East. Even his order in the episcopate was obscured and confused, though that episcopate was the most renowned and powerful in the world. Meanwhile however his basilica kept his fame alive in Rome itself, giving its name to one of the seven ecclesiastical divisions of the city and furnishing his title to one of the chief members of the College of Cardinals. His personal name too was adopted by not a few of his successors in the papacy, but nearly a whole millennium passed before another Clement mounted the papal throne—the first pope (it is said) who was consecrated outside of Rome; and he only occupied it for a few brief months. This second Clement was the 147th pope, and reigned on the eve of the Norman invasion. Yet in this interval there had been many Johns, many Stephens, many Benedicts and Gregories and Leos. Elsewhere than in Rome his name appears not unfrequently in the dedications of churches; and in Bohemia more especially the connexion of his supposed reliques with Cyril the evangelist of those regions invested him with exceptional popularity at an early date.

Meanwhile a place was given to him in the commemorations of the Roman Sacramentaries, where after the Apostles are mentioned ‘Linus, Cletus, Clemens, Xystus, Cornelius, Cyprianus,’ etc., the correct tra­ditional order of the early Roman bishops being thus preserved notwithstanding the confusions of the Liberian Catalogue. At what date this commemoration was introduced we cannot say; but it is found in the earliest of these Sacramentaries. His day is recorded in Western Calendars also with exceptional unanimity on ix Kai. Dec. (Nov. 23). It does not indeed appear in the Liberian list, for the Clement commemorated there on v Id. Nov. (Nov. 9) must be a different person, unless it be altogether an error. But the martyrdom of Clement was probably not yet known; and martyrs alone have a place in this list. This however is the one exception among the earlier Western martyr­ologies. In the early Carthaginian Calendar and in the Old Roman and Hieronymian Martyrologies, Nov. 23 is duly assigned to him. In the last-mentioned document we have a double entry

 

xi Kai. Dec. [Nov. 21] Romae, natalis S. Clementis Confessoris,

ix Kai. Dec. [Nov. 23] Romae...natalis S. Clementis Episcopi et Martyns,

 

but such duplications abound in this document. The later Western calendars and martyrologies follow the earlier. In the early Syriac Martyrology his name is not found at all. In the Greek books his festival undergoes a slight displacement, as frequently happens, and appears as Nov. 24 or Nov. 25, the former being the day assigned to him in the Menaea. In the Coptic Calendar it is Hathor 29, corresponding to Nov. 25, and in the Armenian the day seems to be Nov. 26. All these are evidently derived mediately or immediately from the Roman day. At what date and for what reason this day, Nov. 23, was adopted, we have no means of ascertaining.

But while the neglect of the West robbed him of the honour which was his due, the East by way of compensation invested him with a renown—a questionable renown—to which he had no claim. His genuine letter was written in Greek and addressed to a Greek city, though a Roman colony. Its chief circulation therefore was among Greek-speaking peoples, not in Greece only, or in Asia Minor, but in Syria and the farther East. It dated from the confines of the apostolic age. It was issued from the metropolis of the world. It was the most elaborate composition of its kind which appeared in these primitive times. Hence we may account for the attribution to Clement of not a few fictitious or anonymous writings which stood in need of a sponsor.

The earliest of these literary ventures was singularly bold. A writer living about the middle of the second century wanted a hero for a religious romance, and no more imposing name than Clement's could suggest itself for his purpose. So arose the Clementine fiction, having for its plot the hero’s journeys in search of his parents, which brought him in contact with S. Peter. The story was only the peg on which the doctrinal and practical lessons were hung. The writer had certain Ebionite views which he wished to enforce; and he rightly judged that they would attract more attention if presented in the seductive form of a novel'. The work is not extant in its original form; but we possess two separate early recensions—the Homilies and the Recognitions—both Ebionite, though representing different types of Ebionism. As he and his immediate readers were far removed from the scene of Clement's actual life, he could invent persons and incidents with all the greater freedom. Hence this Clementine story’ is the last place where we should look for any trustworthy information as regards either the life or the doctrine of Clement.

Not improbably this early forgery suggested a similar use of Clement’s name to later writers. The device which served one extreme might be employed with equal success to promote the other. The true Clement was equally removed from both. The author of the Clementine romance had laid stress on the importance of early marriage in all cases. It occurred to another writer, who was bent on exalting virginity at the expense of marriage, to recommend his views by an appeal to the same great authority. The Epistles to Virgins, written in Clement's name, are extant only in Syriac, and contain no certain indications which enable us to assign a date to them with confidence. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong if we ascribe them to the first half of the third century. They must certainly be younger than the Clementine romance, of which I have spoken already; and they are probably older than the Apostolic Constitutions, of which I am now about to speak.

In the Apostolical Constitutions the Apostles are represented as communicating to Clement their ordinances and directions for the future administration of the Church. The Apostles describe him as their ‘ fellow minister,’ their ‘most faithful and like-minded child in the Lord’. Rules are given relating to manners and discipline, to the various Church officers, their qualifications and duties, to the conduct to be observed towards the heathen and towards heretics, to the times of fasting and of festival, to the eucharist, and other matters affecting the worship of the Church. Clement is the mouthpiece of the Apostles to succeeding generations of Christians. As a rule, he is mentioned in the third person; while the Apostles themselves, notably S. Peter, speak in the first. But in one place he comes forward in his own person, ‘I Clement.’ The Apostolical Canons may be regarded as a corollary to the Constitutions. At least they proceed on the same lines, though they were compiled many generations later. Here towards the close of the list of Canonical Scriptures, the professed author thus describes the work to which these Canons are appended; The ordinances ad­dressed to you the bishops in eight books by the hand of me Clement, which ye ought not to publish before all men by reason of the mysteries contained therein.

Three distinct groups of spurious writings attributed to Clement have been described. But these do not nearly exhaust the literary productions with which he has been credited. There is the so-called Second Epistle to the Corinthians, not certainly an epistle nor written by Clement, but a homily dating perhaps half a century after his time. Unlike the works already enumerated, this is not a fictitious writing. It does not pretend to be anything but what it is, and its early attribution to Clement seems to be due to an accidental error. It will be considered more fully in its proper place.

This enumeration would be incomplete, if we failed to mention the Canonical writings attributed to Clement. The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, its parentage being unknown, was not unnaturally fathered upon Clement. This attribution was earlier than the time of Origen, who mentions it, and may therefore have been maintained by Clement of Alexandria or even by Pantaenus. It is due to the fact that the Roman Clement shows familiarity with this Canonical epistle and borrows from it. But it does not deserve serious consideration. The differences between the two writings are far greater than the resemblances. More especially do we miss in the Roman Clement, except where he is quoting from it, the Alexandrian type of thought and expression which is eminently characteristic of this Canonical epistle. The part of Clement however is otherwise stated by Eusebius. He mentions the fact that certain persons regard him as the translator of this epistle, the author being S. Paul himself. This view again need not detain us. There is every reason to believe that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written originally in Greek and not written by S. Paul. But whether Clement be regarded as author or as translator, we must take this attribution, however early, not as a historical tradition, but as a critical inference. When a later writer, Photius, says that Clement was supposed by some to have been the author of the Acts of the Apostles, the form of his statement leads me to suspect that he is guilty of some confusion with the Epistle to the Hebrews.

All the writings hitherto mentioned as falsely ascribed to Clement were written in the Greek language and apparently in the East. But besides these there were other Western fabrications of which I shall have to speak again at a later point. It is sufficient to say here that the Letter to James which is prefixed to the Clementine Homilies was translated into Latin by Rufinus; that somewhat later a second letter was forged as a companion to it; that they were subsequently amplified and three others added to them; and that these five Latin letters thus ascribed to Clement formed the basis of the collection of spurious papal documents known as the False Decretals, the most portentous of medieval forgeries—portentous alike in their character and their results. Thus the Clementine romance of the second century was the direct progenitor of the forged Papal Letters of the ninth—a monstrous parent of a monstrous brood.

If then we seek to describe in few words the place which tradition, as interpreted by the various forgeries written in his name, assigns to Clement, we may say that he was regarded as the interpreter of the Apostolic teaching and the codifier of the Apostolic ordinances.

In dealing with Ignatius and Polycarp I sought for some one term, which might express the leading conception of either, entertained by his own and immediately succeeding ages. I was thus led to describe Ignatius as ‘the Martyr' and Polycarp as ‘the Elder.’ It is not so easy to find a corresponding designation for Clement. The previous examination will have shown that the traditional Clement is in this respect an exaggeration of the historical Clement, but the picture is drawn on the same lines. The one digests and codifies the spurious apostolic doctrine and ordinances, as the other combines and co-ordinates their true teaching. Again, the practical side of his character and work, as we have seen, corresponds to the doctrinal. From this point of view he may be regarded as the moderator between diverse parties and tendencies in the Church. In both respects he is a harmonizer. Yet the term is hardly suitable for my purpose, as it unduly restricts the scope of his position. But he stands out as the earliest of a long line of worthies who, having no authority in themselves to originate, have been recognized as interpreters of the Apostolic precepts ‘once delivered,’ and whom it is customary to call the ‘doctors' of the Church. By right of priority therefore Clement is essentially ‘the Doctor.’