the first twenty-five years of the century which followed? I think that cogent reasons for such a supposition are not far to seek, and I will do what I can to set them forth.

It will, I think, be admitted on all hands that according to the original tradition of the Roman Church the sequence of the names of its earliest bishops ran as follows: (1) Linus, (2) Anencletus (alias Cletus), (3) Clement. Some would, of course, head the whole list with the name of S. Peter, but for the purposes of my present argument I am considering only the names of those who came after the apostles. The sequence of names, as I have given it above, is found in the Roman Canon of the Mass. It is found also in S. Irenaeus;1 and finally it is found in S. Epiphanius, and Bishop Lightfoot has given very strong reasons 3 for believing that S. Epiphanius' list is based on a list compiled by Hegesippus, a writer who is slightly anterior to Irenaeus. As both Hegesippus and Irenaeus spent some time in Rome, they are very good witnesses in regard to the tradition of the Church of Rome.

But soon after the time of Hegesippus and S. Irenaeus a new view seems to have become more or less popular among the Christians at Rome. Tertullian, in a passage which I have already quoted, and which was written about the year 200, is describing how the apostolic churches, when they give an account of their beginnings, are accustomed to show by the catalogue of their bishops "that their much-venerated first bishop had for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of the apostolic men." Tertullian goes on to give examples of this practice, and he says, "As, for instance, the Church of Smyrna relates that Polycarp was placed there by John, and the Church of Rome that Clement was in like manner ordained by Peter." It appears, therefore, that during the years immediately preceding the year 200 an alteration had taken place in the ideas of the members of the Roman Church or of some of them. Linus was no longer regarded as "the first bishop," but that honourable position was assigned to Clement, whose true place on the list was the third, and not the first. There can be no doubt that the Linus tradition is right, and that the Clement tradition is wrong.5

But the question remains to be answered, How was the change of belief at Rome between 180 and 200 brought about?

2 Haer., xxvii. 6.

1 III. ii. 3. S. Clement of Rome, i. 327-333. It may be worth noting that Dr. Rivington (Prim. Church, pp. 21, 22) expresses the opinion that Bishop Lightfoot has established his case in regard to this point.

See pp. 39, 40.

5 Yet we learn from S. Jerome that in his time "plerique Latinorum" sup. posed that S. Clement was the immediate successor of S. Peter (cf. De Viris Illustribus, cap. xv., P. L., xxiii. 631). The De Viris was written in 392.

Bishop Lightfoot 1 and Dr. Salmon reply that the change was probably brought about through the influence of the Clementine romance. It is noteworthy that the Ultramontane Dr. Jungmann, professor of ecclesiastical history in the University of Louvain, suggests the same explanation. It is surely more likely that the author of the Clementine romance, who had selected S. Clement to be the hero of his story, and who makes him out to have been S. Peter's companion in his missionary journeys, should have devised the fable of his being S. Peter's immediate successor, rather than that that story should have been concocted at Rome, where an earlier and truer account had been handed down in the church from the beginning. The choice appears to lie between Rome and the Clementines as the origin of the fable, for we find no trace of it elsewhere until long afterwards. Under these circumstances, I think that most persons of discrimination will come to the conclusion that this legend, which had such far-reaching effects, was invented by the Ebionite author of the spurious letter of Clement to James, or by some earlier romancer belonging to the same school. There seems to have been a copious Ebionite literature in the second century, and the writers appear to have had a predilection for fictitious accounts of the doings of the apostles. Bishop Lightfoot speaks of “a vast number of works which, though no longer extant, have yet moulded the traditions of the early Church," and which "emanated from these Christian Essenes :" "Hence, doubtless, are derived the ascetic portraits of James the Lord's brother in Hegesippus, and of Matthew the apostle in Clement of Alexandria, to which the account of S. Peter in the extant Clementines presents a close parallel." 8

If it be admitted that the story of S. Clement being S. Peter's immediate successor is more likely to have originated in one of the earlier forms of the Clementine romance than among the Catholics of Rome, then in all probability that form of the romance preceded Tertullian's De Praescriptione by at least fifteen or twenty years. Though the story is

1 See Additional Note 15, p. 444.

2

66

Jungmann says, Animadvertendum venit hoc loco, aliquos antiquos auctores, ut Tertullianum, existimasse, Petri primum_successorem fuisse Clementem. .. Ratio autem ob quam aliqui post Petrum numerarunt Clementem, haec forte fuit, quod Clemens ipse in Epistola ad Jacobum dicat, se fuisse a Petro consecratum episcopum, quod etiam Tertullianus affirmat De Praescript., c. 32." (Dissertationes Selectae in Hist. Eccl., tom. i. p. 121, ed. 1880.) Jungmann is not the only learned Ultramontane who attributes the tendency to bring S. Clement into close connexion with S. Peter to the effect of the Clementine literature. On this point see the Additional Note 16, p. 444.

Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, ed. 1892, p. 8o. Bishop Lightfoot conjectures (Op. cit., p. 126) that Hegesippus derived his account of S. James' martyrdom from the Ebionite Ascents of James.

not likely to have originated at Rome, yet, when once it had begun to circulate, we can readily see that it would be likely to affect opinion at Rome. A detailed account of the consecration of one of the best-known Roman bishops by the chief of the apostles would be exceedingly interesting and pleasing to the local Church of Rome, or, at any rate, to many of its members. Thus the letter of Clement to James, or some earlier form of the story, would be very welcome in Roman Christian circles; and when once that letter or story had been accepted, the isolation of S. Peter as the one "auctor" of the Roman Church and the one consecrator of its first bishop would, as I have already pointed out, be sure to follow. In this way the name of S. Peter would appear by itself at the head of the list of names on the catalogue of the Roman bishops, and in a little while he would come to be regarded as having been himself the earliest bishop of the Roman Church. The first stage of the process had been reached at the time when Tertullian wrote the De Praescriptione. We have no proof that the second stage was reached until from thirty to forty years later.

Dr. Rivington has made an attempt to disprove the Ebionite origin of the belief in S. Peter's Roman Episcopate by making much of the fact that that belief was accepted by Eusebius and by S. Epiphanius, who in all probability obtained some of their information about the early Roman bishops from Hegesippus. But it must be remembered that Eusebius and S. Epiphanius lived in the fourth century—that is to say, in an age when the belief that S. Peter had been Bishop of Rome was widely spread. There is no sort of reason for supposing that those writers were indebted to Hegesippus for this particular detail of their teaching. Again, Dr. Rivington raises another objection to the thesis which I am defending, when he expresses his opinion that the Ebionite character of the Clementine documents would prevent their having any influence at Rome. He says, "Was the glorification of S. Clement sufficient to balance the depreciation of S. Peter in the same narrative below S. James? And could Rome ever bear any approach to an Ebionitish view of the apostle of the Gentiles ?"8

1 The author of The Little Labyrinth, a treatise directed against the heresy of Artemon, seems, like Tertullian, to have isolated S. Peter, and to have regarded him as the founder rather than the first bishop of the see of Rome. In a passage of this treatise, quoted by Eusebius (H. E., v. 28), the author speaks of "Victor, who was the thirteenth Bishop of Rome from Peter." Dr. Salmon (Smith and Wace, D.C.B., iii. 98) ascribes this treatise against Artemon to Caius, and seems to show that it certainly was not written by S. Hippolytus. The treatise was, anyhow, written by a person intimately acquainted with the contemporary affairs of the Roman Church, and the date of writing must have been about the year 230. 2 Prim. Church, p. 22. • Ibid., p. 17.

To the latter question it may be answered that any document in which S. Paul was openly attacked by name would almost certainly have been rejected as heretical by any primitive Catholic church, whether at Rome or elsewhere. But such open attacks are not found in the Clementine literature. In these documents S. Paul is sometimes covertly denounced in the person of Simon Magus; sometimes he is described as "the enemy"; sometimes he is passed over in silence on occasions when he would undoubtedly have been mentioned if the writer had not been an Ebionite. Our practised eyes can detect the heretical animus of writings which were accepted as orthodox by the less critical Christians of the early centuries. As a matter of fact, the Clementine literature circulated very largely among the Catholics of Rome and Italy. S. Paulinus of Nola is supposed by some to have made an ineffectual attempt to translate the Clementine Recognitions. They were actually translated by Rufinus, who had been urged to undertake the task by S. Silvia of Aquitaine, and after her death by S. Gaudentius of Brescia. Mgr. Duchesne says, "Le roman Syrien eut au IV et au Ve siècle, une très grande vogue dans les cercles orthodoxes."1 The letter to James was quoted as genuine by the Council of Vaison2 in 442. It is also quoted more than once in the Liber Pontificalis, an eminently Roman book. That same letter, augmented by additional spurious matter, finds a place in the forefront of the celebrated forged decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore; and it is quoted as an authority by Pope Gregory VII.5 in a letter to Herimann of Metz. Altogether, this objection raised by Dr. Rivington will not hold good. The Church of Rome and other Western churches failed during many centuries to detect the Ebionite tendency of these writings.

As we have seen, the Clementine story was continually being republished in ever-varying forms. We still possess four of these forms; and there was at least one other form, earlier than any of these, which has not come down to us. The progress of discovery and criticism may enable us hereafter to settle with precision the dates of the various documents.6

1

Origines Chrétiennes, p. 98.

2 Canon vi. (Coleti, iv. 717, 718).

Lib. Pont., ed. Duchesne, i. 123.

• Decretales Pseudo-Isidor., ed. Hinsch., pp. 30-46.

Greg. VII., Registr., lib. iv. ep. ii., P.Z., cxlviii. 454.

Harnack apparently holds that the whole of the Pseudo-Clementine literature belongs to the third century. The reason which he gives for this determination is not convincing, and will hardly commend itself either to Anglicans or to Romanists. Harnack says (Outlines of the History of Dogma, p. 79, English translation), "The polemic and the means made use of [in the Clementines] prove that the Catholic Church was already in existence. Therefore the Pseudo

At present we cannot say for certain that the letter to James is earlier than the De Praescriptione of Tertullian, though probably it is so. Bishop Lightfoot (S. Clement of Rome, i. 414) says, "Its date can hardly be earlier than the middle of the second century, or much later than the beginning of the third." If we accept the latest possible date for the letter, then it was an earlier form of the story which circulated in Rome between 180 and 200.

Before taking leave of this subject, it may be worth while to recall once more to the reader's mind the fact that my argument against the soundness of the theory that S. Peter was at one time Bishop of Rome does not depend in any way on what I have written about the Clementine romance; it depends on the fact that the language of the writers of the first two centuries is inconsistent with the assignment of the Roman Episcopate to the great apostle. I myself believe that the Clementine romance had a great deal to do with that change of view at Rome which resulted in the adoption of the theory of S. Peter having been the first Roman bishop; but whether the romance had or had not the effect which I attribute to it, in any case the view of the Roman Church was changed, and the later theory cannot claim the weight which would attach to an original tradition of that church.

S. Cyprian's Witness.

I now invite your attention to the history of S. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, and I hope to make clear to you how, from beginning to end, his whole action is absolutely inconsistent with the teaching about the papacy set forth in the Vatican decrees.

I have already pointed out the way in which S. Cyprian

Clementine writings belong to the third century." Orthodox Christians hold that the Catholic Church came into existence on the day of Pentecost; and it is not easy to understand how even Harnack could deny that it existed in the time of S. Irenaeus. Harnack, however, adds that "it is probable that the compilers had before them earlier anti-Pauline writings." Thus even according to Harnack's hypothesis, the germ of the Clementines would seem to date from the second century. Mgr. Batiffol follows Harnack closely, and comes to much the same conclusion. Speaking of the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, he says (Anciennes Littératures Chrétiennes-Littérature Grecque, pp. 48, 49, ed. 1897), "A prendre les deux textes ensemble et dans leur forme actuelle, ils représentent une production de la première moitié du iiie siècle (Lagarde, Harnack, Zahn). Ils doivent leur forme actuelle à des catholiques, qui n'y ont vu qu'une matière à s'édifier et un roman didactique pouvant servir à la refutation du paganisme (Harnack). . . . Les thèmes fondamentaux (monarchie de Dieu, prophétie, stoicisme) fait penser que la source de cette littérature doit être cherchée dans le syncrétisme judeo-chrétien du ir siècle." (The italics are mine.) Compare the Additional Note 16, p. 444.

E