CHAPTER XV.

CLEMENS ROMANUS—PROGRESS OF THE PRESBYTERIATE.

The most correct lists of the Bishops of Rome, forcing a little the signification of the word bishop, for times so remote place after Anenclet a certain Clement, who from the similarity of his name and the nearness of his time has frequently been confounded with 162Flavius Clemens. The name is not rare in the Judeo-Christian world. We may in strictness suppose a relationship of patron and client between our Clement and Flavius Clemens. But we must absolutely set aside both the theory of certain modern critics who insist on seeing in Bishop Clement only a fictitious personage, a double of Flavius Clemens, and the error which at various times comes to light in the ecclesiastical tradition, according to which Bishop Clement was a member of the Flavian family. Clemens Romanus was not merely a real personage, he was a personage of the first rank, a true chief of the Church, a bishop before the Episcopate was definitely constituted; I would almost dare to say a pope, if the word were not too great an anachronism in this place. His authority was recognised as the greatest in all Italy, in Greece, in Macedonia, during the last decade of the first century. At the expiration of the apostolic age he was like an apostle, an epigon in the great generation of the disciples of Jesus, one of the pillars of that Church of Rome, which, after the destruction of the Church of Jerusalem, became more and more the centre of Christianity.

Everything leads to the belief that Clement was of Jewish origin. His familiarity with the Bible, the turn of style in certain passages of his Epistle, the use which he makes of the Book of Judith and of apocryphal writings such as the assumption of Moses, do not agree with the idea of a converted Pagan. On the other hand, he appears to be little of a Hebraiser. It appears then that he was born in Rome of one of those Jewish families which had inhabited the capital of the world for many generations. His knowledge of cosmography and of profane history presuppose a careful education. It is admitted that he had been in relation with the Apostles, especially with Peter, though on this point the proof is perhaps hardly decisive. What is indubitable is the 163high rank which he held in the spiritual hierarchy of the Church of his time, and the unequalled credit which he enjoyed. His approval made law. All parties claimed him, and wished to shelter themselves under his authority. A thick veil hides his private opinions from us; his Epistle is a fine neutral fragment with which the disciples of Paul and the disciples of Peter might equally content themselves. It is probable that he was one of the most energetic agents in the great work which was about to be accomplished, I mean the posthumous reconciliation of Peter and Paul, and the fusion of the two parties, without the union of which the work of Christ must have perished.

The extreme importance at which Clement had arrived results, above all things, from the vast apocryphal literature which is attributed to him. When, towards the year 140, an attempt was made to gather together into one body of writing, clothed with an ecclesiastical character, the Judeo-Christian traditions concerning Peter and his apostolate, Clement was chosen as the supposed author of the work. When it was desired to codify the ancient ecclesiastical customs, and to make the collection thus formed a Corpus of “Apostolic Constitutions,” it was Clement who guaranteed that apocryphal work. Other writings, all having more or less connection with the establishment of a canon law, were equally attributed to him. The fabricator of apocryphas endeavours to give weight to his forgeries. The name which he puts at the head of his compositions is always that of a celebrity. The sanction of Clement thus appears to us as the highest which can be imagined in the second century to recommend a book. Thus in the Pastor of the psuedo-Hermas, Clement’s special function is assigned as being that of sending the books newly issued in Rome to the other Churches, and of causing them to be accepted. His supposed 164literature, whether he must be taken as assuming personal responsibility for it or not, is a literature of authority, inculcating on every page the hierarchy, obedience to the priests, to the bishops. Every phrase which is attributed to him is a law, a decretal. The right of speaking to the Universal Church is freely accorded to him. He is the first typical “Pope” whom ecclesiastical history presents. His lofty personality, increased yet more by legend, was, after that of Peter, the holiest image of Christian Rome. His venerable face was for succeeding ages that of a grave and gentle legislator, a perpetual preacher of submission and respect.

Clement passed through the persecution of Domitian without suffering from it. When the severities abated, the Church of Rome renewed its relations with the outer world. Already the idea of a certain primacy of that Church began to make itself felt. The right of advising the Churches and of adjusting their differences was accorded to it. Such privileges; it may at least be believed, were accorded to Peter and to his immediate disciples. Now, a closer and closer bond was established between St Peter and Rome. Grave dissensions had torn the Church of Corinth. That Church had scarcely changed since the days of St Paul. There was the same spirit of pride, of disputatiousness, of frivolity. We feel that the principal opposition to the hierarchy dwelt in this Greek spirit, always mobile, frivolous, undisciplined, not knowing how to reduce a crowd to the condition of a flock. The women, the children, were in full rebellion. The transcendental doctors imagined that they possessed concerning everything deep significations, mystical secrets, analogous to the gift of tongues and the discerning of spirits. Those who were honoured with these supernatural gifts despised the elders and aspired to replace them. Corinth had a respectable presbyteriate, but one which never aimed at an exalted 165mysticism. The illuminati pretended to throw it into the shade, and to put themselves into its place; some of the elders were even deprived. The struggle of the established hierarchy and of personal relations began, and the conflict filled all the history of the Church, the privileged soul finding it wrong that, in spite of the favours with which he had been honoured, a homely clergy, strangers to the spiritual life, should govern it officially. Not without a certain likeness to Protestantism, the rebels of Corinth formed themselves into a separate Church, or at least distributed the Eucharist in other than consecrated places. The Eucharist had always been a stumbling block to the Church of Corinth. That Church had its rich and its poor; it accommodated itself with especial difficulty to the mystery of equality. At last the innovators, proud to excess of their exalted virtue, raised chastity to the point of depreciating marriage. This was, as will be seen, the heresy of individual mysticism maintaining the rights of the spirit against authority, pretending to raise itself above the level of the faithful, and of the ordinary clergy, in the name of its direct relations with the Divinity.

The Roman Church, consulted on these internal troubles, answered with admirable good sense. The Roman Church was then above all things the Church of order, of subordination, of rule. Its fundamental principle was that humility and submission were of more value than the most sublime of gifts. The Epistle addressed to the Church of Corinth was anonymous, but one of the most ancient traditions has it that Clement’s was the pen which wrote it. Three of the most considerable of the elders—Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Biton, and Fortunatus—were charged to carry the letter, and received full powers from the Church at Rome to bring about a reconciliation.

The Church of God Abiding in Rome to the Church of God in Corinth, to the Elect sanctified by the will of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace be upon you in abundance from God Almighty by Jesus Christ.

After having quoted many sad examples of jealousy, taken from the Old Testament, he adds:—

Order and obedience are the supreme law of the Church.

The Divine Service ought to be celebrated in the places and at the hours fixed by the ordained ministers, as in the Temple of Jerusalem. All power, all ecclesiastical rule, comes from God.

The best thing the authors of these troubles can do is to go away.

Kings and pagan chiefs have braved death in time of pestilence, to save their fellow-citizens; others have exiled themselves to put an end to civil war. “We know that many amongst us have delivered themselves to chains, that they might deliver others.” If those who have caused the revolt recognise their errors, it is not to us, it is to God, to whom they will yield. All ought to receive with joy the correction of the Church.

The submission which is due to the bishops and elders, the Christian owes to the powers of the earth. At the moment of the most diabolical atrocities of Nero, we heard Paul and Peter declare that the power of this monster came from God. Clement, in the very days when Domitian was guilty of the greatest cruelties against the Church, and against the human race, held him equally as being the lieutenant 171of God. In a prayer which he addresses to God, he thus expresses himself:—

Such is this document, a remarkable monument of the practical wisdom of the Church of Rome, of its profound policy, of its spirit of government. Peter and Paul are there more and more reconciled; both are right; the dispute about Law and works is pacified; the vague expressions “our apostles,” “our pillars,” mask the memory of past struggles. Although a warm admirer of Paul, the author is profoundly a Jew. Jesus for him is simply “the child beloved of God;” “the great High Priest,” “the chief of Christians.” Far from breaking with Judaism, he preserves in its integrity the privilege of Israel; only a new chosen people amongst the Gentiles is joined with Israel. All the antique prescriptions preserve their force, even though they have ceased to bear their original meaning. Whilst Paul abrogates, Clement preserves and transforms. What he desires above all things is concord, uniformity, rule, order in the Church as in nature, and in the Roman Empire. Let everyone obey in his rank: this is the order of the world. The small cannot exist without the great, nor the great without the small; the life of the body is the result of the common action of all the members. Obedience is then the summing-up, the synonym of the word 172duty. The inequality of men, the subordination of one to the other, is the law of God.

The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the history of a triple abdication, the community of the faithful remitting first all its powers to the hands of the elders or presbyteri; the presbyteral body joining in a single personage, who is the episcopos; then the episcopi effacing themselves in the presence of one of them, who is pope. This last process, if we may so describe it, was effected only in our own days. The creation of the Episcopate is the work of the second century. The absorption of the Church by the presbyteri was accomplished before the end of the first. In the Epistle of Clement of Rome it is not yet the episcopate, it is the presbytery, which is in question. Not a trace of a presbyteros superior to his fellows is to be found. But the author proclaims aloud that the presbyteriate, the clergy, are before the people. The Apostles, in establishing Churches, have chosen, by the inspiration of the Spirit, “the bishops and deacons of future believers.” The powers emanating from the Apostles have been transmitted by a regular succession. No Church has a right to deprive its elders. The privilege of riches counts for nothing in the Church. In the same way, those who are favoured with mystical gifts ought to be the most submissive.

The great problem is approached: who form the Church? Is it the people? or the clergy? or the inspired? The question had already been asked in the time of St Paul, who solved it in the right way by mutual charity. Our Epistle defines the question in a purely Catholic sense. The apostolic title is everything; the right of the people is reduced to nothing. It may then be said that Catholicism had its origin in Rome, since the Church of Rome traced out its first rule. Precedence does not belong to spiritual gifts, to science, to distinction; it belongs to the hierarchy, to the powers transmitted by the channel of canonical 173ordination, which stretches back to the apostolate in an unbroken chain. We feel that a free Church such as Jesus had conceived, and as St Paul still admitted, was an anarchical utopia, which could not be looked for in the future. With gospel liberty there would have been disorder: it was not seen that with the hierarchy would come uniformity and death.

From the literary point of view the Epistle of Clement is somewhat weak and soft. It is the first monument of that prolix style, charged with superlatives, smelling of the preacher, which to this day remains that of the Papal Bulls. The imitation of St Paul is palpable; the author is governed by his memories of the sacred Scriptures. Almost every line contains an allusion to the writings of the Old Testament. Clement shows himself singularly pre-occupied with the new Bible, which is in course of formation. The Epistle to the Hebrews, which was a sort of inheritance of the Church of Rome, evidently formed his habitual reading; we may say the same of the other great Epistles of St Paul. His allusions to the Gospel texts appear to be divided between Matthew, Mark, and Luke; we might almost say that he had the same Gospel matter as we, but distributed without doubt otherwise than as we have it. The allusions to the Epistles of James and Peter are doubtful. But the allusions to the Jewish apocryphas, to which Clement accords the same authority as to the writings of the Old Testament, are striking: Judith an apocrypha of Ezekiel, the assumption of Moses, perhaps also the prayer of Manasseh. Like the Apostle Jude, Clement admitted into the Bible all those recent products of Jewish imagination or passion, inferior though they are to the old Hebrew literature, but more fitted than this last of pleasing at the time, by their tone of pathetic eloquence and of lively piety.

The Epistle of Clement attained besides the object 174for which it had been written. Order was re-established in the Church of Corinth. The lofty pretensions of the spiritual doctors were abated. Such was the ardent faith of these little conventicles, that they submitted to the greatest humiliations rather than quit the Church. But the work had a success which extended far beyond the limits of the Church of Corinth. There has been no writing more imitated, more quoted. Polycarpus, or the author of the Epistle attributed to him, the author of the apocryphal Epistles of Ignatius, the author of the fragment falsely called the Second Epistle of Clement, borrow from it as from a document known almost by heart. The treatise was read in the Churches like inspired Scripture. It took its place amongst the additions to the Canon of the New Testament. In one of the most ancient manuscripts of the Bible (the Codex Alexandrinus), it is found at the end of the books of the new alliance, and as one of them.

The trace left at Rome by Bishop Clement was profound from the most ancient times; a Church consecrated his memory in the valley between the Cœlius and the Esquiline, in the district where, according to tradition, the paternal house was placed, and where others, through a feeling of secular hesitation, wished to recall the memory of Flavius Clemens. We shall see him later become the hero of a surprising romance, very popular in Rome, and entitled “the Recognitions,” because his father, his mother, and his brothers, bewailed as dead, are found again, and recognise each other. With him was associated a certain Grapte, charged together with him with the government and teaching of widows and orphans. In the half light in which he remains enveloped, and, as it were, lost in the luminous haze of a fine historic distance, Clement is one of the great figures of nascent Christianity. Some vague rays come only out of the mystery which surrounds him; one might call him a 175saint’s head in an old half-effaced fresco of Giotto, still recognisable by its golden aureole and by some vague tints of a pure and gentle light.