GIFT OF JANE K.5ATHBR STUDIES IN EARLY CHURCH HISTORY COLLECTED PAPERS BY CUTHBERT HAMILTON TURNER, M.A. FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1913 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE MEMORIAE HISTORIOGRAPHORVM REI CHRISTIANAE CANTABRIGIENSIVM IOHANNIS - MASON NEALE EDWARDI WHITE - BENSON IOSEPHI BARBER LIGHTFOOT DISCIPVLVS PIETATIS CAVSA 376157 CONTENTS PAGE I. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE DIDACHE . i II. ANCIENT AND MODERN CHURCH ORGANIZATION . . 33 III. METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION IN PRIMI- TIVE CANON LAW . . . . . 71 IV. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE . . . .97 V. EARLY CHRONICLES OF THE WESTERN CHURCH . .132 VI. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 164 VII. ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR : THE APOCALYPSE . .189 VIII. ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 220 APPENDIX I. ON THE VALUE FOR TEXTUAL PURPOSES OF THE LATIN VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE . 250 [NOTE ON THE NEWLY DISCOVERED COPTIC VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE] . .257 APPENDIX II. Two EARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS . 258 INDEX 266 PREFACE THE volume to which these pages are a preface contains such pieces of my published work down to the end of the year 1 894 as it seemed possible and desirable to gather together into a single whole. It is an instalment of a series to which on my fiftieth birthday I resolved to devote myself. Tempus collectum est\ my literary workshop was piled up with a number of undertakings in a more or less advanced stage of development, and it seemed an imperative duty to finish some of them off and clear them out of the way before anything further could legitimately be planned. It is easier to make such a resolution than to keep it to the letter ; but in the result some half-dozen of these older ventures are now either in port or in sight of it. The first to arrive was a chapter on the Organization of the Church contributed to the Cambridge Medieval History. Next after that the present volume has been pushed forward, because I hold strongly that every scholar ought, at some time during his maturer life, to search and sift his own iuvenilia, and, if he determines that any parts of them are worth preserving, then to make the selection himself and himself to be responsible for the more permanent form which they are to take. Post- humous publication or republication of early writings is neither fair to the writer nor to his friends nor to the public. To the then editor of the Guardian (and a kindlier editor than Mr. D. C. Lathbury no young author ever served under) I believe that I owe the privilege of a first appearance in print ; but reviews are seldom worth republishing, and from my own reviews in the Guardian the only salvage I should wish to secure are some suggestions which may perhaps one day find a place in a collection of 'Adversaria ' on the textual criticism of the early Christian documents. All the papers that are here reprinted appeared originally in the Church viii PREFACE Quarterly Review, to which I contributed, between the beginning- of 1887 and the end of 1894, fourteen articles. The material of one of these, 4 Patristic Evidence and the Gospel Chronology,' was incorporated in an article on the Chronology of the New Testament in vol. i of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible ; another is mentioned at the end of this preface, in connexion with the name of bishop Lightfoot ; of the rest eight (with a passage taken from a ninth, p. 33 infra) have been finally chosen for republication here. To these eight papers I have appended, because of its close connexion with the subject of the fourth paper, 4 St. Cyprian's Correspondence,' a note on ' Two Early Lists of St. Cyprian's Works ' from the Classical Review for May 1892. Another and earlier contribution to the same subject was an appendix to a paper by Dr. Sanday on 4 The Cheltenham List of the Canonical Books and of the Writings of Cyprian ' in the Oxford Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica (vol. iii, 1891, pp. 304-325) : this and a paper in volume ii of the same series (1890) on 4 The Day and Year of St. Polycarp's Martyrdom ' were my first efforts in the way of research, and though they cannot be reprinted here, I think that they have some permanent value. The discussion of the date of St. Polycarp's death was probably too technical to arrest the attention even of some professed students of early Christian chronology ; but I have not seen anything to make me doubt that the solution I then proposed, Feb. 22 A.D. 156, was the correct one. The bibliography down to the limit set above is, I think, completed by two or three reviews in the English Historical Review. Out of this earlier work I have had to try and preserve what seemed worth preserving, and at the same time to pro- duce a more or less homogeneous volume. The title I have chosen indicates that the common thread which binds these papers together is that they all deal with various aspects of the history of the primitive Church, textual and critical details having been as far as possible relegated to the appendices. The late Dr. William Bright, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, generously paid me to lecture as his assistant, from 1888 till his death in 1901, on the Ante-Nicene period ; PREFACE ix and I am under a long-standing pledge to make my lecture notes into a book. Pending the realisation, should the opportunity ever come, of this larger plan, I have hoped that this set of essays might serve as a sort of introduction to some not unimportant departments of the Christian history and literature of the first five centuries. And perhaps that thought may justify the inclusion of at least one paper which can lay no claim at all to originality. In preparing these papers for the press I have followed a middle way between leaving them as they stood and such revision of their subject-matter as would in effect make old work into new. I have verified all references. In unessential things I have dealt quite freely with the text ; redundancies of style have been pruned, asperities of tone have been softened. On the rare occasions where I found myself in material disagreement with previous statements of opinion or fact, I have either simply omitted what I could no longer justify, or else have recorded a change of view, or given expression to a counter-balancing consideration, within square brackets. The only point of real importance is concerned with the penultimate essay : as I have explained in a note on p. 191, 1 can no longer speak so confidently of John the son of Zebedee as author of the Gospel and Apocalypse. But, however little I have had to modify in substance, I do not of course mean that, if I were writing de novo on the same topics, there would not be here and there some shifting of the weight of emphasis. Probably this would apply especially to the second essay, that on 4 Ancient and Modern Church Organi- zation ' ; and, as it happens, the above-mentioned chapter in the Cambridge Medieval History, which incorporates sum- marily a good deal of the matter of the essay in question, has furnished me with the occasion for formulating maturer ideas upon the same subject. I have ventured to dedicate this collection of early papers to the memory of three Cambridge church historians, from whose writings, as far as I can tell, I derived my first specific bent towards the study of ecclesiastical history, and (in the x PREFACE sense in which training can be got from books) my first training in it. Of course it would be hardly possible to over-estimate one's debt to the atmosphere and teaching and friendships of one's own special school and university. At Oxford, through the Movement of 1833, the age of the early Fathers had for the first time been made, to a wide circle of English people, a matter of real and living moment. At Winchester (a historian may be pardoned for pointing out that Winchester claims at the present moment, out of the Oxford historical chairs, the Camden and Wykeham professors of Ancient History and the Chichele professor of Modern History, besides Ashmole's keeper of the archaeological collections) we learnt from Fearon what it was to be an enthusiast for history, and we learnt from Ridding that rules of grammar are meaningless till you have got back to the principles which lie behind the rules ; just so the facts of history do not acquire their real meaning till they are placed in right relation to the developments which underlie and connect them. But over and above these general influences I seem able to put my finger on three particular impulses due to books and their writers, and I should like to put my obligations on record. To the stories of John Mason Neale, some of which must have come into my hands when I was twelve or thirteen, I think that I owed my first introduction to what has become the study of my life. Nowadays Neale's fame rests on his superb translations of Greek and Latin hymns, such as 4 Jerusalem the golden ' and l All glory, laud, and honour '. But the current of Neale's activity ran in many channels, and his merits as a story-teller of history have never, to my mind, been adequately recognised. He died under fifty; his life had been largely occupied in practical work, and was spent in Sussex far away from great libraries. He had neither time nor opportunity for research, as we now under- stand the word, and no doubt his critical judgement was often at fault. Nevertheless the little books which he poured forth, one after another, containing stories of saints and martyrs and deeds of Christian heroism from the first century PREFACE xi to the nineteenth, seem to me to bear an unmistakable impress of historical genius. He had read widely and well ; the times, the scenes, were alive to him, and live in his pages. Victories of the Saints was my earliest favourite ; the Farm of Aptonga was a later acquaintance. Neale's books I only knew just as any other reader might know them ; the first book in which I felt the special and personal interest that comes from hearing about it while it is still being written was archbishop Benson's St. Cyprian. Martin Benson, 6 /uaKapirrjy, and I became friends soon after he came to Winchester in 1874 ; among other common interests we shared an interest in early Church history I remember how on Sunday afternoons later on we used to turn over, in the School Library, the pages of Mason's Persecution of Diocletian, with special attention to the headlines and one of his first confidences to me was that his father, at that time chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, had been engaged for years upon a magnum opus which was almost completed (such at least is my recollection) and needed only some finishing touches and revision before publication. Those finishing touches were to take more than twenty years, and the book did not appear till after all the papers that make up this volume were written. But, published or unpublished, I had received two distinct impressions about it, an impression of the writer, that here was someone, with whom I might hope to come into 'contact myself, actually at work on a big book, and an impression of the subject, that St. Cyprian really was an interesting and fascinating person, about whom you might have quite a great deal to say. To the strength of that impression is perhaps ultimately due the fourth of the following papers ; and one or two friends have been kind enough to commend that paper as conveying a similar impression in turn to them. It was as one of Martin Benson's godfathers that Lightfoot's name was, I think, first familiar to me, and it never lost that first friendly sound. His commentaries on the Epistles I learnt to know at school ; but the book which to me really mattered came out about the time I took my degree. I don't think I ever looked forward to the appearance of any book xii PREFACE with quite the same feverish expectation as to Lightfoot's Ignatius. Of hardly any great scholar could it be said with so much truth as of Lightfoot, that down to the very end of his life his work showed progressive development. The com- mentary on Colossians, as it is the latest, so it is, I think, the best, of the Pauline commentaries ; the three volumes of the Ignatius and Poly carp (1883) far outdistance all his earlier achievements ; and in my own judgement the two posthumous volumes on Clement of Rome (1890) mark an advance even on the Ignatius. These five volumes on the Apostolic Fathers form together a massive combination of historical, exegetical, and critical material, which stands alone without possible rival, save maybe the Liber Pontificalis of Mgr. Duchesne, in the annals of modern patristic scholarship. And Lightfoot's style had the supreme merit of being lucid and straightforward, in a circle where lucidity was not always attained, perhaps not always aimed at. I never met him, never (so far as I know) saw him, and one cannot even scrape acquaintance with him at second-hand, seeing that, unlike the rest of the great Cambridge group I suppose because, unlike them, he left no family behind him he has not found his biographer. What I owe to him will partly show itself in the following pages : it would have been expressed more directly if the papers reprinted had included, as had been at first intended, an essay on ' Bishop Lightfoot on the New Testament in the Second Century '. But I was advised, and I think rightly, that the controversy evoked by the book called Supernatural Religion was in this twentieth century too long out of date to be worth recalling. I have to thank the editors of the Church, Quarterly Review and the Classical Review for their consent to republication, and my friends, Dr. Sanday, the Rev. H. E. Salter, and the Rev. H. N. Bate, for advice and assistance in dealing with the proofs. The index I owe to Miss Dorothy Poole. C. H. TURNER. Whitsuntide, 1912. I THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE DIDACHE (Chiirch Quarterly Review. April 1887.) 1. Die Lehre der zwolf Apostel ; nebst Untersuchungen zur dltesten Geschichte der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts. Von ADOLF HARNACK. (Leipzig, 1 884.) (Forming parts i and 2 of vol. ii of Gebhardt and Har- nack's Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschickfe der altchristlichen Liter atur.) 2. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, with illustrations from the Talmud. Two lectures on an ancient Church manual discovered at Constantinople, given at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. By C. TAYLOR, D.D., Master of St. John's College. (Cambridge, 1 886.) 3. Non- Canonical Books. A lecture supplementary to A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament. By GEORGE SALMON, D.D., F.R.S., Regius Professor of Divinity, Dublin. (London, 1886.) [This lecture is incorporated in the later editions of Dr. Salmon's Introduction^ THE most acute critic and the more original his powers the more certain the inference is not able wholly and at once to free himself from the distortion of vision produced by the glamour of a new discovery ; the whole foreground is occu- pied by it at the moment, and hasty conclusions as to its importance are apt to precede exhaustive inquiry into its real worth. For a whole generation after Cureton's discovery of the short Syriac Ignatius a very exaggerated conception of its value prevailed, which has been only gradually correcting 2 ' THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY itself by 'the lapse of time. Quite similarly the publication by archbishop Bryennios in 1 883 of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles^ an undoubted fragment of primitive Christianity, has been accompanied in many quarters by a disposition to see in it the only clue to the solution of all problems that have baffled investigators in the history of the development of Church organization. None of the numerous editors has succumbed more completely to this temptation than Professor Harnack, whose book must certainly have suffered from the haste with which it followed Bryennios' editio princeps, for the one was published late in 1 883 and the other followed in 1884. It is marvellous how any man can have put together such copious notes, and still more such elaborate prolegomena, in so short a space of time probably few men but Harnack could have done it at all ; and it is therefore no matter of surprise that the views he boldly enunciated need modification almost day by day, as continued research and maturer judgement formulate their results. The editor, in fact, seemed to believe, although he placed the l Teaching ' at so late a date as from 135 to 165 A.D. (mainly on the strength of its supposed relation to Barnabas and Hennas), 2 that it preserves the only trustworthy picture of the early Christian ministry outside the 1 The manuscript, whose discovery at Constantinople will permanently enshrine the name of the archbishop among those of the greatest modern benefactors of the study of ecclesiastical history, contained also the Biblical Synopsis attributed to Chrysostom, the Epistle of Barnabas, the two Epistles of Clement, and the interpolated Ignatian Epistles. The Epistles of Clement were published by Bryennios in 1875 [see for these last p. 237 infra}. The 7^eaching is divided by the editors into sixteen chapters, of which ch. i-v deal with the Teachings of the Two Ways of Life and Death ; ch. vi with Meats ; ch. vii with Baptism ; ch. viii with Fasting and Prayer ; ch. ix, x with Thanksgiving or Eucharist ; ch. xi-xiii with Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers, and the relation of the community to them and to other visitors ; ch. xiv with the weekly Eucharist ; ch. xv with Bishops and Deacons ; ch. xvi with the Second Coming. 3 It is fair to note here that in a later pronouncement of Harnack's on the * Teaching ', which followed his larger work at an interval of some two years, entitled Die Apostellehre : (Leipzig, 1886), his views are so far modified as (l) to admit a date 120-150, rather that 135-165; (2) to accept the common Jewish original of Barnabas and the ' Teaching ' (see below). But we have preferred to confine ourselves in the text to the more elaborate work, in which alone he applies his results to the history of the Christian ministry, and produces a consistent theory. AND THE DIDACHE 3 First Epistle to the Corinthians and the { Shepherd ' of Hermas. Now, since the former cannot be many years later than the middle of the first century, and Harnack prefers for the latter a date about 140, there is an interval of eighty or ninety years, the whole of the available literature of which including the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, the Acts, the Epistle of Clement, the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp is passed over in comparative silence in the interests of a document like the 4 Teaching ', maintained here to be of later date than any of them. Yet of course even those who deny the actual genuineness of one or other of these works must accept them as valid witnesses for their own time. Certainly it may often happen that of any two documents the later represents the earlier state of things, and we believe it to be more or less true of the l Teaching ' compared with some of the rest of our authorities ; but so complete an inversion of chronological relations as Harnack 's is an impossibility. Either the date must be thrown many decades back, or the deference paid to the evidence must be less unconditional. We shall try to show reasons for accepting not only one but both of these alternatives. To begin with the external relations of the * Teaching ', it was significant enough that Harnack himself admitted that what in Barnabas are a mere confused medley of disjointed precepts (ch. xix, xx) become in the ' Teaching ' (ch. i-v) an ordered and consistent code of morality. Nor is the pre- sumption thus raised at all rebutted by a comparison of indi- vidual passages. We will only call attention to one parallel, which has always seemed to us decisive in itself: Didache\v 10, n. * Thou shalt not Barnabas xix 7. 'Thou shalt be rebuke thy slave or handmaiden, subject to masters as represent- that hope on the same God, in ing God in reverence and fear, thy bitterness . . . but ye, slaves, Thou shalt not rebuke thy slave shall be subject to your masters or handmaiden in bitterness, that as representing God in reve- hope on the same God . . .' rence and fear.' That the individual Christian who is the subject of exhorta- tion in the 'Teaching ' should be reminded of his duties towards B s 4 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY his slaves, and that then by an easy transition the writer should turn to the slaves and remind them of their duty to their masters, is natural enough. It is not natural that Barnabas should assume his individual hearer to be in the first sentence a slave and in the next a master ; nor that, while as a slave his masters are spoken of in the plural, as a master his slaves are spoken of in the singular. It is not natural, but it is explicable when once we assume the ( Teaching ' as the basis. Barnabas has simply inverted the sentences and omitted the change of subject. Yet we must not too hastily conclude that, because the * Teaching ' is certainly not copying Barnabas, the converse is therefore the case, and Barnabas must be drawing directly from the 4 Teaching '. It is still possible that both of them uti- lised a common source. If Barnabas incorporates the greater part of the first five chapters of the * Teaching ' (the manual of the Two Ways), what he leaves is as noteworthy as what he takes. Part of ch. i ( 3-5) is the only large section of these chapters which can be called definitely Christian, being de- pendent for the most part on the Gospel narrative of the Sermon on the Mount ; and Barnabas has nothing correspond- ing to it. Similarly where the ' Teaching * (iii 7) has attached to the * Be meek ' the Gospel beatitude * for the meek shall inherit the earth ', Barnabas (xix 4) has the command without the promise. 1 And if the one writes (Didache iv 14), 'In church thou shalt confess thy transgressions, and shalt not come to thy prayer in an evil conscience,' the other (Barn. xix 1 2) has simply, * Thou shalt confess thy sins and shalt not come to prayer in an evil conscience,' omitting ' in church ', and instead of v thy prayer ' having ' prayer ' (proseucha, a Jewish prayer-meeting, Acts xvi 13, Juvenal iii 296). It is incredible that a Christian author should have carefully set himself to exclude just what was Christian, and the deduction is natural that the Two Ways in the form from which Barnabas drew contained no Christian elements and was, in other words, 1 [I am not sure that the phrase in the Didactic, ta-di e npavs, Vt 01 Trpacls K\r}povofj.r) yfjv, may not come rather from Ps. xxxvi (xxxvii) II ot Se irpaels K\rjpovo^a-ova-iv yfjv, than from Matt, v 5.] AND THE DIDACHE 5 a purely Jewish compilation ; l and we ought to be able tentatively to restore this common nucleus by taking as our basis the first five chapters of the 'Teaching ' (which, as we have seen, preserve a more original arrangement than Barnabas) and eliminating what is only Christian. The hypothesis is confirmed by an examination of the framework which results. The Golden Rule is quoted in its negative form, and the exegesis consists, as in the Decalogue, almost entirely of pro- hibitions. The need felt of a morality more advanced than that of the Ten Commandments in their literal interpretation is compensated, not by the full evangelical doctrine, but by the Jewish expedient of * a fence to the law ' ; the third chapter, 4 Flee from evil and all that is like unto it,' being an attempt, sometimes rather artificial, to range the l little sins ' under the head of the grosser vices to which they * lead '. Are we, then, to confine the influence of a Jewish original to the first section of the ' Teaching ', or can it be traced under- lying any of the rest of the treatise ? It is true that, with one exception, Barnabas has nothing in common with the later chapters ; but any presumption thus raised is more than counterbalanced by the internal evidence afforded by the * Teaching ' itself. That the whole is saturated with Jewish modes of thought is clear, and Dr. Salmon, following up Dr. Taylor's lead, suggests that, besides the Two Ways, the next section also (ch. vi-x), treating of Meats, Baptism, Fasting, Prayer, and Eucharistia or Thanksgiving, is based on the same Jewish model. Putting the last for a moment aside, the subjects are those which we should expect to be treated in a handbook for the use of proselytes, such as our supposed 1 This, the most weighty contribution yet made to the criticism of the * Teaching', was first worked out in Dr. Taylor's Lectures, which contain besides an immense amount of valuable illustration of the whole book from Jewish sources. What, then, was the motive which led to the rather incongruous inser- tion in the ' Teaching ' of the Christian section (i 3-5), with its exhortations to forgiveness of enemies ? Besides the general feeling that the Jewish standard of the Two Ways did not fully satisfy the claims of Christianity, a comparison with St. Matthew will explain why this special point was chosen ; for the injunction of forgiveness in that Gospel is our Lord's comment on the defective morality which proclaimed, * Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy.' Didache \ 2 ; Matt, v 43. 6 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY original may have been. Meats offered to idols would be rigorously forbidden. Baptism was the normal method of initiation. Prayer and fasting (almsgiving had been already spoken of in chap, iv) would be the special duties inculcated. Of course the hand of the editor is more prominently visible here than in the earlier chapters. Christian baptism must be administered with the Gospel formula. Christian prayer must start from the Lord's Prayer. But the distinctions between running and still, or cold and warm, water, the fasts twice a week, the prayers three times a day, these are all of Jewish origin. And if we read, ' But let your fasts not be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second day of the week and on the fifth, but do ye fast the fourth day and the pre- paration [i.e. Wednesday and Friday], neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded ' (then comes the Lord's Prayer) ; the turn of the sentence may suggest that the fasts and prayers of the * hypocrites ' or Pharisees were what the writer had before him in his model. The phenomena of the 4 eucharistic ' chapters are not quite so simple. But if we consider that the Sacrament has its own proper mention in connexion with the Sunday services in ch. xiv where, though the same verb evyapHrrtto 4 to give thanks ' is used, it is defined further as ' Breaking of Bread * and 4 Sacrifice 'it seems preferable to suppose that we have here substantially Jewish benedictions of meals, intended pos- sibly by the editor for use at the Agape ; the only difficulty that we can see in the way of this view is the use of the term d^xapio-Tia, and that does not seem to have acquired an exclusively technical meaning from the first. By omitting, then, the manifestly Christian interpolations the insertion 1 through Jesus Christ ' in each sentence, and the two prayers for the gathering of the Church we ought to approach to the original. ' [First concerning the cup.] We thank Thee, O our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant which Thou hast made known unto us. Thine be the glory for ever. * [And concerning the broken bread.] We thank Thee, O our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou hast made known unto us. Thine be the glory for ever. AND THE DIDACHE 7 < [And after being filled.] We thank Thee, Holy Father, for Thy holy Name which Thou hast made to dwell in our hearts, and for the know- ledge and faith and immortality which Thou hast made known unto us. Thine be the glory for ever. ' Thou, Lord Almighty, hast created all things for Thy name's sake, and hast given food and drink to men for enjoyment, that they may thank Thee ; and to us Thou hast given spiritual food and drink and life eternal. Before all things we thank Thee that Thine is the power. Thine be the glory for ever.' l Dr. Salmon doubts whether the Jewish basis extends beyond this point : but, not to speak of the presumption that if two-thirds of a book has one source the last third will have the same, there is the fact that Barnabas has a sentence in common with the last chapter ; and it is surely more likely that he should have copied one more sentence from the original of both, than that the 4 Teaching' should, as Dr. Salmon is obliged to hold, have known Barnabas, have quoted him, and yet have quoted him only once. No doubt these final chapters are very much more altered and amplified than the earlier. Yet we know that the Jews had * apostles ', or mes- sengers of the chief priests, and that among their functions was the collection of tribute money for Jerusalem ; 2 and if the original contained instructions about these officers, this would, as Dr. Salmon himself acutely suggests, account for the reason assigned in our ' Teaching ' for the payment of the 1 One or two points may be noted in the above, which does not pretend to be more than approximate, being attained merely by eliminations where elimination was possible without alteration : (1) The doxology in the four prayers retained is in each case 'Thine be the glory for ever ' ; in the two Christian prayers eliminated, as in the Lord's Prayer, it is ' Thine be the power and the glory for ever'. (2) May not the * holy vine of David ' simply be ' the cup of salvation ' of Ps. cxv 4 [cxvi 13] (see the Rabbinical passage adduced in illustration by Dr. Taylor, p. 129), just as corresponding thanks are offered in the next prayer but one for ' the name of the Lord ' which follows in the second half of the same verse in the Psalms? (3) The first prayer in its Christian form (' David Thy servant ', 'Jesus Thy servant ') finds an interesting parallel in the earliest recorded Christian prayer, Acts iv 25-30. (4) For the Christian-sounding phrase ' spiritual food and drink ' Sabatier, quite independently, assigns a Jewish origin. 2 See Lightfoot's Galatians^ * The name and office of an Apostle. 1 , 8 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY firstfruits to the prophets, 4 for they are your high priests.' Again, it is not likely that any Jewish manual would be wholly devoid of instructions about the Sabbath. Here too, if the Sunday has replaced the Sabbath in ch. xiv, the curious phrase * the Lord's day of the Lord * is only the Christian substitute for the Jewish * Sabbath of the Lord '. And, finally, in an age when Jewish thought was so largely eschatological, a description of the Last Things would have formed a not unfitting close ; and this is introduced (xvi 2) by an appeal to 4 more frequent assembling together ' 1 (it is this which is common also to Barnabas, iv 10), which, if the greater part of ch. xiv-xv is Christian, perhaps connected itself in the original immediately with the command to ' assemble together ' on the Sabbath. Parts of the final chapter are certainly additions, such as the last clause of all ; but parts are also apparently Jewish. 2 Of course if we are right in our contention that the 4 Teach- ing' is a rechauffe of a purely Jewish manual, two results follow. In the first place, the value of the 4 Teaching ' is so far diminished that not much stress can be laid on its negative evidence ; it would naturally treat only of such subjects as were contained in (or at least suggested by) its original, so as to present to the convert a form as nearly as possible resem- bling that which had been familiar to the proselyte. The omissions are thus explicable which have been noticed in 1 Ignatius has a phrase rather like the form in the ' Teaching ' : Didache nvKvSis , cf. arroaroXos) implies delegation of authority. See Westcott on John xx 21. * Acts ii 42, 43: v 12-15: vi 3-6: viii 14-19: x 44-48: xi 15-18: xiv 23 : xix 5, 6. AND THE DID AC HE 13 Judas and Silas (Acts xv 22, 27), who were 4 chosen ' out of the company at Jerusalem and were formally ' sent ' as dele- gates with authority (cnrfa-raXKa^v) to the daughter Church. 2. That these holders of * office ' in the Church constituted a 'hierarchy* from the earliest times in other words, that there existed gradations of order and ministry, and a con- trast between the ministries thus graded and the rest is a conclusion which appears to be established by the evidence of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. ' God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, next miracles', and so on (i Cor. xii 2.8). Now if this verse had run, ' God hath placed some in the Church, first bishops, secondarily priests, thirdly deacons, next readers/ and so on, its hierarchical character would scarcely have been denied ; it does not disappear because the offices mentioned are not the same as those of a later period of the Church. We have here in fact both a gradation of offices apostles, prophets, and teachers marked carefully by the ordinal adverbs, and also a number of lesser functions grouped more or less together. Harnack also (p. 99 n.) takes this verse to prove that these three orders, apostles, prophets, and teachers, and these only the clergy, so to speak, of that primitive age held definite rank in the Church. And the list of the Corinthian Epistle is only the earliest and most original of a series of similar catalogues of offices in the Church of the first and second centuries, which differ indeed, according to the stage of development which they represent, in the actual order and names of the offices denoted, but agree in the principle, on which we are now insisting, of an ordered 4 hierarchy '. 3. Those differences, however, can all be reduced to varia- tions of one main phenomenon, the substitution of the local for the general ministry. The distinction between apostles, 1 prophets, and teachers on the one hand, and bishops or epi- 1 When we speak of apostles and prophets, &c., the word ' apostles ' must be understood in the wider sense (not limited to the Twelve), which, although its extent has been greatly exaggerated by some modern writers, has undoubtedly a basis in fact. 14 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY scopi, presbyters, and deacons on the other, ought now to be familiar to every student of early Church history the former the only ministry of the very earliest times, the latter holding its ground exclusively in the end. It is the change from the one to the other which is the real problem of primitive Church organization ; and yet although the details cannot be called other than obscure, the principle which underlies them is comparatively simple. Admittedly the one was the mis- sionary, the other the stationary, organization of the Church ; and the alteration in their relative position is at least partially explained when we remind ourselves of the contrast between the year 50 and the year 1 50 after Christ. In A. D. 50 the Christian Church was a society which had taken firm root in a single province of the Roman Empire. Outside Palestine Antioch was probably the only city of importance with a fully organized community. True, the proselytizing activity of individuals was in play already, and had perhaps by this time dotted the eastern Mediterranean with isolated half- Jewish communities, in more or less close connexion with the Church at home. Three or four years at the most had elapsed since the commencement of St. Paul's first missionary journey. Even on that occasion he had only reached a fractional dis- tance into the heart of Asia Minor ; and more important still than the local circumscription of the Church was the fact that till that memorable journey Christianity had directed its preaching to Jews and Hellenists alone. It was only at this moment that the world- wide, all-embracing commission of the Apostles was adequately realised ; and as the full meaning of that stupendous task dawned upon the consciousness of the infant Church, need we wonder that then, and for a good while after, the missionary equipment seemed the one thing needful ? But as city after city was reached and held as an out- post in the name of Christ ; as the Gospel penetrated over the whole East and at least the Greek-speaking portions of the West ; as not only at Jerusalem and Antioch, but at countless cities all over the Roman world, stable communities developed, centres in their turn from which, besides the populace of the towns, the surrounding districts might be evangelized ; was it AND THE DIDACHE 15 not equally inevitable that the organization of the great Churches themselves the missionaries of their provinces, and even more than that, the safeguards of Catholic unity, the channels of Apostolic tradition, in a word, the representatives of Christianity should be to the Christians of the second half of the second century the type, and the only type, of the Christian ministry ? 4. So much is fairly clear. But the crucial question still remains : When did the transition begin to take place ? When may it be said to have been accomplished ? Was it foreseen from the first, and was its working presided over by the Apostles themselves ? The evidence is of two kinds positive traces of the existence and importance of the local ministry, and the negative argument drawn from the gradual cessation, and at length the total disappearance, of allusions to the Apostles and Prophets ; and both so far coincide that it is not too much to say that they enable us with some measure of confidence to attribute the commencement of the change to Apostolic authority. The Apostles and Prophets meet us in the earliest age as the two supreme orders of the Christian ministry. Together with the Teachers they form the great triad of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. On their foun- dation alone is the Church, according to the Ephesian Epistle (ii 20), builtjesus Christ himself joined with them as the chief Corner-stone. Yet in no later passage of the primitive litera- ture of the Church (with the exception of the Apocalypse 1 and of that document whose date is to be fixed by our present inquiry) are these two orders mentioned together even as the highest only in a series of gradations. Separate the two, and still the mention of either as a factor in the Christian hierarchy can scarcely be brought down later. The Prophets may, indeed, be traced as underlying the * prophecies' which accom- pany ordination in the Pastoral Epistles. 2 The Apostles have been thought to survive still in the * Shepherd ' of Hermas. 1 Apoc. xviii 20 ' Ye saints and ye apostles and ye prophets '. But the characteristic phrase of this book is rather * the saints and prophets ', Apoc. xi 1 8, xvi 6, xviii 24, cf. xxii 9 : and the only other mention of apostles refers to the Twelve, xxi 14 * the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb '. 2 I Tim. i 1 8, iv 14. i6 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY Yet the total absence in that book of the Prophets, except as individuals standing in no authoritative position of supremacy, but rather wholly apart from the enumeration of the ministry, is against any such interpretation, since the prophetic order admittedly survived the apostolic ; and while there is nothing to show that the Apostles of Hermas are a still existent body, there is one allusion l which might suggest even a limitation to the Twelve. At any rate after the beginning of the second century the two orders disappear. 2 Neither is any longer spoken of as the living apex of the Christian society. Nay, more : no individual apostle can be named ; and such prophets as we do meet with are individuals, not members of an order, and had not apparently as prophets inherited any powers of ruling in the Church. To the great writers of the sub-Apostolic times to Clement, to Ignatius, to Polycarp, to Justin Martyr, and perhaps also to Hermas ' the Apostles ' mean the Twelve. Similarly, ' the Prophets ' as a body are to the writers of the second century the prophets of the Old Testament. They are contrasted in Theophilus of Antioch with the Gospels ; in the Muratorian canon, by Justin Martyr, and by Polycarp, with the Apostles; in Ignatius with the Gospel, with the Apostles, and with the Church. In Hege- sippus, in the Epistle to Diognetus, in Clement, the same is the only use. It is no longer of * the (Christian) Prophets * but only of possession of the ' prophetic charisma ' that we still hear. Justin Martyr knows of such men and women ; 3 yet after the middle of the century the existence even of individuals who were simply prophets is at best a precarious supposition. The polemic of the Church against Montanism seems to have proceeded more or less on the tacit assumption of their extinc- tion ; and at any rate the writer of Eus. v 1 7, in enumerating 1 Siwtil. ix 17 TO. opr) ravra TO. ScoSe/Ka Sa>5eKa (pv^ai tlv aTrooroXcai'. 2 [When this article was written, I followed, in the matter of the date of Hermas, those scholars who, like Dr. Salmon, placed him quite at the beginning of the second century. I should now definitely attach myself to the supporters of the later date, c. 140-145 : but the later we place him, the more impossible is it to accept Dr. Harnack's interpretation of his evidence. I greatly hope some day to recur to this question.] 3 Dial, cum Try phone 82, 88. AND THE DIDACHE 17 a list of Church prophets, records among second- century names (besides certain prophetesses) the name of one prophet only, Quadratus, himself perhaps identical with the bishop of Athens. The industry even of Eusebius, in a passage so much earlier in his work (iii 37) that it seems hardly likely to depend on this chapter, has not availed to mention among prophets ' of that time ' the time of the immediate disciples of the Apostles, of Clement and Ignatius a single other name. Certainly Quadratus must have been a younger contemporary of these Fathers ; but it is equally clear that he was anterior to the Montanist prophetesses, who claimed to continue the succession from him (Eus. v 17), and we arrive again in this way at about the same limit of 150 A.D. for the cessation of prophets in the Church. It is true that this very author, as quoted by Eusebius, declares that the prophetic charisma must be permanent 4 in the whole Church ' ; but his argument would imperatively have called for the mention of the indi- viduals preserving the succession, if such he had meant, and his silence here, as well as the special phrase quoted, seems to show that he merges the charisma in the Church. 1 Harnack produces (p. 123) fourteen references to prove the importance of prophets in the primitive Church. Of these several relate to sects and heresies, while others do not take us beyond the beginning of the second century ; two more, Justin and the an ti- Montanist writer in Eusebius, we have dealt with ; two more only, Celsus and Lucian, are of sufficient interest to claim a word. Well, Celsus stated that he had heard prophets ; but, since we do not know when he wrote (Keim's date is 177), still less when he heard them or, lastly, whether the same solution as in Lucian's case may not be the true one his evidence does not go for much. Let us turn, then, to Lucian. In that author's Peregrinus, the hero who gives his name to the story, on falling in with the Christians, ' soon proved them to be mere beginners, being Tfpo(f)T)Tr)s Kal Oiacrdpyrjs KO.L (riwaycoyevs, and what not, all in his own person.' Now Harnack admits that by this time Prophets 1 See below, p. 23. 1 8 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY had long ago died out in the Church of Asia Minor ; he admits too in the fullest degree in direct opposition to Dr. Hatch l that Montanus and his ' new prophecy ' represented innova- tion rather than reaction ; and yet he adduces Lucian's experiences to correct the evidence of the Church writers on the characteristics of the true Prophet. But if there were none in Asia and there is no evidence of their later survival elsewhere how should Lucian, who is at least as late as Montanus, know more about it than the Church writers, his contemporaries ? Remembering, then, that in other points Lucian has drawn from individual cases in his portraiture of the impostor witness his employment of the Ignatian letters may we not turn the tables on Harnack and see here, not a check on the anti-Montanist argument, but a trait drawn from the life of Montanus himself; for who could be more truly described as * prophet and thiasarch ' 2 than the Phrygian ecstatic ? And if we are told l they held him for God ', it is possible, no doubt, with Harnack, to compare the command of the Teaching, * Thou shalt honour thy minister as the Lord ' ; but another parallel would be Montanus' utterance in his trances, * I am come not an angel or ambassador, but God the Father.' Even the rapacity with which Peregrinus preyed on the Christians * large supplies came in to him from them by reason of his bonds, and he made this no small source of revenue ' ; l the Christians were an ample income to him ' tallies exactly with the specific charges brought by Apollonius (Eus. H. E. v 1 8) against the Montanist leaders. Montanus is * the fellow who has set up tax-collectors, who manages his receipt of gain under the name of "offerings ", who lavishes salaries on the preachers of his Word '. ' Their so-called prophets and martyrs amass gain little by little, not only from the rich, but even from the poor and orphans and widows.' Indeed, the more passages of both we could quote the greater would seem the resemblance. Pseudo -prophets and pseudo- 1 Hatch, B. L. p. 122. * a-waywyevs is more difficult. We need not, of course, press every word in Lucian's account as referring to Montanus ; but is there perhaps a clue to the meaning in Apollonius' phrase, that Montanus called Pepuza and Tymium ' Jerusalem ', roi/s iravra\66fv eK.fl vwuyayflv e AND THE DIDACHE 19 martyrs are the two characters Apollonius delineates in Montanism, and both coincide strangely in the person of Lucian's Peregrinus. The evidence of time and place sup- ports the presumptive connexion, for the genuine Peregrinus immolated himself at Olympia in 1 65, and Lucian wrote his Life soon after, but not before he had revisited Asia Minor. This was not only the locality, but also apparently just the period most favourable to our hypothesis, for Montanus had earned by this time a flourishing reputation, while the definite condemnation which severed him outwardly from the main body of Christians did not perhaps take place till about 1 72.* We venture, therefore, to reiterate our original conclusion; neither Lucian's nor any other evidence shows that the Church was familiar even with individual prophets (who were prophets only) after the middle of the second century. But parallel to the gradual process by which the Apostles and the Prophets as living entities sink first into insignificance and then into oblivion is a similar but converse phenomenon. It would not be natural to find that there should be one period when the Church possessed a hierarchy of one set of offices, and a second period when others were in their places, and an interval in between during which she was not officered at all. And in fact, even before the first moment at which the original orders begin to recede into the background, long ere the apostolic age had closed, the importance of the local ministry of bishops and presbyters commences to assert itself; and it was only as these gained prominence year by year and could assume the unfettered leadership of the Christian societies that the elder offices could silently and unnoticed die away. In the protracted enumeration of the Corinthian Epistle Episcopi and Presbyters hold no place at all. But the Epistle to the Philippians is addressed to the church there 4 with Episcopi and Deacons ', and in the series of Eph. iv n, 1 This is the date given by Eusebius in his Chronicle. In 177 the Roman church was still considering what reception to give to the Montanists: and the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne intervene with the pope, by means of Irenaeus, in favour of a sympathetic treatment. The matter, that is to say, had not yet been finally decided in the West. C 2 20 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY so closely parallel in form to the Corinthian list, the local ministry have attained equality, with something- even of superiority, in relation at least to the lowest rank of the earlier triad : * He hath given some Apostles, some Prophets, some Evangelists, some Pastors 1 and Teachers.' Already long before that the church of Jerusalem had been governed by St. James and the Presbyters under the eyes of the Apostles themselves. 2 In the Apocalypse the Presbyters or Elders are the representatives before the Throne, not only of the Old but of the New Covenant. 3 St. Peter exhorts the presbyters as 1 their fellow -presbyter '. St. John (if it be St. John) writes simply as 4 the Presbyter '. Can there be any longer a doubt as to the growing prominence of the local ministry, at least in the organized districts of the Church, under the immediate sanction of the Apostles themselves ? Ample confirmation of this view may be derived from the sub-Apostolic age. Hermas at Rome, in his full enumeration of the ministry 4 , writes of 4 the Apostles and Bishops and Teachers and Deacons '. The Prophets have disappeared ; the Apostles are most probably the Twelve ; the Teachers, whom we have already seen in the Ephesian Epistle combined with the Pastors, are now a subordinate rank to the eTrto-KOTroi. Ignatius at Antioch, the church which next to Jerusalem must have soonest stereotyped its organization, knows of no other authority in the churches but the Bishop, the Bishop with his Presbytery, or the Bishop, Presbyters, and Deacons. 4 Apart from these is not even the name of a church,' 5 so com- pletely are the older orders absent from the range of his ideas. But the most significant fact of all is that almost every single great leader of the Church in the second century, every surviving depositary of the Apostolic tradition of the first ages, is definitely linked by the episcopal title to the local ministry in the complete and final stage of its development. 1 That the ' pastor ' or shepherd is equivalent to episcopos or presbyter is not denied ; it is evident, both from the meaning of the word and from passages like Acts xx 28, I Peter v 2. [See, however, p. 29, n. 2] 2 Acts xi 30; xv 2, 4, 6, 13 (19), 22, 23; xvi 4; and especially xxi 18 ff. 8 Apoc. iv 4, 10 ; v 8 ; xi 16 ; xix 4. 4 Vis. iii 5. 5 ad Trail. 3. AND THE DIDACHE 21 It is true that Dr. Hatch (B. L. p. 88, note) traverses this by declaring ' The earliest use of the word [bishop] with a definite reference to an individual is the inscription of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp, 1 but the absence of the definite article and the inscription of Polycarp's own letter' are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the word was already specially appropriated to the head of the community. The next earliest use of the word is probably also in reference to Polycarp in the letter of Polycrates to Victor, ap. Euseb. H. E. v 24.' Take the letter of Polycrates. Dr. Hatch has omitted to state that not only Polycarp, but Thraseas of Eumenia and Sagaris of Laodicea, and by implication Melito of Sardis, are there denominated bishops. Take, at the other end, the Ignatian Epistles. He has again overlooked the fact that Onesimus of Ephesus, Damas of Magnesia, Polybius of Tralles, besides the writer himself, share the title of bishop with Polycarp. 3 And as for the intermediate eighty years (for the letter of Poly- crates is not earlier than 195), during which Dr. Hatch has found no instances at all, a cursory reference to Eusebius supplies us with several. The abstract noun ' episcopate ' and the verb ' to be bishop ' are used with ' definite references to individuals,' and in the sense of mpnarchical episcopacy, by Hegesippus of Primus of Corinth, by the letter of the Gallic Churches of Pothinus of Lyons, and by Irenaeus of Linus, Clement, and Eleutherus, of Rome. The actual title of bishop is used by Hegesippus of Symeon of Jerusalem, by the church of Smyrna of Polycarp, by Dionysius of Corinth of Soter of Rome, by Irenaeus of Hyginus of Rome and of Polycarp, and by the anti-Montanist author of oticus of Comana and Julian 1 ' Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, to Polycarp, bishop of [the] Church of [the] Smyrneans.' 2 * Polycarp and the presbyters with him.' 3 Eph. I ; Magn. 2 ; Trail. I ; Rom.- 2. As for tfee argument that the article is omitted, it must suffice to say (i) that by parity of reasoning the whole address ought to be translated * to Polycarp, a bishop of a church of Smyrneans, to whom rather a God (and) a Father is bishop'; (2) that the article (' the bishop ') is used twice in chap. 5, once at least in chap. 6 ; (3) that it is used of Damas, Polybius, and Ignatius in the references given above ; (4) that it is really not conceivable that Ignatius, who in eight passages (including Smyrn. 8, 12 and Polyc. 6) names together bishop, presbyters or presbytery, and deacons, does not mean the monarchical episcopate. 22 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY of Apamea. 1 These are from Eusebius alone, 2 and only from absolute quotations of second-century writers. Do we need any further witness to second -century usage ? 5. We have hitherto shown, first, that the substitution of a local for a missionary supremacy over the Christian com- munities was necessary in the nature of things, and then that as a matter of fact the development by which the earlier system sank into insignificance and the later rose into pro- minence was one which was not only practically complete by the year 1 50 A. D., but can be traced in germ nearly a hundred years before, was in full activity by the end of the first century, and was therefore, we may presume, sanctioned at least in principle by the Apostles themselves. Yet even under apostolic authority all this would be scarcely likely to have taken place with such rapidity, and still more with such absence of friction, had the process been an absolute reversal of one set of condi- tions in favour of another and wholly distinct organization, without the intervention of any intermediate stages which should more or less veil the significance of the revolution which was at work. But an absolute reversal was just what it was not. On the contrary, the evidence shows us that on both sides influences were in play contributing to bridge over the gulf of difference, and to render the transition easy from the one form to the other. The general ministry tends to localise itself; the local ministry tends to assume some of the characteristics of the general. In a word, the result was rather to merge than to replace. The tendency to localise in the case of the general ministry shows 'itself in the most archaic period. The Prophets and Teachers of the church of Antioch (Acts xiii i) seem a fairly settled body. It is only when set apart for the apostolate that Paul and Barnabas enter on a directly missionary life ; and even afterwards St. Paul l abode long time ' at Antioch, was eighteen months at Corinth, and three years at Ephesus. 1 The date of this writer, the latest in our list, seems to have been about 193, just earlier than Polycrates. 2 eiriaKo-rrfj and firia-Koirfvu, Eus. H. E. iv 22 ; v I ; v 6 : errioKOTros, iv 22 ; iv 1 5 ; iv 23 ; iv 1 1 ; iv 14 ; v 16. AND THE DIDACHE 23 But if these visits, although lengthy, were after all not per- manent, it was a different thing, in the nature of the case, when the Apostles reached old age. So St. Philip is definitely associated with Hierapolis and St. John with Ephesus. Indeed, if the earlier date and Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse were established, the connexion in the latter case could not have lasted less than thirty years. And just as on the one hand the earlier system thus abandoned its most patent dif- ferentiation, so on the other such of its functions and character- istics as were not part either of its wandering commission or of the extraordinary and temporary endowment of the Church's infancy, were not conceived of as lost simply because the orders to which they belonged seemed to have disappeared. Rather, the Apostolic and the Prophetic charisma were still asserted to be part and parcel for all time of the divine equip- ment of Christianity. l The Prophetic charisma must exist in the whole Church till the consummation of the Parousia,' writes the anti-Montanist in Eusebius H. E. v 17: here 1 the whole ' is opposed to the individual prophets of the Montanists, and it is perhaps implied that each community had its share of the Prophetic charisma in the person of those who, in the language of the Didache (xv i), 4 themselves also minister to you the ministry of the Prophets and Teachers,' the permanent local ministry of the ' bishops and deacons.' Similarly when Alexander the Phrygian is said in the letter of the Gallic Churches (Eus. v i) to have been in favour 4 by reason of his boldness in the Word, for he was not without a share of apostolic charisma ', it is not, especially in the light of the evidence we are coming to, an unlikely assumption if we believe that this denotes clerical office. 1 1 Either the term was itself technical enough to signify this, as is very possible ; or it is an intentional periphrasis (cf. Polycrates, p. 10 supra}, in which case we might compare the companion letter of the martyrs themselves to Eleutherus (Eus. v 4), where Irenaeus is named at first * brother and fellow ' and not presbyter, because, as they explain, church rank does not necessarily make a man righteous. It is impossible not to see here an indication of the same sort of spirit which in its maturity produced the conflict of the Carthaginian martyrs with Cyprian. If, indeed, Alexander was not really a priest at all, the phrase used of him would illustrate the other aspect of the temper which treated Irenaeus 24 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY For the general convergence which we have sought to establish between the two systems will be sensibly confirmed if we can show the same to be true between their respective parts. Concurrently with the process by which the more circumscribed organization was being forced to the front as residuary legatee of the general sovereignty in the Church, another process, which has been already indirectly brought before our notice, was accomplishing itself in the same sphere the evolution of the Episcopate. Once more it would be contrary to historical probabilities if the one phenomenon with its parallelisms of time and place should be altogether unconnected with the other. Once more we find in the facts full ratification of the presumption that the rise of one of the presbyteral body into a position of sole authority was simply a part of the great movement under which the two originally separate and contrasted hierarchies were coalescing ; the higher merging itself under the names of the lower, and the lower so far transformed by the higher that the principle of authority which was inherent in the latter became also characteristic of the former. It is true to say that the ministry of bishops and presbyters as a whole supplanted the ministry of Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers : but it is equally repre- sentative of the development to say that the supreme power of the first system, residing in the Apostles and Prophets, survives in a completed episcopacy as its representative, while the subordinate function of the Teachers is preserved in the subordinate office of the presbyters. In support of this con- ception of the episcopate, three lines of argument may be urged ; the first illustrating the intermediate links between the apostolate and the episcopate ; the second, the actual attribution of apostolic or prophetic l position to the bishops ; as a layman priestly functions, as it were, attributed to a martyr. Harnack no doubt exaggerates when he puts Martyrs and Confessors at the head of a series of charismata of their own, as a sort of rival organi- zation to the regular offices of the Church (p. 149) ; but we do find represented in them from time to time the same sort of opposition to ecclesiastical order as in the Montanists. If the Acts of Perpetua are not Montanist, they at least serve to show how much in common there was between the two tempers. 1 Two indications may be cited to illustrate the close cohesion of these AND THE DIDACHE 25 the third, the same in respect of the teaching position of the presbyters. This last, as the furthest removed from our ultimate aim, and yet the clearest in itself, may be disposed of first. It does not, indeed, directly concern us ; but analogy suggests that if the presbyters represent Teachers, the bishops take the place of Prophets and Apostles. There are of course a host of passages where so common a word as 4 teacher ' is used in a wholly general sense, just as we might use it ourselves. But wherever the use is technical or official, then with remarkable regularity we find it con- nected with the presbyters ; indeed, on no other supposition could we explain the third-century survival of this order, long after the cessation of mention of the other two, than by its natural resemblance to, and early identification with, a permanent office such as the presbyterate. The bishop might hold the position of Apostle and Prophet, but their office clearly only in a limited sense : there was no similar reason on the surface of things why the Teacher and presbyter should not absolutely combine. So the Teachers still meet us in Dionysius and Origen at Alexandria, in Cyprian and the Acts of Perpetua from Africa, and in Hippolytus of Rome : in every case in company with the presbyters. 4 The presbyters and teachers,' 1 say Dionysius and Hippolytus. In the Latin two orders at least after the first generation ; in the Teaching an Apostle who stays more than three days is a 'false Prophet ' ; and in Clement of Alexandria, Barnabas is sometimes an Apostle, sometimes a Prophet. 1 The force of the single Greek article, serving to combine the two classes under one head, must not be overlooked. With it, the twp nouns may indeed connote a difference of origin and history but not of present office ; and it is used in each instance, in Dionysius, in Hippolytus, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Dr. Hatch, whom we have found laying great stress on the absence of the article where it probably meant nothing, has here overlooked its presence when it means a great deal, quoting these three passages (p. 78 note) to prove the distinction of the offices. How more simply could the connexion have been expressed ? The omission of the conjunction, the Latin way out of the difficulty, would be intolerably harsh in Greek. Origen's Latin has ' sacerdotes et doctores ', where no doubt the Greek had the one article, and * sacerdotii gradum vel cathedram doctoris', where the use of vel shows that the two are not mutually exclusive. [* Sacerdotes * is presumably used because the translator, writing not earlier than the end of the fourth century, used ' sacerdos 'not in its proper sense of * bishop ' but in its later sense of ' presbyter '. Origen had doubtless written, with the other Greek authorities just enumerated, The references are, Dionys. ap. Eus. H. E. vii 24 ; Orig. 26 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY of Origen it is * priests and teachers ', or again ' the high degree of the priesthood or chair of the teacher'. In the African idiom of Cyprian and the Acts of martyrdom, it is 4 the presbyter-teachers '. Pass from the third century back to the first and we still find the same. In the Epistle to the Ephesians * the pastors and teachers ' are already one order ; in the first Epistle to Timothy ' they who toil in Word and Teaching' are at least the most prominent class among the presbyters. 1 And when Hermas writes, 'the Apostles and Bishops and Teachers and Deacons,' we have the choice of interpreting * bishops ' in its earlier sense as equivalent to presbyters, and then the case is parallel to those just quoted ; or, as we prefer, of taking 4 bishops ' strictly, when Teachers will be simply the substitute for the presbyters of the Ignatian series of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. That the bishops similarly were so far successors of Apostles and Prophets as to have inherited the supreme control of the churches which formerly vested in those two orders, is the only reasonable explanation of the origin of the episcopal office, once granted that that was developing itself in the lifetime of the last Apostles. That the bishops were also the special depositaries of apostolic tradition is implied in the stress laid by the second-century writers on the l apostolic ' sees, and in the care taken to trace back the lines of succession definitely to their apostolic origin. It is a commonplace with Irenaeus and his contemporaries ; but somewhat earlier still exactly the same principle is represented in Hegesippus, who made such a list at Rome, and also, as it seems, in other places, since he speaks of orthodoxy * in each " succession " and in each city \ 2 But that the bishops were really even more than this, and in some sense the inheritors and successors of the special offices of the Apostle and Prophet, is a con- clusion forcibly indicated by the relation which we have seen existing between the presbyters and Teachers, and is sup- ported by not a little actual evidence. The series of Hermas Horn, in Levit. vi, Horn, in Num. ii (de la Rue II 219 A, 2780) ; Cypr. ep. xxix; Acta Perpetuae xiii ; Hippol. ap. Epiphan. Haer. xlii 2. 1 Eph. iv ii ; i Tim. v 17. 2 ap. Eus. H. . iv 22. AND THE DIDACHE 27 is again instructive. As the three last members of it the Bishops, Teachers, and Deacons are the later triad, except for the retention of the Teachers in place of the presbyters, so the first three the Apostles, Bishops, and Teachers are the earlier triad, except that the Bishops occupy the position of the Prophets. In Ignatius, indeed, the prominent thought is a different one, being theological rather than historical, and the bishop holds the place of Christ, or more often of the Father ; but it is strange to think that any one should have found in this exaltation of the episcopate an argument to show that it was not conceived of as succeeding to the apostolate. Certainly that idea is overbalanced by the higher one ; yet it emerges even in Ignatius. If the bishops are to Christ as Christ to the Father, we remember that Christ so expressed his relation with the Apostles. If 'the messenger of the Master is to be received as himself, and the bishop therefore to be looked on as the Lord ', the language is again that of the Gospels, as repeated even in later times * Peter and the rest of the Apostles we receive as Christ.' l So also in indi- vidual cases. Quadratus, the only recorded later Prophet, was perhaps also a bishop. More usually it is a bishop who is also known as a Prophet. Melito, bishop of Sardis, was (Jerome witnesses to Tertullian's statement) 'generally held a Prophet '. Polycarp is, in Irenaeus, 4 the Apostolic elder ' (Eus. v 20), in the letter of the Smy means to the Philomelians 4 the Apostolic and Prophetic Teacher.' 2 Even Ignatius Theophorus may conceivably mean Ignatius the Inspired. 3 If any doubts remain as to the intimate coherence of the episcopate with the higher offices which preceded it, it will help to solve them if we remember the evidence of history 1 Ign. ad Eph. 3 ; Jo. xvii 1 8 ; Ign. ad Eph. 6 ; Serapion ap. Eus. vi 12. 2 Ep. Smyrn. 16 &idd6r) Ka\ Tf\ti(i>6r)(rTai. 3 Lightfoot, who rejects the passive interpretation of the name, does not seem to lay enough stress on phrases like Clement's of St. John (Eus. vi 14), 7rvfvp.aTi 6eo(popr)0eis. May not the patriarch Severus be resting on some tradition when he says that Ignatius was * appropriately named from facts, because he foreknew things future ' (Lightf. Ign. i 24, 177) ? See also Trail. 5 dvvap.at voeiv ra cirovpavta /cat ras T07ro$e 'pastor* and their derivatives soon became synonyms for the episcopal office.] 3 ap. Eus. H. E. iv 14; v 20 ; v 6; v 24. [I should be more inclined now to translate ' the Apostolic father ', ' the fathers that were before Soter '.] 4 Cypr. ep. Ixxv 4. If he also uses ' maiores natu' (ib. 7), and also, as it seems, exclusively of bishops, the Greek was no doubt the same. 30 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY Such was, we believe, in its outline the history of the development of the Christian ministry. Returning- now to our starting-point and applying the results of our inquiry to the determination of the date of the ' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles ', let us ask first what are the latest parallels to be found elsewhere for its special phenomena, and then what are the earliest divergent representations on points of cardinal importance, which would compel us to mount higher year by year and decade by decade. Working- upwards from the lowest grade, the episcopos in the Didache is still on a level with the presbyter, and the local ministry consists of two orders only ; l to this the latest parallel is the Epistle of St. Clement. The Prophets as a body are the most prominent order ; 2 the Apostles and Prophets are the supreme governors of the Church, raised above the criticism or control of the com- munity ; 3 the Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers form a uni- versal hierarchy altogether distinct from the circumscribed authority of the bishops and deacons. 4 But the body of Prophets meet us nowhere after the end of the first century ; the Apostles and Prophets are never connected later than in the Apocalypse ; the three orders of the general ministry are distinctly enumerated only in the First Epistle to the Corin- thians. Again, in the * Teaching ' the Apostles are still mis- sionary in the very strictest acceptation of the term ; 5 but in the closing decades of the first century some of them were permanently settled : in the 4 Teaching ' the Prophets are only beginning to fix themselves in individual communities, 6 a stage nearly resembling that depicted in the later sections of the Acts. Yet more decisive is the second criterion. The * Teach- ing * ought to be earlier than Ignatius, who knows exclusively of bishop, presbyters, and deacons. It ought to be earlier than Hermas, who knows, indeed, of Apostles and Teachers, but of both probably in a different sense, and of * the Prophets ' as an order no longer at all. It ought to be earlier than Clement, to whom the Apostles are the Twelve alone, and 1 Didache xv i. 2 Ib. x 7 ; xi 7-12 ; xiii I, 3. s Ib. xi 3, n. 4 ib. xi 3-xiii 3. 5 Ib. xi 4-6. 6 Ib. xiii I. AND THE DIDACHE 31 their commissioned representatives the only intermediate stage between themselves and the presbyterate. With all the apo- stolic writings it has something in common ; yet even here the standpoint is earlier than in some of them. In the Pastoral Epistles the Teachers seem wholly merged in the presbyters ; in the Ephesians the Pastors form one order with the Teachers ; in the work before us they are not only separate, but belong to separate systems only just beginning to converge. It is only when we reach the Epistle to the Corinthians, the first fixed stage in the whole course of our inquiry, that we can feel that we have reached, and more than reached, our limit ; for there only, outside the * Teaching ', are the three primal orders of the general ministry visible in their distinctness ; and there the local ministry is not classified at all. The 4 Teaching ', then, represents a stage of organization intermediate between the Corinthian and Ephesian letters : parallel, let us say roughly, to the Epistle to the Philippians with its earliest mention of episcopi and deacons. It follows from this, that, if the * Teaching ' is to be a factor in the series of the full current of Church development, it ought to be placed about the year 60 ; it does not follow that so early a date is inevitable, if the 4 Teaching ' represents and we have seen that it does represent a line of thought of a quite unique and comparatively alien cast. We have seen, too, that its locality was probably Syria or Palestine ; and on the assumption that it emanates from some remote half-isolated district, perhaps beyond the Jordan, tenaciously attached to its traditions, but unaffected by the pulses of the Church's larger life, a further period of a genera- tion may be allowed to elapse before an equal stage of maturity is reached. But a date between 80 and 100 A. D. is as late as we are prepared to admit. Our conclusions, both general and particular, have emerged in a very widely different form from Harnack's. But putting aside questions of mission and ordination, in regard to which it would be unreasonable to anticipate an agreement, we might reduce the main issue between us to the totally divergent estimate not so much of the sequence as of the rapidity of 32 THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MINISTRY the processes which go to make up the history of the com- pleted polity of the Church. Such a variation, however, is so all-important in a case like this, where so much depends on the date attributed, that there is, it may be, not a single generalisation we have made (except only the formation of Catholic episcopacy out of the local episcopos by transference to it of the prerogatives of the general ministry) with which Harnack would coincide ; but we have none the less to thank him for the instructive character of his brilliant and suggestive essay. More than all he has helped us, as we believe, to base more strongly, to explain more reasonably, to develop more naturally, the traditional belief of the Christian Church in the authority of the episcopate and in the validity of its claim. II ANCIENT AND MODERN CHURCH ORGANIZATION (Church Quarterly Review. July, 1888.) 1. The Growth of Church Institutions. By the Rev. EDWIN HATCH, M.A., D.D., Reader in Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford. (London, 1887.) 2. The Organization of the Early Christian Churches. By EDWIN HATCH, M.A. Second edition, revised. (The Bampton Lectures for 1880.) (London, 1882.) 3. Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils. By WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, Re- gius Professor of Ecclesiastical History. (Oxford, 1882.) 4. The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia. By W. M. RAMSAY. (In vol. iv of \\\^ Journal of Hellenic Studies, pp. 370-436: London, 1883.) 5. Die stddtische und burger lie he Verfassung des romischen Reichs bis auf die Zeiten Justinians. Von Dr. EMIL KUHN. 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1864-65.) SOME * years ago Dr. Hatch startled the ecclesiastical world by putting forward, in the Bampton Lectures for 1880, a novel and original scheme of the development of the organization of the early Church. Dr. Hatch's work was characterized by a powerful style, singular erudition in certain spheres of knowledge, and a rare faculty for selecting and marshalling 1 [The first three paragraphs of this paper belong really the word ' ten ' having been originally used instead of ' some ' to an article published in the Church Quarterly Review in October, 1890: the rest of that article I am not re-publishing, but it seemed to me that the paragraphs in ques- tion would be not unsuitable in their present position.] 34 ANCIENT AND MODERN facts so as to present them in the light most attractive for his theory. His object was to strip the Church and its ministry of all Divine claims and sanctions, and to explain their genesis on strictly natural grounds. Our Lord, he would tell us, founded no Church at least in the ordinary sense of the Church as * an aggregate of visible and organized societies ' and his apostles organized no ministry as of authoritative appointment. The tendency of the times was to organization, and the presumption was that the early Christians would organize, just as contemporary Pagans did; the differentiation of their body from other similar bodies lay, not in any super- natural character, but in the primary stress it laid on alms- giving, thus uniting a leading characteristic of Judaism with the outward forms adopted by religious Paganism. This primary stress suggested naturally that its chief officers or officer should, together with the duties, inherit the name by which the administrator of alms was known in Pagan guilds, that, namely, of eVurKOTros, * bishop ' ; or, to put it conversely, the ' bishop * meant originally the administrator of the cor- porate revenues of the local Christian body, and the ' deacons ' were his subordinates in that capacity. Two of the three orders of the later ministry were thus exclusively Pagan in origin ; the third was jointly Pagan and Jewish. Not only were all communities of Jews governed by * elders ' (' pres- byters '), but the municipalities had their senates and the guilds their councils, in all of which special respect was paid to seniority. But the distinguishing functions of the Christian officers were borrowed from their Jewish homonyms, and the presbyters thus exercised discipline and administered con- sensual jurisdiction. Such being the rationale of the Christian ministry, it was a natural deduction that in the Christian Church there could be no essential difference between clergy and laity. The councillor of a guild, or its administrator of alms, was in no way separable, except for purposes of the expediency of the moment, from his fellow-guildsmen. The official elected for one term might fail to secure re-election, and become the private member of the next. In the same way ordinations in the Church were made and unmade with CHURCH ORGANIZATION 35 facility, for ' ordination ' itself was in its origin merely the counterpart of secular appointment to office. Since ordination was thus nothing more than a form, it is not surprising to find that, although the officers as such had a prior right, they had not an exclusive right to the performance of any ecclesiastical function. Laymen, no less than officers, could upon occasion teach or preach, baptize, celebrate the Eucharist, or exercise discipline ; and the Montanist movement, though in the end it failed, was a powerful and well-nigh a successful reassertion of the original conception that ecclesiastical office meant only priority of order. Dr. Hatch sums up his historical positions as two : (i) the development of the organization of the Christian Churches was gradual, and (2) the elements of which that organization was composed were already existing in human society. The theo- logical corollary which he wishes to draw from this conception of history is that it is superfluous to ask whether this or that institution is or is not primitive ; we should rather ask whether all that was primitive was intended to be permanent. To this question the probable answer is negative : fixity of form from age to age is impossible. Form there must be, but the Christian Church has shown at once its vitality and its divinity by readjusting its form in successive ages. Originally a de- mocracy compelled by circumstances to become a monarchy it may one day return to democracy again. This sketch of Dr. Hatch's position is taken almost verba- tim from the luminous abstract prefixed to his lectures. And yet in one respect we have perhaps not done him justice; our only purpose has been to analyse what the ordinary reader will look on as the crucial portion of the book, its account of the origines of the ministry, and we have there- fore omitted from our survey those lectures which treat of developments introduced in the fourth and succeeding cen- turies, principally by the changed relations resulting from the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the State. For part of this later period Dr. Hatch's knowledge was nearly unique ; but, in any case, these chapters lie outside the range of our present inquiry. So it must be clearly understood D 2 36 ANCIENT AND MODERN that, when in the course of this review we mention Dr. Hatch's Bampton Lectures, it is only of the earlier, and, as it seems to us, more disputable, portion of it of which we shall be speaking-. Just in the same way, his newer lectures, although they have suggested the present paper, fall within our purview only so far as they are concerned with the primitive age of Christianity. With the larger and more constructive part of the book the account of the 4 settlement ', if we may call it so, associated with the names of Boniface and Charles the Great, under which Christian institutions assumed for the most part their mediaeval forms we have nothing to do ; but these chapters are prefaced by others which seem to us to build on the unsound foundation of radically false conceptions of early Christian history. The first two chapters and the seventh purport to trace the origins of the diocese, the diocesan bishop, and the metropolitan. They postulate the existence of the episcopal office, and concern themselves with the application of episcopacy to territorial organizations ; and since, in the first paper of this volume, 1 we have ourselves traced the genesis of the episcopate in relation to the ministry of the Church, and thus arrived at the point at which Dr. Hatch, in the work immediately before us, takes his start, it may perhaps not prove unacceptable to our readers if we proceed with Dr. Hatch to the further investigation of the bishop in relation to the diocese. Dr. Hatch's method may be fairly described as the search for differences. He seems to feel that he is discharging the primary duty of a historian when he calls attention to an ex- ternal divergence between the ecclesiastical institutions of the first century and of the nineteenth. Yet substantial identity of principle can survive much apparent change; and it is a one-sided criticism which shuts its eyes upon essential unities and opens them to detect microscopic variations. * The justification of the existence of differences is to be found in the nature of Christianity itself. It was designed to be at once universal and 1 PP- I- 3 2 supra [i.e. C. Q.R. for April 1887, pp. 115-44], CHURCH ORGANIZATION 37 permanent, to embrace all races of mankind, and to meet the needs of successive ages. The presumption is that, this being so, it was also designed to adapt its outward forms to the inevitable changes of human society, and that its earliest institutions were meant to be modified.' l 'The diocesan system as it now exists is the effect of a series of historical circumstances. It is impossible to defend every part of it as being primitive, nor is it necessary to do so. It is sufficient to show that it is the result of successive re-adaptations of the Church's framework to the needs of the times.' 2 'All groupings are artificial. The measure of the Divine will is the spiritual good that comes of grouping. . . . The great mediaeval institution of national Churches claims our respect as an instrument of spiritual good in the past, and the particular Church to which we belong claims also our allegiance as the instrument with which God has appointed us to work in the present ; but the sacredness of the institution attaches not so much to the fact of its existence as to the spirit which prompts its members, nor can it be shown that any blessing rests upon it which does not also rest upon all congregations of " two or three " who are gathered together in the name of Christ.' 3 We note, however, two concessions, which, so far as our task is controversial, will materially lighten it. Dr. Hatch accepts explicitly the substantial similarity of the existing Church organization with the forms which emerged in the eighth and ninth centuries from the reconstruction of the ruins of the Western Empire. 1 The main features of the new system have been so strongly marked on the face of Christendom for more than eleven hundred years, as to make it difficult for most persons to conceive of a time when they did not exist.' 4 Modern diocesan episcopacy ' grew up in the Frankish domain, under the legislation of the Frankish princes and kings, by the co-operation of Church and State, at the instigation in the first instance of the great missionary Boniface.' * To him more than to any other single cause the main features of the ecclesiastical system of the West are due ; and from the lines of diocesan episcopacy which he laid down there was not until the Reforma- tion any considerable departure.' 5 More significant still is the second admission, contained in words which immediately follow the last quotation. 'Those lines were in the main the revival of some elements of the Eastern system, which is found in its most perfect form in the canons of Chalcedon.' .*. 2 Ib.p. 18. 3 Ib.p. 153. * Ib.p.32 5 Ib. pp. 39,29. 38 ANCIENT AND MODERN Quite similarly the institution of metropolitans under Charles the Great is called ' the revived system ' and 4 the re-establishment '. It is not too much to say that in these phrases Dr. Hatch has answered a large part of his own arguments. If the outlines of the c new system ' have 4 again and again been treated as part of the essence of Christian organization, and departures from them have been treated as violations of Apostolic order \ the justification of the action deprecated lies simply in the admission made that the system was not 4 new ' at all. The kernel of the controversy will be found, not in the relation of the eighth-century arrangements to the previously existing condition of things in the West, but in the relation of the conciliar period to primitive times. The centuries of the barbarian invasions may be left, for this purpose, out of account. It would not really affect the issue in the slightest if an ever-increasing degradation had left the Prankish Churches without organization or discipline, when once it is granted that the reformation which succeeded bridged the chasm and established the continuity of the later development with the earlier. This first step in our argument the general identity of the principles of the diocesan or territorial organization of our own day with those of the period of the four great Councils is, however, too serious to be based on a possibly not well- considered admission of our author. We shall therefore proceed to sketch what seem to be in this particular sphere the decisive elements of our modern Church polity, and then investigate their position in the Church of fifteen centuries ago. Nor do we anticipate any objection, if, assuming (as we have said) episcopacy, we define as follows the factors of episcopal organization as it exists to-day : firstly, the bishop is unique in his own sphere ; secondly, his sphere is diocesan, not congregational ; thirdly, the various dioceses are federated, not isolated ; fourthly, just as the diocese is based ordinarily on civil lines, so the federation of dioceses is, with ourselves, coextensive with the nation. i . That there cannot now be two bishops of the same see or jurisdiction is obvious. There cannot be more than one CHURCH ORGANIZATION 39 bishop, say, of Winchester, and no discontented faction could set up a second bishop with valid claims to recognition by the federation until the one already in possession was ousted. It is, in fact, the episcopal organization of the Church as a Society, not the voluntary act of each individual Churchman, which guarantees a bishop's authority. In practice we may even go further and say that, although there could be, there are never likely to be two bishops in the same city, even with different jurisdictions. 2. There will be, we conceive, as little hesitation in according assent to our next proposition. The bishop of Truro, for instance, is not simply president of the congregation or con- gregations (conceived of as one) that meet in Truro ; not only Truro but all the parishes that make up the county of Corn- wall form a territory or diocese, a group of congregations, under his sole control. 3. But the individual dioceses do not stand, and have never stood, alone. In the original scheme of Gregory the Great for the conversion of England provision was made for grouping the dioceses into two provinces, under the metro- politan authority respectively of London and York. With the substitution of Canterbury for London, this scheme, or something like it, was put into force at the end of the seventh century ; and if the boundaries between the two provinces have varied somewhat, the provincial organization itself has proved permanent, and is perpetuated in the two Convoca- tions. 4. This division into provinces was possibly rather arbitrary and artificial in its origin, although at present it represents with singular fidelity the distinction of * the North ' from the rest of England. But very early earlier, indeed, than the division into provinces came the consolidation of all the English dioceses into one organically united English Church. Itself the creation, one may almost say, of the illustrious primate, Theodore of Tarsus, the national Church of England was anterior to, and indeed was conducive to, the formation of the national State. Nor has the provincial system so far tended to interfere with the national basis of the Church, 40 ANCIENT AND MODERN that there has ever been any danger that there would be two Churches of Canterbury and York, and not one Church of England. Not only, however, the federation, but the individual dio- ceses, have been formed ordinarily on civil lines. The early English dioceses were coincident with the early English king- doms, and some even preserve the identity to this day. The diocese of Chichester is the kingdom of the South Saxons. It is true that in most cases later changes in the political as well as in the ecclesiastical geography have obscured the original resemblance ; but the newer dioceses have borne, wherever practicable, the same relation to the modern political units of the counties that their predecessors did to the kingdoms. The changes of the past few years have made Exeter, Truro, Chester, Durham, Newcastle, and Lincoln, shire dio- ceses. The changes of the remaining years of the century may, it is to be hoped, do the same for Surrey and Hants, Norfolk and Suffolk, Essex, 1 and yet other counties. So much for our own times. We do not conceive that there can be any serious quarrel with the contention that these same principles were, allowing for minor differences produced by different and to a certain degree divergent con- ditions, the acting principles of the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries. But in any case, from the point of view of our further inquiry, it will be needful to draw out the eccle- siastical organization of that period at some length. Our appeal will be, wherever possible, to the Eastern councils whose canons still form practically the only common element in the corpus iuris of the Eastern and Western Churches. 2 P We are still waiting, but with a nearer prospect of success, in 1912.] * While not overlooking the essential distinction between East and West (on which Dr. Hatch lays stress, Church Inst. p. 31), we hold our- selves justified in confining our survey in the main to the evidence of the Eastern Church. As Christianity took its rise in the East, overspread the East before it came into contact with the West, and was supreme in the East at a time when it was still in hand-to-hand conflict with Paganism in the West, it follows that at any given moment in the first five centuries the organization of the Christian Church in the East represents a point far in advance of the contemporary conditions in the West. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 41 1,2. Words need not be wasted to prove what no one would dream of denying-, that in the fourth century the rule, one bishop only in each city, was absolute. We are not so sure that we should carry Dr. Hatch with us at once to con- cede the territorial or diocesan character of the whole episco- pate in that period. But whatever may have been the earlier conception of a bishopric, the canons of the council of Antioch (A.D. 341) prove to demonstration that the sphere of a bishop's action was not confined to his ' city ' (TTO'A^), but embraced the ' country ' or * countries ' (x&pat) surrounding and depending upon it. 4 Every bishop has authority over his own diocese, and must . . . take charge of the whole region surrounding his episcopal city ' (can. 9). Chorepiscopi, or country bishops, may not ordain a priest or deacon ' with- out the bishop of the city to which the chorepiscopus himself and the whole district are subject ' (can. 10). 3. We have still to place side by side with our modern organization the federation of dioceses into one intricate whole, such as we find in progress in the earliest years of the fourth century, and completed by the middle of the fifth. And since there are, unfortunately, several points here on which it will be incumbent on us to join issue with Dr. Hatch, we shall do best to state first our own conception of the suc- cessive stages in the development of the complex machinery by which dioceses were grouped into provinces, and provinces were grouped into 4 exarchates ', and ' exarchates ' were par- tially grouped into, partially superseded by, 4 patriarchates ' ; and then to examine any views put forward by Dr. Hatch contrary to the results at which we may have arrived. We shall distinguish, then, three steps, marked respectively, the first by the councils of Nicaea (A.D. 325) and Antioch (A.D. 341), the next by the council of Constantinople (A.D. 381), and the last by the council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451). So much of the system as meets us in a developed form at Nicaea or Antioch must of course have existed in germ much earlier. In the canons of Nicaea and Antioch the only feature yet universally prominent is the grouping of dioceses into pro- vinces under metropolitans. 4 A bishop ought to be appointed 42 ANCIENT AND MODERN if possible by all the bishops in the province ; but ... in any case by the meeting of three . . . and the ratification of the result belongs in each province to the metropolitan ' (Nicaea can. 4). * And generally, this is clear that, if any one be made a bishop without the assent of the metropolitan, the great synod has laid it down that he ought not to be a bishop ' (ib. can. 6). Still more definitely the council of Antioch : * The bishops of every province must be aware that the bishop presiding in the metropolis has charge of the whole pro- vince . . . and that without him the other bishops should, according to the ancient and recognised rule of our fathers, do nothing beyond what concerns their respective dioceses ' (Antioch can. 9). There is, however, one other special phenomenon in the ecclesiastical federation of these earlier Councils which, in view of later developments, cannot pass without mention. Side by side with the normal privileges of every metropolitan, the Nicene council names the three cities of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch (in a descending scale), in connexion with supe- rior prerogatives (Nicaea can. 6). Other elements of the church organization of the con- ciliar period originated and developed during the fourth century. Thus at the council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) two quite new factors claim recognition. Ranking among the three great churches of whom the Nicene canon made mention appears a fourth in the new capital of the Eastern Empire, the church of Constantinople or New Rome, placed next after old Rome and above Alexandria and Antioch (Constantinople can. 3). And irrespective of the privileges of individual churches, the general machinery of the federation has advanced a grade further in complexity. The Nicene grouping of dioceses into a province has been followed, in the interval before Constantinople, by the grouping of provinces into a SUH'KTJO-IJ or l exarchate ' ; and the second canon of the later council restrains the bishops of one 4 diocese ' L from 1 This use of * diocese ' as equivalent to exarchate must of course be carefully distinguished from our own use of diocese as a single bishop's territory, which the canons regularly express by irapoiKia. For the CHURCH ORGANIZATION 43 interfering 1 with the bishops of another. All the five Eastern * dioceses ' are mentioned in the canon Egypt, the East, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace but it is worth noting that this organ- ization is still so far rudimentary that the ' dioceses ' are men- tioned without the bishops of their capitals, the ' exarchs ' ; the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch occur by name, as at Nicaea, but the exarchs of Heraclea (Thrace), Ephesus (Asia), and Cappadocian Caesarea (Pontus) are still absent. It is not till the third and final stage of the development, in the council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), that we meet with the exarch as a regular tribunal of appeal in cases of controversy with a metropolitan (Chalcedon, canons 9, 17). But by this time a further and in some ways a novel tendency was at work. The organization into Exarchates was in course of being superseded by an organization into Patriarchates. Just as Rome had been consolidating her authority over the entire West, so the bishops of Constantinople, and notably St. Chrysostom, had been extending their influence throughout their own neighbourhood until it was paramount in the three ' dioceses ' of Thrace, Pontus, and Asia. At Chalcedon, l the throne of imperial Constantinople ' became for these * dioceses ' an alternative tribunal of appeal with their proper exarchs (ib. canons 9, 17), who themselves, as well as the metropolitans under them, were henceforth (according to the famous canon 28) to be consecrated by the * aforenamed most holy throne '. l When we add to the aggrandisement of Rome and Constanti- nople the emancipation of Jerusalem, as recognised in the Acts of Chalcedon, not only from its subjection to the hitherto metropolitan see of Caesarea (in Palestine) assumed in the seventh Nicene canon, but even from the authority of the great church of Antioch, we have the new patriarchal organ- ization sketched to hand. All the Western ' dioceses ' formed the patriarchate of Rome ; of the East, Thrace, Pontus, and Asia went to make the patriarchate of Constantinople ; Egypt, the 4 diocese ' or exarchate of Alexandria, becomes with the ' diocese ' see below, p. 50 : inverted commas will be used for the term when employed in this technical sense. 1 i. e. of course the bishop's throne, not the emperor's. 44 ANCIENT AND MODERN same boundaries its patriarchate ; while the remaining * diocese ' of the East proper, hitherto owning only the sway of the Antiochene bishop, was divided into the two patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. If, finally, we recall the sub- stitution of the patriarch of Moscow for the patriarch of Rome, we have an outline of the Eastern Church system to this day. Before we can pass from this section of our subject, we have still to deal, as we promised, with certain statements made by Dr. Hatch. The whole idea of federation is appar- ently so repugnant to him that he seizes on any argument and utilises every opportunity, whether to minimise its extent or to deny its advantages. With the latter it is no business of ours to deal, but his criticisms on the prevalence of the system it will be well to try and meet. In the first place, then, against the existence of provincial councils at the opening of the fourth century he alleges the council of Ancyra (c. 314 A. D.), the Acts of which * are signed by thirteen bishops from various provinces of both Asia Minor and Syria '. But surely a glance at the subscriptions makes it plain that it was nothing less than a conference of repre- sentative bishops from a wide area, and in conception far nearer to a general Eastern Council than to an ordinary provincial synod. 1 Not content with an individual instance, Dr. Hatch next asserts that the 1 Nicene canons rather sketched an ideal than established a general prac- tice ... in some parts of the empire, certainly in North Africa, and probably elsewhere, metropolitans were not recognized ; and in the fifth century the council of Chalcedon (can. 19) based a new regulation upon the fact that the half-yearly meetings [i. e. the provincial synods of Nicaea, can. 5] had ceased to be regularly held. It was not until the sixth century, and, as far as existing records enable us to judge, it was only in some parts of Western Europe, that the system attained anything like a com- plete development' (Ch. Inst. p. 123). Really, could anything be more contrary to all we know of 1 At least nine out of the thirteen are metropolitans the bishops of Antioch in Syria, Ancyra, Caesarea in Cappadocia, Tarsus, Amasea, Nicomedia, Iconium, Antioch in Pisidia, Laodicea in Phrygia. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 45 the fourth and fifth centuries than this hypothesis of the dis- appearance of metropolitans ? They are mentioned in five canons of this very council of Chalcedon (canons 9, 12, 17, 19, 25) as against three only of Nicaea (canons 4, 6, 7). And if some explanation must be given of the partial cessation of provincial councils, it would be due rather to the aggrandise- ment of metropolitans than to their insignificance. Just as the consecration of bishops-elect is spoken of at Nicaea (can. 4) as the duty of any three bishops with the consent of the rest in writing, only the ratification remaining to the metropolitan, while at Chalcedon (can. 25) it is attributed directly to the metropolitan and to him alone ; so it is probable that by the same time and in the same way the metropolitan had con- centrated in his own person functions and business which should have been, according to the original legislation, re- served for the provincial synod. And we need not remind Dr. Hatch that to the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431) only the metropolitans were summoned and such able suffragans as they might select to accompany them. Dr. Hatch's third argument against * the assumption . . . that this confederation, and no other, is the Church of Christ in its visible and earthly form ' is contained in his Bampton Lectures (p. 185). 4 There is no proof,' he says, 'that the confederation was ever complete in the sense of embracing all the communities to which by common consent the name Christian was in its fullest sense applicable/ * Some churches remained independent. . . . Their bishops had no superior. They were what the Notitiae, or lists of orthodox churches, call avTOKa\oi. They were in the position which Cyprian had in earlier times asserted to be the true position of all bishops : their responsibility was to God alone.' Cyprus and Armenia are the instances given in support of this assertion. The case of Cyprus is of special interest, because it has retained its 4 autocephalic ' character from the time of the council of Ephesus down to the present day. But Dr. Hatch's phraseology seems to imply that the case was more abnormal than in reality it was. He apparently over- looks the fact that, so far as the metropolitan system went, 46 ANCIENT AND MODERN Cyprus was on exactly the same footing as any other province, its bishops being subject to the see of Salamis or Constantia, and not (in Dr. Hatch's meaning of the words) * responsible to God alone '. Its * autocephalous ' character of course meant its independence of any external control, such as that of an exarch or patriarch, and was probably the result of a combina- tion of accidents. The Cypriots happened to be of Cyril's party at the council of Ephesus, and any pretension raised against the authority of the absent bishop of Antioch (who would be the exarch or patriarch in question) was sure to obtain a favourable hearing from Alexandrian ears (Ephesus can. 8). 1 Armenia differed integrally from Cyprus, in that it was a church lying outside the limits of the Roman world, and its relation to the ecclesiastical confederation of the empire is only part of the wider problem of the position l of the churches of God which are among the barbarians' (Constantinople can. 2). It is as misleading of Dr. Hatch not to mention this, as it is for him to prove Armenia ' autocephalous ' out of the Notitia of the Emperor Leo the Wise at the end of the ninth century. It would have been more pertinent to quote the canons of Constantinople and Chalcedon which regulate the status of these churches. * They are to be ordered/ says the one council, ' according to the usage prevalent from the time of the fathers ' ; or more definitely at Chalcedon, l the bishops of the afore-named dioceses [Pontus, Asia, and Thrace] who are among the barbarians must be ordained ' by the bishop of Constantinople ; in other words, the authority over ( barbarian ' bishops, which had previously resided in the exarchs of those three k dioceses ', is transferred with most of the rest of their privileges to the church of the capital. Among the cases which the council may be supposed to have had most directly in view must surely have been that of Armenia, which, ever since the time of St. Gregory the Illuminator (c. 300 A.D.), had professed dependence on the bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea,and received from him the consecration of its metro - 1 See also Bright, ad loc. [and p. 94 below]. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 47 politan. 1 The re -arrangements of the council, indeed, never took effect, for the national Church of Armenia has been separated from the Greek Church from that day to this. But the principle assumed in the canon is quite decisive against Dr. Hatch's view. All churches outside the empire were regarded as having some sort of filial relation to one of the great churches within it ; and the facts corresponded fairly to the theory. Thus Ethiopia was subject to Alexandria, as Armenia to Caesarea, and the Persian Church through its Catholicos was connected with the patriarchate of Antioch. 4. In passing to the fourth and last of the heads under which we ranged the main conditions of our modern Church polity, it is true that no attempt can confessedly be made to illustrate directly from the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries the principle of national Churches. So far as the Church was coextensive with the empire there could, from the nature of things, be no national Churches, for there were in that sense no nations. So far as the Church had penetrated beyond the empire, the Christian communities were yet in their childhood, dependent, like children, on the communities which had founded them from within the empire and had supplied them with the machinery of their organization. 2 Some, indeed, of the then existing ecclesiastical divisions such as the 4 dioceses ' or exarchates of Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Egypt were more or less conterminous with what we might call ' national ' limits. Or to put another point of 1 [No doubt it sounds odd to call Armenia ' barbarian ' : and it might perhaps be contended that the councils were thinking only of races like the Goths or the Ethiopians, both of whom had received Christian missions in the course of the fourth century. But (i) the canons appear certainly to contemplate an organization which is to be exhaustively com- plete : (2) /3ap/3apoi does not mean, as the N.T. usage is enough to show us, even apart from classical authors, quite what we mean by ' barbarians '. St. Luke applies the word to the Maltese : St. Paul divides the people he had come across in his missionary labours into the two classes of Greeks and barbarians, philosophers and fools (Rom. i 14), and more significantly still (i Cor. xiv n) calls pdpfiapos the man who could not 1 understand the meaning of the language ' with which he was addressed. I imagine that theoretically any one who could not talk Greek was fidpfiapos : in the practice of Roman times it probably meant any one who talked neither Greek nor Latin.] 2 Dr. Hatch, who maintains the ' autocephalous ' character of Armenia, ought surely to regard it as an early national Church. 48 ANCIENT AND MODERN view, the patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople, of Alex- andria and Antioch, represent pretty well the great Latin- speaking and Greek-speaking portions of the empire and the outlying Coptic and Syriac districts. Even more strictly parallel is the curious instance of the African and Numidian provinces, where the ecclesiastical followed, not the civil, but the ethnical boundaries. According to the secular organiza- tion, Africa, the proconsular or senatorian province, took the coast, and Numidia, a legatine or imperial province, took the interior. But this division was purely artificial, and was due to the danger of barbarian invasions from inland, which necessitated the command there of a military governor ; the ancient and ethnical boundary lay not so much from north- west to south-east as from north to south, and this, it is note- worthy, was the demarcation adopted by the Church. So the Notitia ; so, too, the constant reckoning of Augustine among the Numidian bishops, although his see-town of Hippo Regius lay in Africa Proconsularis. The true justification from these early centuries of the principle of national Churches will be, however, not in this or that more or less parallel instance, but in the then generally accepted system, according to which the ecclesiastical organiza- tion was modelled on the civil. The very idea of the em- ployment of civil divisions at all suggests the conclusion that the nation, had it existed as a definite civil unit, would have formed a definite ecclesiastical unit also. 1 Before proceeding to the ecclesiastical side of the inquiry, it will be convenient to sketch briefly the civil organization of the Roman empire in its corresponding scale. Working up- wards, the unit which the diocese forms in the Church the 4 city ' formed in the Roman state. For the city was emphati- cally not, as with us, an urban as opposed to a rural popula- tion, but an urban and a surrounding rural population 1 [It is perhaps right to add here that, though there is a true and real justification from ancient times for the existence of national churches as a stage in the ascending federation of the Christian communities, nothing could well be more unprimitive than to look on such a grouping by nations as ultimate, and not, ideally, subject in its turn to a further process of federation.] CHURCH ORGANIZATION 49 conceived of as one. Every landowner was a citizen of the city within whose sphere his property was situated. Every 4 vicus ' or village belonged to some * civitas ', which was the ' patria ' of the villagers. 1 The city that is to say, the place which possessed a municipal constitution was a universal element in the Roman world, just because the whole of that world had been open either to Roman or to Greek influence ; but the number of cities varied, in proportion especially to the degree of Latinization or Hellenization which each pro- vince had experienced. The l diocese' of Asia numbered 326 cities in the sixth century ; that of Pontus, twice its size, only seventy-eight. The tiny (Diocletianist) province of Proconsular Asia, which had long been thoroughly Hellenized, numbered forty-two or forty-three towns; the much larger provinces of Cappadocia, Prima and Secunda, where neither Greek nor Roman influence had penetrated deep enough to replace the old tribal organizations, could not muster between them more than twelve. 2 The city was, so to speak, a natural product, and different conditions had shaped its growth differently in various parts of the empire. But the province, certainly from Diocletian's time and to a less extent before, was artificial, and therefore uniform. Conquered districts were from much earlier days of Roman dominion organized as * provinces \ In the course of centuries there was a continual and always growing tendency to split up one province into two or more, with advantages and disadvantages manifest enough ; and to 1 See Ulpian as quoted by Kuhn, who sums up thus (i 30) : { Vergegen- wartigt man sich, dass die Stadte der Alten zu dem ausdriicklichen Zweck gegriindet wurden, damit sie den Besitzern der Landereien als Central- punkte und Wohnplatze dienten, so diirfte man voraussetzen, dass Stadt und Land in dem Alterthume zu einer organischen Einheit verbunden worden seien, nicht so wie bei uns einen Gegensatz gebildet hatten.' z Egypt is the notable exception originally to the organization by cities. In other provinces there were proportionally more or less cities : in Egypt, if we except Alexandria and one or two others, there were none. What the city and its region was elsewhere, the ' nome ' and its * metropolis ' (answering not to the /zrjrporroXis but to the TTO\IS of the rest of the world) was to Egypt. The ' nome ' was the diocese ; its capital the see-town. By the time of the councils, however, the city organization was pene- trating Egypt, and the conciliar lists give usually the name, not of the nome, but of the metropolis (Kuhn, ii 464 sqq.). TURNER E 50 ANCIENT AND MODERN secure the one and obviate the other was one feature of Diocletian's great re-organization. With the one aim he carried subdivision still further, so that Egypt, for instance, once a single province, consisted now of six: but he also grouped the provinces themselves into a new system of 8io6KriV ITapOLKL&V f) T(il$ aKo\ov0ira>, 4 Let the arrangement of the ecclesiastical dioceses be modelled on civil and secular lines.' So close was the resemblance that it can even be a disputed point whether, for instance, the earliest complete specimen of the Notitiae (or lists of cities and provinces), the Synecdemus of Hierocles, written about A. D. 530, is primarily of an eccle- siastical or of a civil character. Professor W. M. Ramsay, whose Phrygian investigations are among the most important contributions of the last few years to Christian history, is so much struck with the accuracy with which Hierocles' list corresponds on the one hand to the traces of cities identified by remains of buildings or inscriptions in situ, and on the other to similar evidence for the existence of episcopal sees derived from conciliar subscriptions, that in the important paper on the Cities and Bishoprics q/ Phrygia which we have named at the head of this article he not only concludes for the universal correspondence of city and bishopric, but supposes, if we understand him aright, that the Synecdemus itself is ecclesiastical. * The list of Hierocles is the list of the bishops of his time.' For ourselves, we think that the position of Aelia or Jerusalem in Hierocles, where it appears in its E 2 52 ANCIENT AND MODERN civil position simply as one of twenty-two cities of Palestine, eighth in a series headed by the metropolis Caesarea, and not in its ecclesiastical rank as a patriarchate, forbids us to suppose that die list is not primarily civiL But if so, this only renders its close connexion with the ecclesiastical organization the more remarkable. We must not, however, forget that the civil grades of city. province, and exarchate do not quite exhaust the ecclesiastical federation recognised at Chalcedon. We have seen that at Nicaea three great sees were confirmed in the possession of unique privileges, and that by the addition of Constantinople and Jerusalem to Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, the five patri- archates of Chalcedon are complete, and unite under their different jurisdictions the whole Christian world. But on what grounds did the two new-comers base their claims to rank on the same select level as the other three ? Obviously on grounds which, if strictly taken, are mutually exclusive. Constantinople rested her ecclesiastical assumptions on her cnrfl prerogatives as New Rome. Jerusalem in the civil sphere was only one city of Palaestina Prima, of which Caesarea (Stratonis) was the metropolis ; ecclesiastically it was the mother Church of Christendom. Whether%the patri- archal Churches then owed their uniqueness ultimately to their civil position or to their ecclesiastical traditions will be a question to which Chalcedon gives no answer, or rather gives two inconsistent ones. We are thrown back for the solution of the problem on Nicaea and its recognition of the pre-eminence of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. But since what was recognised at Nicaea was not created there, the investigation belongs rather to the pre-conciliar era of Chris- tianity, and must for the moment be deferred Only we may call attention in passing to the presumption raised by the consideration that, had sacredness of associations been the chief passport to rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, * the Holy Resurrection of Christ ' should have stood, not fifth and last, but first in the order of the patriarchates. 1 1 With something of this feeling our own Nonjurors, in their curious correspondence with the Orthodox Church, soon sifter George I's acces- CHURCH ORGANIZATION 53 We stand now on the threshold of the really crucial section of our inquiry. We doubt whether Dr. Hatch himself would deny that the principles which governed fourth- century organization were very largely agreeable with our own of to-day. But at the same time we are fully conscious that between these and what is really primitive he would see a great gulf fixed. If we have shown that the existence of rival organizations in the same sphere, both recognised as genuine, is to the later Church a thing unknown, he would answer that the idea only gradually grew up ' that there should be only one bishop in a community. The rule was not firmly established until the third century '.* 4 Where there was more than one community in a city, there was, as a rule, more than one bishop.' 2 If we have proved that the sphere of episcopal authority from the fourth century onwards is not congregational but territorial, Dr. Hatch maintains that in the normal use of earlier days ' a bishop, presbyters, and deacons existed for every Christian community '. 3 l In the greater part of the Christian world each community was complete in itself. Every town, and sometimes every village, had its bishop.' 4 4 When the episcopal system had established itself, there was a bishop wherever in later times there would have been a parish church.' 5 If we have displayed the principle of federation extending its comprehensive machinery from Nicaea to Chalcedon, Dr. Hatch asserts roundly in answer that the idea of dependency of any sort was unknown to the really primitive Church. l The original conceptions of Christian association were but two in number that of the single congregation, and that of the whole aggregate of believers throughout the world.' 6 And again : l In primitive sion, proposed ' that a principality of Order be allowed to the Bishop ' of Jerusalem rather to the surprise of the unromantic Greeks, in whose eyes the order of the patriarchates had long been stereotyped into a super- stition. See G. Williams, Orthodox and Nonjurors, pp. 5, 48. 1 Bampton Lectures, p. 103. * Ch. Inst. p. 17. s Ibid. p. 16. 4 Ibid. p. 18. 5 B. L. p. 79. * Ch. Inst. p. 139. [I could entirely subscribe to this statement. But surely the very fact that one of the ' original conceptions of Christian association ' was that of the ; whole aggregate of believers throughout the world ' implied that the ' single congregation ' did not and could not live to itself, independent of every other community.] 54 ANCIENT AND MODERN times every Christian community was independent of every other, and every Christian bishop was regarded as having received his commission direct from the Chief Shepherd.' 1 4 There is no trace of the dependence of any one community upon any other.' 2 Where we have illustrated the exact parallelism in the Church under the Christian emperors of the see and its diocese to the city and its region, and have called attention to the varying proportions of * cities ' in different provinces, which would imply consequently a vary- ing proportion of dioceses, Dr. Hatch, anxious, we suppose, to emphasize the ' haphazard ' character of Christian organiza- tion, draws up in array no less than five causes, each of which is apparently conceived to have operated in producing a specific kind of episcopal system. 3 Where we have argued that, while it is unreasonable to expect to find national Churches at a time when there were no nations, the ideas which subsequently shaped them were familiar to the carefully- graded federation of the fourth-century Church, Dr. Hatch mentions only the provincial organization, and arbitrarily selects it to contrast with our own, in which 4 the locality is conterminous with the State, and the majority which exercises control is the majority, not of the immediate neigh- bourhood, but of the whole political area.' 4 In arguing back from the fourth to the preceding centuries it is not unnecessary to formulate a truism at the outset. We must not anticipate the presence of an elaborate organization before the Church had time or opportunity to organize. The missionary dioceses of modern times are created with only loose territorial definitions and these often not civil or natural, but mere parallels of latitude or longitude and of course without any approach to provincial federation. It was the same in the earliest days of the Church of Christ. Until the middle of the second century Christianity was in many pro- vinces of the empire as purely missionary as it is now in 1 Ch. Inst. p. 126. We may be allowed to ask whether Dr. Hatch, then, supposes that either a fourth-century or a nineteenth-century bishop was ever * regarded as having received his commission' from the metropo- litan ? 2 B. L. p. 195. 3 Ibid. pp. 195-205. 4 Ch. Inst. p. 142. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 55 Central Africa. It is therefore in the highest degree uncritical to expect evidence of a state of things which under parallel circumstances no one would think of creating nowadays. If it can be shown that, while our missionary Churches may be compared with the pioneer work of Christianity in the Roman world, our settled Churches are organized in substantial agreement with the earliest settled Churches of the primitive age, that is enough, it seems to us, to establish the case. i. To take our first point and Dr. Hatch's counter- theory. We shall hardly be doing him an injustice if we suggest that his assertion of the recognised coexistence of two bishops in one city is connected with his favourite dogma of ' free association * 1 or the right of any malcontents to form them- selves into a rival community. Such a theory is in frank contradiction of the whole principle of Catholic order as the Church understands and, we believe, always has understood it. It may therefore be worth while to deal thoroughly, even at some risk of tediousness, with the evidence adduced by Dr. Hatch in support of his contention. In the Bampton Lectures (p. 103) the solitary argument is drawn from the case of Cornelius and Novatian at Rome. The problem of the right treatment of the lapsed pushed itself to the front after the Decian persecution ; and when the Roman Church elected for its bishop, in Cornelius, a repre- sentative of the party who were for re- admission after penance, the rigorist party refused to recognise him as their chief pastor and set up another bishop and a rival organization. In Novatian 's case 'all the elements of a valid election were present. Under ordinary circumstances, or in a newly organized community, the election would have been unchallenged. There was only one point in which it was exceptional. That exceptional point was that Rome already possessed a complete organization. The question arose whether it was competent, under any circumstances, for a new organization to be established side by side with an existing organization in the same city. The question does not seem to have been raised before.' The latter statement is a welcome elucidation of Dr. Hatch's 1 B. L. p. 106. 56 ANCIENT AND MODERN point of view, and we now understand that when, on the previous page, he says that ' the rule (of one bishop only in a city) * was not firmly established until the third century ', he means merely that * the question had not been raised before '. 1 In Asia Minor, in Syria, and in Africa Novatian's election was for a time held to be valid.' We doubt the fact ; but our quarrel is only with the deduction drawn from it, that these churches recognised the possibility of there being simultaneously two bishops of Rome. It does not seem to occur to Dr. Hatch to consider whether those churches or individuals who recognised Novatian recognised Cornelius as well. That Cornelius did not recognise Novatian we know from his letter in Eusebius (H. E.m 43): 6 eKSiKijTTjs ovv TOV vayy\tov OVK T^Tricrraro va (Trio-Koirov 5eu> etixu tv KaOoXixy eKKA.Tjo-a, 'This guardian of the Gospel was not aware, then, that there must be a single bishop in a Catholic church.' That Novatian did not recognise Cornelius is clear from the account in Cyprian (ep. xliv), where Novatian's ambassadors base the claim for the acknowledgement of their bishop on the ground of the accusations they bring against Cornelius. That all parties admitted that only one of the two could be the true bishop seems to result from the declaration of the Novatianist confessors on their return to the communion of Cornelius : 4 We are not ignorant that there is one God and one Christ . . . one Holy Spirit, and one bishop rightly in a Catholic church.' This formulary, contained in a letter from Cornelius (ep. xlix), is quoted by Dr. Hatch as the summing up of a paragraph attributing the l one bishop ' view to the efforts of Cyprian, and Cyprian alone. It is at least curious, then, that the most pointed expression of the ' Cyprianic ' doctrine came, not from Cyprian at all, but from ex-Novatianists. But when we turn from the Hampton Lectures to the Church Institutions, we are faced with a remarkable change of front. In the one book the theory of ' free association ' was built up entirely on the supposed evidence of the Novatianist dispute ; in the other that ground is abandoned altogether, 1 and ' the decisive passage ' is 4 Epiphanius, 1 It may be noted that the German translator of the Bampton Lectures , CHURCH ORGANIZATION 57 Haeres. Ixviii 7, who says that " Alexandria never had two bishops as the other cities had"' (p. 17). This statement of Epiphanius attracted attention long ago, and Bingham tells us (book ii, ch. 13) that bishop Pearson originally interpreted it to imply that ' St Mark, being the only Preacher of the Gospel at Alexandria, left but one Bishop his Successor; but in other Churches sometimes Two Apostles gathered Churches, and each of them left a Bishop in his Place'. Pearson, however, as Bingham adds in a note, himself altered his opinion, and in his posthumous dissertations de Succes- sione RomanorMm Pontificum'*- points out the entire absence of primitive evidence for his earlier view. And at the best, little could be deduced from it in favour of the general principle against which we are now contending. For the only probable explanation of such a double episcopate, if it ever existed, is that different bishops were consecrated for the Jewish and Gentile communities. But since the accident of birth, and not the exercise of choice, would in that case decide the position of the individual Christian, we are still as far as ever from any ' free association '. It is pertinent to add that Epiphanius speaks of no more than two bishops in one city, and it would be a very restricted 4 freedom of association ' which limited the possibilities of selection to a couple of ecclesiastical superiors. But the passage in Epiphanius, \h& fons et origo mail, admits nay, demands a wholly different exegesis. Let us see. In the sixty-eighth chapter of the work against Heresies Epiphanius gives his account, not without some partiality for Professor Harnack, who has substantially identified himself with the views of the English original, throws cold water on this particular hypo- thesis. ' Ich kenne iiberhaupt keinen Grund, der gegen die Annahrne spricht, dass sich die Regel, in jeder Stadt sei stets nur ein katholischer Bischof zu dulden, bereits am Ende des zweiten Jahrhunderts festgestellt hat ' (Analecten zu Hatch, p. 252). 1 ' Novum igitur erat hoc commentum de duobus aut tribus episcopis simul Romae praesidentibus, nee veterum cuiquam cognitum, antequam Ruffinus ex epistola supposititia dementis, quam uti genuinam verterat et Romano orbi intulerat, hoc effugium excogitavit, ut merces suas vendibiles faceret ' (Minor Works, ed. Churton, ii p. 452). Presumably the idea was originated in the interest of the direct Apostolic ordination of Clement and Ignatius, it being notorious that these fathers did not stand first on the list in the authentic diadoxai of Rome and Antioch. 58 ANCIENT AND MODERN the seceders, of the Meletian schism. Meletius, a bishop of the Thebaid, separated himself from the communion of Peter of Alexandria on the question of the reconciliation of the lapsed. Both bishops were sufferers in the Great Persecution. Peter, who with the Church generally had taken the milder view, was martyred. Meletius, who represented Novatianist principles, was condemned to the mines. In the course of his journey as a prisoner to Palestine, the rigorist bishop ( in every district and in every place ' appointed bishops, presbyters, and deacons of the ' Church of the Martyrs '. On the restoration of peace he took up his residence in Alexandria, where he worshipped apart with his sympathizers, but for the rest is represented as having lived on friendly terms with the then Catholic bishop, Alexander, being the first to give him information of the heretical opinions expressed by Arius. Meletius did not claim the title of bishop of Alexandria, but apparently that of bishop or archbishop of Egypt. 1 Before the council of Nicaea he died. No immediate action was taken to fill his place ; but when, soon after the council, Alexander also died, and Athanasius, on whom all eyes were fixed, was absent, so that no consecration could take place, the Meletians took advantage of the occasion. Aa^o/ie^oi Katpdv ol Kara MeA.7]TlOZ/ TTL(7KOTTOV TT/J AiyVTTTOV, eTTKTKOTTOU fJ.r] TIClpOVTOS T7JS 'A\avbpLas (ov -yap Trorc ^ 'AAefapSpeia bvo tTUcrKonovs V civai KOL aiiTos apxieiritf K.OTTOS . . . anrjvfyKf roiwv fls TO. a>ra TOU dp%iem(rK6irov 'A\e- dvdpov 6 apxienio-KOTros MeXiyTior 6 Kara rfjv hlyvirrov. It should be remembered that the whole account in the text is simply Epiphanius' version of the facts. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 59 a rival organization from bishop downwards was started by the Meletians, in Alexandria Meletius himself officiated episco- pally for his community, but under the title, not of bishop of Alexandria, but of bishop of Egypt. Alexander of Alex- andria was therefore, from their point of view, the one Catholic bishop still left in possession of his see ; and it was the vacancy caused by his death which they pretended to fill up with a Meletian successor. Alexandria in fact was the one city which, until many years after the organization of the schism, never had two bishops taking their title from the same see. Let us hear no more of this ' decisive passage \ l But if the evidence brought forward by Dr. Hatch has thus crumbled at the touch of criticism, what is the condition of the evidence on the other side ? It would be superfluous to quote the pithy reply of the Roman populace to Constantius : ' One God, one Christ, one bishop ' ; or to appeal to the arrange- ments of the eighth canon of Nicaea (on the reception of Novatianists) 'to prevent there being two bishops in one city ', where ' the principle is not so much enforced as assumed by the council ' (Bright, ad loc.) : for Dr. Hatch will not dis- pute the universality of the rule in the fourth century. But the very same issue which had to be decided in the case of Cornelius and Novatian had been more or less anticipated, and in Rome itself, a full generation earlier. Dr. Hatch him- self calls attention (S.L. p. 104, note 41) to 'the important fact ' that Hippolytus * was an adherent, possibly a bishop, of the Puritan party '. Now, if Hippolytus was, as the acute in- vestigations of Dr. von Dollinger suggest, not only a Puritan bishop but Puritan bishop of Rome, we have the later con- troversy exactly foreshadowed. 2 But here, too, Hippolytus 1 Dr. Dollinger, it is true (Christenthum und Kirche, p. 324), thinks that Epiphanius is referring to the passage in Apost. Const, vii 46, where Antioch and Ephesus are said each to have had two bishops consecrated by apostles (and therefore perhaps contemporaneous) ; but we doubt whether Epiphanius could have used al oXXcu TrdXct? of two cities only, when in the same passage of the Constitutions Jerusalem, Caesarea, Rome and Smyrna are mentioned, besides Alexandria, as having had successive and not contemporaneous bishops. In any case the context in Epiphanius appears to be decisive of the primary reference. * [I leave the text standing more or less as I wrote it in 1888 : but I now accept the view that Hippolytus was bishop of Portus. At the 60 ANCIENT AND MODERN did not recognise Callistus as a true bishop: rather he was the head of a Sibao-KaXflov or school of heretics ' in opposition to the church '.* Nor did Callistus recognise Hippolytus, and it was probably just because the official lists of Roman bishops contained no trace of any other episcopate than Callistus' that Eusebius professed himself unable to state over what see Hippolytus presided; for his writings would directly prove him a bishop, and the surroundings would point to no other city than Rome, while yet Rome, in face of the episcopal Sia8o)(?j with which the historian was well acquainted, was out of the question. The problem therefore remained to Eusebius insoluble. Yet another century can we ascend. How are we to inter- pret this passage from Ignatius ? ' For as many as are of God and Jesus Christ, they are with the bishop ; and as many as repent and enter into the unity of the Church, these also shall be of God. ... If any man followeth one that maketh a schism (0-Xi'bi/Ti), he doth not inherit the kingdom of God. ... Be ye therefore careful to observe one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup into union in his Blood ; there is one altar, as there is one bishop ' (Ign. ad Philad. 3, 4). What is the meaning of cryji&iv and a-^ia^a in Christian litera- ture at all, if the 4 free right of association ' permitted a section of the congregation to secede from their bishop whenever they liked to set up a new one ? 2. We have no hesitation in pronouncing Dr. Hatch's counter-theory on our first point untenable. But he opens up in the second place a problem which can at least be legiti- mately argued on both sides, when he urges that the earliest evidence goes to show that episcopacy was originally congre- gational and not diocesan. It is curious, however, that he nowhere, as far as we have seen, states any of the grounds for this view, except the presumption drawn from the large num- ber of bishops in Proconsular Asia and North Africa. 2 But same time his case can still be so far adduced in support of the argument of the text that if he officiated episcopally at Rome, as he seems to have done, it was just because he refused to recognise Callistus as a true bishop.] 1 Ref. Omn. Haer. ix 12 (p. 290). 2 Bampton Lectures , p. 79. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 61 a more unfortunate illustration he could not have chosen, for the provinces of Asia and Africa stood at the head of the secular hierarchy just because of the wealthy population and im- portance which they owed to their unusually developed city life : the forty-two bishops of (the later) Proconsular Asia were not village bishops at all, but the bishops of the forty - two cities, and we have here, not congregational episcopacy at all, but simply another example of the parallelism of cities and dioceses. We can, therefore, only conjecture what evidence Dr. Hatch would think fit to call. He would, we suppose, direct attention primarily to the remarkable treatise entitled Atarayat KA.?}- jutej/Toj, Constitutions of Clement^ or, as the German editors * have named it, Die Apostolische Kirchenordnung (quoted as 4 K. (9.'), of which chapters 15 to 23 (in Harnack's notation) contain directions for the organization of a church on the smallest permissible scale. The locality of this pseudo- apostolic piece is pretty certainly Egyptian, and this portion in its original form can scarcely have been later than the beginning of the third century. In spite of the corrupt character of the text as it stands, we are fairly confident that the minimum of officers provided in the case specified, where a community could not muster more than twelve voters for an episcopal election, should be restored as a bishop, two presby- ters, 2 two (or possibly three) deacons, a reader, and three widows. The conclusion would not be unnatural that we have here the village community and its bishop. But is this necessary ? We think not. It should be observed, and is undeniable, that the treatise contemplates only the first forma- tion of a settled ministry. The community is one which is still in its infancy, and there is nothing to prevent our seeing here, not the normal size of a village church, but the small beginnings of a city one. 3 1 It is to be found either in Bickell Geschichte des Kirchenrechts \ (1843) p. 107, or in Harnack Die Lehre der zwolf Apostel (1884), p. 225 of the Prolegomena. 2 Cf. an interesting inscription, describing a somewhat similar organiza- tion, referred to by Dr. Hatch, Bampton Lectures, 199 n. (C. I. G. 8819). 3 So we are told, on the authority of Gregory of Nyssa, that the 62 ANCIENT AND MODERN If the first witness called fails under cross-examination, there are others who might perhaps give Dr. Hatch rather more substantial support. The names and sees are pre- served of eighty- seven African bishops who voted at Cyprian's council on Rebaptism in A. D. 256. By the aid of the excellent map of Africa in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum about fifty sees can be identified with known * cities ' ; of the rest, the majority could not be traced, and many of them probably belong to cities whose sites are not yet discovered ; but one or two seemed to belong to places proved to have been, at some time, not cities, but 4 vici ' or villages. 1 Again, when Athanasius says that the ' country district ' Mareotis never had bishop or chorepiscopus, but only presbyters in charge of it, 2 it would probably follow that he knew of bishops in such places elsewhere. But all such evidence fails to go to the root of the matter. It is not enough for Dr. Hatch to show that there were sometimes bishops in villages or that, speaking generally, there were a great many bishops every- where. For, on the diocesan theory, the dioceses may occasionally be so small as to be little larger than congrega- tions. If, on the other hand, the congregational theory be true, the bishop's sphere ought never to be larger than a congregation. And there is evidence not perhaps very decisive, but still not without weight which suggests that a primitive bishop's sphere was sometimes very extensive. When Ignatius alls himself 4 the bishop of Syria', TQV iria-Koirov Svptas (ad Rom. 2), the most natural exegesis of the words would make Syria his diocese. Doubtful as this may be, there are other indications of a similar sort. If Eusebius speaks of the -napoiKtai (dioceses or churches) of Gaul over which Irenaeus 'was bishop ' (cTrfo-KOTrei, H. E. v 23), and of the Trapoi/a'cu of Alex- andria (ib. v 22), or T&V avToOi -rrapoiKioSi;, where aMOi refers important city of Neocaesarea in Pontus, when Gregory Thauma- turgus became its bishop (about A. D. 240), contained only seventeen Christians. 1 For example, Horrea Caeliae, on the coast south of Carthage. [See now the exhaustive investigation in Benson's Cyprian, pp. 575-610.] 2 Athan. Apol. c. Arianos 85, quoted by Bright on Nicaea canon 8. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 63 to * Alexandria and the rest of Egypt ' (ib. vi 2), as those of which bishop Demetrius had received the 'oversight' or 4 episcopate ' (e-Trto-KOTTTJ), the possible explanations are several, but all significant for our present purposes. * The churches of Alexandria' may quite conceivably mean the 'parishes' of Alexandria, and then we have testimony to the diocesan theory. 1 As applied to Egypt at large and to Gaul, the plural implies either that Irenaeus and Demetrius were the only bishops in their respective countries,' or that their authority as prelates of Lyons and Alexandria so far over- shadowed that of their colleagues that either could be con- ceived of as holding the ' episcopate ' or ' oversight ' of the dioceses of their suffragans. In the one case the argument is pertinent here; in the other it bears on what we shall presently proceed to prove, the anticipations in the earlier centuries of the federated system of the later. A further consideration which is very adverse to Dr. Hatch's view is the scantiness of any traces of the survival of a once universal village episcopacy, when we reach in the fourth century the full daylight of history. If, as we are bidden to believe, Christendom once knew of no other bishop than the parochial bishop, where did he disappear to ? Yet of direct evidence for his later existence we know none but the instances quoted in Bingham 2 from Synesius and Sozomen, descriptive of Egypt (but only isolated cases), Cyprus, and Arabia. Since, then, these authors both belong to the fifth century, it would seem to be more probable that the village bishoprics they mention were located in places which had once been ' cities ', though in the general process of depopu- lation they had ceased to be so, than that they were genuine survivals of the second or third centuries. Still, a presumption might be derived from the existence of chorepiscopi or country bishops. We do not hear of them before the fourth century. But it is scarcely possible that 1 Dr. Hatch, however, admits (B. L., p. 198) the diocesan character of the early bishopric of Alexandria, which is indeed abundantly clear. Cf. Epiphanius, Haer. Ixviii, Ixix. 2 Book II, ch. xii. 64 ANCIENT AND MODERN they were originally an institution of that time ; for from the very first moment we meet with the order it is in a state of progressive decay. In numbers : for at Nicaea fourteen signa- tures out of over two hundred are those of chorepiscopi ; at Chalcedon we have not noticed more than three out of over six hundred: again, at Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Nicaea, and Antioch their existence among the regular ranks of church officers is assumed without question ; at Laodicea further appointments to the order are forbidden (can. 57). In func- tion : at Nicaea they sign on their own account, at Chalcedon only as deputies of absent bishops; at Antioch they are allowed to promote to minor orders without consulting the city bishop (can. 10), but St. Basil denies them this on the ground of ' the canons of the Fathers ' (ep. liv). Speaking generally, at the opening of the conciliar period they are true bishops; witness their signature at councils, their power of ordination, with the bishop's consent, to the diaconate and priesthood (Ancyra can. 13, Antioch can. 10), and the clear contrast between them and the country presby- ters (Neocaesarea can. 13, 14, Antioch can. 8). By the middle of the fifth century there is little or nothing to distinguish the chorepiscopus from the presbyter. Gregory Nazianzen (pro- bably) and Theodoret (certainly) speak of individual choj> episcopi as if they actually were simply presbyters ; and that they sign as deputies at Chalcedon proves nothing to the contrary, for many presbyters did the same. If, then, the chorepiscopi are a survival of earlier ages, it may be not improbable that they represent descent from some- thing like Dr. Hatch's village bishops, and that, as the chor- episcopus was a more independent personage in A. D. 325 than in A.D. 450, he may have been more independent still in A.D. 200, if he existed, than in A.D. 325; in fact, that he was originally a diocesan bishop. Yet we doubt whether this will carry Dr. Hatch very far, for the chorepiscopus was and this point merits more notice than it has received a very local institution. The fourteen chorepiscopi at Nicaea come from only five, mostly con- tiguous, provinces Coelesyria, Cilicia, Isauria, Cappadocia, CHURCH ORGANIZATION 65 and Bithynia. In no case does their number bear a large proportion to the total of bishops present from the province, except for Cappadocia, which sent ten bishops, five of them chorepiscopi. From the same locality proceed a very large proportion of the extant references to the order. To Cappa- docia belong St. Basil's letter to his chorepiscopi on their duty with regard to ordination (ep. liv), and St. Gregory's lament that Basil, not content with having fifty chorepiscopi under him, raised Sasima to the dignity of a see and made himself (Gregory) its bishop. 1 From Cappadocia come the latest traces of the strictly episcopal chorepiscopus, in Timotheus, who early in the fifth century * ordained Lepidius as priest for a monastery ', and in Caesarius, chorepiscopus of the city of Area, who signed in his own name the deposition of Nestorius if the text may be trusted and Area be identified with the Area of Armenia Secunda, practically a part of Cap- padocia. And a chorepiscopus representing the bishop of Arabissus in this last province was one of the three present at Chalcedon. Can we not assign a rational cause for the multiplication of chorepiscopi in Cappadocia, which will at the same time account for their paucity elsewhere ? Cappadocia, as we have already seen, 2 differed markedly from most other provinces in the very limited extent to which city organization prevailed there, and in the consequent lack of see -towns for dioceses. When Hierocles wrote, the two Cappadocias contained twelve towns ; but before the division of the province by Valens there are no certain traces of more than five. 3 Of four or five of the rest we read in Basil's letters and in the subscriptions of the council of Constantinople. 4 It would therefore seem that Valens' division of the province, about 370 A.D., was 1 Carni. de Vita sua, 447. 2 p. 49 supra. 3 Caesarea, Tyana, Cybistra were represented at Nicaea. Faustino- polis belongs, from its name, to the time of M. Aurelius. Nazianzus had the elder Gregory for its bishop. Parnasus was possibly represented at Philippopolis. 4 Nyssa, Rege-podandus, Sasima, Rege-doara, Parnasus. The prefix 'Pe-yt- for'Peye&Ji/, i. e. regio, suggests that these places had become ' cities ' comparatively late, and were before under the magistrates of some other town : Kuhn, ii 238. 66 ANCIENT AND MODERN accompanied by the elevation of certain places to the dignity of 4 cities ', and in particular we learn from St. Basil that part of both the senate and the people of Caesarea were transported to form the new city of Podandus (ep. Ixxiv). Possibly Valens, reckoning on the ecclesiastical arrangements following the political, aimed at diminishing not only Basil's metropolitical authority by dividing his province, but his diocesan authority by depleting his city. It is clear, then, that before the division of the provinces and the multiplication of the cities the 4 regions' over which the magistrates and bishop of each city held sway must have been enormous. This would doubtless have been pre-eminently the case with Caesarea, and the fifty chorepiscopi of Gregory, after due deduction on the score of poetic licence and metrical exigencies, will repre- sent a number not out of all proportion to the position of the capital. Our hypothesis, then, is that the employment of chorepis- copi in the fourth century was a method of correcting the inequalities in the size of the dioceses which resulted from the widely*varying proportions of cities in different provinces. If there were few cities in a province, as in Cappadocia, there were chorepiscopi where elsewhere there would have been more city bishops. If there were many cities, as in Phrygia, 1 and consequently many diocesan bishops, the employment of chorepiscopi was deprecated. No conclusion can thus be drawn from the local rural bishop to a once universal village episcopacy, even if such chorepiscopi as there were really did represent some earlier diocesans, whose see-towns being technically * villages ' lost their independent status accordingly ^ when what had apparently always been the general rule became a universal principle, and the boundaries of the cities controlled everywhere those of the bishoprics. 3. 'There is no trace of the dependence of any one community upon any other.' We cannot but differ from Dr. Hatch; for there seems to us to be a multiplicity of phenomena of the kind. 1 Sixty-two : see Ramsay, op. cit. pp. 371, 373. This will account for the action of the synod of (the Phrygian) Laodicea against chorepiscopi. CHURCH ORGANIZATION 67 From the very first times the officers of the Christian com- munities must have occasionally met together in conference, as difficulties arose, after the model of the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem : but it is not till the second half of the second century that we light on clear indications of the association of the bishops of a definite territorial area. Dionysius of Corinth, so Eusebius tells us, 1 wrote an epistle to the bishops of Crete and another to the bishops of Pontus. The Easter controversy, at the end of the same century, occasioned synods, as we learn from the same writer, 2 in Palestine, Rome, Pontus, Gaul, and Osrhoene. Tertullian speaks of councils in Greece. Origen was excommunicated by De- metrius and the assembled bishops of Egypt. Many years before Cyprian, Agrippinus of Carthage had treated of the baptism of heretics in a council at Carthage, and the same question had been discussed by meetings at Iconium and Synnada. In the Church polity recognised by the canons ot Nicaea the synod was a stereotyped institution with a fixed area corresponding to the civil province, a fixed president in the bishop of the metropolis, and fixed times of meeting every year. But how far do these regulations represent what had been the invariable practice from the first ? Dr. Hatch answers, Not at all. * At first such conferences were held irregularly. There was no stated time or occasion for them. There was no fixed president. There was no limitation of the area from which their members were drawn.' 8 The federated system was a total overthrow of the whole primitive idea of episcopacy : ' Every Christian bishop was regarded as having received his commis- sion direct from the Chief Shepherd. The words of the most powerful of early defenders of Catholic unity are conclusive as to the early conception of the independence of bishops : " cum . . . singulis pastoribus portio gregis sit adscripta quam regat unusquisque et gubernet, rationem actus sui Domino redditurus." ' 4 1 H. E. iv 23. 2 Ibid, v 23. 5 Ch. Inst. p. 121. 4 Ibid. p. 126 and note. Cf. Bampton Lectures, p. 171. [I feel that I have perhaps hardly done justice to one side of Dr. Hatch's contention. But it is possible with St. Cyprian to cherish the ' early conception of 68 ANCIENT AND MODERN We doubt if any instance could be cited where a council which corresponded at all in its general idea with what we mean by a provincial council did not draw its members from some well-defined area, national or political. With regard to the presidency, it is true that there are traces in the earliest times of exceptions to the later rule. Eusebius notes that the bishops of Pontus met to consider the Easter question under the headship of Palmas, as apyaioTaros among them 1 that is, as the senior either by age or appointment ; and the same may perhaps have been the case on other occasions. In parts of Africa certainly this practice was permanent, for in Numidia the bishop senior by consecration officiated as metropolitan. Thus in the fourth and fifth centuries we hear of Secundus of Tigisis, Megalius of Calama, and Xantippus of Tagora, all as metropolitans. 2 But the general, and in the East before A.D. 300 the universal, rule is formulated, and its justification given, by the council of Antioch (can. 9, quoted above, p. 42). And the combination of Cyprian's assertion of episcopal independence with the high importance which he attributes all along to synodical action finds an echo in the same canon of Antioch : * Every bishop has authority over his own diocese, and must govern it according to his con- science, and take charge of the whole region subject to his episcopal city, ordaining priests and deacons, and dis- charging all his duties with circumspection. Further than this he may not venture without the metropolitan, nor the latter without consulting the other bishops.' But beyond and behind such rudimentary traces of the later established system, there is even more comprehensive evidence for the general dependence of churches upon one another. We saw that probably Irenaeus, 4 who was bishop of the dioceses in Gaul,' and Demetrius, * who received the episco- pate of the dioceses of Alexandria and Egypt,' held a position the independence of bishops ', and yet with the same St. Cyprian to believe in the need and duty of federated action.] 1 H.E. v 23. 2 Bingham, Book II ch. 16 6. Dr. Hatch overstates the case in asserting (Ch. Inst. p. 124) that metropolitans were not recognised ' in North Africa ', for the bishop of Carthage was certainly metropolitan of Proconsular ' Africa '. [Tagora is the true reading in Aug. ep. lix.] CHURCH ORGANIZATION 69 of supremacy over daughter churches. And if the testimony of Eusebius be discounted as insufficient, we can also appeal to the Apostolic Church Order before mentioned, where the community of less than twelve electors is required to com- municate with neighbouring organized churches, in order the more effectually to compass its episcopal election. But more than this. We can appeal with especial confidence to the great primitive principle, acted on by the churches of Lyons and Vienne, when they wrote to ' the brethren in Asia and Phrygia ', whence their own missionary founders had come ; formulated by Tertullian, when he urged resort to the * Apos- tolic Churches ' as the depositaries of Apostolic teaching ; assumed by Hegesippus and Irenaeus, when they drew up their 5ia8oxai or lists of the episcopal succession, which joined the Roman Church of their day in living continuity with the Roman Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. As each new church was founded, the church that evangelized her stood surety for the correctness of the Deposit as she passed it on ; and the measure of Christian conviction was the measure of the certainty that the * tradition ' could be tested and traced back from bishop to bishop, and from church to church, until in the Apostolic Churches it was at length confronted with the Apostles themselves. 4. How far a presumption can be drawn from evidence of the first three centuries in favour of national Churches either directly or indirectly is, in face of the absence of data, a diffi- cult question to decide. But the supremacy of the city over the surrounding region, which is a postulate of fourth-century organization, certainly had its roots in the far earlier past; and since a city was only a synonym for a place more central or more populous than the rest, this is only to say, what is surely probable enough, that the Christian Church, at first no doubt unconsciously, modelled itself upon a system which was not only in possession of the field, but approved itself as undoubtedly the most sensible and the most convenient. Nor is any exception to this general principle to be detected in the position of pre-eminence which, as we have said, the Nicene canons ascribe to the sees of Rome, Alexandria, and ;o CHURCH ORGANIZATION Antioch. It has, indeed, been urged that here at least must be traced the influence not so much of civil position as of ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition. But we do not see what answer can be made to the objection that, if Apo- stolic foundation was the chief thing considered, Ephesus, the home of St. Paul and of St. John, ought on all accounts to have ranked above Alexandria. Roman Catholic writers certainly have maintained that the three sees recognised at Nicaea owe their uniqueness to their connexion with St. Peter Rome and Antioch as his .own foundations, Alexandria as that of his disciple, St. Mark. But then, again, why should the see of the disciple rank above one of the sees of the master ? There is no intelligible explanation open to us except this, that the order Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, was also the order of their civil importance, and that civilly (and so ecclesiasti- cally) these three cities stood on a level of their own. We can now bring our task to a close. We have done our best to demonstrate for the satisfaction of Churchmen of to- day that they have no cause to shrink from the most stringent inquiry into the correspondence of ancient and modern Church polity. If we have had to criticize the counter- hypothesis of a writer who wishes to see, and succeeds in seeing, nothing but divergences, we do not desire thereby to undervalue the striking qualities of Dr. Hatch's work. He is a scholar in whom we are bound to recognise, even when we most differ from him, an unwearied assiduity, and no small measure of success, in collecting from different fields of labour material which may throw light on the obscurer sides of Chris- tian history. [And perhaps we on our side have not always been free from the tendency to take an external and mechanical view of questions of organization. Yet we are sure that neither historical truth nor spiritual gain is on the side of those who (with whatever excuse) lose hold, in their search for differences, of that principle of unity and continuity which binds together the earliest and the latest fortunes of the Society founded by Christ.] Ill METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW (Church Quarterly Review. October, 1889.) 1. The Guardian for May 15, 1889. (Containing report of the judgement delivered in the Archbishop's Court, Lambeth, on May n.) 2. Canones Conciliorum. Edidit H. T. BRUNS. (Berlin, 1839.) FOR thirteen centuries the prelates of the see of Canterbury have played a great and representative part in the fortunes of the Church of England. For half that time Lambeth Palace, whose story was so vividly sketched by the facile pen of the late J. R. Green, has formed a picturesque stage for their action. Nor is the part allotted to the archbishops of less moment to-day than in the past, nor the scenes witnessed by Lambeth less historic. Many fateful assemblies have met there, but few so pregnant with result as the decennial councils, of which the third met in 1888 under the wise and statesmanlike guidance of Dr. Benson as Primate. More than one famous trial has brought archbishop and bishop, metropolitan and suffragan, face to face within its walls. Here Pecocke appeared before Chichele, and Bonner before Cranmer, and Watson before Tenison. Yet the present trial of the bishop of Lincoln bids fair in absorbing interest to equal any of them. The main encounter is to come, and of that, pendent e lite^ it would not be in place to speak ; but even the preliminary fencing had an importance of its own. The 72 METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION bishop's protest raised, and the archbishop's judgement of May 1 1 decided, an issue which involved the whole question of the judicial functions of the Metropolitan. It was argued on behalf of Dr. King that the only constitutional machinery for a bishop's trial was, according to the ancient canons of the Church, the synod of the province. It was affirmed by arch- bishop Benson that, whether or no alternative methods existed, judicial rights over his suffragans were inherent in his metro- political office according to canon law in general, and accord- ing to the law of the Church and Realm of England. There cannot be more than one opinion as to the clearness, consistency, and ability of the archbishop's judgement. * As between the ecclesiastical lawyer and the theologian, it looks as though the theologian had the best of it,' was the verdict of a daily newspaper. And whatever view we take of the conclusion reached, w r e may well be thankful for the deference shown on all sides to the argument from continuity even in matters of jurisdiction. But the present case will be a prece- dent, and perhaps an epoch-making one. A prosecution may be as easily instituted for doctrinal as for ritual offences. At the mercy of any successor of the primate would lie the verdict of the highest spiritual court in jurisdiction over the chief spiritual officers of the Church of England, and in matters touching their chief function as guardians of the Apostolic tradition. Should it be said that we are not justi- fied in hypothetical representations of obscure possibilities, we answer that that is so only when we have taken all such precautions against them as are right and reasonable. So soon as we have built up our spiritual judicature on constitu- tional principles and primitive models, and have shown our- selves not unfaithful to our inheritance, then, and not till then, we may safely leave the morrow to ' take thought for the things of itself. We are bound to test in these lights the judgement and the jurisdiction it affirms; and in doing so it must be remembered that the archbishop was a party to the issue of which he was the judge. If it was true that ' their lordships ' (the assessors) 4 could not be called on to discharge the office IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 73 of assessorship, properly speaking, in considering the validity of jurisdiction which potentially affects themselves and their acts ', the same would seem to be in a measure true of the archbishop himself. At any rate, the fact remains that the present constitution of the ultimate spiritual court before which an English bishop may be called upon to plead was upheld, and objection to it overruled, only by the court itself. Since, then, the reconsideration of the judgement by a fresh hearing elsewhere cannot be secured, no apology will be necessary for an attempt to subject some measure of its facts and reasonings to unauthoritative criticism. Our intention in the following pages is to cover only a definite and limited amount of the field traversed by the archbishop. We do not propose to touch the history of metropolitical jurisdiction in England, or the extent of the reception in England of the canon law of the Church at large. Nor shall we even discuss the process by which the canons of individual councils have attained an ecumenical or quasi- ecumenical, and therefore in some sense permanent, authority. In other words, while dealing with the history of metro- political jurisdiction in the early Church, and especially with the canons of councils from Nicaea to Chalcedon, although these, as a matter of fact, formed the basis of the later canon law, they will be adduced here only as evidence for their own time and place. Archbishop Benson speaks, indeed, with admirable force and point of the general contrast between the doctrinal and disciplinary authority of the Councils. 'The creeds and sacred definitions deal with things eternal. The canons and the discipline deal with things of spiritual concernment, but in temporal regions and for temporary uses. The canons themselves take into account the conditions of their own times and countries. . . . The institutions, organizations, and usages of communities, both ecclesiastical and civil . . . have been in perpetual movement and life, and those canons as they stand do not now answer to the actual practice of any Christian Church. 3 Yet if we show, as we shall try to do, that the jurisdiction now claimed violates not only in method but in substance, 74 METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION not only in expression but in principle, the practice of the primitive Church and the rules of its earliest codes, shall we be wrong- in urging that if the judicature of the English Church diverges in this respect so far from that of the centuries to which confessedly she looks for example, and diverges in the direction of arbitrary and uncontrolled indi- vidual power, the sooner so serious a blot upon our system is wiped away the better ; however venerable the prescription quoted correctly or no on behalf of the existing state of things ? The synod of bishops or the single bishop ? the plurality of judges or the sole judge ? From the very first moment at which we have any evi- dence at all, we can see how synods of bishops, each the freely chosen representative of his people, formed the natural and obvious method of expressing the mind of the Church on those wider issues which concerned more than a single diocese. At the time when Victor of Rome disturbed the Church over the Easter question (c. 196 A. D.), such synods were being held in Palestine, at Rome, in Pontus, in Gaul, in Osrhoene. Early in the third century Carthage, Iconium, and Synnada had their councils on the question of heretical baptism. St. Cyprian, the organizer but not the founder of this .system of episcopal intercourse, held regular synods of the African bishops, and six of his letters are written in their name. 1 The presumption that the trial of a bishop de- manded no less an assembly is borne out by other allusions in St. Cyprian's correspondence. 2 If he sometimes treats a bishop as ipso facto excommunicate like the African Fortunatianus of Assuras and the Spanish bishops Basilides and Martialis, all of whom had lapsed in the persecution, or Marcianus of Aries, who had joined Novation and had therefore by implica- tion broken off communion with the Church, this is not to 1 Cyprian, epp. Ivii, Ixi, Ixiv, Ixvii, Ixx, Ixxii ; for the early synods see Eus. H. E. v 23, Cyprian, ep. Ixxi 4, Ixxv 7, 10. Cf. Tertullian, de ieiuniis 13 ' Aguntur praeterea per Graecias ilia certis in locis con- cilia ex universis ecclesiis, per quae et altiora quaeque in commune trac- tantur, et ipsa repraesentatio totius nominis Christiani magna veneratione celebratur.' [See also p. 67 supra.} 2 Epp. Ixv, Ixvii, Ixviii. IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 75 claim that he, a single bishop, could try the case of another. Rather, with respect to the bishop of Aries, he requests Stephen of Rome to communicate with the bishops of Gaul in order that they should take the necessary steps. To the Spanish churches he writes as the spokesman of thirty-six of his colleagues, and it is specifically mentioned that Sabinus had been elected in place of Basilides by the whole flock and the assembled bishops on the spot : from the same letter, too, we learn that the case of lapsed bishops as a whole had been adjudicated on already by the bishops of Africa as well as elsewhere. There is also the * post mortem ' excommunication directed by Cyprian against Geminius Victor, bishop of Furni ; but this again is based definitely on the ground that the pro- visions of his will transgressed a decision of the African .episcopate. 1 Finally, the case of Privatus of Lambaesis is a type of the normal constitutional action of the African Church. He had been charged, we are told, with many serious crimes, and condemned in a synod of no less than ninety bishops. 2 The questions brought to trial in the West were most often those concerning discipline and morals. For doctrinal cases we turn naturally to the East, and from Eusebius' cursory reference to Beryllus of Bostra and the fuller details about Paul of Samosata we gain a singularly attractive impression of the openness and fairness with which, in the third century, even the most novel and startling statements were treated. Beryllus held quasi- Sabellian views on the Person of Christ, and * very many bishops held inquiries and discussions with the man *, 3 until finally Origen, the great theologian of the East, was called in, with the happy result of convincing the bishop of Bostra of his errors. To decide the charges against Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, who taught that Christ 1 Cypr. ep. i 2 ' Contra formam nuper in concilio a sacerdotibus datam.' [ But it is doubtful if Geminius ' frater noster ' was after all a bishop.] 4 Cypr. ep. lix 10 ' Ob multa et gravia delicta nonaginta episco- porum sententia condemnatum antecessorum etiam nostrorum.' It was apparently before Cyprian's elevation to the episcopate. [Cf. p. 1 1 5 n. 4.] a Eus. H. E. vi 33 jr\fiarcri : TO) KOIJ/W TO)V TU(TK.6irQJV. IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 79 and it is ratified on the two grounds that it is ancient and that it is not absolutely unique. Thus the bishop of Alex- andria possessed a far wider local prerogative than any other Eastern bishop, and what he refrained from doing no ordi- nary metropolitan could have done. Did then his * dominion over ' Egypt cover the right to try a bishop as sole judge ? Among the original adherents of Arius were numbered two bishops, Secundus and Theonas, who,' together with several Alexandrian priests, were tried and deposed shortly before the council, not by Alexander of Alexandria alone, but in conjunction with a synod ; and just as Cyprian had empha- sized the condemnation of Privatus by a vote of ninety bishops, so Alexander in his circular letter to the Churches emphasizes, not the authority of the president, but the num- ber of the bishops, l nearly one hundred,' who pronounced the sentence, and the extent of the area, ' Egypt and the Libyas,' which they represented. 1 Of primary importance for our inquiry are the canons which chronologically follow next in order. Between the councils of Nicaea (A.D. 325) and of Antioch (A.D. 341), the Arian controversy had entered on an acuter stage. Trials and depositions were the order of the day. Synod was pitted against synod, and appeal against appeal. Athanasius had been condemned by a synod at Tyre, and acquitted by a synod in Egypt ; his successor had been consecrated by bishops at Antioch, while his rights were being affirmed by bishops at Rome ; his enemies had urged the emperor to recognise and act on the sy nodical deposition, and he sud- denly appealed to the emperor in person against them. It was a pressing necessity to formulate some code of rules about jurisdictions and appeals, which, by giving further expression to principles already admitted, might gain general acceptance and help to clear up the confusion which prevailed. 2 And it is a striking proof of the prudence and success with which this Antiochene council went to work, 1 Socrates, H. E. i 6 (ed. Bright, p. 6). 2 The greater the turmoil of these years, the more remarkable the absence of instances of any metropolitan claiming to sit as sole judge. 8o METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION that although it consisted, if not of Arians, at least of allies of Arians and opponents of Athanasius, and although some of its provisions were obviously aimed against the Alexandrian bishop, yet as soon as the stress of the Arian struggle was forgotten, the regulations of the quasi- Arian council obtained an unquestioned footing in the Catholic .canon law. 1 We rest our case so confidently on these canons taken as a whole that we can afford to admit frankly that a most un- fortunate use of one at least of them was made in the recent arguments, when the bishop of Lincoln's counsel quoted the thirteenth canon as showing that intruding bishops ' are to be deposed by a sacred synod', and laid himself open to the merited rebuff of a corrected translation by the archbishop. Dr. Benson pointed out unanswerably that ' holy synod ' is the name by which the council regularly denotes itself, and paraphrased the Greek ' ipso facto excommunicate \ 2 But the main body of Antiochene evidence remains un- touched. Of the two groups of canons, those from the second to the sixth and with these would go, in one aspect, the eleventh and twelfth contain provisions bearing directly on the struggles of the time, the setting up of altar against altar, priest against bishop, bishop against synod ; while the ninth to the twenty-fifth (and last) define the functions of provincial synods and metropolitans, and in these the special necessities of the moment, though doubtless equally present to the 1 [The account given in the text is ' the truth ', but it is perhaps not quite ' the whole truth '. The corpus of Eastern canon law, as the geogra- phical distribution of the councils contained in it is enough to prove, was put together either in Constantinople, Asia Minor or Antioch itself, by a generation which accepted indeed as a matter of course the Creed of Nicaea and the orthodoxy of St. Athanasius, but in a milieu naturally unfavourable to Alexandrine claims or Alexandrine prejudices.] 2 The Greek is K.a6r]pr)p.vov emvtitv fjdr) VTTO 7779 dyias vwo&ov, ' deposed from the very moment by the holy synod.' Cf. in canon I, TOVTOV f) dyia arvvobos i>Tfv6ev f}8r) dXXorpiov cKpive ; and canons 10, 14, of novel enact- ments, fiof rrj dyia aw68s rvyxdvtiv, TO rrptirov 8oKip.aoi>or)s rrjs dyias (rvvodov, are more difficult, especially as the provincial synod is mentioned just before ; is it possible still to take them of the synod then sitting, 'for the holy synod approves seemliness,' comparing Nicaea 9, TO yap dveiri\^TTTov fieSiMi T) KadoXiK?) eKK\rj(ria, * for the Catholic Church vindicates for herself blamelessness ' ? IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 81 thoughts of the council, are less prominently expressed. We will commence with these latter, as being at once simpler and more permanent. The ninth canon treats of bishops and metropolitans. While each bishop has independent authority in diocesan matters, to the metropolitan belongs the general duty of 4 accepting the care for the whole province '/on the ground of the civil position of the metropolis as the centre of all business transactions ; consequently (50 ev) the metropolitan has * precedence in honour", and the other bishops, * according to the canon of our fathers in force from old times,' are to do nothing ' extraordinary ' or 4 superfluous ', nothing beyond diocesan duties, without him. But does this 'care for the whole province ' include any powers, and especially any powers of jurisdiction over individual bishops, apart from the action of the comprovincials ? Certainly not ; for the same canon concludes ' nor is the metropolitan to act without the consent of the rest', 2 and a similar relation is expressed in other canons e. g. * not without the consent and letters of the provincial bishops, and particularly of the metropolitan ', 1 by letters of the metropolitan and the bishops with him f , ' not without a synod and the presence of the bishop of the metropolis of the province'. 3 Or the same idea is expressed by the technical phrase, ' the complete synod,' 4 defined in canon 16 as that l where the bishop also of the metropolis is present '. If the metropolitan is ever mentioned alone, it is in connexion with duties which fall necessarily on the presi- 1 Canon 9 T ^ v * v ^ /ir/rpoTrdXei TrpoeoTwra fnivKoirov Kal rrjv povri8a dvade\(r6ai irdvr)? rfjS firapxias. 2 Uepairepa) de nydey irpdrTttv fm\ipeiv Si^a roi) TTJS fjLrjrpojroXecos eVi should be interpreted of the influence and position of the metropolitan as the representative of the combined action of himself and the comprovincials, is indicated by the concluding stipulation that such metropolitan^ already excommunicated by the synod then sitting, may further be deposed from the episcopate by the action of such of the bishops of the province and of the neighbouring metropolitans as hold orthodox doc- trine. If the provincial bishops take part as joint judges in the case of the metropolitan himself, can they have been excluded from the same function in the cases of their colleagues ? Certainly the canons of Chalcedon tend towards retaining and restoring the prerogatives of the synod rather than elevating the metropolitan at its expense. One canon emphasizes, ' according to the canons of the holy fathers ' and against contemporary laxity, the rule of the yearly meetings 92 METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION of the provincial synod ; others point to the synods thus re- stored as the proper tribunals for adjudicating suits between a cleric and a bishop, or disputes about diocesan boundaries between one bishop and another. 1 It is inconceivable that when the judicial decision of comparatively trifling 1 causes is attributed to the synod and not to the metropolitan, the council contemplated with approval the violation of 'the canons of the fathers ' by the metropolitan's exercise of sole jurisdiction in the most serious cause in which a bishop could be concerned. If this particular usurpation the grossest of all had come into fashion (which is at least doubtful), it may safely be argued that it is restrained by the principles of judicature laid down at Chalcedon. There is, indeed, another provision of this council on which the archbishop relies. ' As early as A. D. 45 1 the highest trials between bishops are to be taken before either the exarch of the dioecesis or the archbishop of Constantinople.' 2 But since these ' highest ' trials are, according to the express language of the canons, those in which a metropolitan is the defendant, they do not really touch the issue, as between metropolitan and synod, in the slightest degree ; we have seen what ground the council took up on that point. All that the canon can be fairly quoted as illustrating is the tendency towards centralisation, which the council discouraged in the case of metropolitans, but in this case tacitly confirms. By analogy, as suits against a bishop fell to the provincial synod, so suits against a metropolitan should have fallen to the synod of the * dioecesis ', or exarchate ; and this was no doubt the intention of the so-called sixth canon of Constanti- nople. Synods of this sort as there provided had not been unknown in practice. To the synod of Aquileia the bishops from the ' dioecesis ' of Italy were summoned by the emperors, and Ambrose, the bishop or exarch of Milan, its capital, pre- sided. The acts of the Ephesine council speak of * the synod 1 Chalcedon, canons 19, 9, 17. 2 The reference is to Chalcedon, canons 9, 17. The * exarch' was the chief bishop of a ' dioecesis ' ; in Egypt, Alexandria ; in the East, Antioch ; in Pontus, Cappadocian Caesarea ; in Asia, Ephesus ; in Thrace, Heraclea. [See above, pp. 42, 43, 50.] IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 93 which met in Alexandria of the Egyptian dioecesis ' ; similarly of 4 the holy synod of the Oriental dioecesis \ l But such synods must have been unwieldy to the last degree, and practical convenience outweighed the preference otherwise clearly evinced at Chalcedon for older and more constitutional methods. However, the synod of the exarchate was really giving way not so much in favour of the exarch as of the alternative court of appeal, 4 the throne of imperial Constantinople.' 2 The aggrandisement of New Rome is one of the decisive charac- teristics of this later period. To the natural influence arising out of its relation with the Court there accrued the widespread jealousy felt in the East for both Rome and Alexandria, so that the new capital attained by consent rank and privileges equal to those of any other see, and in a sphere which, ever since the episcopate of St. Chrysostom half a century before, had included the whole East except such districts as owned the sway of Alexandria or Antioch. The twenty-eighth canon 3 of Chalcedon lays down the general principle of equality with Rome very definitely, and sanctions in detail the right to ordain metropolitans (but metropolitans only) in the exarchates of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace ; an encroachment, no doubt, but only to a certain extent affecting the provincial bishops, to whom the election is still reserved, ' the votes being unanimous according to the custom, and referred to the bishop of Constantinople.' In other words, the patriarch has the same sort of privilege in the appointment of a metropolitan as belonged to the metropolitan in the appointment of an ordinary bishop. If this is the utmost extent to which patriarchal interference 1 See the note of Justel on Constantinople canon 6 (Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Universae. Paris 1610, p. 221 : Bibliotheca Juris Canonici Veteris, Paris 1661, i 91). 2 If archbishop Benson paraphrases these words with ' archbishop of Constantinople ', he is quite justified by the usage of that time. But then it must not be forgotten that the title 'Archbishop' meant something much more venerable than it does to us, being almost synonymous with Patriarch ; no ordinary metropolitan would have been so denominated. 8 [It was not really a canon at all, but a special decree passed at a separate sitting from the rest of the canons.] 94 METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION in provincial matters is carried by a council, all whose sym- pathies and prejudices were enlisted on behalf of the patriarch whose claims they were asked to ratify, it is easy to conjecture that, where the contrary was the case and the council inimical, provincial independence was guaranteed by very stringent enactments. For instance, the council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 had quarrelled with John of Antioch, and the Cypriot appeal against this prelate's claim to perform ordinations in the island was favourably entertained. The 'judgement' known as the eighth canon of Ephesus assumes that ' the laws of the Church and the canons of the holy fathers' establish the principle of the self- sufficiency of the province. * Ancient custom ' might justify an exception, though this could not be pleaded so at least the Cypriots had assured the council in the case of Cyprus : but such a custom must be ' original ' l and not a modern usurpation. Nor is a despotism of the metropolitan substituted for the despotism of the patriarch. If it is enacted that * each metropolitan has permission to take a copy of the proceedings for his own security ', this is as the representative of the province ; for the appellants here were * the Cypriot bishops ', and it is ' the presidents of the holy churches in Cyprus ' (in the plural) to whom l according to the canons of the holy fathers and the ancient custom ' the right of ordinations is asserted to belong. What is more noteworthy still, the whole decision is based in the clearest manner on * liberty ' (tXevOtpia) as a first principle of Chris- tianity. The innovation * strikes at the liberty of all '. It, and anything like it, is null and void, not only as violating the canon law, but 4 lest under cloak of sacerdotal action the pride of secular dominion be privily brought in, and unconsciously we lose little by little that liberty which was purchased for us with his own blood by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Liberator of all men '. 2 avwQcv Kal 2 | Of course the bishops of Antioch did not admit the historical accuracy of the Cypriot case : and pope Innocent, not many years before, had roundly declared that the Nicene canon supported the Antiochene claim. Equally of course the bishop of Alexandria would grasp an opportunity IN PRIMITIVE CANON LAW 95 More pregnant words were never uttered by a council of Christian bishops. They strike the true keynote for all systems of ecclesiastical organization and jurisdiction. They lift what may seem petty squabbles into a loftier region, and deal with them in the light of an elementary Christian truth. We. confidently appeal to their sanction on behalf of the bishop of Lincoln's claim. Yet we trust that we have not in the course of this argument been betrayed into any criticism inconsistent in the least degree with the deep respect which is due to the person and office of the Primate. We should not wish to forget that it was the part of the bishop's representatives to state the case for the primitive jurisdiction of the synod ; and that a judge is not to be blamed for leaning to the side of the competency of his court until it is disproved to him. We know that, when the office assumed is difficult and delicate, it may be the highest course not to shirk responsibility. We appreciate to the full the motive which must animate a Primate situated as archbishop Benson is situated, and which would weigh with him in exact proportion to his sense of duty and of mission the hope that by his means some quiet might be restored to a distracted Church. But to us it has seemed that history and reason, Church principle and Church practice, are too deeply involved in the issue for silence to be kept. We are unable to see that in the ancient canon law 'there appears all through a jurisdiction vesting in, and exercised by, the metropolitan, sometimes with, sometimes only m } a synod, and sometimes separately '. We seem rather to see that one form of jurisdiction, and one only, comes to the light in the first four centuries, and that the canons of the later councils rather rebuke than ratify de- partures from the earlier system ; that least of all in questions of trial of a bishop was the court of the metropolitan a recog- nised alternative to the court of the province. We cannot for humbling the rival see of Antioch and crippling its jurisdiction. It is a strange irony that we owe to the fiery Cyril this notable declara- tion of constitutional freedom : dpxiepevs &v roD eviavrov CKCIVOV Trpor)- 96 METROPOLITANS AND THEIR JURISDICTION believe that a constitutional and an absolute jurisdiction were contemporaneous growths. It is true, indeed, that as we pass our glance along the centuries of Christian history a time does come when these two jurisdictions are traceable side by side. But the one is of later creation, and a supplanter of the earlier. It is individual, arbitrary, despotic. The other has an illus- trious pedigree and an ancient history. It is deep-rooted in primitive times ; it is sanctioned by primitive councils ; it is based on primitive principles. IV ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 1 (Ch^l,rch Quarterly Review. July, 1892.) 1. Sancti Caecilii Cypriani Opera recognita et illustrataper Joannem [FELL] Oxoniensem Episcopum: accedunt Annales Cyprianici per Joannem [PEARSON] Cestrien- sem. (Oxford, 1682.) 2. 5*. Thasci Caecili Cypriani Opera omnia recensuit et commentario critico instntxit GUILELMUS HARTEL. Pars' II : Epistulae. (Vienna, 1871.) 3. Cyprianus, Thascius Caecilius [in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. i. By Archbishop BENSON]. (London. 1877.) 4. Cyprian von Karthago und die Verfassung der Kirche. Von OTTO RITSCHL. (Gottingen, 1885.) 5. The Cheltenham List of the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, and of the Writings of Cyprian [in Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, vol. iii]. By the Rev. W. SANDAY, D.D. (Oxford, 1891.) IF the history of the century which succeeded the council of Nicaea is illustrated by a not inconsiderable number of collec- tions of letters notably by those of St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Isidore in the East, St. Jerome and St. Augustine in the West for ante-Nicene times the correspondence of St. Cyprian occupies a position which is quite unique. It is true that a series of seven letters of St. Ignatius is extant, which are invaluable 1 [Archbishop Benson's great monograph Cyprian : His Life, His Times, His Work, 1897, had of course not appeared when these pages were written. Still less had another book which deals more especially with the letters, Die Cyprianische Brief sammlung, by Hans v. Soden, 1904 (in Gebhardt and Harnack's Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, x 3).] TURNER H 98 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE for the light they throw on the doctrine and organization of the Church in perhaps the least known generation of its history. These, however, are rather treatises or exhortations than letters in the ordinary sense of the term ; while the relics preserved by Eusebius of the correspondence of Cornelius of Rome, and even of Dionysius of Alexandria, are too slight and fragmen- tary to stand in any comparison with the eighty-one epistles which form the second volume of Hartel's edition of St. Cy- prian's works. For the persecution of Decius, for the Novatianist troubles arising out of it at Rome and Carthage, for the con- troversy on Rebaptism between the bishops of these two sees, for at least the earlier stages of the persecution of Valerian, we possess here contemporary evidence, and evidence of that uniquely valuable character belonging only to letters, which photograph for us, so to speak, each separate stage of the history, and enable us to trace, as in no other way could be done, the formation of opinions and the development of events. In the case of St. Cyprian, the preservation of so large a portion of his official correspondence is to be attributed prima- rily to the business-like habits which especially distinguished the writer who is par excellence also the statesman of the ante-Nicene Church. If in justifying his course of action to one African bishop, Antonianus, at the close of the Decian persecution, he has occasion to appeal to words of his own, penned while it was still raging, a copy of them is at his side. 1 Whenever, during his absence from Carthage, he writes to his clergy there, he is anxious that bishops or clergy of other cities who may happen to be visiting the capital should have an opportunity of hearing what he says, and, if they wish, of transcribing it for their own use. Where a group of letters of one period shape out a policy which his colleagues would do well to adopt in their own dioceses, it is circulated in col- lected form throughout the African episcopate. Nor, of course, was Cyprian insensible to the advantages of united action, not merely in the African provinces, but in the whole of the Latin - speaking Churches as well ; consequently a series of letters to the Roman Church enclose, one after another, packets of those 1 Ep. lv 4, quoting ep. xix 2. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 99 which he had just been addressing to correspondents in Africa. So again, if a declaration from Rome supports the line which he has independently initiated in Africa, care is at once taken that copies of it should be dispatched l throughout the whole world ', in order that African dissentients from the policy authorised at Carthage may realise that they are setting them- selves in opposition, not to their own primate only, but also to the great churches across the sea. When, however, the pope of Rome entered into controversy with the primate of Africa, it seems probable that similar provision was not necessarily made for the circulation of Roman letters, for it is only at the special request of bishop Pompey that a copy of Stephen's answer to the African pronouncements on Re- baptism is transmitted to him. 1 It might thus have been natural to conjecture that, as Carthage had been the centre of St. Cyprian's activity, and the archives of its see must have contained copies of his multi- farious correspondence, an official and authorised edition of his collected works would, if not in his lifetime, at any rate soon after his death, have been put into circulation there. But there was, it would appear, no Atticus to fulfil this office for his Cicero. The phenomena of the posthumous history of the correspondence, as gathered either from the extant manu- scripts or from notices in the great writers of the generations which immediately succeeded, all point to unofficial action, and in the first place to small collections as the nucleus round which was gradually worked up the mass of letters as we know them now. 2 On the one hand, the leading representatives among the numerous manuscripts exhibit the correspondence in arrangements totally independent in the main of one another ; on the other hand, even St. Augustine, who would certainly have possessed a complete edition, if such had existed, of the correspondence of so great an African authority, finds an in- superable puzzle in a reference by bishop Crescens of Cirta 1 Cf. ep. xxxii ; epp. xxv, xxvi ; epp. xx 2, xxvii 3, xxxv, xlv 4; ep. Iv 5 (xxx 5) ; ep. Ixxiv i. 2 The case is different with the treatises, which there is reason to suppose may have been collected in a quasi-official edition [see Appendix II, at the end of the present volume]. H 2 ioo ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE (in his vote at the Rebaptism Council) to a letter of Cyprian to Stephen about Rebaptism. 4 Why,' says St. Augustine, ' I know that letter very well, but it does not say a word about the question.' Now, as a matter of fact, we possess two letters to Stephen, and while the one (ep. Ixviii) does not, the other (ep. Ixxii) does, contain a discussion of the Rebap- tism controversy. It is clear that St. Augustine possessed the one, but never so much as guessed at the existence of another. 1 The want of any such authoritative edition in early times only serves, however, to throw into greater relief the striking completeness of the collection as we have it now. Of course we have no means of checking the number of letters written on isolated topics in individual cases, and many of these may have perished. But as regards the controversies with which St. Cyprian's name is more especially connected, the mass of letters are so intimately bound up together that the absence of one link in the chain could not pass unnoticed; yet in the whole group belonging to the period during and immediately after the Decian persecution epp. v to Ix while there are plenty of gaps in the series addressed to him, the extant pro- ductions of his pen, forty-four in number, would require only to be supplemented here and there 2 in order to make an absolutely perfect set. So gradually, however, did this collection complete itself, that out of the fifty-six letters forming the group just mentioned, fifteen are entirely un- represented in any one of the ten manuscripts earlier than the tenth century used by Hartel. 3 We are again thrown back upon the hypothesis of individual effort resulting in the formation of small collections of the principal, or some of the principal, letters dealing with various single questions. Thus, while nine letters in the editions are addressed to Cornelius of Rome, a group of eight was already known in the fourth century, as Jerome's Chronicle and the Cheltenham List, of which we are about to speak, testify ; nor does any one of the families of Cyprianic manuscripts contain less than five or six, 1 de Baptismo VI xv 25. 2 Cf. epp. xxxvi 4, lix 9. 3 But several of them, and especially those written by Cyprian himself, were contained in the lost Verona manuscript, probably of the seventh century. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE -ion and these arranged in more or less the same order. Even more distinct in the earliest manuscripts and the Cheltenham List (partly also in Lucifer of Cagliari) is a group written to or about the confessors and martyrs ; and a third is formed, before the Cheltenham List and St. Augustine, of the chief pronouncements about Rebaptism. 1 To what extent this process had reached in the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, we are to some degree enabled to judge by the extant literature of that time. In most parts of the East, indeed, so small was the demand for Latin authors or so small the knowledge of Latin among Greeks that even Eusebius seems only to have known Cyprian through the medium of the (Greek) correspondence of Cornelius of Rome and of Dionysius of Alexandria ; yet collections of his epistles, perhaps in Latin, found in Rufinus' day a ready sale in Constantinople 2 ; and some of his writings were certainly translated into Greek, and even into Syriac. But to the West St. Cyprian was not merely, or not primarily, a great writer, but a great man. Apart entirely from the literary or theo- logical value of his works, he had stamped his personality too deeply on the face of the history of his generation to be easily forgotten. Certainly he had contributed, by his treatises on Patience, on Envy, on Almsgiving, valuable material towards the systematic treatment of Christian ethics : but Tertullian had done the same before him with deeper thought, more fiery rhetoric, more pointed epigram ; and the rich mine of Tertullianic literature was, with some exceptions among whom must be noted Cyprian himself 3 comparatively unworked. Exception may have been taken to many of Tertullian 's writings on the ground of their Montanist tenden- cies. But St. Cyprian might equally have been an object of suspicion, at least to those writers who favoured the supremacy 1 The first group, epp. 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 57, 59, 60, of which ep. 48 is probably the one absent from St. Jerome's eight ; the second, epp. 6, 10, 28, 37, 11, 38, 39 ; the third, epp. 73, 71,70, 74, and Sententiae Episcoporum. See Dr. Sanday in Studio, Biblica. iii 284-7, 2 95 ff - 2 Rufinus de adulteratione libromm Origenis (de la Rue iv App. 53). 3 Cf. the story told by Jerome of Cyprian's daily request, ' Da magi- strum ', de Viris illustribus liii. [And the adversus Praxean was largely used by Latin theologians.] ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE of the Roman see ; and even in Africa the appeal made to him by the Donatists occasioned some inconvenience to St. Augustine. It is therefore, as we have said, not only to the intrinsic value of his writings that we must look to account for his popularity ; and we shall not be wrong in emphasizing first his reputation as a statesman, and secondly his fame as a martyr. Origen or Tertullian may have surpassed him as scholars and theologians, Irenaeus of Lyons and Dionysius of Alexandria may have wielded an episcopal influence only second to his ; Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage, Sixtus and Laurence at Rome, suffered martyrdom under circumstances equally calculated to arrest the interest and strike the imagi- nation of the Christian world: but which of them was, like St. Cyprian, writer, statesman, and martyr in one ? Without pausing to dwell further on the testimonia which might be drawn from the writings, for instance, of St. Augus- tine and St. Jerome, we must hasten to the still earlier witness of what we have already alluded to as the Cheltenham List. In 1885 Professor Mommsen, while working in the Phillipps Library at Cheltenham of which the most valuable section has since that date found its way to Berlin discovered, in a manuscript of chronicles, a list of the books of the Old and New Testaments and of the writings of St. Cyprian. In the immediate neighbourhood of these lists were two calculations of dates, the one giving the consulship of Eusebius and Hypatius (A.D. 359) and the other that of Valentinian and Valens (A.D. 365), so that there is some presumption that the lists were added by a hand contemporary with these dates ; a presumption fully borne out by Dr. Sanday's thorough investigation of the bearings of the canon of scriptural books on the place and time of its composition, of which the one is satisfactorily proved to be Africa, and the other the fourth century. J In the second half, then, of the fourth century, the writings of St. Cyprian which were known to the African author of this list were the following : of the thirteen treatises contained in Hartel's first volume, all but one, the Quod idola dii non sint, reappear ; of the spurious and additional matter 1 Studio, Biblica, iii 226-74. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 103 contained in his third or appendix volume, the list includes the Life by Pontius and two already of the pseudo-Cyprianic works, the de laude martyrii and the adversus ludaeos. To identify the rest, which are letters properly speaking, we have to guide us, in the first place, the rough titles of the list ; where these are corrupt or insufficient, the parallel order of letters in one or two of our MSS ; and in the last resort the stichometry or number of lines which the list supplies as a means of checking the extortionate charges and falsified totals of the booksellers for each item throughout the Biblical and Cyprianic books. 1 By these means twenty-three, or perhaps we may say twenty-four, letters, besides the group to Cornelius, can be certainly recognised ; and there are not more than two or three left which are identified doubtfully or not at all. 2 In any case there is no real reason to believe that the author of the list knew any writings as St. Cyprian's which have not come down to us. It will have become obvious already that, granting the stages of growth of the Cyprianic literature to be such as we have described, it will be hopeless to look, in manuscripts of the letters, for even an approximation to their chronological order. The possessor of one small collection added to it at haphazard whenever he fell in with another, and the same process was repeated time after time until the larger collections as we have them in the later MSS were complete ; sometimes, indeed, it even happened that the same letter appears twice in one MS, and with a text so different as to indicate a different genealogy and a different moment of accession. 3 To follow the order of the MSS, or of any one of them, in a printed text, would only 1 * Quoniam indiculum versuum in urbe Roma non ad liquidum, sed et alibi, avariciae causa non habent integrum, per singulos libros computatis syllabis posui numero xvi versum Virgilianum omnibus libris numerum adscripsi.' The sense is clear if the words are not ; our compiler counted all through each book of the Bible and of St. Cyprian, reckoning ac- cording to custom sixteen syllables as equal to one a-ri^os or Virgilian hexameter. 2 Epp. 2, 10, u, 20, 28, 30, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 54, 55, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69 part i, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, and probably 70; doubtful ones are epp. 72, 76,6. 3 Such is the case with the Oxford MS Bodl. Add. C 15, called by Dr. Sanday O l , where ep. Iviii (ad Thibaritanos] is repeated. 104 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE be to court confusion, and it has been one of the chief problems confronting the editors of St. Cyprian to reduce this chaos into a harmonious and orderly arrangement. In Pamelius' edition of 1568 order is beginning to appear ; and yet even this attempt is disfigured by palpable blots. 1 A great step in advance was taken by the Oxford edition of 1682, which may be said to have distinguished once for all the chief historical groups, though still leaving room for discussion as to the true relation of the members of each group to one another. Hartel's Vienna edition of 1871, which did so much for the knowledge of MSS and for the critical apparatus to the text, was content to 'adopt the Oxford arrangement ; and it has since found a champion even in details in archbishop Benson's admirable article in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. But it was not to be expected that this, which may be called the received opinion, should pass in the present generation with- out challenge; and an essay on Cyprian by Otto (son of Albrecht) Ritschl, published in 1885, contains a short appen- dix on the chronology in which a considerable amount of variation in detail is suggested. Before, however, we can pass to the letters themselves and trace out in them the course of St. Cyprian's episcopate, we must follow the example of the Oxford edition, and say something about the Annales Cy- prianici. No one can cast even the most hasty glance at bishop Pearson's wonderful piece of work without being profoundly impressed with the skill and eruditon of its author ; but it was inevitable that the two centuries since elapsed should have added to and corrected our knowledge. Space forbids us to discuss in detail the points in which older writers seem to have gone wrong ; we can only give, according to the most modern authorities, the dates and successions of the Roman bishops and the Roman emperors contemporary with St. Cyprian as a sort of framework into which to fit his correspondence. For the popes, our guides are the Liberian papal catalogue of A.D. 354, and the two related lists published with it of the 1 e. g. ep. vi, really one of the first letters, appears eight years too late, in connexion with the persecution, not of Decius, but of Valerian. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 105 commemoration days at Rome of popes and martyrs, Depositio episcoporum and Depositio martyrum. From these we learn that Fabian was martyred on January 20 or 21, A. D. 250. We know from Cyprian that the next election did not take place very much before Easter A. D. 251 ; but it cannot have been after it, for the ' two years, three months, and ten days ' of Cornelius, and the ' eight months ten days ' of his successor Lucius, give almost three years to be reckoned back from Lucius' death on March 5, A. D. 254. Cornelius' death must have occurred in June A. D. 253. * Lucius' successor, Stephen, governed over three years, and died on August 2, A. D. 257. Finally, Xystus, after barely a year's episcopate, was martyred a month before Cyprian, August 6, A. D. 258. The more fragmentary evidence of numismatics, epigraphy, and history is by modern writers combined to restore the imperial chronology somewhat as follows. Decius became undisputed emperor and master of Rome in the autumn of A. D. 249. Persecution followed immediately until the advance of the Goths called the emperor away to a campaign on the Danube, where he fell in battle about the November of A. D. 251. His successor was Trebonianus Gallus, whose lax administration soon provoked a revolt, and Aemilianus seized the throne, perhaps in August A. D. 253, only to be dethroned and put to death in turn, after a few weeks' reign, by Gallus' representative Valerian, who, with his son Gallienus, retained the reins of power until after St. Cyprian's martyrdom. 2 To return now to St. Cyprian. Of the eighty-one extant letters, all were written by or addressed to him during the 1 The older critics, following St. Jerome's statement de Viris Ixvii, that Cyprian suffered ' eodem die quo Romae Cornelius sed non eodem anno', naturally placed Cornelius with Cyprian on September 14. But we know from the Liberian Catalogue that Cornelius died at Centum- cellae, and September 14 was perhaps the day of the translation of his remains to Rome. See generally Lightfoot, S. Clement, i 246-56, 287-90. 2 An outline of the material for the reconstruction will be found in Cagnat Cours d' Epigraphie Latine, ed. 3, pp. 203, 204. It may be added that no coins have been found in Egypt of year 3 of Decius i.e. none after Aug. 29, A. D. 251 : on the other hand there are plenty of coins of the third year of Gallus i.e. after Aug. 29, A. D. 253; while Aemilian must have been proclaimed before, but only acknowledged in Alexandria after, Aug. 29, A. D. 253, for all his coins are dated as year 2. io6 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE years of his episcopate, and, with a few exceptions of quite uncertain date, all of them fall into some four well-marked classes. Thirty-nine (epp. v-xliii) belong to the period of his absence from Carthage occasioned by the Decian perse- cution ; twenty-three (epp. xliv-lxi, Ixiv-lxviii) are occu- pied with the questions which arose out of the persecution after its close and after Cyprian's return to his see ; the Rebaptism controversy accounts for seven (epp. Ixix-lxxv) ; the last six (epp. Ixxvi-lxxxi) belong to Valerian's persecu- tion and to the closing year of Cyprian's life ; while the six remaining (epp. i-iv, Ixii, and Ixiii) deal with isolated questions and lie outside the general development of the history. On the present occasion our task will be confined to the letters of the first two classes that is, to the Decian persecution and the Novatianist schism ; and, taking as our guide the chrono- logical framework just constructed, we shall attempt to place the correspondence in rough order as we go. Before the outbreak of the Decian persecution the Church had been in the enjoyment for many years of a period of profound and unexampled peace. It was nearly forty years since the death of Severus had relieved her of her last enemy upon the throne of the Caesars, and the tendencies of the mainly Oriental emperors who followed were favourable rather than otherwise to an Oriental religion. For one brief moment indeed it seemed that the barbarian Maximin would direct upon Christianity the hatred he felt for everything in which his predecessor, Alexander Severus, had been interested. But if such was his design, it was frustrated by his own death ; and the banishment to Sardinia of Pontianus the bishop, and Hippolytus the schismatic suffragan, of the see of Rome, with the contemporary local outbreak in Cappadocia recorded by Firmilian of Caesarea, are almost the only acts of persecution which history has put upon record to break the continuity of a period when Alexander placed the image of Christ in his chapel and copied Christian customs in the statute book, or when Philip the Arabian (at least according to the story as it ran half a century later) consented to be ranked among the ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 107 penitents in the Christian congregation. Nor was this change of attitude towards the Church confined to high places. Half a century of free intercourse between the Church and the world had at least shown the baselessness of the old calumnies, which out of the secrecy and mystery of the Christian worship of earlier generations had evolved the charges of cannibal banquets and promiscuous intercourse, 1 and had taught people that, if a Christian differed from his neighbours in morals, he differed for the better. But it was beginning to be doubtful, at least in some places, to what extent he really differed at all. When the ease of the hereditary Christian began to replace the ardour of the convert, and the sense of imperial favour relaxed the uncompromising sternness of the times when every day might bring forth a martyrdom, the whole attitude of the Church underwent a change, inevitable, indeed, in the nature of things, but none the less resisted and lamented by the more fiery spirits of that generation. The perpetual exclusion from communion with which the Western Church, at least at the end of the second century, had visited what were called the ' mortal ' sins of murder, idolatry, adultery, and perhaps fraud, was exchanged, in the case of one class of sins after another, for a definite term of penance. 2 Nay, before the end of the period, if we are to trust St. Cyprian's picture of the African episcopate, 3 the bishops, instead of guarding the morals of their flocks, themselves set the example of neglect of duty by putting their whole energies into secular business and deserting their dioceses whenever the exigencies of the market required their presence elsewhere. We must, no doubt, reduce to due proportions the exaggerated image which the excited minds of the survivors of the persecution projected back upon the preceding years, as they saw in the failure of the Church to meet the blow the Divine judgement upon the sins which had provoked it ; but the ordinary standard of the African Chris- tianity of those days was obviously not calculated to produce 1 [They were suggested, no doubt, the one by Christian language about the Eucharist, the other by Christian language about universal brother- hood and love.] 2 Cf. Cyprian, ep. Iv 20, 21, 27. 3 Cyprian, de lapsis 5, 6 ; cf. cardinal Newman's Callista, ch. ii. io8 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE the stuff of which confessors and martyrs were made, and proportionate was the alarm when Philip's successor, Decius, the honourable bearer of an honourable name, set himself to restore the old glories of Rome by a determined onslaught alike on the Gothic enemies of her frontiers and on the Christian enemies of her institutions. The persecution of Decius is memorable as the first and most disastrous of the general persecutions which the State waged against the Church. In the second century the initia- tive had come always from the populace or the magistrate, and the persecutions in consequence, frequent as they must have been, were local and spasmodic. Severus had directed an edict against proselytism and proselytes, but not against Christianity as a whole. It was reserved for Decius to pit the whole forces of the State in a systematic and organized effort to crush a power which men were now beginning to gauge more truly as an antagonist, not indeed of the morals, but of the very existence, of the Roman State. Humanly speaking, such an effort on the part of Nero or Domitian might have been successful. Two centuries of growth had increased the number of Christians so much that it would be impossible directly to annihilate them but they had also taught the politic Roman how and where to strike with most effect. A few months only after the accession of Decius the first overt signal of the persecution was given by the martyrdom of Fabian, bishop of Rome, on January 20, A.D. 250. But doubtless it was not entirely unexpected. Even before the news arrived in Africa, Cyprian, only lately elected bishop, had already, avoiding by anticipation a similar fate and act- ing, as he believed, in accordance with Divine admonition, retired from his see and was directing the Carthaginian com- munity from a distance. He was in hopes, we gather, that the danger of popular outbreaks against the Christians would be minimised when once the * invidious presence ' of the bishop was withdrawn ; and he may have dreaded the possible conse- quences of anarchy and schism, were his death to leave the Church to face the storm without a head. If such were his thoughts, the actual results at Rome where towards the close ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 109 of the vacancy of fifteen months (from the death of Fabian till the mitigation of persecution permitted an election in March A.D. 251) dispute and dissension ran so high as to lead to the rival episcopates of Cornelius and Novatian more than justified his forecast. But it was obvious that such a step would expose him at once to misconstruction ; and in fact we seem to find a tone of something like contempt in the letters of the Roman clergy and the Carthaginian confessors. 1 His property was confiscated ; 2 but where he went, and whether he really succeeded in removing himself beyond the reach of the government, we do not know. It is at least not impossible that, even if Decius or his officials had wind of the hiding-place, they would have preferred to leave the Carthaginian prelate under the odium that attached to a fugitive rather than to confer on him the dignity of a martyr. For the emperor seems to have grasped as strongly as Tertullian the truth that 4 blood was the seed of the Church '. His object was not to make martyrs : ' cupientibus mori non permitteretur occidi ' was the complaint of disappointed Christians. 3 On the other hand, in proportion to the credit conferred on the Church by a martyr- dom was the disgrace incurred over an apostasy ; and the imperial policy, by the employment of tortures calculated to wear out the strength but not to put an end to the life of its victims, was only too successful in producing the maximum number of apostates with the minimum number of martyrs. Cyprian's retirement did not obviate, as he had hoped it would, a breach of the peace. Only one letter expresses the hope of a speedy settlement and return ; the next two are com- panion letters, the one of encouragement to the confessors, the other of directions to the clergy about visiting and supporting them in prison. 3 But so far the persecution was only a symptom of the popular feeling which, excited by the news from Rome, forced the local magistrates to anticipate the formal proceed- ings of the law. Confession was followed only by imprison- ment and exile. Still, although nothing is said yet of torture 1 Cf. epp. viii, xxiii ; also ep. Ixvi. 2 Ep. Ixvi 4, SI QVIS TENET POSSIDET DE BONIS CAECILI CYPRIANI EPISCOPI CHRISTIANORVM. 3 Ep. Ivi 2. 4 Ep. vii is the earliest, then epp. v, vi. no ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE or death, the mere anticipation of what was to come called forth many apostasies among the laity, and some even among the clergy ; and the corresponding feeling of self-satisfaction and pride among those who had confessed was followed on their release and return by an outbreak of insubordination and indifference to morals auguring ill for a Church which had still to experience the real brunt of the persecution. As yet the proconsular governor of the province, whose duty it was to see to the execution of the edict, was absent from Carthage perhaps going on circuit through the province, perhaps not yet arrived from Rome and a lull ensued till his arrival, when the full forces of the State, on the lines mapped out by the emperor, were put into action with results disas- trous to the Church. The number who stood firm was small in comparison with those who yielded. Many who had withstood the first trial now submitted and sacrificed ; and the crisis called forth from the bishop a passionate entreaty, re-inforced by appeal to the visions which had been granted him, for unanimity and prayer. 1 Still the widespread fall only threw into higher relief the constancy of the few, who having endured torture were now, according to the established usage, entitled to the name not merely of confessors but of martyrs ; and Cyprian's first letter to them under this title is like a paean of triumph. At least one of them, Mappalicus, had died under the torture ; and as he is commemorated in April, the reference to his death gives us the first fixed date of the Cyprianic correspondence. 2 The situation in Carthage developed in a way that was not difficult to foresee. The vast multitude of apostates had by their lapse ipso facto excluded themselves from communion ; 1 Ep. xi. This epistle is preceded by two companion letters to the confessors and clergy, epp. xiii, xiv, and also by ep. xii ; and is followed by ep. x. The order of this group is determined (i) by the internal indica- tions of the progress of the persecution contained in them ; (2) by the connected summary of them given by Cyprian himself in ep. xx 2. Our reconstruction agrees so far with that of Ritschl. 2 Ep. x 4 : April 19 in the Carthaginian kalendar, ap. Ruinart Acta Sincera, l xiiii kalend. maias martyris Mappalici ' ; in the Martyrologiwu Hieronymianum the name occurs in an African group under April 17, but characteristically also under April 18. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE in and if the older law for which Tertullian and Hippolytus had fought, and for which Novatian was to sacrifice the unity of the Church, was to be maintained in all its lifelong rigour, these people, Christians of course still in heart, would never have been able to call themselves Christians in name again. It is likely enough that the emperor or his ministers may have counted upon this as one of the results of their policy ; and it would have been a terrible weapon in their hands. But there was at least one, if only one, resource open to the apo- state. Ancient custom ruled that the martyrs, the constancy of whose confession more than counterbalanced the scandal of their companions' fall, might recommend individual cases among the latter for the favourable consideration of the authorities of the Church, with a view to the ultimate restoration of com- munion. No sooner, then, were Mappalicus and others in this privileged position, than the lapsed naturally trooped in crowds to secure their potent intercession. Some, like Map- palicus himself, exercised their powers with care and modera- tion; others, without pretence of examination into the circumstances of each applicant, granted tickets, or libelli as they were called, embracing not only the applicant, but all his household. 1 And not only so were the traditional cautions violated, but the clergy on the spot were readmitting ticket- holders to full communion without exacting any public con- fession of sin or making any communication to the bishop. Three letters, sent contemporaneously to the martyrs, the clergy, and the people, 2 show us St. Cyprian face to face with this widespread revolt against his authority. The laity, who had probably carried his election to the bishopric, and on whom he was obviously accustomed to lean for support against the discontent of at least a section of the presbyters, were disorganized by the fall of so many among their body. The martyrs, pressed by the lapsed, and not disinclined, some of them, to use to the utmost the position which by a sort of unwritten sanction the gratitude of the Church accorded to them, were in no mood to respect the interference of epi- scopal claims or ecclesiastical discipline. And a party of the 1 Ep. xv 4 : * communicet ille cum suis.' 2 EpP- x v> xvi, xvii. ii2 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE clergy had resented Cyprian's elevation against their own longer service and superior claims, and saw in his absence and in the conditions of the times an opportunity for arrogating to themselves the practical direction of affairs by flattering the vanity of the martyrs and remitting the penance of the lapsed. Thus in the first stage of the controversy Cyprian appears as the upholder of canonical rigour. No case can be adjudicated upon without the bishop or before the restoration of peace to the Church. Either Cyprian was impatient or his correspondents dila- tory ; for the expected answers from Carthage did not arrive. It almost seemed as though both the Carthaginian and the Roman clergy appreciated an interval of presbyterian govern- ment. Anxious, then, to strengthen his position by avoiding all reasonable cause of offence through over-severity, now that the heat of summer had begun perhaps it was June by this time and an increase of mortality was therefore to be expected, the bishop directed that holders of libelli from the martyrs might be re-admitted in articulo mortis^ This con- cession (which was followed by a re-opening of communications from Carthage) had the further advantage of putting his policy in line with that already sketched by the Roman clergy, who had written to him after his retirement to relate the martyrdom of Fabian, and at the same time had sent to the clergy at Carthage a curious epistle (which fell into the bishop's hands), unsigned and ungrammatical, full of obscure references to hireling shepherds and of instructions how to govern the flock in their stead, the re-admission of sick penitents being especially inculcated. At the moment Cyprian had only written to acknowledge the one letter, and to return the other as being presumably a forgery. 2 But now, especially in pre- sence of the mutiny in his own camp, he was looking abroad to find allies for the campaign ; the independent concurrence of each bishop and diocese in united and consistent action was the keynote of his ecclesiastical theory, an ideal which he 1 Epp. xviii (cf. ep. viii 3), xix. 2 Epp. viii, ix. Perhaps the Roman letter emanated from one section only of the clergy. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 113 never tired of commending- by practice. The whole series of thirteen letters are forwarded, as a justification of his policy and a claim on external support, to the one great Church across the sea with which Carthage stood in the closest relations of accessibility and intercourse. 1 Throughout Africa he circu- lates a group of the five latest; and there his colleagues, probably feeling that they had at their head a stronger man than themselves, seem to have acquiesced in his lead, and consulted him on points arising out of the application of his principles. 2 In Carthage itself, if a few of his clergy were prepared to go to all lengths against him, the majority had now rallied to his side. But the martyrs to whom alone he had used the language of entreaty and respect rather than of command represented or misrepresented by Lucian, one of their number, proceeded to announce to the bishop, in laconic but decisive terms, that they had settled the whole question for him and his colleagues. ' All the confessors to Pope Cyprian greeting. You are to know that we all of us have granted peace to those who have established before you the character of their conduct since their fall; and we will that this decision become known through you to the rest of the bishops as well. We trust you may have peace with the holy martyrs. Of the clergy both an exorcist and a reader are present ; Lucian is the scribe.' Happily, a later letter from the same martyr, in answer to a request for a libellus for two ladies from Celerinus, of whom we shall hear again, gives us another side of the picture, and shows us the poor fellow worn out with his sufferings, in the act of being starved to death, and * so tired ' that he cannot write out all the names of those to whom he wishes to send greetings. 3 The main interest of the two groups of epistles which now follow is transferred from Africa to Italy. Sixteen letters (epp. xxviii-xliii) cover a period of perhaps some six months from the autumn of A. D. 250 onwards, during which 1 Ep. xx 2 ; cf. ep. xxvii. 2 Epp. xv-xix, xxiv, xxv. 3 Epp. xxiii, xxi, xxii. In the group of letters epp. xv-xxvi we have disagreed from Ritschl so far as to put epp. xxi, xxii, at the end, instead of at the beginning, of the series. u 4 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE the episcopal chair was still unoccupied in both cities; for Cyprian could not return, nor the Roman clergy elect a bishop, until the early spring of A. D. 251 . The attempt to range these epistles in chronological order is complicated by the triangular character of the series for Cyprian still had Carthaginian as well as Roman correspondents and by the fact that more than once letters from and to Rome seemed to have crossed one another. The season was winter, when no doubt the communication across the Mediterranean was less speedy ; and besides the voyage from Carthage to the Tiber or vice versa, there was the land transit to reckon in between Cyprian's hiding-place and his metropolis. Nor were Cyprian's letters written with the idea of keeping up at stated intervals communications between the churches, but solely as forwarding necessary information about new aspects of the controversy, which might develope slowly at one time, rapidly at another. Thus letters from the clergy and confessors at Rome to the clergy and confessors at Carthage, though they reached Cyprian at the moment when he was dispatching to Rome a second batch of correspondence, had certainly been written before the arrival of the original batch at its destination ; and similarly Cyprian's third letter, with its enclosures, was perhaps sent before the receipt of the answers to his previous one. 1 However, the news from Rome, when it came, was encourag- ing enough ; if the Romans had scarcely veiled their opinion of the bishop's flight, they also proved, as might have been expected, to be no lenient critics of the policy of laxity which had found favour with the clergy and the confessors at Carthage. Such, we gather from Cyprian's allusions, was the drift of their first pair of letters, unfor- tunately not extant ; such is certainly the theme worked out at length in the second pair, addressed to the bishop himself in answer to his congratulations on the identity of the policy which had thus been independently arrived at in the govern- 1 Ep. xxvii encloses epp. xxi-xxvi ; epp. xxvii 4, xxviii 2 mention the arrival of the two (lost) letters from the Roman clergy and confessors respectively. Ep. xxxv, his next letter to Rome, does not mention that he had yet received the Roman letters (in answer to his epp. xxvii, xxviii) epp. xxx, xxxi. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 115 ment of the two churches. 1 No re- admissions will be granted to the lapsed at Rome, write the clergy, until the persecution has ceased, until the bishop's chair is filled, until the fullest consideration has been given to the question as a whole both by the Roman Church and the Church at large. An exception, indeed, is still made in favour of the dying; and the repetition becomes noteworthy, when we learn later on that it was no other than Novatian who acted as spokesman of his colleagues in drawing up the letter on this second occasion. It is not surprising that the standpoint of the Roman confessors, as expressed in the companion missive, is practically identical, though expressed with less detail ; for the principal confessors were the presbyters Moses and Maximus, the former of whom is specially mentioned as subscribing with the clergy, while his name stands also at the head of the letter of the confessors. 2 Before these letters arrived in Carthage, the lapsed, or a party of them, had made one last desperate effort to cow their bishop into accepting them on the martyrs' terms, and wrote to him, not as individuals no names were attached but as themselves constituting the body of the church. Their letter is lost, but its tenor can be reconstructed from Cyprian's reply, and from the description he gives of it when forwarding it to his own and to the Roman clergy respectively. 3 From the latter he received in answer a reiterated assurance of their support. 4 1 Cyprian to the Roman clergy in the postscript to ep. xxvii, to the confessors in ep. xxviii ; the answer of the clergy in ep. xxx, that of the confessors in ep. xxxi. Yet it is not impossible that ep. xxx is a direct answer to ep. xx, Cyprian's first letter, only ; and that it was sent before ep. xxvii had reached Rome. The close connexion in the Cheltenham List and elsewhere of epp. xxxii (a letter enclosing others to Carthage), xx, xxx, suggests this view. 2 Cf. epp. xxx 8, Iv 5. 3 Ep. xxxiii (cf. ep. xxix to the Carthaginian, ep. xxxv to the Roman, clergy) : no one seems to have noticed that the opening words of ep. xxix clearly allude to this pair of letters, and that ep. xxxiii must therefore precede ep. xxix. 4 Ep. xxxvi obviously corresponds to and answers ep. xxxv. The reference in xxxvi 4 to information given about Privatus of Lambaesis implies, indeed, the receipt from Cyprian of another letter besides xxxv, in which this personage is not mentioned. We hear of Privatus again in ep. lix 10 seqq., as the organizer of the lax party and chief consecrator of Fortunatus, its ' pseudoepiscopus * at Carthage ; cf .p. 125. [Lambaesis was the military capital of Numidia ; see Benson Cyprian, pp. 227, 586.] i a n6 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE Some time during the autumn, and after this interchange of correspondence, Celerinus, of whom we have already heard as a correspondent of Lucian's, arrived in Carthage. This Celerinus was either himself a Carthaginian, or at least of Carthaginian stock; but he had been amongst the con- fessors at Rome, for he had faced the * head and source of the troubles', the 4 vanguard of Antichrist', who can be no other than Decius himself. 1 Released by some means from prison perhaps the fury of persecution was already slacken- ing he crossed the sea, and brought to Cyprian direct intelligence of and from the martyrs ; and the bishop took advantage of the occasion to write again to Moses and his companions in tones that recall the paean he had addressed some months earlier to the prisoners at Carthage. Putting together the fragmentary allusions of several letters, we can see that the persecution in Rome, while it had followed the same general lines as in Africa, bore in details still more clearly the characteristic stamp of the emperor's policy. At Carthage the number of deaths of those who succumbed to tortures or to starvation in prison was considerable ; at Rome, on the other hand, the reluctance to place in the hands of the Church the weapon of martyrdom was more marked, for when Cyprian first wrote to the confessors their ranks had not yet been thinned, and the allusion in his second epistle implies that the deaths which occurred in the interval were rather the natural effects of so prolonged an imprisonment than the actual intention of the persecutors. Chains, the stocks, short- ness of food, the horrors of the inner prison, accompanied by the frequent offer of release, were relied on to break down their constancy. 2 Originally arrested in winter, when Cyprian wrote the second time autumn had come round, and the cycle of the seasons was complete. It cannot have been long after this, about the end of A.D. 250, that the presbyter Moses, the chief among the confessors, earned by his death in prison the title of ' martyr \ 3 1 For Celerinus, see epp. xxi, xxii i, xxvii 3, xxxvii I, xxxix 1-3. 8 Contrast ep. xxii 2 with epp. xxviii I, xxxvii i, 3, xxxix 2. 3 Ep. Iv 5 : cf. Liberian Catalogue (Lightfoot, S. Clement, i 255), ' post ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 117 Of Cyprian's letters during this period to his own clergy, some are occupied simply with forwarding copies of his correspondence, while others announce the ordinations and appointments which under normal circumstances would have been made after full consultation with the council of clergy, but which the necessity of the times and the paucity of clerics compelled him to undertake without their assistance. Even so he is careful to point out that in no case has he relied entirely on his own initiative. If Saturus and Optatus are made, the one a reader, the other a subdeacon, in order as clergy to convey episcopal communications to Rome, they had long ago been placed by common consent among candi- dates for minor orders. On the other hand, when Aurelius and Celerinus are admitted to the office of reader, it is pointed out that their position as confessors is a divine witness to their fitness for clerical duties, substituted for the public examination of character necessary in other cases. Lastly, the enrolment of Numidicus, already a presbyter of some other church, among the presbyters of Carthage, is justified on the triple ground of his confessorship, of the lapse of so many other presbyters, and also of a direct divine intimation. 1 Meanwhile, as the persecution abated, the controversy over the re -admission of the lapsed, if fought out upon a narrower area, had entered an acuter stage. While Cyprian, in his plea for delay and his refusal to decide the question offhand, was supported by the majority of his clergy and people, a party in Carthage were pushing side by side the claims of the lapsed, with whom they began to communicate freely, and their own opposition to the bishop's authority. The commissioners to whom Cyprian about this time gave powers to act as his representatives Caldonius and Herculanus, African bishops whose sees presumably lay near the capital, and Rogatianus and Numidicus, confessors and presbyters of Carthage itself reported Felicissimus and Augendus as ringleaders of the sedition, and with the primate's authority excluded them and passionem [Fabiani] ... in carcerem sunt missi/. . . Moyses in carcere defunctus est qui fuit ibi m[enses] xi d[ies] xi.' 1 Epp. xxix, xxxviii, xxxix, xl. n8 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE certain of their followers, women as well as men, from com- munion. 1 It soon appeared, however, that the ramifications of the movement were spread wider and deeper still, and that Felicissimus was only the mouthpiece or catspaw of Novatus, who had made him his deacon, and of certain other presbyters, five in all with their chief, the representatives and survivors of the original opposition to the bishop's election. In the last letter of an exile by this time prolonged into a second year, Cyprian, writing shortly before the Easter of A.D. 251 (which fell on March 23), complains bitterly that it was their machina- tions which had prevented his returning in time to keep Easter in his diocese. A fresh outbreak of persecution, he learnt, was to be anticipated in the event of his arrival, and this he declined for his flock's sake to risk ; but whether he was right in charging the presbyters with being accessories before the fact, and if so, by what underhand means they can have proposed to secure their end, it is impossible to say. 2 Before he reached Carthage they were excluded from com- munion by some of his colleagues perhaps the former, perhaps a second and larger, commission acting on the principles Cyprian had already laid down for their guidance ; whereupon the malcontents immediately sent Novatus, and with him it seems Augendus, to organize in the imperial City an alliance among the presbyterate of the Roman Church. When Cyprian wrote in March, the news of the election of Cornelius as bishop of Rome had not yet had time to reach him. We may conjecture that it was the same slackening of persecution^ owing to the Gothic advance in the Danube pro- vinces, which enabled the election of the one bishop and the 1 Epp. xli, xlii. Ep. xxxiv should be placed in connexion with these two ; it treats similarly of a presbyter and deacon (perhaps not Cartha- ginian), who had communicated with the lapsed, but it is addressed to the clergy, not to the commission, and therefore is either slightly earlier or slightly later. 2 Ep. xliii. For the condemnation of the presbyters, see epp. xlv 4, lix 9. Cyprian was not present, for he always speaks of it in the third person ; nor is it likely that he had returned, but declined to be present, as archbishop Benson suggests. Ep. lix 15 shows that the ' iudicium et cognitio ' took place before only a few bishops acting with presbyters and deacons ; perhaps nine was the exact number (lix 10; but this may refer to some other local synod). ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 119 return of the other 1 ; for the independent evidence of the papal lists shows that the Roman election cannot have taken place later than March, as the correspondence of Cyprian shows that it can scarcely have been earlier. It was a triumph, perhaps an unexpected triumph, for the party of moderation, which at Rome meant the party of opposition to the austerer policy of the more prominent clergy and confessors. Like Hippolytus a generation earlier and Jerome a hundred and thirty years later, Novatian, the candidate of the extremists, was incom- parably the greatest scholar and theologian of the Roman Church of the day ; but it was characteristic of the electors that the qualities for which they looked in their bishop were those of the practical statesman, and Novatian had no doubt already committed himself inconsistently (as Cyprian later on pointed out) with the letter written six or eight months before to Carthage to the uncompromising exclusion of all the lapsed from any hope of restoration to Church communion. When the popular choice fell upon Cornelius, the supporters of Novatian issued an immediate protest, and the customary letters of the new bishop announcing his consecration reached Carthage Cyprian had by this time returned there, and was in the act of holding a council of African bishops by the same post as a budget of calumnious charges against him. The bishop of Carthage had been so prominent an opponent of laxity, that confident hopes were built by the Roman puritans upon his adhesion to their cause; but emphatic as was his stress upon the need for discipline, he had never committed himself to more than delay in the reception of the lapsed, and his whole theory of the Church summed itself up in the harmonious action of an independent episcopate, representing by free election each local church. Therefore, while formal recognition of the new bishop was delayed until two African representatives, Caldonius and Fortunatus, had visited Rome to learn on the spot and from the consecrators the actual truth about the dispute, and to attempt to effect a reconciliation, 1 Yet see ep. Iv 9, where Cyprian speaks as if Cornelius might have anticipated immediate death at the hands of the furious emperor. 120 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE a presumption in favour of the fait accompli was so far ad- mitted, that the letter of Cornelius was, while the charges of Novatian were not, read out in the assembly of the Cartha- ginian Church. 1 The council adjourned until the commissioners should return, and we find Cyprian at Hadrumetum enforcing the ad interim decision, and directing that letters to Rome should meanwhile be still addressed to the clergy rather than to Cornelius. But the report of Caldonius and his colleague was anticipated by the arrival not only of letters from Cornelius complaining of the delay and from his consecrators guaran- teeing the genuineness of his election and ordination, but of two (African) bishops in person Pompey and Stephen who had been present at the time in Rome ; while, on the other hand, a deputation from Novatian announced that the extreme step had been taken of setting up an antipope. Strange to say, the puritan extremists in Rome were supported nay, if Cyprian is to be taken literally (ep. lii 2), were incited to the schismatic consecration of Novatian by the antinomian extre- mists from Carthage. But when we remember that the clue to the policy of the latter at home had lain in their oppo- sition to the bishop, it is less surprising than at first sight it seems, that these Carthaginian clergy should have seconded the opposition of a party of Roman clergy to the Roman bishop, regardless of the grounds upon which that opposition was based. The African synod hesitated no longer. Whatever claims the minority might have had to be heard on the question of the validity of Cornelius' appointment, they had put them- selves completely out of court by this outrageous proceeding, rendered the more odious in Carthage by the accession of the ex-Carthaginian presbyters. Two letters from Cyprian to Cornelius followed one another quickly, conveying the fullest recognition of his episcopate, together with a defence of the hesitation and caution which had prevented this being given 1 It has been usually supposed, in reliance on the concluding words of ep. xlv 2, that Novatian's first protest was temperate and was read out. But the words really mean that Cyprian only read what was temperately expressed that is, only Cornelius and not Novatian at all. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 121 before. 1 Moreover, Cyprian's previous cordial relations with the Roman confessors emboldened him to hope that his per- sonal intervention might detach them at least from the side of Novatian, and by the same messenger as the second of his letters to Cornelius he forwarded a brief appeal to the con- fessors and a postscript, or perhaps rather a private note, to Cornelius, in which it was left to his judgement whether or no this communication should be delivered to them. 2 Cornelius' answer to the first letter showed that he was still far from being satisfied, and no doubt the same chain of reasoning which led the Novatianists to count on Cyprian's sympathy caused the Roman bishop to suspect the sincerity of his adhesion. 3 Indeed, his attitude is illustrated by the willing ear which, a full year later, he lent to the accusations brought against his Carthaginian colleague. 4 But the second messen- ger, sent with the group of three letters, epp. xlv, xlvi, xlvii, returned with a corresponding group of three, the contents of which were far more re-assuring for the prospects of unity. The first had, indeed, only to relate that a new Novatianist embassy, headed by Nicostratus the Roman confessor, Novatus the Carthaginian presbyter, and Evaristus an Italian bishop representatives of the different sections of the opposition had left Rome for Carthage. However, before Niceforus the acolyte had started with it an important change occurred in the situation. Startled perhaps by the unexpected attitude of Cyprian and moved by his appeal, the confessors remaining in Rome, of whom Maximus the presbyter, Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macarius were the chief, conveyed to the authorities their decision to dissociate themselves from the Novatianist cause. In the presence of the Roman presbytery, assembled for the 1 Epp. xliv and xlv, though sent by different messengers, do not seem to present any very material difference in the situation, and it is conse- quently not easy to say which is earliest. But we agree with Pearson against Ritschl, believing ep. xliv to be a hasty announcement of the course which is explained and defended at greater length in ep. xlv. 2 Epp. xlvi and xlvii, sent by Mettius the subdeacon, mentioned also in ep. xlv 4. 3 Cornelius' letter is lost, but we have information about its contents in Cyprian's answer (ep. xlviii), written after Caldonius and Fortunatus had returned. 4 Ep. lix 2. 122 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE purpose under Cornelius, and of five bishops who happened that day to be visiting- the City, they and their companions and followers made full and formal recantation, concluding with the pregnant words ' for we know that, as there is one God and one Lord Christ whom we have confessed, and one Holy Spirit, so ought there to be one bishop in a Catholic church '. With every demonstration of popular satisfaction all were re- admitted, and Maximus was bidden to take his old seat among the presbyters. Cornelius wrote a hasty note which accom- panied his previous letter, and to prevent all possibility of misconception a few lines from the four confessors were en- closed. 1 To these letters Cyprian replied again by a corre- sponding three : one to the confessors of genuine congratulation, enclosing his lately written tracts on the Lapsed and on the Unity of the Church ; and two to Cornelius, to all appearance strictly contemporary, the one dealing entirely with the second, and the other almost exclusively with the first, of the two letters from the Roman bishop. Possibly one of Cyprian's was meant for public reading to the Roman Church, the other for Cornelius' ears alone ; possibly the one was a hasty note dashed off in the exuberance of his delight, while more depressing points were reserved for a second letter ; possibly the double form of the reply was only suggested by the double form of the original. 2 Over what period of time, whether it were weeks or months, this correspondence extended, we have no certain indications to decide ; in any case, the further history of the Roman schism passes out of the range of the Cyprianic correspondence. Meanwhile in Africa the Novatianist deputies, rejected by the capital, attempted to seduce from their allegiance the churches of the neighbourhood ; and letters from Novatian himself indignantly rejected the charge of heresy, while they re- proached Cornelius with having put himself out of the pale of the Church by communicating with the lapsed at large and in 1 Epp. 1, xlix, liii. The mention of Macarius in Cyprian's answer to Cornelius (ep. li) implies that ep. liii had been simultaneously received, since Macarius had been named in ep. liii only. 2 Epp. li, Hi to Cornelius (li answering xlix, and lii answering 1) and liv to the confessors. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 123 particular with Trofimus, a bishop who had sacrificed. It was urged on Cornelius' behalf that this was an exceptional case. So large a number of lay Christians had seceded with Trofi- mus, that it seemed right to stretch a point if their corporate return from schism could be secured : and of course Trofimus had only been received into lay communion. Still, some bishops wavered in their support of Cornelius ; and episcopal consecration was ultimately procured for Maximus, one of the Roman envoys who had come on the first Novatianist embassy, as Novatianist bishop in Carthage : but it does not appear as if, at least in the African capital, this schism was a formidable one. More danger threatened from the other side. The alliance between the two extremes of puritans and antinomians, which Novatus had done his best to bring about in Rome, was, it would seem, silently disowned in Carthage ; and this may be the reason why Novatus from this time onwards disappears from the history. 1 Steering his middle course, Cyprian had rejected with firmness the preposterous demands of the lapsed, and with no less firmness the episcopal claims of Novatian and therewith the theory underlying them which made the rigorist doctrine of refusal of re-admission to the fallen a test of communion : but, even so, the council which met at Carthage after the bishop's return, and to which we must now go back, had many delicate problems to solve and many alternatives to choose between. In cases of death-bed re-admission, was the prefer- ence hitherto shown to those who possessed the libellus of the martyrs to be maintained ? Should any one, thus restored in illness, chance to recover, ought he to continue in communion or to be again excluded ? Were the libellatici those who had bribed the magistrates or their officials to give them certificates that they had sacrificed, when in fact they had not to be distinguished or not from those who had actually sacrificed ? Among the latter, was any difference to be made between the Christian who had shown no reluctance to sacrifice, and had even put force upon his friends and dependents to follow his example, and the Christian whose individual fall was qualified 1 Cf. epp. xlv 3, lv 2, lix 9, 10, 11. 124 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE by the safety he secured for his household and the protection he afforded to fugitives and exiles ? Balancing, then, the prin- ciples of the discipline which demanded penitence proportioned to the fall, and of the charity which required forgiveness in proportion to the penitence, the council decided that, while each bishop had on matters of this sort an indefeasible and independent jurisdiction by virtue of his office, in the exercise of which he was responsible to God alone, yet certain lines of action should be laid down, to which it was agreed to conform. In each individual case examination was to be made on the spot into the circumstances of the fall, the amount of force which had been employed, the degree of reluctance and of repentance which had been displayed ; libellatici were to be re-admitted at once, on the ground that it had never been formally laid down in the past, as it was now laid down for the future, that to accept a certificate of sacrificing was more or less equivalent to the act itself; sacrificati were for the present to be exhorted to penitence, in case of mortal sickness to be re-admitted without distinction (the privilege of the martyrs being thus ignored), and in the event of subsequent recovery not to be again excluded. 1 It was probably implied that on some later occasion the question of general re -admission would be considered. It was certainly also assumed that lapsed bishops or clergy had permanently forfeited all possibility of restoration to their official position ; they had, in fact, become laymen ; as such they would fall under the same rules as the rest, and if re-admitted would be re-admitted only to lay com- munion. 2 The chronology of the period which follows is obscure, and the order of the letters which come next before us in the editions is not satisfactory. But it is tolerably clear that two letters to African communities assume a position of things similar to that just described. Fortunatianus, bishop of 1 Epp. lv 6, 13, 14, 17, lix 14. Ep. Iv, from which our knowledge of this settlement is almost exclusively derived, is a letter from Cyprian, in defence of his own action and that of the council, addressed to a Numidian bishop, Antonianus, inclined to Novatianism. 2 Ep. Ixvii 6. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 125 Assuras, had sacrificed, and in consequence Epictetus had been consecrated in his place ; but the ex-bishop attempted to re-assert his position, and the lapsed laity, who would thus have escaped all inconvenient consequences of their own fall, not unnaturally supported him while Cyprian of course wrote strongly on the other side. Less serious was the incident of Therapius, bishop of a see not named, who had without any adequate cause re-admitted (although doubtless only to lay communion) a lapsed ex-presbyter, Victor, and had thus trans- gressed the regulations of the synod. A protest was sent to Carthage by a bishop Fidus : but it was decided that, though Therapius had acted recklessly in separating himself from his colleagues, and he was in consequence sternly rebuked, the re- admission was within his episcopal prerogative and must therefore stand. The result was communicated to Fidus (together with an answer to a point he had raised in connexion with infant baptism) by Cyprian and sixty-six colleagues, probably the council of the Ides of May (May 15, A.D. 252) of which we shall hear in a moment. 1 Clearly the most serious danger in Africa was still the move- ment in favour of laxity. Decisively beaten at the first council, this party had apparently for a time confined themselves to local intrigues in various quarters ; but after a second council that of the Ides of May just mentioned had met a year after the first, and dispersed without any action being taken towards the re- admission of the lapsed generally, the extremer spirits hesitated no longer, and a combination of ex-bishops, deposed for heresy or idolatry, and claiming support from Numidia (always the hotbed of opposition to Carthage), consecrated Fortunatus as a third claimant to the metropolitan see, while at the same time they dispatched Felicissimus to announce the news to, and negotiate for the support of, the Church at Rome. Cornelius and a Roman synod had indeed subscribed in toto to the conditions of re- admission as laid down in Africa ; but the reception of Trofimus, even though only to lay com- munion loyally as Cyprian had defended it was not exactly 1 Epp. Ixv and Ixiv: both obviously before the general re-admission of the lapsed, and therefore before epp. Ivi, Ivii. 126 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE on the lines of the Carthaginian praxis, and the pressure of the opposition to Novatianism no doubt led official circles in Rome to incline to laxity. 1 The representative of Fortunatus, notwithstanding* a first rebuff, was able so far to influence Cornelius that that prelate supplemented the original draft of his next letter to Carthage by a postscript, in which he com- plained that Cyprian was keeping him in the dark as to African affairs, and may, perhaps, have gone so far as to hint (unfortunately the letter is not extant) that it was Cyprian's unpopularity and severity which had driven his diocese into rebellion, and that it might if persevered with endanger his life. To an argument of this sort Cyprian was the last man to yield. His answer forms one of the longest letters of the collection, and is an indignant 4 apology ' for an episcopate which had now lasted between three and four years ; if any division of opinion existed between himself and his people, it was rather that he had been too lax, and they had resented his laxity, in re- admitting the adherents of Fortunatus. We are now in the latter months of the year A.D. 252, for the excommunication of the five presbyters about March A.D. 251 belongs to 'the previous year ', and a later council is referred to as held * on these last Ides of May '. Nothing definite is yet said of any relaxation of the penitential system, and if mention is made of 4 sacrifices ' which the people were bidden by official edict to celebrate on which occasion shouts were heard in the circus of * Cyprian to the lions ' we should be disposed to explain them as referring not to a recrudescence of persecution, of which there is no trace in this year, but to the great plague of A.D. 252 and the succeeding years, which is so prominent in the Life of Cyprian by his deacon Pontius. 2 But in the early months of the year A. D. 253 the distant mutterings of the storm were audible once more. The new emperor, Gallus, at a moment when, as Dionysius of Alex- andria 3 tells us, ' his reign was prosperous and everything 1 Ep.lv 6, ii. 2 Ep. lix : see especially i, 2, 6, 9-11, 15. 3 Cf. Eus. H. E. vii I. Dionysius' words imply that Gallus had been some time on the throne, for the Goths, who in November A.D. 251 had defeated Decius, must have been entirely got rid of before the course of ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 127 going- on as he wished,' took up the broken threads of his predecessor's policy and inaugurated a new campaign against the Church. It may be conjectured that the ravages of the plague, to which Hostilianus, the colleague of Gallus and only surviving son of Decius, succumbed in Rome, seemed to call for victims to appease the offended gods. So highly strung at this moment was the Christian consciousness, that the mere anticipation of renewed attack seemed to portend an even more fiery trial than before. When Cyprian, at the com- mencement of the Paschal season, received an appeal from some of his colleagues on behalf of certain brethren at Capsa who had withstood the preliminary persecution of mob and magistrates, and if they had at length yielded to torture before the proconsul had not ceased for now a third year to show genuine repentance, he expressed his own sympathy and promised to lay the matter before the bishops as soon as they had kept their Easter festival at home and had collected at Carthage; but even still he does not speak as if he antici- pated an immediate outbreak. 1 Before, however, the council met, the signs of hostile preparation on the part of the State were unmistakable; and the question pressed for answer, whether the Church was to face the coming blow with half her members still excluded from communion and deprived of all the means of grace which might help them to redeem their former fall. The momentous resolution was taken to admit, after examination of individual cases, all those lapsed who, since the persecution, had lived soberly and quietly, and had neither returned to the world nor taken refuge with heresy or schism ; and it was formally conveyed to Cornelius in an epistle to which were attached the names of forty-two bishops. 2 The tide of excitement and anticipation had swelled affairs could be said to be prosperous. Therefore Pearson's Easter A. D. 252 for epp. Ivi and Ivii is scarcely possible. See also the note next following. 1 Ep. Ivi. If the proconsul was at Capsa after he was at Carthage (April A. D. 250, see p. no), a 'triennium' cannot possibly be satisfied by March or early April A. D. 252. But if he had been, as is conceivable, at Capsa first (between January and April), the letter might perhaps be placed with Pearson at Easter A. D. 252. But this does not apply to the next letter, which must belong to A. D. 253. 2 Ep. Ivii. 128 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE still higher when Cyprian, perhaps a few weeks later, wrote to the church of Thibaris a trumpet call of no uncertain sound for the battle. Visions and warnings from heaven impressed him with the conviction that the 4 day of tribulation and end of the world and time of Antichrist ' was at hand ; the coming conflict would not be, like the past one, transient and mo- mentary, but the final struggle of a dying world, which should usher in the final triumph of Christ and the reward of those who should be faithful to him to the end. 1 Men might well tremble as they listened to the prophecy and marked the events which one by one seemed to augur the fulfilment of Cyprian's prognostications. Cornelius can hardly have received the conciliar resolutions before a sentence of banishment exiled him to Centumcellae. 2 One more letter, the last of the series, reached him from Cyprian, from which we gather that the persecution had anticipated that of Valerian in striking primarily at the bishops. But the Roman Church had refused to desert its head, and a vast multitude accom- panied Cornelius to his trial, confession, and exile. His death followed his banishment so quickly not later than the middle of June that it is natural to conjecture that it must have been hastened by the hardships he suffered; and Cyprian always speaks of him as a martyr. 3 A successor was appointed immediately in Lucius ; and a second sentence of banishment followed. But as suddenly as it had begun the persecution ended. In the picturesque phrase of Dionysius, the emperor had driven away, with the bishops, the prayers which they had offered God on his behalf. Soon after the middle of the year, Aemilianus, the commander in Moesia, after defeating the Goths, was saluted imperator and led his troops into Italy, where he achieved an easy victory over the incompetent Gallus. Lucius and his companions were recalled, or at least were tacitly allowed to return to Rome and perhaps to bring with them the relics of the deceased bishop. But when Cyprian wrote to Lucius his letter of congratulation, it was still un- certain whether the bishop had returned to exercise a peaceful 1 Ep. Iviii. 2 Civitk Vecchia. * Ep. Ix ; cf. Ixi 3, Ixvii 6, Ixviii 5. ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 129 episcopate or only to crown his confession by a more public martyrdom. 1 Even if toleration was secure at the hands of the usurper, who might be expected to reverse his predecessor's policy, Valerian was hurrying* up with the German legions as the representative of Gallus, and in fact the year had not yet run out before the death of Gallus was avenged by the victory and succession of the avenger. But although the new emperor had been appointed censor by Decius, there were Christian influences in his household, and for the first few years of his reign the Church enjoyed peace once more. The death of Lucius on March 5, A.D. 254, must have been a natural one. In the episcopate of the next pope, Stephen, who was consecrated somewhere about May 12, fall three more letters of Cyprian, which, as they still show him attacked by, or attacking, the puritan and antinomian extremists respectively, may fitly be included here. Perhaps some time in A.D. 254, when Cyprian had been five or six years bishop, he received a strange communication from (as it would seem) a colleague, which illustrates the kind of opposition and criticism with which he had to deal. Florentius Puppianus, the writer, had been a 'martyr' in the persecution, and scarcely disguised his contempt for Cyprian's retreat. If it was defended on the ground of divine warnings, he has his doubts as to the value of dreams and visions. He understands that the Carthaginian Church is split in two, and all because of Cyprian. He recom- mends humility as the proper quality for bishops. He would like to know if his correspondent admits the truth of the charges of moral laxity, even of incest, which are being made against him. He is only writing himself in order that certain scruples which have thus suggested themselves may be cleared away from his mind. That such was the tenor and such the arguments of the letter we gather from Cyprian's answer, refusing to bear testimony on his own behalf, but appealing to God's witness borne by his appointment to the episcopate, and to his com- munion with his people, with the martyrs and confessors, and with the Churches throughout the world. 2 Temperate and quiet enough at the outset, he rises at the close to a white heat 1 Ep. Ixi. * Ep. Ixvr. 130 ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE of denunciation without parallel in his correspondence. No other letter but closes with a salutation ; this one breaks off abruptly with the solemn warning- : * Thou hast my letter and I have thine. In the last day both shall be read aloud before the judgement-seat of Christ.' It is not clear that Puppianus had formally severed himself from Catholic communion. Two other cases are those of bishops ipso facto deposed either by lapse on the one side or by open adherence to Novatian on the other, and are of great interest as showing how the rising repute of the Cartha- ginian bishop elicited appeals for his interference and support all along the Latin -speaking shores of the Mediterranean. From Gaul came letters of Faustinus of Lyons, announcing that Marcianus of Aries had adopted Novatianist views, and was boasting that, far from being put out of communion by the Catholic bishops, he had himself excommunicated them ; and Cyprian urges pope Stephen to bestir himself and not by inaction to cast a slur upon the policy of his predecessors, but to write to the bishops of the province and the church of Aries directing the excommunication of Marcianus and elec- tion of a substitute in his place. 1 But whatever authority is here recognised in the Roman bishop in relation to foreign communities must on Cyprian's conception be exercised solely according to right principles, and any action violating these is null and void. Thus when Basilides, a Spanish bishop deposed for lapse and other crimes, appealed successfully to pope Stephen to direct his re-instatement, the diocese with the newly elected successor of Basilides made a counter-appeal to Cyprian, who simply ignored the Roman decision on the ground that Stephen lived a long way off and was unac- quainted with the real facts of the case. 2 Inconsistent as 1 Ep. Ixviii 3 ' Dirigantur . . . litterae quibus abstento Marciano alius in loco eius substituatur'. a Ep. Ixvii. In this epistle the similar cases of two bishops are dis- cussed, Basilides and Martialis, of whom one was bishop of Merida in the south-west, the other of the neighbouring cities of Leon and Astorga in the north-west, of Spain. The tone towards Stephen (cf. 6-9) is less cordial than in ep. Ixviii, and possibly the date is considerably later. It is to be noted that the thirty-eight bishops whose names head the letter re-appear, all or all but one, in the great Rebaptism Council of Sept. I, ST. CYPRIAN'S CORRESPONDENCE 131 Stephen's action may seem with his inclination to support the Novatianist bishop of Aries, it is to be noted that Basilides and Marcianus were the original bishops of their sees, and perhaps we may suppose that the Roman bishop's policy in this respect was dictated by a disposition to acquiesce in things as they were. A line of action which to his supporters might seem only evidence of a cautious and tolerant spirit might easily present itself to his critics in the guise of an excessive and dangerous laxity. Probably in this last letter of Cyprian's may be detected the indications of the difference of temperament and divergence of view which resulted, during the great controversy about Rebaptism, in an estrangement (though never, at least on Cyprian's side, a schism) between the Roman and Cartha- ginian prelates. But with that, as with the closing scenes of Saint Cyprian's life in the persecution of Valerian, we do not on the present occasion attempt to deal. Nor is it inopportune to take leave of him at a moment when he had triumphantly guided his own community and the whole West- ern Church through the difficulties of external trial and internal strife, in the presence of assaults directed against him from the one side and from the other, indifferent so long as his great ideal was even approximately realised of the unity and close communion of each bishop with his church, summed up in the communion of all bishops with one another, the symbol of the oneness of the holy Church Universal. A. D. 256; and it is an obvious conjecture that the letter was written at the very beginning or the very end of that council, when some half of the bishops had either not yet arrived or had already left. K 2 EARLY CHRONICLES OF THE WESTERN CHURCH (Church Quarterly Review. October, 1892.) 1 . Euse&i Chronicorum Canonum quae super sunt. Edidit ALFRED SCHOENE. [Armeniam versionem Latine factam e libris manuscriptis recensuit H. Petermann : Hieronymi versionem e libris manuscriptis recensuit A. Schoene : Syriam epitomen Latine factam e libro Londinensi recensuit E. Roediger.] (Berlin, 1866.) 2. Monumenta Germaniae Historica : Auctorum Anti- quissimorum Tomus IX. Chronica Minora saec. w, v, m\ viz. Edidit THEODORUS MOMMSEN. Vol. i, fasc. i. (Berlin, 1891.) 3. Le Liber Pontificalis : Texte, Introduction, et Commen- taire. Par 1'Abbe L. DUCHESNE. (Paris, 1886-92.) 4. The Apostolic Fathers : Part I. S. Clement of Rome : (Early Roman Succession, pp. 201-345 of vol. i). By J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., Bishop of Durham. (London, 1890.) IT is characteristic of all primitive attempts at historical composition that they are cast rather in the form of annals than of continuous narrative. The simple co-ordination of facts, and the barest and most jejune statement of them, is all that appears necessary to the first generations of prose writers, and for this the chronicle is the natural vehicle. The appearance of a Livy or a Froissart postulates the existence of a long and perhaps forgotten series of pre- decessors whose elementary attempts prepared the way for the genesis of history as a civilised nation understands the CHRONICLES OF THE WESTERN CHURCH 133 word. But the rise and development of the literature of Christianity is parallel in many respects to the rise and development of the literature of a people. If it is true on one side that the Christian Church was implanted in the midst of a Gentile world which had just produced an Augustan age, it is also true that it had in the end to work out for itself whole new departments and methods of literature, which, far from springing fully armed into being, followed the natural law of struggle and of growth. In the sphere of historical writing both these aspects of the case find ample illustration. The first Christian history is a book which testifies by its very existence to a period of highly developed civilisation and matured literary gifts, and may safely challenge com- parison as an artistic production with the work of any con- temporary Greek writers. But the Acts of the Apostles in this, as in other ways, stands alone. If we except the lost * Memoirs of fiegesippus, an interval of more than two cen- turies elapses between the work of St. Luke and that of the next Christian historian, Eusebius : and the History of < Eusebius owes its priceless value as an authority exactly to the quality which ruins its literary merit, the incorporation namely of so many undigested fragments of the ancient writers. And, the work even of Eusebius, while it remained * for succeeding generations the standard source of information for the period it covered, produced at first no imitators. It * was not till the fourth century, with its wonderful outburst of literary activity in Christian circles, had quite passed away, that a succession of writers commencing with Rufinus, the translator and continuator of Eusebius, in the West, and with Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Philip of Side in the East, popularised historical writing once for all as a principal department of Christian literature. On the other hand, chronography, or the writing of * chronicles, had long before this found home and welcome in the Church. If bishop Lightfoot's view be accepted, 1 Bruttius l the chronographer ', who is thrice quoted by John 1 S. Clement of Rome ^ i 46-9. i 3 4 EARLY CHRONICLES OF Malalas in reference to the legend of Danae, to the conquests of Alexander, and to the persecution of Domitian and once (again about Domitian) in the Chronicle of Eusebius, was a Christian ; and if so, he was, as the extensive compass of the three references shows, the first of a long line of successors who included the whole course of history, sacred and profane, from the creation of the world to their own day in one com- prehensive survey. There is something magnificent in this conception, and in the unrestrained boldness with which each ancient author treats all lines of development, Jewish or Gentile, as illustrating together God's providence in history : but it must be confessed that few forms of literature are less interesting in detail than the collocation of Egyptian dynasties, *- Roman kings, Greek poets, and Hebrew prophets, and it is the habit of these Christian chroniclers to devote more space to the mythic periods of history than to those Christian times of which the information they could have given us would have been so rich and so invaluable. * This conciseness for the Christian period we know on the authority of Photius, the omnivorous patriarch of Con- stantinople and it is almost the only thing we do know to have characterized the lost Chronographies of the first great Christian chronicler, Julius Africanus, which were continued to the fourth year of Elagabalus, A.D. 2 21, and were a primary authority for the Chronicle of Eusebius from the close of the Hebrew canon down to that date. 1 A similar combination of prolixity and brevity is a marked feature again in the chronicle which may without hesitation be ascribed to Afri- canus' still more celebrated Roman contemporary, Hippolytus. For the famous seated statue in the Lateran Museum contains mention of XPONIKA in the catalogue of writings inscribed upon 1 Photius, Bibliotheca 34; Eusebius, Chron. ad ann. Abr. 1571 'Hue usque Hebraeorum divinae scripturae annales temporum continent; ea vero quae post haec apud eos gesta sunt exhibebimus de libro Maccha- baeorum et losephi et Africani scriptis qui deinceps universam historiam usque ad Romana tempora persecuti sunt.' Africanus is named again, ann. Abr. 2234, as authority for the Christianity of the Abgar of Edessa at that date, and ann. Abr. 2237, as influential in the foundation of the city Nicopolis in Palestine, the earlier Emmaus. For his connexion with the Roman and Antiochene episcopal lists see p. 162 below. THE WESTERN CHURCH 135 the chair; and two Latin versions of a Liber generationis mundi are extant the one in the collection of the chronicler of A.D. 354 presently to be described; the other both in independent MSS,and in the seventh- century collection of the so-called Fredegar both obviously translations of a common Greek original written in the thirteenth year of Alexander Severus, A.D. 235. These versions have been printed, and their Hippolytean origin demonstrated, most lately and most satisfactorily by Mommsen in the new volume of the Monu- menta Germaniae Historic a, named at the head of this article. 1 But since the work contains nothing relative to Christian history, except the statements that Christ was born anno mundi 5500, and suffered at thirty years of age, l him- self the true Passover,' 206 years before the thirteenth of Alexander Severus, it may for our purpose be set aside. It is probable indeed, that (like Africanus) Hippolytus included, among his various catalogues of kings and prophets, an epis- copal succession of the Roman see, for some of our MSS supply the title, 4 nomina episcoporum Romae et quis quot annis praefuit? But the list itself nowhere follows; though the possibility remains that it may have served as an authority to some of the later chroniclers with whom we shall further on have to deal. Most celebrated of all the chronicles which will come under our notice, and for Christian history at large quite the most important in spite of the fact that here too three- quarters of the bulk is pre-Christian is the great work of Eusebius, the Xpoin*ol Kavovc? or Chronicle? Strangely enough, it is not extant in the original Greek, although much of it has been incorporated in the later chronologists who wrote in that language, particularly in the Chronography of the Byzantine writer George Syncellus (c. A.D. 8oo). 3 But 1 Pp. 78-138. We should like to call special attention to the note on p. 85, in which Mommsen defends the ascription of the see of Portus to Hippolytus. 2 Strictly speaking the Xpoyucot Kavovcs is only the second part of the work ; but the first, the Xpoi/oypa(pia, consisting of excerpts from earlier writers and lists of names, has not come down to us even in the versions. "* Syncellus' opinion of his author was not sympathetic (Chroncgr. 136 EARLY CHRONICLES OF the material preserved to us in Latin, Armenian, and Syriac, and put together for the most part in Schoene's edition, is amply sufficient to ensure a tolerably faithful representation of Eusebius' general arrangement, and even of his historical notices. Until the nineteenth century, it is true, our knowledge of the versions was confined to the translation which Jerome made into Latin, and continued on his own account from A.D. 324, where Eusebius had concluded, to the death of the emperor Valens in A. D. 378. The manuscript authority for the Hieronymian chronicle is full and early, 1 so that we ought ' not to be often in doubt as to its readings ; but since Jerome expressly speaks of himself as having added as well as translated, scholars, who, like Scaliger in his Thesaurus Temporum, had to depend (with the exception of the Greek extracts) upon this alone, could never be wholly certain of distinguishing correctly between the contributions of Eusebius and of Jerome. The publication of the Armenian version in 1818 by the Mechitarist Aucher (re-edited for Schoene by Petermann) supplied the required standard for checking the Latin translator; although as the MSS are late and the version is secondary for it appears to have come from the Greek through the Syriac its independent value would have been small. The Syriac itself is represented by two separate epitomes, both apparently abbreviated from a single complete version. Of the one a Latin translation by Roediger is printed in Schoene's edition, but he has ignored the exis- tence of the other, though published at Upsala as long ago as A.D. 1850.2 p. 670. 2 = Jerome's ann. Abr. 2246 ; Schoene, ii 178), TOVTOV (sc. Origen) Evo-e^io? 6 IIa;ii/ fK$eia&>j/ tri'V aurw XoyHrQcir). It is not therefore surprising to find that in cases where authorities diverged, as with the Roman episcopal succession, he relegates Eusebius to the second place ; compare his notices of Zephyrinus and Pontianus. 1 Schoene used two MSS from the seventh century, A (Valenciennes, originally of St. Amand) and B (Berne, originally of Fleury near Orleans), besides some fragments : but Mommsen has called attention to a Bodleian MS not known to Schoene, which is certainly the earliest and perhaps the best of all. [This MS has now been reproduced photo- graphically, with valuable introductions and description of a dozen MSS by Dr. J. K. Fotheringham, Oxford, 1905.] 2 We owe our knowledge of it to Lightfoot, S. Clement, i 219. Roedi- ger's epitome is from a British Museum MS, add. 14643. THE WESTERN CHURCH 137 The system of this great chronicle, which commences with * the birth of Abraham, appears to be to take the years of Abraham throughout as a framework, and to attach to them in parallel columns the years of the reigning king in each of the dynasties recorded. 1 For the period after Christ these ^ are limited of course to the Roman emperors, with the ex- ception of the Jewish kings and tetrarchs down to the destruc- tion of Jerusalem. In both versions each event chronicled belongs to the year opposite the first line of the notice re- cording it ; but in the Armenian it also frequently happens, especially in the later centuries, that a notice is not placed in the margin at all that is, not opposite any particular date, but runs more or less across the whole page, interrupting the columns of dates ; and arguments have more than once been based upon the supposition that Eusebius implies that he was in these instances devoid of means for fixing the year pre- cisely. Thus it is a cardinal feature of bishop Lightfoot's discussion of the martyrdoms of both Ignatius and Polycarp, that Eusebius does not really place them opposite the loth year of Trajan (A.D. 107) and the 7th of M. Aurelius (A.D. 167) respectively, as Jerome would lead us to suppose; but that, as represented by the notices in the Armenian, which interrupt the tables to run across the page, he simply groups all that he knows about the persecutions in each of the two reigns at some convenient point. 2 That the chronicler should group homogeneous notices together was indeed an obvious course. But it is, we believe, an entire fiction to suppose * that he shrank from ranging opposite a particular year events of which he only really knew the dates within the limits of a reign. The whole work teems, as every chronicle must do, - with notices which violate any such hypothetical rule ; time after time the * fame ' of an orator or a writer is catalogued under a special year, which can only be supposed to give a rough approximation. In fact, a cursory glance over a few pages will supply the key to the misleading practice of the 1 [For further details of Eusebius' chronological system see an article of mine in the Journal of Theological Studies, January 1900, i 184-200.] * S. Ignatius i 629, ii 447. [The references are to ed. i.] 138 EARLY CHRONICLES OF Armenian MSS ; for it is invariably the longer and more diffuse notices which run across the page, and this is quite obviously done to save space, lest too much of the page should remain blank and wasted. 1 The preface to the Chronicle throws no light on the prin- ciples which governed the selection of the events recorded in the body of the work ; but the necessary information as to the method and plan pursued is given us elsewhere by the author at the commencement of the Ecclesiastical History, which he defines as a narrative at full length of the same subjects which he had already epitomized in his * Chronological Canons '. ' The lines of succession from the holy apostles, together with the chronology of the period between our Saviour's time and our own ; the events of ecclesiastical history ; the chief personages, whether bishops of important sees, or writers on behalf of Christianity, or heretical innovators, according to the generations in which each lived ; the fate of the Jews in the time immediately succeeding their rejection of Christ ; the number and dates of the persecutions, with the martyrdoms in each.' Now if we turn to the Chronicle, we shall find that on its ecclesiastical side (though of course that is not its only one), the four main divisions of the subject-matter of the History are exactly reproduced : the episcopal successions in the great apostolic sees of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; the chief actors prelates, writers, heretics on the ecclesiastical stage ; the history of the Jews during the century from the Crucifixion to the final revolt of Bar Cochba ; and the persecutions from Nero to Diocletian. But we must not expatiate at too great length upon the work of Eusebius, for the title of this article requires us to confine ourselves to the affairs of the Western, which for Eusebius means practically the Roman, Church ; and it is of course precisely his ignorance in this direction 1 It does not, -however, follow from this that bishop Lightfoot is not right in asserting that, as a matter of fact, Eusebius had no evidence to warrant him in dating the two martyrdoms to any precise year. Very likely he simply selected a place, perhaps somewhere near the middle of the reign, which was otherwise vacant. THE WESTERN CHURCH 139 that is the great defect of the presentation of events in the Chronicle. The extent of his knowledge is bounded, * indeed, rather by language than by geography ; there is no lack of mention of facts where Western records are couched in the language familiar to the East. The martyrdoms of Ignatius and Justin at Rome, and those under M. Aurelius in Gaul the Apology of Justin the concentration of Gnostic teachers, like Valentinus and Cerdo, at Rome all these belong to the second century when Greek was still the prevailing language of Western, and especially of Roman, Christianity. But the authority quoted for the Novatianist * schism in the middle of the third century is the Greek Diony- sius of Alexandria ; the writings of St. Cyprian, probably even his death, pass wholly unnoticed. If the martyrdom of pope Fabian is mentioned, nothing is said of martyrdoms so famous as those of Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage, and of Xystus and Lawrence at Rome. Tertullian escapes a similar neglect only in so far as his Apology happened to have been translated (badly enough) into Greek. It may no doubt be * urged that the episcopal successions of the apostolic see of Rome, continued as they are to Eusebius 1 own day when the Roman Church had been thoroughly Latinized, constitute an obvious exception to this rule. Yet even here it is worth noticing that for the dates of the Greek-speaking second- century popes Eusebius, our only Greek authority, is far more trustworthy than any of the Western lists ; while, on the other hand, Eusebius begins to make some appalling- blunders, and the Latin authorities replace him as our safest guides, as soon as the third century introduces us to a Latin- speaking Church. 1 It was just this defect on the part of Eusebius which apart * from the continuation of the Chronicle for another fifty years Jerome assures us in his preface that he set himself to rectify. * You must know,' he writes, ' that I have undertaken the part both of a translator and also to some extent of an original writer, inasmuch as, 1 We reserve the consideration of the papal list, and of the divergence between the Latin and Armenian versions of the Chronicle upon this subject, to a later point ; see pp. 158 n. i, 161. J40 EARLY CHRONICLES OF while I have faithfully represented the Greek, I have filled up sometimes what seemed to me to be omissions, especially in Roman history ; a department which, as I thought, our author Eusebius (though so learned a scholar was doubtless not unacquainted with it) had passed lightly over, as a Greek writing for Greeks. So from Ninus and Abraham to the capture of Troy I have merely translated from the Greek. From that time down to the twentieth year of Constantine, I have added much material and interwoven much, selected with extreme care from Tran- quillus and other experts in these matters. From the same year of Con- stantine down to the sixth consulship of the emperor Valens [A. D. 378] every word is my own.* But the additional information incorporated^ into the original Eusebian matter scarcely turns out> at least for ecclesiastical affairs, to be quite of the importance which Jerome's language suggests. It is derived mainly from the older Latin Church writers, Tertullian and Cyprian. The references to Tertul- lian's Apology are corrected and enlarged from the original text, and variant dates for the Nativity and Crucifixion are given from the same writer's contra ludaeos * ; while under A.D. 207 he is named as ' celebrated in the talk of all the churches '. Of the writings of St. Cyprian are mentioned, besides the Liber de Mortaltiate^ the collection of eight letters to Cor- nelius, as well as letters to that pope's immediate successors, Lucius and Stephen ; and the notice of Novatianism is now obviously Cyprianic. * Novatus, the presbyter of Cyprian, coming to Rome, associates with himself Novatian and other confessors, on the ground that Cornelius had received back to communion penitent apostates.' A third Latin writer whose name is introduced (A.D. 316) is Lactantius, the tutor of Constantine 's son Crispus, * the most eloquent of all his contemporaries, but so poor that he often lacked the neces- saries of life.' Jerome's independent work for the years A.D. 324 to 378 has in the main naturally followed the framework in which its exemplar was set ; we have the same catalogue of wars, 1 See under Ann. Abr. 2014, 2051, 2124, 2189 (B.C. 3, A.D. 35, 108, 173). It may be added that Eusebius' year for the Passion, Tiberius xix, A. D. 32, which is guaranteed by the concurrent testimony of Syncellus, the Armenian, and the Syriac, is altered by Jerome to Tiberius xviii, A.D. 31. THE WESTERN CHURCH 141 famines, earthquakes, and eclipses, of rhetoricians, bishops, and heretics. But the younger chronicler, partly no doubt owing to his vivid interest and personal participation in cur- rent controversies, has succeeded in breathing something of real life into the dry bones of his annals ; and from a literary point of view the palm must certainly be awarded to the writer whose residences in Rome, Aquileia, and Illyricum, at Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, have all left their mark upon his work. At the same time, this very cosmopolitanism tends to lessen his value for our immediate purpose; for, Western though he was by origin and education, his interests, if we may judge by the events he selects for chronicling, were predominantly Eastern. Of what he does tell us about the West there is not very much that need detain us (we may mention the notice about Arnobius, and the names of the two bishops, Gregory from Spain and Philo from Libya, who are distinguished, together with Lucifer of Cagliari, as having never mixed with 4 Arian wickedness '), except, perhaps, the occasional bits of Roman gossip. We hear of the patrician lady Melanius and Donatus the grammarian, * my teacher ' ; how the Donatists were nicknamed 4 montenses ' or * hillmen ' by some people in Rome, because their first church there was 4 in monte ' ; or how the partisans of Damasus and Ursinus fought for the possession of the Liberian basilica; or how most of the Roman clergy perjured themselves by accepting Felix when they had sworn to accept no one but the exiled Liberius ; while the clergy of Aquileia, on the other hand, are ' accounted as a choir of the blessed '. At the same time it is to be hoped that Jerome's Roman information is more trustworthy than his Roman chronology ; for, in spite of the fact that he was cataloguing events which had mostly occurred within his own lifetime, he has not succeeded in getting the date of a single episcopate at Rome correct. All the popes are antedated, Marcus and Julius by six years, Liberius by four years, and even Damasus, the latest of them all, by one year. 1 1 Marcus' accession is placed in 330, Julius in 331, Liberius in 348, Damasus in 365 A. D. 142 EARLY CHRONICLES OF We pass now to a series of less important chronicles of the fourth or early fifth centuries, of which so much at any rate may be said in common, that their interest in the history of the first three hundred years of Christianity centres in the persecutions. This is the case, for instance, with the chronicle which Sulpicius Severus, the disciple of St. Martin of Tours, published in the year A.D. 401, and which was edited by Halm in the first volume of the Vienna Corpus of Latin Fathers. Like his predecessors, Sulpicius devotes most of his time to pre-Christian history, and he explains that he declines, from feelings of reverence, to paraphrase the New Testament in the same way as the Old. But while he pursues the true annalistic method in cataloguing the persecutions from one to nine Eusebius being, it would seem, his ultimate authority, so that he adds nothing new he foreshadows later developments by becoming at other times rather the historian than the annalist. At the commencement of Christian history he recapitulates, as is well known, Tacitus' account of the Neronian persecution probably also of the destruction of the Temple ; at the other end, his treatment of the fourth century is really a history of three things, the residence of the empress Helena at Jerusalem, the Arian movement, especially in Gaul, and the rise and fortunes of Priscillianism in Gaul and Spain. Among the smaller Chronicles collected by Mommsen in the volume already referred to (p. 135 supra} is a group of four worthy of passing mention, which may be described in common, since all seem to rest ultimately on one list of consuls reaching down to the beginning of the fourth century: the Consularidt Constantinopolitana ( i ), the Fasti Vindobonenses pr tores (2) and poster iores (3), and the so-called Bar bar us Scaligeri (4). 1 The first of them adds for the fourth century some ecclesiastical information from Constantinople, and for the early fifth some emanating from Spain ; the last has Alexandrian additions and a good deal of apocryphal Gospel history. But for the first three centuries the Christian notices 1 The first is printed in Chronica Minora^ \ pp. 205 sqq. ; the other three on pp. 274 sqq. THE WESTERN CHURCH 143 are almost exclusively about the persecutions, and we put together and subjoin those especially that relate to the West : A. D. 42. St. Peter's visit to Rome (2). 57 or 58. Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul on June 29 (i, 2, 4). 67 or 68. Disappearance of Nero : ' non comparuit ' (l, 2, 4). 95 or 96. Death of Domitian (i, 3). 112. Persecution of the Christians (i). 161. Persecution (i). 1 203. Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas at Carthage, March 7 (2, 3). 250 or 251. Persecution of the Christians (i, 2, 3). Martyrdom of Lawrence, Aug. 1 1 (2) ; of Sixtus and Lawrence, Aug. 6 (3). 258. Martyrdom of Cyprian at Carthage, Sept. 14 (i, 2, 3). 303. Persecution (i, 4) : the Churches demolished and sacred books (libri dominici ) burned (2, 3). 304 or 306. Persecution in the West (4) : Martyrdom of Timothy at Rome, June 22 (2), of Timothy the bishop at Carthage (4). The Spanish chronicler, perhaps Hydatius, who continued the Constantinople list, records, under A.D. 399, the destruc- tion of the temples of the Gentiles by counts Jovian and Gaudentius ; A. D. 405, the union made between Catholics and Donatists ; A.D. 415, the revelation of St. Stephen the proto-martyr to the priest Lucian, as witnessed by the letters of Avitus, a priest of Braga then staying at Jerusalem. The information of these consular lists is too scanty to be of much real interest ; but the same cannot, we think, be said of another of these chronicles of persecution, also published in Mommsen's volume. The Liber Genealogus, as the editor calls it of which the three MSS give the dates A.D. 427, 438, 463 for their respective forms of the chronicle emanates 1 If this chronicle gives the martyrdom of Polycarp and Pionius, first under this year, and then again under A. D. 167 with the remark in chronico his conss. Bassos tegts^ we take this to be a reference, not with Mommsen to some complete chronicle of which the extant one is an epitome, but to Jerome's version of Eusebius, emphatically ' the chronicle', which does give A. D. 167. 144 EARLY CHRONICLES OF from a Donatist source in Africa, and has thus to be added to the scanty and precious remains of the literature of that sect. Like Eusebius and the Liber Generationis of Hippoly- tus, the writer is mainly interested in the pre-Christian period ; like the consular lists of which we have just spoken, he specially chronicles the persecutions, and his epitome is of such independent value that we do not scruple to reproduce it in full. 1 After placing- the Birth of Christ in Augustus xli and the Crucifixion in Tiberius xvi, he proceeds : A passione autem domini usque apostolorum Petri et Pauli anni sunt xxviii : passi Nerone bis et Pisone consulibus [A. D. 57]. persecutio enim prima haec fuit Neronis quae iterum futura est sub Enoch et Helia. hie Nero ipse est cuius nomen Johannes in Apocalypsi vocavit DCXVI : hie sapientia vertitur ut conputetur per eras 2 nomen illius qui dicitur A N T I C H R I S T V S i xiii xviiii viiii iii viii xvii viiii xviii xviiti xx xviii fit numerus collectus asses cliiii : hoc quater ducta secundum litteras iiii nominis Neronis facit asses dcxvi quod est nomen Antichristi. . . . nam et in secretis legimus, de tribu Dan filii lacob patriarchae veniet in spiritu Neronis ; et Saar est civitas in occidente, ubi adhuc tenetur inclusus, quamvis iam ubique habet metores \sic\ de quibus apostolus dicit [i Jo. ii. 18, 19 quoted]. ab ipso autem Nerone usque ad Domitianum anni sunt xxiiii. ipse est Domitianus qui secundus extitit acerrimus Christianorum debellator utpote recidivae crudelitatis seminarium Neronis et portio, episcopi scilicet Cleti temporibus in Urbe praesidentis. ab ipso usque ad Traianum anni sunt xviii. neque ipse inmodicus persecutor . . . 3 temporibus episcopi Urbis. a Traiano vero usque ad Gettham anni sunt cxiiii : cuius persecutione praeter quamplurimos passi sunt quos scire potuimus Saturus Saturninus et Revocatus, Felicitas quoque et Bibia Perpetua gloriosas, in Urbe Zefurino episcopo praesidente. ab ipso autem usque ad Decium anni sunt xlvii : minus gravis et eatenus tolerabilis persecutor, Fabiano episcopo in Urbe praesidente. huius namque temporibus iam Ciprianus in Africa ecclesiae Karthaginis episcopus fuit. sub ipso Decio passi sunt Romae Sempronius Paulus et Eupater \y. /. eius pater] et in Africa passus est Donus 4 Montanus. ab ipso usque ad Valerianum anni sunt vii. sacerdotum domini debel- lator, cuius persecutione passi sunt Romae Xystus martyrium, et Kartha- gine Cyprianus, Nemessanus vero Tubunis. 1 Mommsen, op. cit. p. 194. a eras, i. e. series, numbers. s The name of the pope is uncertain. * [Perhaps ' domnus Montanus '.] THE WESTERN CHURCH 145 ab ipso autem usque ad Diocletianum et Maximianum anni sunt xlv. ipsi sunt septimi, Christianorum acerrimi persecutors, ab his coacti Marcellinus Urbis et Mensurius Karthaginis, Strathon et Cassianus diaconi Urbis, et Caecilianus dum esset veritatis ecclesiae diaconus, publice in Capitolio tura et evangelia concremaverunt. ab ipsis usque ad Stilicone iterum consule anni sunt centum duo. ipso consulatu venit persecutio Christianis vi Kal. lulias, data pridie Kal. Febr. Ravenna. Many are the points of interest raised by this little chronicle. We notice first the remarkable persistence of the impression which the belief in Nero's second coming- appears to have made upon the chroniclers. The non comparuit of the Con- sular lists is here worked out into a theory of Apocalyptic interpretation ; the letters of the word * Antichristus ', calcu- lated according to their place in the alphabet (I and J counting, of course, as one), amount to 154, and are multiplied by four for the letters of the word Nero. We thus possess a fresh witness for the Western variant 616 for 666 in Apoc. xiii 18, which is also the reading of the Donatist Tyconius in his commentary upon the Apocalypse. The connexion of Anti- christ with the tribe of Dan, which reappears elsewhere, 1 is doubtless not independent of the omission of that tribe in the catalogue of the 144,000 of Apoc. vii 5-8 ; but though Sulpicius Severus also locates the re-appearance of Nero in the West, 2 we must profess ourselves at a loss in explaining the reference to the city * Saar'. It is curious to find the persecutors classified according to their greater or less severity, the more ' tolerable ' being Trajan and, oddly enough, also Decius. The account of Domitian is obviously derived from Tertullian's Apology, and that of l Geta ' from the Acts of Perpetua and her com- panions, martyred 'on the birthday of Geta Caesar' both, it will be observed, African authorities. The phrase l metator antichrist! ' is also used by the Carthagian confessor Celerinus of the emperor Decius. 3 The names of the Decian martyrs 1 [e. g. Iren. V xxx 2 : and compare one of the appendices to Prosper's chronicle in Chronica Minora, I ii 493.] 2 Dial, ii 14. 8 Cyprian, ep. xxii I [cf. p. 116 suprd\. TURNER L 146 EARLY CHRONICLES OF are new to us, and this and the following notices illustrate the close connexion which existed, at least from Cyprian's time onwards, between the Churches of Carthage and of Rome. Nemessanus or Nemesianus of Thubunae was one of those who gave his vote earliest and at greatest length in St. Cyprian's Rebaptism Council, and he is doubtless to be identified with the bishop Nemesianus, condemned to the mines, with whom St. Cyprian corresponded at the commencement of Valerian's persecution in A. D. 257 (epp. Ixxvi, Ixxvii). 1 So far we have found no clear trace of Donatist influence, though the interest in Apocalyptic calculations might possibly suggest it ; and it is noteworthy that an identical list of perse- cuting emperors, including 4 Geta ', is given by St. Augustine *s Donatist opponent Petilian. But there is no doubt about the two last notices. Marcellinus of Rome, with his deacons, Strato and Cassian, Mensurius of Carthage, with his deacon (afterwards his successor) Caecilian, are asserted to have 4 burned incense and the gospels ' under Diocletian. The charge against Caecilian is the staple resort of Donatist con- troversialists ; that against Marcellinus was made also by Petilian ; while the names of Mensurius, as well as of the two Roman deacons, reappear at the Conference between Dona- tists and Catholics in A.D. 41 1. 2 And we find ourselves in the heart of the Donatist movement when the edict of repression secured through St. Augustine's influence from Honorius in A. D. 405, which the Spanish chronicler above mentioned exalts into * union ' between Catholics and Donatists, is here grimly ranked as the eighth and last persecution * against the Christians '. A series of writings, and these more valuable than any for our present purpose, now claim our attention, all emanating (not perhaps officially, but with access to official sources) from historians or annalists of the Church of Rome. One group of them is formed by the various recensions of the Liber 1 [On Nemesianus see Journal of Theological Studies, ii 602.] * Cf. Augustine, contra litteras Petiliani, ii 202 ; de unico Baptismo contra Petilianum, 27 ; Breviculus Collationis cum Donatistis, tertii diei, 25, 26, 34, 36. On Marcellinus see Lightfoot, S. Clement, i 293. THE WESTERN CHURCH 147 Pontificate^ of which we shall say something later on. Another, and this the earliest, is the material put together by the chronographer of A. D. 354, sometimes called Liberian, from the pope under whom he wrote, sometimes Philocalian, from the Filocalus who illuminated the original manuscript, and who is familiar to travellers in Rome as the sculptor of the beautifully carved inscriptions set up by Damasus, the successor of Liberius, in the catacombs. In its extensive scope this collection covers all history, universal and Roman, sacred and secular. The Liber Generationis of Hippolytus, incorporated, as we have already mentioned (p. 135), in a Latin dress, supplies the general history ; the annals of the Roman State are recorded in lists of emperors and consuls, and of the prefects and regions of the City ; the annals of the Roman Church receive their equal representation in two small lists of obits or depositiones observed during the year the one of popes, the other of martyrs and more formally in a catalogue of popes, from St. Peter to Liberius, equipped with elaborate details of dates and with some few additional his- torical notices. All extant transcripts of this collection are ultimately derived, according to Mommsen, from a manuscript which in the sixteenth century was at Luxemburg, passed from thence to Brussels and to Arras, and is last heard of in the possession of the French scholar Peiresc, who died in A. D. I637. 1 The Depositio Episcoporum contains the names of all the popes for the century from Lucius to Julius (A. D. 254 to 352) with the exception of Xystusand of Marcellus (who, as often happens, has been confused with his predecessor Marcellinus), the day and month, but not the year, of their death, and the cemetery in which each was buried and where consequently the memorial Eucharist was annually celebrated. Marcellinus and Silvester lay in the cemetery of Priscilla, Marcus in that of Balbina, on the Ardeatine Way; Julius, like his third- century predecessor Callistus, on the Aurelian Way ; the rest, eight in number, slept together in the great cemetery on the 1 See Mommsen, op. elf. pp. 15-38, and cf. Lightfoot, op. cit. pp. 246 ff. L 2 148 EARLY CHRONICLES OF Appian Way, associated since the time of Hippolytus with the name of the same Callistus, probably as its constructor and first superintendent. The Depositio Martyrum is a companion list of the martyrs commemorated by the Roman Church, arranged similarly with the days and places of each commemoration. All the feasts are Roman except the Nativity on December 25, Perpetua and Felicitas ' of Africa' on March 7, and on September 14 Cyprian 'of Africa'. In the last case it is specially added that the Roman celebration is held in the cemetery of Callistus no doubt because this was the resting-place of pope Cornelius, whose body had perhaps been translated to Rome on the same day, and who was therefore commemorated, as he still is in the Roman Canon of the Mass, in conjunction with his illustrious African contemporary and ally. The list of martyrs includes the popes Callistus, Pontianus, Fabian, and Xystus, and some forty others, of whom Lawrence, Hippolytus, Agnes, and Sebastian are the most familiar names; all probably belong to the later persecutions, though dates are only given twice, both times in A. D. 304. Besides this, the translation of the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul to the catacombs is fixed to June 29, A. D. 258 ; and we may conjecture that the persecu- tion of Valerian pope Xystus was martyred in August and St. Cyprian in September of this year and especially his attack on the churches and cemeteries, suggested the removal of these sacred treasures from their homes on the Vatican and on the Ostian Way to the safer recesses of the catacombs. 1 But the Liberian writer, as we have said, preserves another and more elaborate record, in which, under each pope, are reckoned the years, months, and days of his episcopate, the emperor or emperors during whose reign he occupied the chair, and the consuls of both the commencement and the close of his tenure of office. An estimate of this chronological matter we for the moment postpone; but, besides this, the 1 The Depositio Episcoporum is printed by Mommsen,p. 70, and Light- foot, p. 249 (cf also Duchesne, Liber Pontificates, p. clvi) ; the Depositio Martyrum by Mommsen, p. 71 ; the catalogue of popes, or 'Liberian list ', by Mommsen, p. 73, and Lightfoot, p. 253. THE WESTERN CHURCH 149 chronicler adds in a few cases (most frequent in the middle of the third century) historical notices of sufficient value to be presented here in full : Imperante Tiberio Caesare passus est dominus noster lesus Christus, duobus Geminis consulibus [A. D. 29] viii Kal. Apr., et post ascensum eius beatissimus 1 Petrus episcopatum suscepit. ex quo tempore per succes- sionem dispositum, quis episcopus, quot annis praefuit, vel quo impe- rante. [Petrus] passus autem cum Paulo die iii Kal. lulias consulibus supra- scriptis [= A. D. 55] imperante Nerone. [Pius] sub huius episcopatu frater eius Ermes librum scripsit in quo mandatum continetur, quod ei praecepit angelus cum venit ad ilium in habitu pastoris. [Pontianus] eo tempore Pontianus episcopus et Yppolitus presbyter exules sunt deportati in Sardinia in insula nociva, Severe et Quintiano consulibus [A. D. 235]. in eadem insula discinctus est iiii Kal. Oct. et loco eius ordinatus est Antheros xi Kal. Dec. consulibus suprascriptis. [Fabianus] passus xii Kal. Feb. [A. D. 250]. hie regiones divisit dia- conibus et multas fabricas per cimiteria fieri iussit. post passionem eius Moyses et Maximus presbyteri et Nicostratus diaconus comprehensi sunt et in carcerem sunt missi : eo tempore supervenit Novatus ex Africa et separavit de ecclesia Novatianum et quosdam confessores postquam Moyses in carcere defunctus est, qui fuit ibi menses xi dies xi. [Cornelius] sub episcopatu eius Novatus extra ecclesiam ordinavit Novatianum in Urbe Roma et Nicostratum in Africa, hoc facto confes- sores, qui se separaverunt a Cornelio, cum Maximo presbytero qui cum Moyse fuit ad ecclesiam sunt reversi. post hoc Centumcellis expulswj, 2 ibi cum gloria dormicionem accepit. [Lucius] hie exul fuit et postea nutu Dei incolumis ad ecclesiam re- versus est. dormit^ iii Non. Mart, consulibus suprascriptis [= A. D. 255]. [Xystus] passus est viii Id. Aug. et presbyteri praefuerunt* a consulatu Tusci et Bassi [A. D. 258] usque in diem xii Kal. Aug. Aemiliano et Basso consulibus [A. D. 259]. [Marcellinus] quo tempore [A. D. 304] fuit persecutio et cessavit episco- patus, ann. vii m. vi d. xxv. [lulius] hie multas fabricas fecit : basilicam in via Portense miliario iii ; basilicam in via Flaminia mil. ii quae appellatur Valentini : basilicam 1 [It is a curious but, I think, well authenticated fact, that the super- latives 'beatissimus', ' sanctissimus ', are signs of antiquity as compared with ' sanctus ' and ' beatus '. When ' sanctus ' and * beatus ' became technical terms (in the sixth century ?) so that ' sanctus Augustinus ' no longer meant 'the holy Augustine' but ' saint Augustine' the superlatives were meaningless.] 2 The words or letters in italics are editorial restorations. 150 EARLY CHRONICLES OF luliam quae est regione vii iuxta forum divi Traiani ; basilicam trans Tiberim regione xiiii iuxta Callistum ; basilicam in via Aurelia mil. iii ad Callistum. Of these fragmentary but precious records, the notice about Pius and Hermas recalls, of course, the parallel statement in the Muratorian Canon ; the information about the Decian persecution and the Novatianist schism, while it agrees ad- mirably with what we learn from St. Cyprian, is independent of him, and adds some new facts. In most of the remaining cases the statement of the Liberian list is our sole authority. The common exile of Pontianus, the pope, and Hippolytus, the celebrated theologian, to Sardinia, adds a new detail to the little that is known to us of the momentary outbreak under Maximin the Thracian. Still more noteworthy is the record of Pontianus' resignation of his office for this is the most natural interpretation to put on the phrase 4 discinctus est ' * whether the reason of his action was to end a schism (as some have thought who look upon his fellow prisoner Hippolytus as occupying the position of an antipope), or the simpler one of relieving the Roman Church from the diffi- culties of being ruled by a head who was not only in exile but probably in the mines. The ' regions ' into which pope Fabian divided the City among the deacons, must, since the deacons were seven in number, as we learn from Cornelius, 2 be the seven ecclesiastical regions of which we hear in the fourth and fifth centuries. The two vacancies in the Roman See, during the persecutions of Valerian and of Diocletian, are nowhere else recorded ; but the duration of the second one should apparently be reduced from seven years to three or four. 3 Of the five churches built by pope Julius towards the middle of the fourth century, the two in the City are S. Maria in Trastevere (soon to be a stronghold of the two anti- popes, Felix in A.D. 358, and Ursinus in A.D. 366), and probably the SS. Apostoli : the other three were cemetery churches on the suburban roads, St. Valentinus on che Flaminian road 1 See Lightioot, p. 286 n. I ; Duchesne, L. P. p. 146 n. 6. 2 In his letter to Fabius of Antioch, preserved in Eus. H. E. vi 43 ; cf. Duchesne, p. 148 n. 3. 3 iii or iiii for vii. THE WESTERN CHURCH 151 beyond the Milvian bridge, St. Felix on the road to Portus, and that where Julius himself was interred near the burial- place of his predecessor Callistus. 1 Reserving-, again, the lost * Leonine ' catalogue of popes, which has been postulated as the common parent of the Greek and Latin catalogues of the sixth and later centuries, until we treat of the authorities for the Roman episcopal succession as a whole, 2 we pass at once to speak of the L iber Pontificates. In treating of this celebrated series of papal biographies there is no need to appeal to any other authorities beyond the sumptuous and monumental edition of the Abbe L. Duchesne, and the brief summary incorporated by bishop Lightfoot in his chapter on the early Roman succession. The name of each pope is followed by those of his nation and his father, and (as in the Liberian list) by the years, months, and days of his pontificate ; in the earlier part of the series, as long as the Liberian list is available, the consulships and emperors are added from that source. After this introduction comes an account, brief for the early popes and longer as time goes on, of decrees issued on disciplinary or liturgical questions, or of important historical events ; from the conversion of Constantine onwards the foundation and endowment of churches forms a new and important section of the bio- graphies. Like the introduction, the conclusion is invariable ; the number of ordinations and consecrations performed by each pope, the time and place of his burial, and the length of the vacancy of the see after his death. Such a collection might have been all compiled at one time ; or it might have grown up by the systematic addi- tion of a new biography after the death of each pope ; or it might and this was, beyond doubt, the case with the Liber Pontijicalis have been put into shape now on one, now on the other method. As we have them, the biographies extend into the fifteenth century ; but we can claim at once for the first half of the series an origin seven centuries at least earlier, for manuscripts are extant of the seventh and eighth cen- 1 The identifications are Duchesne's, pp. 205, 206. 2 See p. 158 n. i. 152 EARLY CHRONICLES OF turies, 1 and the notices of Leo II and Conon between A.D. 680 and 690 must have been the work of a contemporary, for the former speaks of the sixth Ecumenical council of A D. 680 as ' lately held in the imperial city ', and the latter of a legacy of the pope ' not yet paid '. Moreover, our own Bede, about A.D. 724, was making use of a copy of it for his Chronicle, nay, even of a copy containing information about the pontificate of the then reigning pope, Gregory II so carefully was the Liber being kept up to date, and so constant was the communication between Rome and England. 2 But besides this evidence for the period about A. D 700, the hand of contemporaries can be traced a century and a half further back. Not to dwell on other details accumulated by Duchesne, the biography of pope Silverius (A.D. 536-7) resolves itself, even on cursory reading, into the work of two writers, of whom the one looks upon his subject as uncanonically and simoniacally appointed, while he describes with vivid admira- tion the heroic defence of Rome against the Gothic king Witiges by Belisarius l pro nomine Romano ' ; the other, emphasizing the heretical tendencies of the Byzantine court, regards Belisarius only as the tyrant who, at Byzantine insti- gation, deposed the 4 beatissimus Silverius ' on a charge of treacherous correspondence with the Goths. And the pre- sumption which results from phenomena like these is sup- ported by evidence from the MSS : for an abbreviated form of the Liber Pontificalis, found in French MSS and known already to Gregory of Tours, ends with the life of Felix IV, A. D. 530.3 On the other hand, it is not possible to believe that any 1 Neapolitanus iv A 8 is of the end of the seventh century (Duchesne, p. clxxvi) ; Lucensis 490, in the Chapter Library at Lucca, of the end of the eighth century (p. clxiv). [I suspect that the Turin fragment, F iv 18, Duchesne p. clxxv, was originally part of the same MS as the Neapoli- tanus.] 2 Duchesne, pp. xxxiv, ccxxii. 8 For this 'Felician' abbreviation see Duchesne, p. xlix ; Paris 1451, Vat. Reg. 1127 (this MS, like most of Queen Christina's, is French), [and a third MS once in the College de Clermont, now in the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum at the Hague] are sister MSS containing a collection of canons made in the sixth century, together with this form of the L. P. . THE WESTERN CHURCH 153 of the compilation attains a very much earlier date than this. Scattered over the whole corpus of earlier biographies are blunders of varying atrocity, from the assertion that pope Gelasius (A.D. 492-6) ruled under the emperor Zeno, who died a year before his accession to the see, to the assertion that pope Victor, who died not later than A.D. 200, discussed the Easter question with Theophilus of Alexandria, who died in A.D. 412. By these convergent arguments we arrive, therefore, at the conclusion that the first half of the sixth century was the period in which a Liber Pontificalis was for the first time published in a complete form ; and though it is a vexed question whether the extant form of it apart, that is to say, from abbreviations represents the publication even of that date, the question may, from our present point of view, be set aside ; for it is not a matter of much moment whether histories of the popes of the first four centuries were written in the sixth century or in the seventh. Whatever be their exact date, it is too late a one to be by itself any guarantee of truth, and the problem which alone deserves attention is to discover at what point of his work the compiler began to have access to trustworthy and contemporary authorities. Certainly the Liberian list, the information of which our author incorporates with more or less of corruption, takes us well back into the third century ; but excepting this it would not be easy to point to much of real value before the episcopate of Silvester. We do not, indeed, forget that these legendary biographies of the first three centuries, worthless as history, have an interest and a meaning of their own, as illustrative of the time when they were written and of its ideas about antiquity ; and they are annotated by the Abbe Duchesne with a wealth of erudition and a lucidity of style which leave nothing to be desired. We may mention the notes on praedicare (Evar- istus, p. 126), on the Lenten Fast (Telesphorus, p. 129), on the subdeacons and notaries (Fabian, p. 148), and on the clerical attendants of the pope (Lucius, p. 153). But the historian whose interest lies in the centuries earlier than the sixth finds his reward in the life of Silvester. The conversion of the emperor and end of all danger of persecu- 154 EARLY CHRONICLES OF tion evoked at once an outburst of the builder's skill, aiming partly at replacing the churches injured or destroyed under Diocletian's edict, but partly also intended to express in greater magnificence of structure the Church's thankoffering for restored peace and enhanced prosperity. Nor was the encouragement of the State lacking ; if the pagan emperor had made it his special object to strike at the worship, the public buildings, and the property of the Church, the first Christian emperor was willing and able to restore fourfold. During the long empire of Constantine and pontificate of Silvester, no less than ten great churches were built and endowed in or near the capital. One of these, the titulus EquitiiQr Silvestri the present San Marti no ai Monti, near the Baths of Trajan was founded by the pope himself and one of his presbyters ; but this was endowed, and the rest both built and endowed, by the zeal and generosity of the imperial family. The Constantinian (or Lateran) basilica, with the baptistery attached ; the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul; the Sessorian basilica of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem ; besides the lesser foundations of St. Agnes with its bap- tistery presumably the present round church of Sta Cos- tanza St. Lawrence, and SS. Marcellinus and Peter: all these (not to speak of churches at Ostia, Albano, Capua, and Naples) were built, provided with church furniture, and endowed with landed property, and it is the list of these donations which our author has most happily preserved in detail. 1 To take the basilica of St. Peter as an illustration. Besides the precious materials used in the construction of the confessio for the relics of the apostle and the golden-plated vaulting of the apse, there was a cross of solid gold, an altar of silver-gilt adorned with 400 precious stones, white, green, and blue; a golden paten, with a ciborium of pure gold and a dove upon it, 2 similarly adorned with jewels, together with five silver patens ; three golden jewelled chalices and twenty silver ones ; 1 Duchesne, Liber Ppntif. pp. 170-187. * Such, we suppose, is the meaning of the words ' patenam auream cum turrem ex auro purissimo cum columbam* (p. 176). THE WESTERN CHURCH 155 two golden and five silver amae apparently flagons for receiving oblations of wine from the clergy. Such were the eucharistic vessels : but there was also a golden jewelled censer, and a series of ornaments relative to illumination ; four brazen candelabra covered with silver medallions of scenes from the Acts of the Apostles, 1 and a golden corona these stood before St. Peter's shrine ; thirty-two silvery^tf or pendants for lights in the nave, and thirty in the aisle. Nor did this equipment mark St. Peter's basilica as singular among the Roman churches. On the contrary, it was the Lateran basilica which, as both the Episcopal and, in a special sense, the Constantinian church, possessed alone a multiplicity of altars and a corresponding richness of decoration, special mention being made of the silver figures (bas-reliefs) of the Saviour among the Apostles and the Saviour among the angels. To return to St. Peter's, its imperial endowments were curiously enough situated entirely in the East, in the 4 diocese ' of the Oriens 2 ; houses, cottages, shops, baths, gardens, in Antioch itself, with their yearly rents ; land near Antioch, near Alexandria, in Egypt, and in the Euphratensis, paying rent sometimes in money, sometimes partly in kind e.g. spices, balsam, oil of nard and papyrus. The total amount of money income was 3,688 solidi yearly. One may suppose that this revenue supported the fabric of the Church and the clergy attached to it ; but at any rate it partly, if not indeed mainly, was directed 'in servitio luminum', to provide for the illumination of the sacred building. Lights and incense, golden vessels and jewelled altars ! well may the nineteenth -century Protestant rub his eyes, as he tries to picture to himself what a church was like where the survivors of Diocletian's persecution may have worshipped. 1 If that may be thought to be the meaning of the words ' cum sigillis argenteis actus Apostolorum '. * The inclusion of Egypt and Alexandria in the ' diocese ' of Oriens is an incontrovertible testimony (if any were needed) to the antiquity of these lists, for Egypt became a separate ' diocese ' before A. D. 386. The Antiochene endowments may possibly have been meant to mark the connexion of St. Peter with Antioch as well as Rome. 156 EARLY CHRONICLES OF We have promised to say something before concluding on the episcopal succession of the Roman See, and on the problems raised concerning the order and duration of the various pontificates. The question was one which excited interest almost from the earliest days of the Christian Church. In the great controversy with Gnosticism, side by side with the appeal to the apostolic writings, stood the appeal to the apostolic successions as an 'epistle known and read of all men ' ; and the Roman Church, tracing its foundation by in- contestable evidence to the two apostolic chiefs, St. Peter and St. Paul, was for the whole Church the most forcible, and for the West perhaps the only, instance of a genuinely apostolic see. At least two writers of the second century, both of them Easterns by birth but both conversant through personal visits with the church of the capital, learnt the Roman list of bishops from the Apostles to their own day as the surest proof that the Church of their own day held and taught the doctrine of the Apostles. Irenaeus' catalogue extends from Linus to Eleutherus, in whose time (c. A. D. 180) he was writing, and is preserved both by Eusebius and in the Latin translation of the adversus flaereses. 1 It contains, besides the names of the first twelve popes, historical notices concerning Linus, Clement, and Telesphorus, but no indications at all of date or length of office. Hegesippus, as we learn from Eusebius, visited Rome under Anicetus, and remained there through the episcopate of Soter until that of Eleutherus ; and he must have coincided very nearly with Irenaeus alike in the date of his original visit and in that of the production of his work. On settling in Rome, he tells us, he made for himself a 'succession' down to Anicetus 2 ; but Eusebius does not go on to quote the catalogue, and his silence would raise a pre- 1 Eus. H. E. v 6 ; adv. Haer. iii 3. 2 diadoxnv firoirja-dfjLTjv n*xp is 'AvtKiJroi;. Savile proposed, and Harnack accepts, the conjecture 8iaTpi@r}v eVoirjo-a/^i', ' I made a stay there till the time of Anicetus.' It is a fatal objection to this alteration that Hege- sippus did not 'stay at Rome till' the time of Anicetus, but (as Eusebius tells us out of Hegesippus' own work) came under Anicetus and stayed till Eleutherus. (The references for Hegesippus are Eus. H. E. iv n, iv 22 ; Epiphanius, Haer. xxvii 6 ; Lightfoot, pp. 154, 202, 327 if.) THE WESTERN CHURCH 157 sumption that Hegesippus had not included it in his Memoirs, if it were not natural enough to suppose that the contem- porary catalogue of Irenaeus, brought down to a rather later point and guaranteed by a more famous writer, may have been incorporated in the Ecclesiastical History as the better representative of second-century tradition. The question has become one of more than academic interest, since bishop Lightfoot propounded the view that not only did Hegesippus publish his catalogue, but that Epiphanius has actually pre- served it to us. It is quite certain that Epiphanius' list ends, as Hegesippus' list did, with Anicetus ; it is very likely that, as it adopts the name Cletus instead of Anencletus for the second pope, it is independent both of Irenaeus and of Eusebius ; its dependence on Hegesippus is probable, even if it is not yet proved. A catalogue so well authenticated as that of Irenaeus and Hegesippus (if indeed it be Hegesippus) has every prima facie appearance of presenting us with the true succession of bishops from the Apostles downwards. And yet it is notorious that many writers have found, as they thought, an irrefragable argument against the apostolic origin of at least the Roman episcopate exactly in the very episcopal lists which profess to connect the later popes with St. Peter and St. Paul. So diverse and inconsistent, it is said, are the traditions of the earlier names, that the only possible explanation is that Linus and Clement, Cletus and Anencletus, were not successors in the episcopate, but contemporaries in the presbyterate. It is to the consideration of this thesis that bishop Lightfoot specially devoted himself. At first sight the variations are bewildering in their extent. If most authorities place St. Clement third, and some even fourth, in the series, he is for the Clementine romance and for Tertullian the immediate successor of St. Peter; while again several fourth- century writers the Liberian list and the African fathers Optatus and Augustine postpone him to Linus, but to Linus only. The remaining name among the first three popes appears as Anencletus in Irenaeus, Eusebius, and the Greek writers ; yet no Latin writer, with the exception of St. Augustine, gives 158 EARLY CHRONICLES OF this form. A few, including Optatus, give Anacletus, which is no doubt a mere variant, though a curiously persistent one, in the spelling ; but the majority of Latin witnesses, among them the Canon of the Mass and all but two of the papal catalogues of the sixth and following centuries, together with some Syriac authorities and Epiphanius (Hegesippus ?) among the Greeks, substitute the name Cletus. Finally, there are cases the Liberian list (with its descendants, the Liber Pontificalis and the papal portraits in the basilica of St. Paul) and a Latin poem against Marcion of the fourth or fifth cen- tury in which both Cletus and Anacletus appear. 1 Is there not then, it may be asked, sufficient reason to doubt whether any order can result out of so complete a chaos ? The first answer which it is natural to make is that the mere existence of variants is no proof that such differences rest ultimately on different authorities ; for lists of names are likely to produce, and do produce, as well omissions when the eye wanders on too far, as alterations in order when the omitted name is noted in the margin opposite a name in the text and reappears in the next copy at hazard either before or after it. We need not go beyond the papal lists for the period anterior to Constantine to illustrate this. In the middle of the second century Anicetus is placed before Pius by the same Latin authorities who place Clement next to Linus and before Cletus or Anacletus ; and yet no one, of course, hesitates to accept the definite statements of the contemporary writers Irenaeus and Hegesippus, made quite separately from 1 The references are Epist. Clem, ad lacobum ; Tert. Praesc. Haer. 32 ; Optatus, de schism. Donat. ii 3 ; Augustine, ep. liii ad Generosum ; Jerome, Chronicon, Titus 2, and de Vir. Illustr. 15, cf. Lightfoot, pp. 173, 332. In the de Viris the MSS are divided [according to the appa- ratus in Richardson's edition, 1896, two of the earliest MSS give Cletus: Richardson himself reads Anencletus: which is right, it is not easy to say] ; but in the Chronicle the earlier MSS all read either Cletus or Clemens, the latter being supported by the Bodleian MS. * Clemens ' can scarcely be right ; but it postulates Cletus rather than Anacletus, and serves to illustrate the facility of confusion between the names Clement and Cletus. The nine papal catalogues, mostly from MSS of canons from the sixth to the ninth century, which Duchesne prints p. 14 fif., are believed to descend from a single list, supposed to have been drawn up at Rome under pope Leo I, c. A. D. 450, and there- fore called the Leonine: Lightfoot, p. 311, Uuchesne, p. xiii. THE WESTERN CHURCH 159 their catalogues, 1 that Anicetus, not Pius, was the immediate predecessor of Soter. In the third century Pontianus is post- poned to Anteros by the Greek writer Syncellus and by the 'Felician' form of the Liber Pontificalis? together with the portraits at St. Paul's ; although here the explanation of the error may very likely be that since Pontianus, as we have seen, resigned and died in exile, his successor, whose reign barely exceeded a month, was certainly buried in the papal crypt before him, and possibly predeceased him as well. Lastly, the names of the two successive popes in the Dio- cletian persecution, Marcellinus and Marcellus, were so similar, that more than half our lists omit either one or the other. We are thus enabled to return to the earlier variations with the conviction that errors of transcription will often account not only for the omission of names but also for their trans- position : and this will be especially the case with the names Cletus and Clemens. Moreover, since the two names Cletus and Anacletus are found each without the other before they are found together, the appearance of both in the list of the Liberian chronographer seems to be simply due to his desire to omit no element of existing tradition. The position of Clement at the top of the list is still less entitled to respectful consideration, since no one would go either to Tertullian, who gravely informed the world that Marcus Aurelius was no persecutor, or to the Clementine novelist, for sober history. There are, in fact, only two problems to be solved the order of the second and third popes, and the co-existence of the two forms of name Cletus and Anencletus. Bishop Lightfoot suggests that the original name was Anencletus, 'the blameless,' with Anacletus as a phonetic variant, and that Cletus, * the called,' was substituted from a feeling of Christian humility for the first or pagan name. 3 Then, for the other point of the order of the names, so far as the name Cletus was the one in use, the confusion of Cletus and Clement that we have noticed in the MSS of St. Jerome, coupled with the existence of other transpositions, 1 Iren. ap. Eus. H. E. v 24 ; Heges. ap. Eus. H. E. iv 22. 2 See p. 152 n. 3 supra. 3 Lightfoot, S. Clement, i 80. 160 EARLY CHRONICLES OF is a quite sufficient explanation, if the error be an accidental one ; but it may also be supposed that it was an intentional reconciliation of the two earlier traditions, the true which placed Clement third, and the false which placed him first, the divergence being compromised, after the manner of com- promises, by placing him second. Upon a review of the evidence, then, bishop Lightfoot maintains the conclusion that the divergences in the lists -of succession of the Roman see are all capable of resolution, and that the list which is admittedly the earliest has good right to be treated as historical ; and his proof of this is a service to the history of the Christian origines second only to his defence of the Ignatian letters. The companion problem of the chronology of the Roman bishops is one both of more difficulty and less im- portance ; and, just as we have carefully separated it hitherto from the larger question, so now we do not propose to do more than outline its main bearings. Briefly summarized, the conditions of the question are as follows. From the time of Constantine onwards the evidence of the Leonine list, of the Liber Pontificalis, and of other documents, is amply sufficient to warrant not only the length in years of each pontificate, but the day and month of consecration (the day was always Sunday) and of death. From Pontianus to Miltiades (A.D. 230 to 314) the Liberian list and the Depositio Episcoporum give us most of the dates of death and some of the dates of ordination ; though, on the other hand, not only the days and months but even the years are uncertain during the Diocletian persecution. But about the period of Pontianus there is a marked break in the Liberian list, which becomes gradually less and less trustworthy as we ascend further and further back, until ultimately the popes reckoned downwards from St. Peter overlap by seven years, in the middle of the second century, those reckoned upwards the other way. 1 1 If the Liberian list drew for this period from Hippolytus, which is certainly the most obvious theory, the process of corruption must have been so extensive as to reduce the Hippolytean material to a minimum. THE WESTERN CHURCH 161 At about the same point, c. 230 A.D , there is a similar break, only of exactly a converse character, in the chronology of Eusebius. It is conjectured, with some probability, that the list he copied for the later period had got so far mutilated or illegible that the cypher of years had sometimes disappeared, sometimes been confused with the cypher of months, with the result that he attributes to Xystus II eleven years instead of eleven months, and to Eutychian eight (or ten) months with- out any years at all. But for the second and early third century the case is different. Here the true or approximately true dates must be sought and found, if anywhere, in Eusebius. Only it must first be settled what the evidence of Eusebius is ; for the testimony of our authorities is anything but homo- geneous, and the Armenian version of the Chronicle supplies one set of papal dates, while the Latin and the Syriac agree with the History in another. Those who, like nearly all Continental scholars, accept the Armenian as the genuine reproduction of the dates in the Chronicle, are obliged to suppose that two writers, Jerome and the Syriac translator, independently decided to substitute throughout he Chronicle the dates of the History}- This is unlikely in itself, and there is ample material elsewhere to re-inforce the alterna- tive hypothesis that Eusebius used the same chronology in both his works, and that the Syriac and Latin forms of the Chronicle reproduce it faithfully, while the Armenian, whether by intentional revision or by transcriptional blunders, has wandered widely from it. Not only is Jerome's version preserved in much older and better MSS than the Armenian, but it proves itself, if tested on other points, invariably the more truthful. The proof is clenched by Dr. Hort's recon- struction of a theory first put forward by Harnack, who, in studying the Antiochene chronology, noticed that the dates 1 It might not be impossible in itself that the Syriac should have been derived direct from the Latin of Jerome ; but in fact the Syriac writer ends, not with Jerome in A.D. 378, but with Eusebius in A. D. 324, and con- tains besides no single one of the additions to the Eusebian original which can with certainty be ascribed to Jerome. TURKF.R M 1 62 EARLY CHRONICLES OF of all the early bishops of that see (with the one exception, Ignatius-Hero, fixed otherwise by Trajan's persecution) bear a symmetrical relation to those of the bishops of Rome. Accepting as he did the Armenian chronology, Harnack found that the Antiochene accessions were placed at a more or less fixed interval of an Olympiad after the Romans, and attributed consequently to Eusebius the invention of a purely fictitious chronology. Dr. Hort rescued the credit of Eusebius by showing that, if Jerome's figures be taken, the Roman and Antiochene dates actually coincide, and it becomes obvious that the historian followed an authority according to which the two lines of succession during this period were simply co-ordinated the authority probably of Julius Africanus. It is easier to determine thus the chronology of Eusebius than to decide exactly its value. On the one hand Africanus, if it be really he, was certainly an able writer and careful chronologist, as well as a contemporary of some of the popes whose dates are in question. On the other hand, if he co- ordinated the Antiochene and Roman episcopates, it might conceivably have been because as a Syrian he knew the Antiochene dates best and accommodated the Roman suc- cession to them, rather than vice versa. Such a priori con- siderations do not in fact carry us very far. It is more to the point to ask what events, independently dated, can be used to test our Eusebian chronology. We know, for instance, that St. Clement wrote to the Corinthians in A. D. 95 or 96, at the close of the reign of Domitian. We know that St. Polycarp visited pope Anicetus to discuss the Easter question 1 ; and as Polycarp's martyrdom falls in February of A.D. 155 or 156, and the journey from Smyrna to Rome cannot well have been undertaken in winter, Anicetus must have entered on office not later than A.D. 155. We know, thirdly, that Callistus 2 was condemned to the mines in Sardinia by Fuscianus, Prefect of the City at the end of the reign of Commodus, and released with the other Christians through the influence of the empress Marcia when Commodus was still emperor and 1 Cf. Iren. ap. Eus. H.E.v 24. 2 Hippolytus, Haer. ix 12; Lightfoot, p. 341 sq. THE WESTERN CHURCH 163 Victor was pope say between A.D. 190 and 192. In the first and last of these cases the evidence, so far as it goes, entirely confirms the data of Eusebius ; while the second case is scarcely inconsistent with them, especially if we select the later of the two possible years, A.D. 156, for the martyrdom of St. Polycarp. To sum up, it may be said, we think, that the information we have been attempting- in this article to piece together from very different sources, fragmentary as it is, is yet not incon- siderable in bulk and not unfruitful in result. Until some one more of the great lacunae of Christian literature is re- paired and the hope must be but a faint one of recovering, for instance, the Memoirs of Hegesippus it is only by such slow and toilsome search for side-lights that fresh illumination can be thrown on the still darkened chambers and obscure recesses of primitive Christian history. M 2 VI ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR (Church Quarterly Review. July, 1893.) The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170. By Prof. W. M. RAMSAY. (London, 1893.) 4 Westward the course of empire takes its way,' and the spiritual empire of the Christian Church has followed the same law of history. Rooted in Judaism, its earliest home was the sacred city of the Jews. At Jerusalem the Apostles awaited the Pentecostal outpouring- of the Spirit, and, according to the tradition as recorded in the next century by Apollonius and by Clement of Alexandria, twelve years were to pass before the foundations of the first Christian Church were laid deep enough to warrant the Apostles in finally separating to take up their original missionary work. There too for the first time a Christian community received its full development ; in the person of James, ' the Lord's brother,' we see the prototype of the episcopal organization which was to be the model of the permanent government of the Church, and the Apostles seem to recognise the validity of the development when they defer to his presidency at the Apostolic council which showed Jerusalem to be still the centre of the Church. But the increasing importance of the foreign and especially of the Western Churches, and the increasing rift between the standpoint of the Jewish and of the Gentile Christian, were tending to leave the Church of Jerusalem stranded in a backwater off the main current of Christian history, even before the great cataclysm of A.D. 70 came in the providential order of events to cut apart sharply and once for all the cord which bound the Catholic Church to its Jewish ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 165 origin. A generation earlier some far-sighted spirits who had grasped the true significance of the new dispensation found their way to Antioch, the great capital of the Roman East, when the liberal tendency of their ideas drove them from the scene of their original preaching. At Antioch Saul of Tarsus found a congenial home, and thence he was dispatched, after being solemnly set apart for the Apostolic office, on the first of his three missionary journeys ; at Antioch, the first centre of Gentile Christianity, the battle of Gentile freedom from the Jewish law was fought and won ; and yet Antioch itself was only a temporary halting-place in the Church's western march. St. Paul passes on to Ephesus, to Corinth, and to Rome. St. Peter followed in the steps of St. Paul, perhaps to Antioch, if we accept the local tradition that he first organized its episco- pate, probably to Corinth, certainly to Rome. Ignatius, the last great name of the primitive Church of Antioch, is known to us only through the journey which he too took westward as a prisoner over a similar road and to the same goal. That its only other well-known bishop in ante-Nicene times, Paul of Samosata, was deposed for his doctrinal eccentricities, serves well to illustrate how during the second and third centuries the predominance in Christian life and thought had passed away from the Church of Antioch almost as completely as it had passed from the Church of Jerusalem. It might have been an open question whether the westward progress of Christianity from its first home should take the route northwards by Syria, or south-westwards through Egypt; and it would be an interesting question to consider why Alexandria, the second home of Judaism, occupies no place in the development of the Church as depicted for us in the Acts. But when once the direction of Antioch was taken, geographical conditions, political and natural, conditioned closely the future course of affairs. Eastwards lay the Eu- phrates the * Great River ' of Bible history and the Roman frontier. North-east lay range beyond range of inhospitable mountains and barren table-land. Civilisation beckoned along the one natural road which led north-west and west through the Syrian and Cilician gates up on to the plateau, 1 66 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR through Lycaonia and southern Phrygia, and down again to the great cities of the Aegean coast. Here in Asia Minor was the well-worn battle-ground of East and West. Here horde after horde of Eastern invaders had passed on to the old errand of the subjugation of Europe. Here Greece and Rome had for the time turned the tables in favour of the West, though even so Greek culture and Roman organization had made as yet but faint impression on the peoples of the interior. If Christianity was to gain Greece and Rome, it must win its spurs on the ground that brought East and West into contact ; and by insight or by instinct the Apostles grasped the need. St. Paul chose Lycaonia for the scene of his first missionary journey, Ephesus for the centre of the longest stay recorded in his later life ; and half of his epistles were written to correspondents or to churches of Asia. St. Peter's epistle is addressed to the ' dispersion ' in the four Roman provinces which made up most of Roman Asia Minor. St. John's Apocalypse is directed to the angels of seven representative churches of the district of the coast. From the destruction of Jerusalem to the final passing away of the generation of immediate disciples of the Apostles, during the mysterious creative period of Christian history, Asia Minor was the chief centre of the Church's life. St. Paul and Timothy, St. John and St. Philip, Papias and Polycarp, Melito of Sardis and Apollinaris of Hierapolis, continue without a break the succession of leaders from the middle of the first to near the close of the second century of the Christian era. It is true that in time the primacy, which had come to Asia Minor from the East, passed away from it again to the West. Its records in the third century scarcely place before us more than the names of Firmilian, bishop of the Cappadocian Caesarea, and Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea in Pontus ; and both these provinces, whatever their later fame, lay wholly away from the side of Asia Minor which attracts us in earlier days. Already in the lifetime of the Apostles the current was setting steadily westward still to the centre of the empire. St. Paul ' must see Rome ', and to the Christians of Rome his ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 167 most elaborate epistle was directed. From the great * Babylon ' of the West St. Peter wrote to Asia Minor, and its image filled the visions of St. John in his island exile in the East. Before the middle of the second century Rome was the centre to which teachers and philosophers, orthodox or heretical Valentinus, Cerdo and Marcion, Justin and Tatian and Hegesippus were drawn by the irresistible magnetism of the capital of the world ; and before the century closed so strong already was the consciousness of primacy in the Roman Church that pope Victor could claim to excommunicate the Johannine Churches for their adherence to Johannine tradi- tion. The appeal of Poly crates of Ephesus, in contravention of Victor, to the great memories of the churches of his district marks the close of a chapter of history. What the Church of Asia Minor possessed of greatest value was no longer its present but its past ; thenceforward for several generations, so far as extant records go, its silence was almost unbroken. But the contrast of the third century with the first and the second serves only to throw into clearer relief the vast impor- tance of a careful study of the Christianity of Asia Minor during the formative period of the Church ; and it is from this point that special attention is due to the work named at the head of this article. Professor Ramsay's book does not, indeed, profess to confine itself (as the title sufficiently shows) to any one region of the Roman world ; but in effect it is mainly concerned with Asia Minor, and it was, we suppose, the interest aroused in him during his Asiatic expeditions which first turned the energies of this eminent classical scholar into an ecclesiastical channel. No contemporary book on Church history that we could mention possesses so remark- able a combination of qualifications. To the traveller every inch of the ground seems to be familiar. He knows the route St. Paul must have taken ; he illustrates from the inscriptions the very real ' peril of robbers ' ; his own experience suggests a new interpretation of the * infirmity ' under which St. Paul preached to the Galatians. And if his claims to a hearing are unique here, they are not much less binding on the general ground of classical knowledge. A Lightfoot or a Mommsen, 168 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR to name Professor Ramsay's two masters, does not venture on ecclesiastical without a competent knowledge of secular history. But how many well-known and able divines have raised elaborate structures upon the quicksands of their classical ignorance! Professor Ramsay is almost unduly severe when he begins to dilate on what seem to him the errors and the assumptions of the ecclesiastical professoriate. * It would not be easy to unite more errors in a single short sentence ' than Dr. Pfleiderer does when he attempts to employ Pliny's letter to prove the late date of St. Peter's epistle. Lipsius and Wendt display a 'satisfied acquiescence' 'in the hereditary circle of knowledge or error '. ' When I read such a statement I fall into despair ' is Ramsay's comment on the 'extraordinary ' view about Roman Galatia taken by Schiirer. 1 It will be our object in this article to follow Professor Ramsay's method, and, taking his book as our guide, to call attention to the most striking features of the early history of Christianity in Asia Minor. It is impossible to cover the whole ground in a single paper, and consequently we now propose to confine ourselves to the first of the two parts of Professor Ramsay's book, and to deal only with the work of the Apostle St. Paul. For many centuries before the Christian era Asia Minor had been the outpost both of Greek civilisation towards the East and of the Oriental empires towards the West. Before history begins Greek colonies studded the fringe of coast-land which bounds on three sides the great plateau of the interior. But just as these cities naturally belonged to the maritime people of the Aegean, so the plateau, accessible with ease only on the side of the Euphrates, presented an impenetrable barrier to the onward progress of the influence of the West. Even when the conquests of Alexander spread over the Oriental world a veneer of Greek rule and Greek civilisation, the old contrast remained almost as true as before. Pergamum, 1 It is fair to add that Ramsay never seems to find similar reason for falling foul of the most eminent of them all, Prof. Harnack. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 169 on the coast, the capital of the kingdom of Attalus, was a Hellenic centre which rivalled Alexandria, but Phrygia and Galatia and Cappadocia were still the same ' barbarous ' inland as ever. It was reserved to the secular power of Rome, and even more to the spiritual power of Christianity, to effect at last a union and produce a homogeneity which should prevail until once more the wave of Oriental barbarism and Moham- medan conquest overflowed the devoted territory, and reduced some of the most prosperous and flourishing districts to a stolid indifference of waste and desolation which no previous inroad had ever succeeded in equalling. But the empire of Rome moved forward slowly or even reluctantly. To an alliance would succeed a tributary kingdom, and only later to the tributary kingdom a direct annexation. It was not till after the middle of the second century before Christ that Attalus, the last king of Pergamum, was recommended to assign his dominions by testamentary disposition to the Roman people, and the district of the Aegean coast-land, with the Phrygian highlands behind, became the first Roman province of ' Asia'. Before the civil wars broke out Bithynia-Pontus, on the north-west coast, and Cilicia, in the south-east, added two more to the list. The latter, indeed, would not come into account here, since the geographical conditions of the Taurus ranges have always connected Cilicia with Syria rather than with Asia Minor, were it not that the southern portion of the great plateau Lycaonia and the neighbouring districts formed part of the original Cilician province, such as Cicero administered it in the middle of the first century B. C. But in the north of the plateau the kingdom of the Galatian invaders of 279 B.C., and in the east and north-east the scarcely Hellenized kingdoms of Cappadocia and of Pontus, lay still outside of Roman rule ; and the civil wars, with the consequent disorganization of the provincial governments, enabled these kingdoms to enlarge their borders by encroaching on what had already been annexed by Rome, as Amyntas, for instance, did when he incorporated into his Galatian kingdom the parts of Lycaonia, Isauria, Phrygia, Pisidia, which had belonged to the province of Cilicia. Here, as elsewhere, it was the reorganization under i ;o ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR Augustus which first mapped out the ultimate lines of the political geography of the provinces. Like Attalus, Amyntas was recommended to make Rome his heir, and on his death in 25 B. c. his Galatian kingdom was transformed bodily into the Galatian province. The same process was repeated later, in A. D. 17, with Archelaus, and the territory he had ruled as king passed unchanged in extent into the Roman province of Cappadocia. Eastern Pontus, the Pontus of Mithridates, continued in St. Paul's time to be ruled by its own princes ; two small provinces, Lycia and Pamphylia, and a small king- dom, that of Antiochus, lay on the south coast ; Cilicia, as we have said, goes with Syria ; but for the rest Asia Minor was now divided into four Roman governments, the older provinces of Asia and of Bithynia- Pontus on the coast, the newer provinces of Galatia and of Cappadocia in the inland. Such were, in outline, the political conditions of the country into which St. Paul advanced on his first missionary journey. Hitherto he had been preaching the Gospel in districts familiar to him either by birth or by education. The historian of the Acts emphasizes for us the importance of the occasion by following from this point onwards without a break the steps of St. Paul, even more exclusively than in the first part of his book he has confined himself to the labours of St. Peter. He dwells in detail on the revolution then effected in St. Paul's career : his settled life among the prophets and teachers of the Church of Antioch ; the divine call to the Church to set apart Barnabas and Saul for a special work ; the fasting, the prayer, the laying on of hands, which sealed the missionary apostle - ship and started Christianity on its forward course among the Gentiles. Cyprus was their first halting-place, whether because of its enormous Jewish population, or because it was St. Barnabas' early home, or simply because it was one natural route towards parts of Asia Minor. Passing through it from east to west from Salamis to Paphos they set sail again and landed either on the coast at Attalia, or at * Perga of Pamphylia \ a town some miles up the river Cestrus. 1 Here it was that 1 St Luke's words (xiii 13) are avaxOivres OTTO T^S ndov . . . ^\6ov els ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 171 the journey into the unknown interior was to begin, and here the courage of John Mark, the 'minister' of the Apostles, foiled. Professor Ramsay suggests that the momentous resolve to penetrate into the interior was due to accidental circum- stances, and that a sudden and disabling attack of fever in the Pamphylian lowlands necessitated an immediate move on St. Paul's part to the hills. This would be, he supposes, that ' infirmity of the flesh ' by reason of which St. Paul first preached to the ' Churches of Galatia ', and to the recurrence of which, as happens in such cases, he was at least for many years of his life painfully liable. Are we, then, to identify the communities of Christians formed by St. Paul at Antioch of Pisidia and Iconium, at Lystra and Derbe, an$ revisited by him at the commencement of his second journey those firstfruits of his work in Asia Minor with the Churches of Galatia, of which he speaks in his first letter to the Corinthians (xvi i), and to which he wrote the Galatian epistle? The contrary view has been maintained by English and apparently (with the exception of Weizsacker) by German critics of all schools. To Lightfoot, for instance, it seemed 'most probable' that St. Paul (like St. Luke) was using the term Galatia in its popular and ethnological rather than in its ' formal and official ' sense ; and the whole of the introductory matter to his commentary is based upon this view. Let us, however, for the moment postpone this question, and proceed to follow the account given by St. Luke of the Apostle's travels. The four cities in which St. Paul and St. Barnabas are recorded to have preached and founded churches upon this first journey are Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. All four of them belonged to the Galatian province, and were at this period, when the Roman pacification of the mountainous region of Pisidia was in full progress, important centres of administration more important indeed than any of them, Ilepyrjv. He does not say they first landed there, and may mean to pass on at once to the place where first anything of importance happened namely, John Mark's retirement. On their return journey (xiv 25) they certainly embarked at Attalia. Ramsay inconsistently speaks of Perga on p. 1 6, of Attalia on p. 61, as their landing-place. 172 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR Iconium alone excepted, was in later times. Antioch, while politically Galatian, was popularly Phrygian ; Phrygia, how- ever, being a wide region of which most part belonged to the proconsular province of Asia, a more exact localisation is supplied by the title Pisidian that is, on the side or borders of Pisidia, the reading * Antioch of Pisidia \ one of the cor- rections of Codex Bezae, being true for the second century, but not for the first. Iconium, again, was originally a Phrygian city, but by the time of the Christian era is by Roman writers habitually spoken of as Lycaonian. On the other hand, Firmilian of Cappadocia in the third century, and Hierax, the companion of Justin Martyr, in the second, are witnesses that the native custom was to speak of Iconium as Phrygian, the great Graecized city no doubt looking down with contempt upon its neighbours the Lycaonians and their barbarous dialect. If, then, St. Luke tells us that the Apostles fled from Iconium to * the cities of Lycaonia ', we have here a touch of local usage which implies first-hand information. Of these Lycaonian cities, Lystra was a new Roman colony of Augustus, while Derbe was the frontier city eastwards of the Roman province. To push on from Derbe would indeed be the straightest road back to Antioch of Syria, St. Paul's head- quarters, but it involved crossing the Taurus, in winter at least a difficult business, and it involved crossing the Roman boundaries into the small native kingdom of Antiochus. Partly, it may be, for these reasons, partly to revisit the infant churches, the Apostles retraced their steps, and reversing their route returned to Perga, and thence, without touching this time at Cyprus, sailed direct from the port of Attalia to Antioch. The time over which the first journey extends cannot be less than a year and a half, and Professor Ramsay goes so far as to think that it cannot be less than two years and a half, and might be even more. Antioch was again the starting-point, and the churches already founded on the first missionary journey were the object, of the travels which some few years later were resumed by St. Paul and St. Barnabas. But, owing to their deciding to part company, Cyprus fell to the share of Barnabas, while ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 173 Paul took the continental churches and went straight through Cilicia and the Cilician gates, over the Taurus, arriving there- fore first at Derbe, the place on the earlier journey reached last. At Lystra he selected Timothy to join him, in addition to his original companion Silas, and then the party, who had aimed at turning from Pisidian Antioch due westwards into proconsular Asia, were 4 hindered by the Spirit '. If they did not take the western road at Antioch, and went forward at all, they were bound to go northwards; and in fact, after passing through the Phrygo-Galatic country, 1 they made for Bithynia presumably for the important cities near the Pro- pontis, such as Nicomedia and Nicaea. But when they had reached the point where they began to have no longer Asia but Mysia on their left hand, the divine call once more sum- moned them to vaster plans than St. Paul himself had as yet conceived. It was not even in Ephesus or Smyrna or Nico- media that the Church was next to plant itself. It was no longer Asia but Europe which was ready for the Word of God. The careful record of the supernatural intimations which twice changed their route, and of the vision which finally supplied the positive encouragement to the fateful voyage across the straits, marks St. Luke's sense of the meaning of the moment when first an Apostle carried over Christianity from Asiatic to European soil. St. Paul's hope of preaching in proconsular Asia was only delayed, not destroyed ; and after two years in Europe he reached Asiatic ground again at Ephesus. At first the stay there was only brief, but after visits to Palestine and Syria he left Antioch finally, and traversing once more the interior of Asia Minor transferred his head-quarters to Asia and its capital. His route across the highlands is described in similar but not identical language to that employed on the earlier 1 Trjv Qpvyiav KOL TaXariKrjv ^o>poi/ is the reading of all the best MSS in Acts xvi 6 ; the omission of the second article implies that the country passed through could be described equally as Phrygian and as Galatian. Either, therefore, it was a debatable land on the borders of the two districts, or (much more probably) it was country which in one sense (the popular or ethnological) was Phrygia, in another (the political or provincial) was Galatia. 174 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR occasion. Instead of the * Phrygian and Galatian country ' we have in Acts xviii 23 l the Galatian and Phrygian country ', or possibly we should translate it l the Galatian country and Phrygia ' ; in any case the single article appears again to imply that the district thus described was a single one, and as the work of the journey was the 'confirmation' of the disciples, it is implied that St. Paul had visited these churches before. Unless, therefore, the author of the Acts is at fault, no new extension of St. Paul's missionary labours is admissible on this journey before he reached the frontier of the proconsular province. By what route, however, the Apostle passed through the highlands and reached Ephesus is less certain. If Pisidian Antioch was the last church he visited in ' Galatian Phrygia ', he would most naturally proceed to Ephesus by the great highroad which leads beyond Apamea down the Lycus and Maeander valleys past Colossae, Laodicea, and Tralles. It is, however, usually held that the Epistle to the Colossians (ii i) implies that the Colossians and Laodiceans were among those who at that date had never seen St. Paul in the flesh ; and if the exegesis be correct, we must suppose that the Apostle continued his labours along the route of his second journey northwards from Pisidian Antioch, and only at a later point diverged westwards from it, so as to reach the Aegean at Pergamum or Smyrna, and then turned south to Ephesus, the city which was to be his centre and rallying-point for more than two years. First in the Jewish synagogue, next in the 4 school of Tyrannus ', St. Paul disputed daily, so that not only the capital but all ' Asia ' predominantly, no doubt, the circle of illustrious cities which stud the neighbourhood of Ephesus pagans as well as Jews, 4 heard the Word of God.' Up to this point, then, taking the Acts of the Apostles as our sole guide, we have found the preaching of St. Paul follow the line of the great road from Antioch to Ephesus, and concentrate itself especially at two points, one the southern or Phrygo-Lycaonian district of Galatia, and the other the head of the road on the Asian coast-land. But the question may be put, Do not other authorities extend our knowledge ? ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 175 We turn in the first place to St. Paul's own Epistles, and we find three addressed to Asiatic Churches. But the Epistle to the Ephesians, whatever be the exact history of its origin, has all the vagueness, all the absence of circumstantiality, which we expect in a circular letter. The language of the Epistle to the Colossians we have seen to be thought incompatible with any previous visit to that corner of the province. The Epistle to the Galatians, on the other hand, indicates a personal ac- quaintanceobtained, it would seem, on more than one occasion with the Galatian Churches ; and we return to the problem which we have already stated, whether the com- munities in question are those of South Galatia, spoken of in the Acts, or those of North Galatia, that is, Galatia proper, of a stay in which the book of the Acts certainly says nothing, and appears to know nothing. Against the South - Galatian theory the first point urged would be the unlikelihood that St. Paul would so far diverge from popular usage or ethnological exactness as to extend the name Galatia to a region to which it applied only in the political sense, and even' in that sense only since the conquests of Amyntas. But there are several considerations which go to rob this argument of its weight. In the first place St. Paul as was natural enough in one so permeated with Roman feeling habitually uses geographical names, such as Macedonia and Achaia, 1 in the wider extension which Roman administrative arrangements had given them ; just as St. Peter does for Asia Minor itself in the opening salutation of his epistle, where indubitably Galatia is used in the larger sense. In the second place, it is difficult to see what other generic expression could have been employed which would embrace all the towns of the first missionary journey, on the hypothesis that the letter was addressed to them. If Antioch were reckoned Pisidian, Iconium was in Phrygia ; and even if Antioch were Phrygian too, Lystra and Derbe were ' cities of Lycaonia '. No one designation, therefore, would suffice to include them all except 1 [Illyria too might be added : see my note on Rom. xv 19, in the Journal of Theological Studies (October 1909), xi 23.] 176 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR that which connoted the new political unity of Galatia. The only other argument against the South-Galatian view which appears to need mention is the absence of traditional support for it. But, seeing that after the middle of the second century the district in question was no longer Galatian in any sense at all for Lycaonia was by that time formed into a separate government the misconception which has transferred the scene of St. Paul's preaching to Galatia proper was certain to arise. On the other hand, the difficulties of the ordinary view l are shown by Ramsay to be infinitely more serious. We have seen that it is difficult to foist a North-Galatian mission into the account of St. Luke. It is even more difficult to under- stand why St. Paul should have turned aside to such a relatively unimportant and out of the way region as Celtic Galatia was in the early imperial era. As long as Ephesus and Smyrna were the great cities of Western Asia, as long as the traffic with Rome went at the most no further north-east than by Troas and the Egnatian road, so long commerce and popu- lation kept the line of Lycaonia and Phrygia. Even if St. Paul had not been consciously bearing always further to the West, he must, if he were to follow the procedure univer- sally described in the Acts, have visited communities of Jews and have used the Greek language; but Jewish nationality and Greek speech were probably both of them more or less rare in the district of the Celtic settlers. It was not till the choice of Nicomedia by Diocletian, of Byzantium by Con- stantine, as the capital of the Eastern world, that the relative importance of North and South Galatia of Galatia and Ly- caonia, in the terminology of the fourth century. was reversed. From that time onwards Iconium and Pisidian Antioch no longer lay near the great route through the interior. Ancyra, the centre of Galatia proper, became the meeting-point of the 1 For which see Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 18 ff., and Colossians, p. 24 n. It is a curious illustration of the development of bishop Lightfoot's work that the ablest statement of the case from his point of view should be found not in his commentary on Galatians, but in his later work on Colossians. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 177 roads, and, next to Cappadocian Caesarea, the most important city of the highlands of Asia Minor. In exact correspondence with this political and commercial development, it is just at the beginning of the fourth century that Ancyra emerges into the daylight of Church history. The Acts of St. Theodotus under Diocletian ; the great Council of metropolitans held at the close of the same persecution (the first Eastern council whose canons are preserved) ; the episcopate of Marcellus, the opponent of Arianism ; all these belong to the half-century between A.D. 300 and 350: but the records of Christianity there in the three preceding centuries are, if we mistake not, an almost entire and unbroken blank. 1 The Epistle to the Galatians, then, adds fresh touches to the picture already drawn by St. Luke, but it does not extend the Apostolic labours to any fresh ground. It is doubtful whether so much can be said of a second and very different authority, the revision of St. Luke's text preserved to us in the codex Bezae. The peculiarities of this, the most markedly individual of all the great New Testament MSS, have attracted of recent years increasing attention. Dr. Scrivener's careful edition of the text, with distinction of the various correctors, has been followed up by Professor Rendel Harris' acute (if not always convincing) * Study of Codex Bezae ', while among prominent objects of the fund raised to the memory of the greatest New Testament critic of our age was placed the photographic reproduction of the Cambridge codex. 2 A bilingual manuscript of the sixth century, written somewhere where both languages were sufficiently familiar at that date that is, on Western rather than Eastern ground it naturally shares the peculiarities of the so-called Western text; but in addition to these it contains, especially in the Acts, a large number of unique, or nearly unique, readings, sufficiently characteristic to suggest the handiwork of some one definite reviser. We are speaking now not of doctrinal 1 The anonymous anti-Montanist of Eusebius H. E. v 16 visited Ancyra, and found the local church much disturbed by the Montanist movement. 2 [The photographic edition of the codex Bezae was published in 1899.] TURNER N 178 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR so much as of historical changes, and these Professor Ramsay with great apparent plausibility attributes to an editor not much, if at all, later than 150, familiar with the country and churches of Asia and Galatia, and with traditions still surviving, in more or less distinctness, of St. Paul's labours in those provinces. 1 Certainly, the substitution of the order * Iconium and Antioch' for * Antioch and Iconium' in xiv 19, or the insertion of a halt at Myra, between Patara and Phoenicia, in xxi i to which should, no doubt, be added, though they have since penetrated into the Textus Receptus, 4 Antioch of Pisidia' instead of 'the Pisidian Antioch' in xiii 14, and the halt at Trogylium, between Samos and Miletus, in xx 15 imply an editor familiar with the whole topography of South- western Asia Minor. So also the substitution in xix 35 of what is apparently a dialectic variation, zmoKo'po?, for the otherwise universally known veowopo?, or in xix 28 that of the cry ' Great Artemis ' for the statement 4 Great is Artemis ' ; and the group of new details belonging to chapter xiv, ' the frpXio-vvdytoyoi of the Jews and the officials of the synagogue ' instead of ' the Jews which disbelieved ' (xiv 2) at Iconium, or * the priests of Zeus Propoleos ' (roC OVTOS A toy n/>o7ro'\ea>9) at Lystra (xiv 13); suggest acquaintance with its religious rites. On the other hand, if the codex Bezae tells us that the Apostle, after passing through 'the Galatian country and Phrygia' (xviii 23), was intending to journey to Jerusalem, when the Spirit bade him turn back into Asia (xix i), the insertion may be simply due to the reviser's fondness for an inspiration overruling St. Paul's own intentions 2 ; but it may be meant to account for the phrase * Galatian country and Phrygia ', as though that implied a direction contrary to that of xvi 6, 4 Phrygian and Galatian country,' and therefore back south- east towards Syrian Antioch and Jerusalem. If so, Phrygia must have been understood by him as lying nearest to Syria 1 It follows that Ramsay's theory clashes definitely with Rendel Harris' view that the peculiarities of D have their origin in Rome. 2 Compare, for instance, xx 3, where he makes out that St. Paul would have liked to go to Syria but was bidden by the Spirit to return through Macedonia. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 179 and Palestine, the Galatian country nearest to Asia and the coast ; and the argument that the revision itself belongs to the time before the Pisidian and Lycaonian country had ceased to be politically Galatian, and is therefore not after Antoninus Pius and the middle of the second century, would fall to the ground. But in any case the general consideration of the reverence paid to the letter of the New Testament writings as soon as they attained complete recognition as canonical would forbid our dating so drastic a treatment of the text as that of our Asiatic editor at any period much later than 1 50. It is another and a more delicate question whether, even granted that the reviser's place and time are fixed as favourably as in the book before us, he adds any germs of true tradition to the original statements of St. Luke. Our present opinion is that many of his variations can be shown to be arbitrary re -arrangements of the existing material, and from these an unfavourable presumption would naturally suggest itself about the rest. In xiv i St. Luke wrote that l they ', both Paul and Barnabas, entered into the synagogue to speak at Iconium : the reviser substitutes * he ', because St. Paul was the 4 chief speaker'. The name Apollos is altered into Apollonius (xviii 24), perhaps because the reviser's taste was offended by these diminutives, for which St. Luke displays so marked a partiality. 1 The omission of the number seven for the sons of Sceva in xix 14 is a harmonistic alteration to suit the dju$oT^oa>z> (the man * leapt on them and overcame both ') of verse 16, just as the received text makes the converse change by turning in the latter passage * both ' into * them '. In the story of Demetrius (xix 24, 25) the distinction in the original between the Teyvlrai) the skilled craftsmen of the silversmiths' guild, and the epyarai, or workmen, seemed meaningless to the reviser, who gets rid of the second class altogether. Finally, when in xx 4, instead of * Asians Tychicus and Trophimus \ the codex Bezae writes ' Ephesians 1 Thus St. Luke writes Priscilla (Acts xviii 2, 18, 26), St. Paul Prisca (Rom. xvi 3, I Cor. xvi 19 [true text], 2 Tim. iv 19) ; St. Luke Silas, St. Paul Silvanus ; St. Luke Sopater, St. Paul Sosipater. N 2 i8o ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR Eutychus and Trophimus ', the first change is an adaptation to the remaining epithets in the verse, which all refer not to provinces but to cities Beroea, Thessalonica, and Derbe the second is a crude identification with the Eutychus whose accident at Troas is next described. And we believe our- selves justified in drawing from these examples the inference that even statements which, if they had stood alone, might conceivably have seemed to be genuine survivals such as, at Ephesus again, the specification of St. Paul's teaching hours as from 1 1 A.M. to 4 P.M., * from the fifth hour to the tenth/ or the detail that the tradesmen, excited by Demetrius' speech, rushed out into the street (xix 9, 28) are, equally with the rest, due to the same reviser's desire to add to the original picture, whether by way of correction or of addition, some touches of his own. 1 In another direction, however, Professor Ramsay is perhaps more successful in finding some nucleus at least of a con- temporary story illustrative of St. Paul's life and preaching in Asia Minor. The Acts of Paul and Thecla do not, indeed, come to us in the best of company, for the apocryphal Acts of Apostles are for the most part Gnostic forgeries of the second century, equally unsatisfactory for history and for doctrine ; and even where there is some core of fact in them such as, possibly, the preaching of St. Thomas before Gundaphorus, King of India, in t\\eActa Thomae it is difficult to distinguish it from the later growths which overlay it. If the reviser of codex Bezae serves by his very uniqueness to illustrate the reverence which protected the canonical writings from the free handling of irresponsible editors, the inventive energies which were so far held in check found their full vent in the apocryphal literature, and not least in the Acts of Paul and Thecla v which, as they stand, in some measure contain all the marks which characterize this whole class of 1 [The textual criticism of Acts is an extraordinarily difficult problem. In the Gospels the codex Bezae combines in an extreme degree some of the best and worst elements of the 'Western' text : in the Acts we have far less satisfactory standards by which to test it, but it is probable that the same sort of mixture still persists. Yet I am not quite prepared to with- draw the unfavourable view that I took in 1893.] ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 181 forgeries. Individuals whose names occur by the way in the genuine Apostolic writings Demas, Hermogenes, Onesi- phorus take a prominent place. Mistakes in the region of fact, such as the confusion of the two Antiochs, or the location of a Roman governor at Iconium, equally with deviation from apostolic teaching, such as the Gnostic depreciation of marriage and of meats, betray the hand of the second century, and that, too, not at its best. And yet, on the other side, these Acts have always been felt to distinguish themselves decisively from the productions, for instance, of the Gnostic novelist, Leucius Charinus, to whom we appear to owe some of the earliest of our apostolic apocrypha. The details have, many of them, more probability ; the doctrinal motive retires into the background ; the tests which detect the presence of the forger are not everywhere successful. A presumption is so far established in favour of a first-century nucleus ; and the nearer we can get to St. Paul's own time, the greater chance of course there is of some truth in the story. It is more doubtful how far by a comparison of the authorities for these Acts the Greek text, the Latin and Syriac versions, the references in pseudo-Chrysostom and Basil of Seleucia 1 it is possible to disentangle the original matter from the sub- sequent recasts. At any rate, Professor Ramsay has made the attempt, and is characteristically confident of having achieved success : and inasmuch as the proportions of this paper forbid our following out his arguments point by point, we shall confine ourselves to summing up the story in what he believes to be its primary and genuine form. In the course of his first missionary journey (Acts xiii 51), St. Paul on leaving Antioch took the * Royal Road that leads to Lystra ' the new military road built by Augustus to 1 The Greek text in Grabe's Spidlegium (from a Bodleian MS) i 95, and in R. A. Lipsius' Acta Apost. Apocrypha (from half a dozen MSS) p. 235 ; the Latin version, also from a Bodleian MS, in Grabe p. 120; the Syriac in Wright's Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles , vol. i (translation in vol. ii, p. 116). These three authorities seem to present substantially the same text. [Previous discussions of the Latin documents are now super- seded by von Gebhardt's comprehensive treatment Die lateinischen Uebersetzungen der Acta Pauli et Theclae (Texte und Untersuchungen, N. F., vii 2), 1902.] i8a ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR connect his colonies until he came to the place where the branch route to Iconium diverges. 1 At this point he was met by an inhabitant of the latter city, who recognised the Apostle from the description which had been given him of his personal appearance 4 a man of small stature, 2 bald-headed, somewhat bow-legged, with meeting eyebrows and a rather long nose, full of grace, at one time like a man, at another like an angel.' Together they went on to Iconium, and there, in the house of the host, 3 ' there was great joy, and bending of knees, and breaking of bread, and God's word concerning temperance and resurrection.' The sermon was overheard by Thecla, the daughter of Theocleia and affianced bride of Thamyris, as she sat at the window of her mother's house close by. Night and day she continued to listen, clinging to her place * like a spider ' to its web, though she could only catch the words and could not see the speaker. Neither her mother nor the women-servants nor her betrothed could move her. In despair Thamyris appealed to the magistrate against Paul for corrupting the city and interfering between man and woman, and the Apostle was thereupon thrown into prison. 4 But Thecla the same night, by bribing the porter of her mother's house with her bracelets to let her out, and the jailer of the prison with a silver mirror to let her in, succeeded in penetrating to Paul, and listened again to his preaching of 1 the great things of God '. In the morning, when her proceedings were discovered, both Thecla and Paul were brought before the magistrate. 1 The Latin correctly gives the name via regalis^ the Syriac alone the full description of the spot, * where the roads meet on the highway which goes to Lystra.' 2 So the Greek and Latin : the Syriac, perhaps misunderstanding the reading of one Greek MS, pucpoprycdty, translates 'of middling stature'. To the details quoted the Syriac adds ' projecting knees and large eyes ', the Greek, * of healthy appearance.' 3 Onesiphorus, according to the Acts: but the name is suspicious (2 Tim. i 16, iv 19), and probably belongs to a later reviser. * The Acts insert the characters Demas and Hermogenes (2 Tim. i 15, iv 10), who describe Paul's doctrine to Thamyris, suggest proceedings at law, and explain their own view that the Resurrection is not, as in St. Paul, a future state to be attained by pure living, but has already come to pass in our children, 'in whom we rise again.' ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 183 The Apostle was scourged and expelled from the city ; l the lady was questioned why she did not obey her betrothed according to the law of the Iconians, and probably (as the account in Pseudo-Chrysostom implies) was then handed over to her relatives to be dealt with. The story which follows in the Acts according to which, on her mother's request, she was condemned to be burned, was rewarded with the vision of Christ in the form of Paul, and was delivered by a hailstorm which extinguished the fire and killed many of the spectators bears more markedly than usual the stamp of the Gnostic miracle-monger. Equally untrustworthy is the meeting of Paul and Thecla, their meal on bread and herbs, water and salt (which appear to be, as in the Clementine Homilies, a substitute for the Eucharist), and their journey in company to Antioch of Pisidia, where Paul's denial that Thecla had anything to do with him appears to be a mere makeshift to get him off a scene into which the second editor had un- warrantably introduced him. As a matter of fact, Thecla appears to be still searching for Paul, when, at the entrance to Antioch, Alexander, one of the chief men of the place, on seeing her became enamoured of her, and attempted to force himself upon her notice. She resisted, proclaiming herselt a stranger, a noble lady of Iconium, and God's handmaiden, and in the struggle the crown upon his head, adorned with figures (or as some of the Syriac MSS better have it, * with the figure of Caesar '), fell to the ground. As he was exhibiting games to the people, it is obvious that he had an official position, possibly even that of high priest of the worship of Augustus, so that Thecla's violence may have been regarded as a sacrilege. Anyhow, she was sentenced to be exposed to the beasts at the games which were proceeding, a severity resented by the women among the bystanders, who cried out 4 111 judgement, unholy judgement '. Thecla only claimed to preserve her purity until her martyrdom, and was in conse- 1 Cf. 2 Cor. xi 25 rp\s eppapSlfffyv, from which we learn that his Roman citizenship was either concealed by him, or in the excitement of the moment proved an insufficient protection, on more occasions than that at Philippi, Acts xvi 23. 184 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR quence entrusted to the charge of a lady of royal rank, queen Tryphaena, who received her in place of a lost daughter. The occurrence of this name, even if we were to suppose the Acts to contain no historical foundation at all, would be decisive as to the generation and the locality in which the writer lived. Princely dynasties under the Roman Empire did not often enjoy very lengthy existence, and the case of the family of Polemon, king of Pontus, was no exception to the rule ; for the period of a century, from 37 B.C. to A.D. 63, covers the whole of their connexion with their kingdom. To this house belonged Tryphaena, daughter of Polemon and of Pythodoris, granddaughter to M. Antonius and first cousin once removed to the Emperor Claudius. From the time of Caligula's accession in A.D. 37, she ruled over Pontus jointly with her son, and the heads of both of them appear on the coins. It is not unreasonable to suppose that as her son grew older he would take over the reins of government more exclusively into his own hands, and that the mother might be forced to abandon a position no longer tolerable. If this were so, we could well understand how we find her in neighbouring Roman territory, securing respect for herself by her relation- ship with Caesar, but complaining of her desolation and loss of husband and child. 1 As in the Acts of Perpetua, the prayers of the martyr the most powerful earthly intercession of which the Church could conceive are engaged for one who has died a heathen, that she might * pass into the place of the righteous '. Perpetua sees in two visions her brother Dinocrates, who had died obviously without baptism, and her prayers are effectual for his deliverance ; the daughter of Tryphaeaa appears similarly to her mother, and, at Tryphaena's entreaty, Thecla prays : 1 The Greek, at first sight, Seems to imply that she has no children living [and one form of the Latin definitely adds 'neque films'], and this was certainly not the fact, for her son was reigning in Pontus ; but the Syriac probably corresponds better to the original : ' I have no one to help me, for my daughter lives not, who is dead, and there is none of my kinsmen to stand at my side, and I am a widow.' The daughter is nameless in the Syriac, but has received the name of Falconilla at the hands of the editor whose Greek text now lies before us. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 185 4 O God the Most High, grant to her according to her will that her daughter may live for ever. 1 In the account of the martyrdom itself, the historical and the legendary may still be difficult to disentangle, but the present text of the Acts contains at least nothing so remarkable as the 4 story of the baptized lion ', which Jerome professed to have found there. It is true that a lioness is the cause of Thecla's immunity from the death to which she had been sentenced, by refusing to touch her itself or to permit the other beasts to do so ; it is true also that Thecla, who is yet unbaptized, seeing a tank full of water, leaps in with the cry, 4 Lo, now it is time to wash myself: in the name of Jesus Christ for the last day (or, on the last day) I am baptized ' ; but the connexion and combination of the two phenomena is probably due just to one of those strange freaks of memory, to which hasty work exposed even the prodigious erudition of Jerome. Anyhow, when the more than usually barbarous proposal was made by Alexander, to tie Thecla to two savage bulls, 1 queen Tryphaena fainted away and was for the moment believed to be dead. In the reaction of horror at the result and fear for the consequences for Tryphaena, as we have seen, was Caesar's relative Alexander implored, and the magistrate willingly conceded, Thecla's release. Whether or no the original story left her at Antioch in the household of queen Tryphaena, as Ramsay apparently thinks, it is not easy to say ; all extant forms of the Acts take her first to Myra to rejoin Paul, then back to her home at Iconium, and lastly, across the hills again to Seleucia, where also the Latin and Syriac versions place her death. 2 Here at Seleucia certainly was the scene of her cultus in later centuries ; Basil, its bishop about 450, wrote her life in verse, according to Photius, and Gregory Nazianzen, three-quarters of a century earlier, lived there for three years in seclusion attached to her shrine. 1 That the martyrs were sometimes actually tied to the beasts is clear from Acta Perpetuae^ 19: * Saturus solummodo tractus est' (Greek co-ipy povov (T^ou/io) irpoo-defais) ; compare Martyrium Polycarpi, 3 : TfpfMviKos . . . auTtp errfcnrdo-aTO TO drjpiov Trpoafliaffdptvos. 2 The Greek MSS have later legendary additions ; some of them even take her on to Rome. 1 86 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR Professor Ramsay, if we understand him rightly, is of opinion that the Acts, thus purged of later growths, are a genuine and contemporary record of the experiences of a disciple of St. Paul ; and even those to whom this seems at first sight a conclusion too startling for acceptance cannot perhaps do more than plead for suspense of judgement. But even were the facts not literally true, they would yet be typical of the surroundings, and expressive of the ideas, of the people to whom St. Paul preached, and in the estimation of the Apostle's work in Asia Minor they form a factor to be taken into account. Certainly in one obvious characteristic, the Acts of Thecla correspond to and expand the hints of St. Luke, and throw a welcome light upon the social conditions of the country in the first generations after Christ. The prominence of women impressed itself deeply on the early history ot Asia Minor. To trace descent through the mother was no uncommon thing. Arrian remarks that, while elsewhere men ruled over women, in Asia Minor women ruled over men. Nor was the phenomenon confined to heathenism ; the Jewish women are specially mentioned in the Acts of St. Pionius, and Ramsay has called attention to the unique appointment of a woman to be archisynagogos at Smyrna. At Antioch of Pisidia it was by the instrumentality of the women pros- elytes of high rank that the Jews effected the expulsion of Paul and Barnabas from the city. 1 The instances of the daughters of Philip, of the Montanist prophetesses Prisca and Maximilla, of the prophetess who claimed, as Firmilian of Caesarea tells us, 2 to baptize and consecrate the Eucharist, show that a similar state of things was not unknown in Christian or quasi -Christian circles. It ought to be no matter of surprise to find the same feature in the story of Thecla. In any recension the chief characters of the Acts must have been the two women, Thecla and Tryphaena, and though no doubt the editor of the extant document has exaggerated the teaching on virginity, yet other points seem to belong to the original version. * Many women ' were among those who attended 1 Acts xiii 50. 2 ap. Cyprian, ep. Ixxv 10. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR 187 St. Paul's preaching in the house of Onesiphorus, just as the charge which the whole city brought against him was that 1 he has corrupted all our wives '. In the prayer of Thecla, as she stood naked in the arena at Antioch, she speaks of the 1 shame of women uncovered in her ' ; l and on the same occa- sion the sympathy of the women in the crowd is more than once emphasized expressed at first in wailing words, then in casting perfumes on the martyr. 2 But (and this is of even greater interest) we also learn from so archaic an account of the trial of a Christian lady, what was the train of causes which first threw the new religion into collision with the existing law. It was not ' for the Name ', that is, simply as a Christian, that Thecla was condemned ; nor was it yet for crimes which the Christian name was presumed to imply * flagitia cohaerentia nomini ' that she suffered at Antioch, or that Paul was expelled from Iconium. In the one case the charge was apparently that of sacrilege, because she had resisted by force the assault upon her purity made by one who bore, at least for the moment, a sacred character ; in the other case it was that of interfering with the traditions of society and upsetting the customs of family life. The problems with which St. Paul deals in i Cor. vii, and the concrete case of Pomponia Graecina at Rome, belong to a time when a Christian was not amenable as such to the processes of law. The mere introduction of novel theories in the sphere of religious thought was not likely of itself to provoke perse- cution in an empire governed in practice on such broad lines of toleration as was the Roman. The priest of Zeus at Lystra, the head of the local hierarchy, shared the popular enthusiasm and proposed to worship the Apostles. Among the Asiarchs, the official presidents of the worship of Augustus in Asia, were some at least who were friendly to St. Paul ; 1 This prayer, however, is only in the Syriac version ; and though that is the best apparently of the three forms, it is doubtful how far it will overbear here the silence of both Greek and Latin. 2 A notice which seems to throw new light upon those passages in the Acts of the Martyrs (e.g. Mart. Pol. 15, Ep. Lugd. et Vienn. ap. Eus. H. E. v i), where mention is made of sweet odours perceived by the Christians present. 1 88 ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR and the Ephesian riot is another excellent instance of the sort of way in which popular feeling, as opposed to legal proceedings, might be set in action against the new teaching. Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen and their employes were losing money as the demand for the Artemis shrines fell off. Trade was dislocated, and before the capital embarked in the business could be peacefully transferred into other channels some violent protest from the parties affected was inevitable. 1 As yet, however, no constitutional incompatibility had been discovered between the empire of Rome and the empire of Christ, and the Apostle could successfully appeal against local magistrates or mobs to the principles of Roman law and the privileges of Roman citizenship. How this alliance was supplanted by the new policy of Nero in his later years and of the Flavian emperors, made possible again under Trajan and Hadrian, lost sight of once more under Marcus Aurelius, is the story that Professor Ramsay sets himself to tell and to explain in the second half of his book. The scene is laid for the most part in Asia Minor still ; but for the moment we must content ourselves with having described the Asia Minor of St. Paul, and leave to some future occasion an account of the Asia Minor of St. John and St. Polycarp. 1 See Ramsay passim, especially chap. vii. All these points are ex- cellently brought out in Newman's Callista. VII ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR: THE APOCALYPSE (Church Quarterly Review. January, 1894.) i . ' The Church in the Roman Empire before A. D. 1 70. By Prof. W. M. RAMSAY. (London, 1893.) 2. Die Kommentare des Victorinus, Tichonius und Hiero- nymus zur Apokalypse. Von Dr. J. HAUSSLEITER. (Zeitschrift fur kirchliche Wissenschaft und kirch- liches Leben. Leipzig, 1886 [part v, p. 239].) 3. Die lateinische Apokalypse der alten afrikanischen Kirche. Von Dr. J. HAUSSLEITER. (Part IV of Zahn's Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons. Erlangen and Leipzig-, 1891.) 4. The Revelation of St. John: Introduction and Com- mentary. By Ven. W. LEE, D.D., Archdeacon of Dublin. (In vol. iv of the Speaker's Commentary on the New Testament. London, 1881.) 5. The Revelation of St. John the Divine : with Notes and Introdiiction. By the late Rev. W. H. SlMCOX. (Cam- bridge Greek Testament for Schools, 1893.) 6. L'Antechrist. Par E. RENAN. (2nd ed. Paris, 1873.) 7. The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian. By THEODOR MOMMSEN ; translated by W. P. DlCKSON, D.D. 2 vols. (London, 1886.) THE place of Asia Minor in the early history of Christianity was the theme which, in connexion with Professor Ramsay's work The Church in the Roman Empire, we set ourselves in the preceding paper of this volume to illustrate. By the help of the Epistles, of the Acts of the Apostles, and of the 1 9 o ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR story (so far as it can be considered genuine) of Thecla, we traced the history, as it is there mapped out for us, of the foun- dation of the Christian communities by St. Paul. We showed that the new religion excited social opposition by its upheaval of traditional customs, and business opposition by the disloca- tion of trade, but that against serious molestation it could count confidently on the protection of Roman law. We have now to speak of the generation of Asiatic Christians which experienced the change from this contemptuous toleration by the central government to unrelenting and unremitting perse- cution, and of the book which depicts the corresponding change of their conception of the Empire in relation to the Church. St. Paul's apostolic oversight of the Asiatic Churches lasted down to the final months of his life. From his first captivity he wrote to Colossae bidding them to expect a visit from him after his release. We know from the Pastoral Epistles that he did in fact travel eastwards again, and we hear of him in particular at Miletus and at Troas. But it was Ephesus which had been his head-quarters for two years when previously settled in Asia after his second missionary journey; and Ephesus was still to be the centre of the Christian communi- ties. There he left his favourite disciple Timothy to take charge in his place ; thither at the very close of his career, when again a prisoner in Rome, he dispatched Tychicus, though to do so deprived him of the ministry of almost the last of his personal companions. But the work begun by the inspired insight of St. Paul was taken up, not by any one of his own disciples, but by the most illustrious survivors of the first generation of the Church. To this same district came St. John and St. Philip, possibly St. Andrew as well ; it is natural to suppose that their migration was the result of the Jewish war and destruction of Jerusalem, which expelled Christianity from its first home and sent it out into the world to seek another. They did not stay at Antioch, nor among the communities founded by St. Paul in the interior of Asia Minor ; nor did they, on the other hand, remove themselves as far from Palestine as to settle in the THE APOCALYPSE 191 great Church which St. Peter and St. Paul had organized, if they had not founded, in the capital of the world ; but they halted midway, in the district where east and west most intimately intermingled with one another, and there they watched over the completion of the transformation of Christianity from a Jewish sect into the Catholic Church. St. Philip placed him- self at Hierapolis in the valley of the Lycus, and probably gave to it an importance in Christian circles which is illustrated by its possession of two well-known names during the second century on its roll of bishops Papias and Claudius Apolli- naris. St. John, the chief of the new-comers, settled in Ephesus in the wake of St. Paul, and abode with the disciples, as Irenaeus tells us, until the times of Trajan. Of the writings attributed to St. John, the Gospel and First Epistle throw little light on the definite historical experiences of the Asiatic Churches, beyond the general impression that is conveyed of a situation much more developed than in the letters of St. Paul. The Apocalypse, on the other hand, is full of priceless historical portraiture ; and it is attributed to St. John the Divine alike by the earliest Christian testimony, and by the critical ex- tremists of the Tubingen school. No doubt many of the most learned and competent .Church writers, especially among the ancients, have rejected the claims of the book to apostolic authorship, if not to canonical rank as well. No doubt, too, even among scholars who receive it 1 [I could not now express myself quite so positively about either the common authorship of the Johannine books or the personality of the writer or writers. But it does appear to me (l) to be reasonably certain that one of the original disciples named John, whether the apostle or another, settled in Asia Minor, wrote the Fourth Gospel there, and died about A. D. 100 ; (2) to be almost certain that the Apocalypse was written in the second half of the reign of Domitian. That the Apocalypse and the Gospel are by one and the same hand I still think probable, though I admit that I cannot easily reconcile the hatred of Rome which per- meates the Apocalypse with the sympathetic delineation of the Roman governor, and of the contest in him between the Roman's sense of justice and the official's desire to ' carry on the king's government ' at the least possible cost of friction with his turbulent provincials, in that most wonderful narrative Jo. xviii 29~xix 1 6. I should feel minded to urge every student who wants to understand the meaning of the Roman empire in history to master two brief passages in the Bible, the story of the open- ing of relations by Judas Maccabaeus with Rome in I Maccabees viii, and the Fourth Evangelist's account of the Trial before Pilate.] 192 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR as St. John's, a wide and well-marked difference of opinion exists between those who assign it to the period after the death of Nero, in A.D. 68, and those who put it a quarter of a century later, towards the end of the reign of Domitian. But none of these divergences manifested themselves among the first generation of those who received the book. During the second century a continuous catena of writers witness to the authority, the authorship, and the date of the Apocalypse. Papias is appealed to by Andrew the commentator, at the head of the ' more ancient ' writers whose evidence guaran- tees its inspiration. Alone among the books of the New Testament it is quoted by the author's name like the pro- phecies of the Old Testament as foretelling the millennarian reign of the saints at Jerusalem, in Justin Martyr's 'Dialogue with the Jew Trypho '. The letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne introduces a quotation of Apoc. xxii 1 1 with the phrase * that the Scripture may be fulfilled '. Irenaeus alleges the testimony of personal acquaintances of St. John to the reading 666 as against 616 for the Number of the Beast, ^and dates the book at the end of the reign of Domitian. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Apostle's recall from Patmos after the death of 4 the tyrant '. And this, the unanimous verdict of the second century, is predominant in the third ; Origen and Methodius, representing Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor, are at one with Hippolytus in Rome and Tertullian and Cyprian in Africa. On the borders of East and West, Victorinus, bishop of Petavio on the Drave, who wrote in Latin, although better acquainted, St. Jerome says, with Greek, was the author (and this implies an even more absolute acceptance) of a com- mentary on the book. Not inappropriately the first commentator on the Apoca- lypse received the crown of martyrdom : in days of external trial men turned for encouragement to the prophecy which proclaimed with such unfaltering conviction the final triumph of the Saints over the Beast and his ministers. No general law is more certain than that the prevalence of persecution is accompanied by an increased devotion to apocalyptic litera- ture ; where the present is so dark, the future, with its recom- THE APOCALYPSE 193 pense and retribution, with its reversal of the positions of martyr and judge, becomes the all-engrossing- hope. So in the time of Severus' persecution, a Christian writer named Judas, discussing the seventy weeks of Daniel, brought down his computation to the year A. D. 202 and anticipated at that moment the near approach of Antichrist, 4 thus vehemently,' adds the historian, l did the persecution directed at that time against us disturb people's minds.' 1 This somewhat disparaging comment of Eusebius on apoca- lyptic researches will serve to remind us that another and an opposite tendency was gathering strength, especially in the Eastern Church. At intervals during the third century more regularly and uncompromisingly after the age of per- secution closed Hellenic culture revolted against what seemed the crude and violent imagery, the unrestrained Orientalism, of the prophecy attributed to St. John. The Fourth Gospel seemed to be, among the books universally recognised as canonical, exactly the one which showed the clearest traces of the influence of Greek thought. Was it possible then to admit that a composition so utterly alien in tone from it as the Revelation proceeded from the same pen ? Gaius the Roman presbyter, the first churchman of whom we hear as declaring against the book, ascribed it, on the ground of its promise of material rewards and an earthly kingdom, to the heretic Cerin- thus. 2 Dionysius of Alexandria, a generation or two later, while on critical grounds he refuses to identify the writer of the Gospel with the writer of the Apocalypse, declines to go the length of adjudging the latter to a heretic, and finds a middle ground on which to reconcile criticism and custom in the view that the book is inspired indeed, but the work of some John other than the Apostle. The successors of Diony- sius in the patriarchal see adopted, as was so often the case with them, the Western rather than the Eastern view; but Egypt excepted, the Apocalypse did not approve itself to the taste, either in culture or in politics, of the Greek Church of 1 Eus. H. E. vi 7. 2 Eus. H. E. iii 28, cf. the Syriac fragments of the Heads of Hippo- lytus against Gaius : Dionysius ap. Eus. H. E. vii 25. 194 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR the fourth century. Eusebius, though his historical sense could not fail to be impressed by the early evidence of its use, obviously leans for his own part to the unfavourable view. The New Testament lists of Cyril of Jerusalem, of Gregory Nazianzen, of the Council of Laodicea, and of the Apostolic canons, are unanimous in their conspiracy of silence against the book ; while in the Syriac-speaking churches not even a version of it existed until the revision of the New Testament by Thomas of Heraclea in the seventh century. The Latins shared neither the literary sensitiveness of the Easterns nor their extreme veneration for the secular power in the hands of Christian emperors. They found nothing to grate on their prejudices in the Apocalypse, and they con- tinued to devote to it no inconsiderable amount of study. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus (who himself, among the multi- farious products of his retirement at Vivarium, was the author of scholia on the Apocalypse) enumerates besides Victorinus the commentaries or treatises of Tyconius, Jerome, Augustine, Vigilius Afer, and Primasius, though Vigilius and Augustine had only treated of special points. Of these a work bearing the name of Victorinus is still extant in two not identical but closely related forms, 1 the substance of which is clearly ancient and corresponds with what we know of the author's literal and historical method. But the shape can scarcely be his, seeing that he was a chiliast, while the printed com- mentary explains the thousand years in an allegorical sense not to say that an alternative explanation of the number of the Beast is given in the name of Genseric, the Vandal persecutor of the fifth century. Part of this difficulty may be solved with Haussleiter, who has noticed that an epistle bearing the name of Jerome and prefixed to the text in de la Bigne's edition, implies that the writer had revised 1 The one printed in de la Bigne's Bibliotheca Patrum (ed. 2, Paris, 1589, i 1245-62), the other in Gallandi's Bibliotheca (iv 52-64). Hauss- leiter gives the preference to the former ; the latter is quoted as * sanctus Victorinus episcopus ' by the scribe of a Florentine manuscript of the tenth century or its ancestor, who has inserted the whole section on the number of the Beast into a Donatist chronicle of A. D. 438 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Chronica Minor a t i 194 : see p. 143 supra). THE APOCALYPSE 195 and rewritten the commentary of Victorinus on a -doubtful points, especially that of his chiliasm, by the help of ' the works of our predecessors '. The whole proceeding would be quite characteristic of Jerome's methods ; but even Jerome cannot have spoken of Genseric, nor is it quite clear that he could have applied the phrase maiorum libri to the only commentator (other than Victorinus himself) of sufficiently early date to come into question, Tyconius the Donatist. Of this scholar's history we only know that he preceded St. Augustine, and that his dissent from the violence of his fellow-schismatics on the question of excommunicating the rest of the Christian world provoked an attack from Parme- nian, Donatist bishop of Carthage c. A. D. 350-392, which in turn was answered some years later in the contra Parme- nianum of Augustine. Tyconius' system of exegesis, unlike that of Victorinus, was, we are told, allegorical and spiritual. His work has perished ; but large portions of it are shown by Haussleiter to have been incorporated by later commen- tators a speaking testimony to its reputation and value. Thus another African, Primasius, Catholic bishop of Hadru- metum two centuries later, 1 stigmatizes the exegesis of the Donatist writer as containing 4 many things that are unsound, foolish, and superfluous ', but acknowledges nevertheless that he has himself rescued l pearls from the dungheap ' : unde- cumque veritas clareat catholicae defendenda est unitati. Even to the eighth- century commentators Tyconius was still a standard writer. Bede names him, though only, it is true, to record his disagreement from him ; while a younger contem- porary of Bede's, the Spaniard Beatus, has silently embodied without protest or remark much that only becomes intelligible when we recognise in it Tyconius' defence of the separation of his sect from the Catholic body. * As in the Babylonian captivity, so now heretical priests carry off our vessels. They take for themselves the name of Christ, the Law, the Gospel, the Epistle, the Psalms, Baptism, the Amen and the Alleluia, the Creed and the Lord's Prayer.' a 1 For the life and work of Primasius see Haussleiter, Die lateinische Apokalypse, part iv of Zahn's series of Forschungen. 8 P. 55 of the only edition, that by the Augustinian, H. Florez, Madrid., O 2 196 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR If this is the passionate outburst of a Donatist, we are re- minded in the words that immediately follow, * we do not repeat Baptism/ of Tyconius' independent protest against the prevailing- Donatist views ; 1 and the same explanation must be given when the writer urges that if Philadelphia of old time or Africa in his own day had ' kept the word of God's patience', it was not to be thought that the Philadelphians then or the Africans (that is, the Donatists) now were the only Christians in the world. 2 Meanwhile in the East the only two commentaries pro- duced before the year A. D. 1000 are those of the two arch- bishops of the Cappadocian Caesarea, Andrew and Arethas, of whom the former would appear to have lived perhaps in the seventh century, while the date of the latter is fixed by the subscription to the great Paris manuscript of the Greek Apolo- gists, written by Arethas' notary Baanes in A. D. 914* And as with commentaries, so with manuscripts : where the book was in less request, the manuscripts also were fewer. Of uncials there are extant only five ; 4 of later or minuscule manuscripts a considerable number are of course now known, but so scanty were copies in the West in the time of Erasmus that that scholar constructed his editio princeps of this part of the New 1770. According to Haussleiter, copies of this book are as rare as manu- scripts ; but the Bodleian contains a presentation copy ' Celeberrimae Universitati Oxoniensi Henricus Florez, Augustinianus.' 1 As St. Cyprian rebaptized schismatics, so the Donatists, following his example and considering the Catholics as in schism, refused, most of them at least, to recognise Catholic baptism as valid. 2 Florez, p. 212. Haussleiter also thinks that in the ' Summa dicendo- rum ', prefixed by Beatus to his commentary, he can identify the (other- wise unknown) work of St. Jerome on the Apocalypse, mentioned by both Cassiodorus and Beatus himself. 3 [We must now add the commentary of Oecumeriius, c. A. D. 600.] 4 Three of these form part of manuscripts which contained the whole Bible, the Sinaitic (N), the Alexandrine (A), and the imperfect Paris palimpsest (C) ; the fourth of the great Bibles, the Vatican MS (B), breaks off abruptly in its present form in the middle of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and it is therefore impossible to say whether the Apocalypse was originally contained in it. Besides these three, we have another Vatican MS of the end of the eighth century called also B by Tischen- dorf, and B 2 by Westcott and Hort, but by Tregelles and Weiss, to dis- tinguish it more readily from its great compeer, Q from the library of the Basilian monks, and the somewhat later P, brought to St. Petersburg by the Russian bishop Porphyry. THE APOCALYPSE 197 Testament on a single manuscript of the twelfth century, 1 and filled up its lacunae by himself retranslating- the Latin Vulgate into Greek. But the MSS of the Apocalypse, few as they may be in number, are remarkable for their variations from one another. It was the early recognition of the New Testament books as authoritative and inspired which conditioned the independence of the copyist. This reverence for the sacred- ness of the text we have seen to be a motive which in regard to the Apocalypse would have been, during the third and fourth centuries, largely inoperative in the East ; and in consequence a vast diversity of readings grew up which is without parallel elsewhere in the New Testament. The Sinaitic MS, for instance, is the second in age and, according to Westcott and Hort, the second in general trustworthiness among our Bible manuscripts ; but the ancestry of its text in the Apocalypse stands so far apart from the rest that it contains in this book no less than five hundred readings entirely peculiar to itself. 2 So much, then, being premised as to the history of the Apocalypse in later Christian generations, we turn to the book itself and to the circumstances of its composition, and inquire what light it throws on the contemporary conditions of the Church, and especially of the Church in Asia Minor. *The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. 1 St. John was in Patmos, an islet in the Aegean Sea near Samos, for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ. For the same word and witness those who cried from beneath the altar, those who should reign for the thousand years, had been beheaded or otherwise slaughtered. 3 Like them, St. John was a martyr, and for his confession he was sent to the island ; but on the 1 Erasmus 1 manuscript had disappeared in modern times till it was discovered at Mayhingen in 1861. It is now numbered I among the cursive manuscripts of the Apocalypse. 8 Dr. Hort notices (The New Testament in the original Greek : Intro- duction, p. 260) that the Epistle of Barnabas, which follows the Apocalypse in the Sinaitic MS, also contains a large proportion of * individualisms ' of the scribe. 8 Apoc. xix 10, i 2, 9, xx 4, vi 9. 198 JOHN IN ASIA MINOR circumstances of his arrest and condemnation, or on the nature of the sentence, he is wholly silent. Tertullian places his banishment in direct connexion with the story that he was plunged into boiling oil at Rome and suffered no hurt. 1 This legend of * St. John before the Latin gate ' is primarily of interest in so far as it would indicate that the writer had himself, following in the footsteps of St. Peter and St. Paul, travelled westwards to the capital of the world. 2 But if so, it was with nothing like the affectionate longing with which St. Paul looked forward to seeing Rome that St. John looked back on it. To him the great City on her seven hills is only the mysterious harlot, mistress of the kings of the earth, throned over peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues, full of all abominations and uncleanness, drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs, decked with purple and scarlet and gold and jewels and pearls, for whose adornment the merchants and sailors hastened from all parts with their trade in linen and silk, in precious woods and ivory and marble, in spices and frankin- cense, in corn and wine and oil, in cattle and horses and chariots and slaves, yes, and souls of men, until the day when God should visit her with sudden judgment. 3 It is difficult not to think that the seer had himself been an eye-witness of the luxury and shamelessness of the imperial City, and if so it was probably at Rome that he was tried and thence that he was sent to Patmos. St. Victorinus, full of the associations of his own times, speaks of the apostle as condemned to the mines, and no doubt in the later persecutions at least this was a quite ordinary punishment. Thus Marcia, the concubine of Corn- modus, procured the release of all the Christians working in the Sardinian mines, among whom was Callistus, afterwards pope ; and St. Cyprian's seventy-sixth epistle is directed to a body of African Christians, including nine bishops, con- demned to the mines under Valerian; while Christians sent to the mines in Palestine and Cilicia (many of them having come from Egypt) are mentioned frequently in Eusebius' 1 Tert. Praesc. Haer. 36. 2 So Renan, L? Antechrist, pp. 27, 198. 3 Apoc. xvii 3-6, 9, 15, 1 8, xviii 11-13. THE APOCALYPSE 199 account of the great tenth persecution. 1 But though there were mines or quarries at Naxos and Paros, we do not know of any in Patmos ; and banishment to the small islands of the Medi- terranean, and especially of the Aegean, was an habitual fea- ture in the imperial policy of the first century after Christ. In old Greek times the islands had competed for a place in his- tory on equal terms with the cities of the mainland ; to the Romans, with their horror of the sea, an island, even if not one of the smallest or most barren, was a place of residence conceivable only under compulsion. Not only l tiny Gyara ', but Cythnos, Seriphos, Amorgos, all of them islets like Patmos, as well as the larger Andros, Naxos, Lesbos, and Cos, are known to have received exiles ; and Kenan's objection that Patmos must have had too much commercial importance to serve as a place of banishment is quite untenable. 2 If now we ask whether the conditions of the case point rather to Nero or to Domitian, the answer is scarcely doubtful. The persecution of Nero, as described to us by Tacitus, was a sudden outbreak in which Christians were made the scapegoats of the popular indignation, and the * vast multitude ' arrested were no sooner convicted than they perished under every refinement of sport and cruelty. The measures of Domitian were more continuous, more graduated, more varied, more widespread ; it was characteristic of him to strike hard at wealth and birth, position and power. The grandsons of St. Jude were summoned from Palestine to the emperor's pre- sence, but were dismissed unharmed, while Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian and his nearest male relative, was put to death. On the same charge of Christianity many others were condemned, some to death, some to degradation and loss of property. Domitilla, the wife of Clemens and own niece of Domitian, was banished to one of the islands of the Tyrrhe- 1 HippoJytus, Ref. Omn. Haer. he 12. Cyprian, epp. Ixxvi-lxxix : since the addressees of ep. Ixxvi answer in three separate groups, it would appear that they were working either in separate mines or at any rate in separate gangs. Eusebius, Mart. Pal. 7, 8, 9, 1 1, 13 : among the Egyptian martyrs sent to the Palestinian mines was Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis and author of the Meletian schism, see Epiphanius, Haer. Ixviii 3. ? Renan, L'Antechrist^ p. 373. Contrast Mayor's characteristically full note on Juvenal, i 73 ; Mommsen, Roman Provinces, E. T., i 343. 200 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR nian Sea. St. John may well have been one of the obscurer and so far more fortunate victims of that reign of terror when, in the historian's epigrammatic summary, * plenum exsiliis mare, infecti caedibus scopuli.' 1 From this island exile the seer turns to the churches of the Asiatic mainland from which he had been torn away. 4 The seven churches which are in Asia ' 2 are, according to the consistent use of the symbolism of numbers in the Apocalypse, a type of completeness. While the churches addressed by St. Ignatius in the next generation are those of the cities where he stayed, like Philadelphia and Smyrna, or by whose ambassadors he had been visited, such as Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, St. John's choice, not being thus con- ditioned, is determined by geographical, political, and civil qualifications. The chief towns of a province were the con- ventus, the centres where the governors from time to time held courts of assize, and in the province of Asia thirteen towns appear to have possessed this privilege at the close of the first century after Christ ; but some of them, such as Cyzicus in the north, or the group consisting of Apamea, Eumenia, Synnada, and Philomelium in the interior, were far removed from St. John's ken at Ephesus. The great cities of his own neighbourhood were, near the coast, Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum, the three claimants to the title of l first city of Asia ' ; and on a more or less parallel line inland, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Among these rivals, Ephesus, where the proconsul on his arrival from Italy was obliged to enter on his office, was at this time from its commerce and importance the practical capital of the province, and the natural centre for the over- seership exercised by St. Paul and St. John over the churches of the Asiatic district. The angel of this church is therefore the first addressed, and perhaps the introductory phrase 4 He 1 Tac. Ann. xv 44, Hist, i 2; Dio Cass. Hist. Ixvii 14 ; Hegesippus, ap. Eus. H. E. iii 20. See Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome, vol. i. ch. ii passim. 2 [Of course the pages that follow were written before the appearance of Sir W. Ramsay's book on the Seven Churches. But I have thought it best to let what I had written stand untouched.] THE APOCALYPSE 201 that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ' is an allusion to this primacy. The Ephesians are commended for the 4 unwearied ' devotion to 4 weary ' toil of their efforts to extend the Kingdom of Christ ; for their 4 patience ', which in the Apocalypse always means the endurance of present tribulation in view of the future reversal of earthly judgments ; and because, while they could bear for the Name's sake, they could not bear sin and heresy, 1 as represented in the per- sons of false apostles and of the Nicolaitans of whom more is told us in the Epistle to Pergamum. An argument for an early date has been drawn from this allusion to 4 false apostles'; 2 but (not to mention the care of the later gnostics to claim secret channels of connexion with the Apostles) the Didache shows us that apostles and their counterfeits played no in- considerable part in many Christian communities under the Flavian emperors. One other point rather suggests the time of Domitian. This church, active enduring orthodox as it was, had lost its first love, its first works, the early enthusiasm of the days of St. Paul and of the days perhaps, too, when St. John had first known it. The candlestick should be moved from its place * except thou repent '. The primacy of Asia still belonged to Ephesus, not only under Poly crates at the end of the second century, but also under the Christian empire witness the two great councils, the Third Ecumenical, and the Latrocinium, which were held there in 43 1 and 449 ; but in later days the home of St. Paul and St. John has become a desolate and deserted village, and its place has been taken by the sister church of Smyrna, which already under Poly- carp, the disciple of St. John, gave promise of that faith and crown which the seer now proceeds to predict for it. The keynote for Smyrna is the contrast between poverty and the true riches, between tribulation and final victory, between death and eternal life. The message comes from him 1 Apoc. ii 1-6 : notice verse 2, rbv KOTTOI/, verse 3, ov KCKorrlaKff ; verses 2 and 3, rrjv vTro^o^i/, vrrop.ovT]v cx ls > & l 9> x "i io, xiv 12 ; verses 2 and 3, ov 8vvr) jSaoratrat, e/3a0Ta 2a/ij3.a&ta> eV TG> Xa\8aiou 7rpi/3oXa>, KT\. (C.I. G. 359) We have met with the same view in Miss Yonge's attractive Pupils of St. John the Divine (ch. vi, p. 88), who, however, makes the prophetess to have been originally a Christian. * Epiph. Haer. li 33. THE APOCALYPSE 205 had not defiled their robes and been unfaithful to their Chris- tian calling. Such an one in the next generation was the illustrious bishop Melito, the greatest theologian and writer of the Asiatic school of St. John, who, l after a life lived entirely in the Holy Spirit, lies in Sardis awaiting the coming from heaven of the Bishop of our souls and the resurrection from the dead.' l But after Melito the history of the church of Sardis becomes a blank. The description of the church of Philadelphia presents some remarkable points of contact with that of the church of Smyrna. Here, as there, there is the same prophecy of coming persecution (and we remember that among the com- panion martyrs of the great bishop of Smyrna some at least were ' they of Philadelphia ' 2 ), and the same or even greater emphasis on the opposition of the Judaizing 4 synagogue of Satan \ of the persistency of whose false teaching St. Igna- tius' letter to this church bears ample witness. But one day these spurious Jews should come and worship at the feet of the glorious church of Philadelphia, on whose brow was written the name of that city of God, the New Jerusalem, which was the true successor of the destroyed earthly sanctuary of the older covenant. The same manful use of its ' little power ' in ' keeping the word of God's patience ' distinguished Philadel- phia in later history. Of all the Christian cities of Asia Minor it longest resisted the Mohammedan conquerors, and only sur- rendered itself into their hands when its Christian suzerain, the emperor John V, submitted to the degradation of consent- ing to appear in person among the besieging army of the Ottomans. Laodicea, the last of the seven churches, receives the only message in which blame is unrelieved by any praise. It was possible still that some might open their doors to the knock- ing of the messenger and welcome his entrance. But the nakedness of the community as a whole is unrelieved by any notice that even a few, as at Sardis, were walking worthily in the white garments of holiness. Nominally they were 1 Polycrates of Ephesus, ap. Eus. H. E. v 24. 8 Mart. Pol. 19. 2o6 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR Christians, and so could not claim the more lenient judgment of those who had never entered into baptismal privileges and responsibilities ; practically, other thoughts and interests elbowed out their Christianity altogether. Material wealth went side by side with spiritual poverty at Laodicea, as material poverty with spiritual wealth at Smyrna. Laodicea is the only Asiatic city in whose case the Roman historian, after recording the calamity of an earthquake, adds that it repaired the ruin without falling back upon the resources of the State ; l and the Christians apparently enjoyed their full share of this prosperity. Victorinus, perhaps rightly, empha- sizes a further trait ; these Laodiceans are ' rich men who read the scriptures in their chambers, but leave their religion at home, and out of doors nobody knows what they are, for they boast of universal knowledge and occupy themselves in books rather than in works neither cold nor hot, but all things to all men. But just as this gift of knowledge is dangerous when misused, so if they who possess it carry it out into good works, they are of special benefit to many, and to them is promised the special reward that they should sit upon the judge's throne.' * Remembering the neighbourhood of Laodicea to Colossae, the church to which St. Paul taught Christ, the first-born of creation, as the satisfaction of all intellectual yearning, St. John will seem to us to have the same thought in mind when he delivers the message to the Laodiceans as from the c Amen, the Beginning of the creation of God', who counsels them to purchase not only the gold of trial patiently endured, and the white garments of good works, but the eye-salve of true enlightenment as well. A review of the data of these two chapters brings out the double nature, material and spiritual, of the danger to which the Asiatic Churches were exposed. On the one side is aggressive enmity, now the normal and systematic relation of the State to the Church, over against which is set in anta- 1 Tac. Ann. xiv 27 (A. D. 60), ' Laodicea tremore terrae prolapsa nullo a nobis remedio propriis opibus revaluit,' quoted by Lightfoot, Colossians, P- 43- 8 De la Bigne, p. 1248 ; cf. Gallandi, p. 54. THE APOCALYPSE 207 gonism the characteristic Christian virtue of * patience ' or 4 faithfulness '. 1 On the other side are the seductions of the pseudo-Jews and pseudo-apostles, and the relaxation of the rigour of the Christian standard of life to accommodate it to social and political exigencies. Both of these phenomena are reconciled more easily with the epoch of Domitian than with an earlier generation. Whatever the savagery of Nero's outbreak, it was not a symptom of law but of caprice. There is hardly room before A. D. 70 for the growth and development of so extreme a tension as is implied both here and, as we shall see, more clearly later on in the book. Again, the accommodating theory on idol meats implies, if we are right in our interpretation of it, some lapse of time before a situation would grow up in which it would be natural that theses so alien to the spirit of apostolic Christianity could be maintained authoritatively 2 as a modus mvendi for Church and world. Both perils are treated by St. John as manifestations of diabolic enmity. The worship of power incarnate in the emperor makes Pergamum the * throne ' and dwelling-place of Satan, just as * Satan's synagogue ' is that of the false Judaizers, and 4 Satan's deep things ' form the knowledge of the heretics. 3 When, then, we find in the visions which form the latter part of the book that the devil has two chief ministers on earth, with whom he is in the end cast into eternal fire, we recognise in them the embodiments of the same two tendencies which the seer has traced at work in his own time. 4 That the Beast who fills the foreground of chapters xi-xx is the Roman monarch and monarchy, the brute force of the world in its contest with the Church, will become abundantly clear as we proceed. And what is the second Beast or False Prophet but the prostitution of mental and spiritual power to the aid of the world's rebellion against God ? Unlike the first Beast, 1 'Patience' at Ephesus (Apoc. ii 2), Thyatira (ii 19), Philadelphia (iii 10) ; 'faith ' at Smyrna (ii 10), Pergamum (ii 13), Thyatira (ii 19). * We hear not only of their works, epya (Apoc. ii 6), but of their doctrine, diSaxij (ii 15). 8 Apoc. ii 13, 9, 24. Ibid, xx 10; cf. xvi 13. 208 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR the second arises, not out of the sea, but out of the land ; he possesses, not the strength of the West, but the subtlety of the East. He has two horns like the Lamb and speaks as the Dragon, because he comes in the guise of a follower of Christ and yet speaks blasphemies. He acts as minister of the world- power, and employs all his talents and influence to induce the peoples of the earth to subject themselves as he has done. In counterfeit of Christ's true representatives and witnesses, he has (like the Simon Magus of early Christian legend) the power of working miracles and signs, and his crowning achievement is to make the image of the Beast a living and speaking reality to his subjects. All his energies are devoted to the task of making every man, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, a worshipper of the Beast. Against recusants he em- ploys, not only the rough and ready means of direct persecu- tion, but the subtler and more deadly methods of social exclusion ; no man could buy or sell save he who had the mark upon his forehead. 1 Here, surely, reappear the linea- ments with the outline of which the seer has made us already familiar at Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira. There is the same mask of Christianity, the same successful deceit by spiritual manifestations, the same knowledge of the depths of Satan, the same readiness to come to terms with the world. No single figure is exclusively in view ; no apostate minister of the emperor, no Cerinthus among heretics, not even Simon Magus, satisfies all the conditions : St. John personifies the spirit of accommodation, of subservience to the powers that be, of persuasion successfully exerted against the revolt of the Christian instinct and conscience. The Epistles to the Seven Churches in chapters ii and iii are followed by a series of visions which occupy the rest of the book. How far these are conditioned by the data of the personal history of the writer, and of the churches under his 1 Apoc. xiii 11-17. For the last point compare the letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, ap. Eus. H. E. v I ; God's servants were not only kept out from houses, baths, market-place, but ' it was for- bidden that any one of us should show ourselves anywhere at all '. The idea of the xap7^ or ' impress ' of the Beast is doubtless suggested by the ' impress ' of references to emperor- worship on the coinage : so Renan and Mommsen. THE APOCALYPSE 209 care, we have now accumulated enough material to judge. To deal with all the other influences which have left their mark upon the imagery of the Apocalypse would be a task beyond our limits. The rainbow about the Throne, the sea of glass mingled with fire, the sound of many waters, the prominence of mountain, island, and sea, may reflect the picture which unfolded itself day by day before the eyes of the seer in his place of exile. Much of the description of catastrophes and plagues may be coloured by the reminiscence of events familiar to the writer's generation. The awful eruption of Vesuvius, with the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, must have been fresh in his recollection ; and the volcanic fires of Thera, which had thrown up new islands within the previous half-century, may have been visible from the heights of Patmos. But our object in the rest of this paper is to confine ourselves to an examination of the seer's conception of the political and ecclesiastical events of his generation, and of their bearing upon the future of the Church. It is mainly in the central chapters that the historical matter of the Apocalypse apart from the Letters to the Seven Churches is concentrated. From the fourth to the tenth chapter, and from the twentieth to the close, the movement of the drama takes place either in heaven or in the remoter future, the consummation of all things, upon earth. Thus the visions open in chapter iv with a hymn of praise to God from all creation summed up in the Living Creatures and the Elders. It was natural for succeeding generations to see in the Four a symbol of the Evangelists ; but it cannot, of course, be sup- posed that any such idea was present to St. John's mind, and indeed so definite an allusion to the Christian revelation would be quite out of place in this chapter. They rather represent creation as a whole, and the Elders mankind in particular, the number twenty-four the double of twelve signifying the whole course of human nature under both dispensations. Of the two views embodied in the present form of Victorinus' commentary, the truer one will then be that which arrives at twenty- four as the sum of the Patriarchs and the Apostles ; the alternative interpretation, of the twenty-four books of the Old TURNER P 2io ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR Testament, is a natural correlative of the erroneous interpreta- tion of the Four Creatures as the Gospels. In this chapter the hymn is directed only to Him that sitteth upon the Throne ; in the next follows the introduction of the Lamb, and to him is paid homage for his redemption of men, not by the re- deemed themselves, but by their heavenly representatives. 1 Only in the universal chorus of praise 4 to Him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb \ which connects together the themes of these two chapters, is mention made of earth. Hitherto the action has been solely in heaven ; with the opening of the seals, in vi i, it passes down towards earth, and from this point moves backwards and forwards from one to the other, or rather includes them both with the inter- vening space of mid- heaven 2 in one survey. As each of the first four seals is opened, one of the Living Creatures thunders out the command * Come ', and four horsemen, on horses white, roan, black, and grey, in turn appear. Here, if our exegesis is correct, we have the first indication of St. John's conceptions of the contemporary history of the world inde- pendently of its relations to the Church. The first rider has a white horse, and armed with a bow goes forth to conquer ; the second is mounted on a roan horse, and wields a sword, with which he encourages war and internecine bloodshed. 3 Even if this passage stood alone, the contrast of the bow, the national weapon of the Parthian, with the Roman sword would be suggestive enough, and later passages in the book make the allusion clear. The second woe, that which follows the sixth trumpet, is the loosing of the angels bound on the ' great river Euphrates ', who are made ready for that 4 hour, and day, and month, and year,' that they may slay 1 In Apoc. v 9, 10, the true reading is : ' Thou hast redeemed to God in Thy blood [men] of every race, and tongue, and people, and nation, and hast made them to our God a kingdom and priests, and they shall reign upon the earth.' * ev fjLc&ovpavrjfjiaTi, Apoc. viii 13, xiv 6, xix 17. 3 The third and fourth riders symbolize simply Famine and Death. The view that the four riders represent the conquests of Augustus' reign, the judicial murders under Tiberius, the famine under Claudius, and the final catastrophe, moral and political, of Nero's days, is ingenious enough to deserve mention. THE APOCALYPSE 211 a third of mankind by means of the countless number of their cavalry 4 twice ten thousand times ten thousand.' l Both that passage and the one we are considering belong to the portion of the book where historical events are not yet shadowed forth in literal detail; but when we read that the sixth vial note the sameness of the number is the drying up of Euphrates that the way may be made ready for the kings from the East,' 2 it is impossible not to see that St. John looks forward to a great Parthian invasion and to the victory of these hereditary foes of Rome, as one of God's greatest instruments of judgment upon the sinful and anti- Christian empire. 3 If we could put ourselves into the position of an oriental in the first century after Christ, we should think of the two States in a very different way from modern ideas. For us the long tale of the Roman Empire and its enduring influence over all Western institutions overshadows everything in history. To him the defeat of Crassus on the plain of Carrhae was an earnest of what might come to pass again. We cannot, it is true, suppose that St. Paul would under any conceivable circumstances have shared St. John's triumphant expectation of an Eastern victory followed by a break up of the Roman Empire and the destruction of the City. To him, as to us, that must have seemed the prevalence of barbarism over civilisation, of stagnation over progress. But St. John was no Roman citizen like St. Paul ; he only saw the other truth, that Rome slew the righteous, and lived deli- cately and sinfully, and he looked forward to her reward. As the first and second seals foreshadow under the general types of war and bloodshed the political situation developed more fully later on, so in the fifth seal the contest between the Church and the Empire, which is the theme of the central chapters of the book, is already glanced at in the cry of the Martyrs from below the Altar. 4 But their company is not 1 Apoc. ix 13-16. 2 Ibid, xvi 12. 8 Mommsen, R. P. ii p. I n. The Christian reader may naturally see an ultimate fulfilment of these anticipations in the Mahommedan conquest of the East ; as also of the judgments denounced against the City of Rome in the barbarian invasions of the West. * Apoc. vi 9-11. P 2 212 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR yet complete ; others of their brethren and fellow servants must be put to death even as they ; they must wait yet a little while. Not till the end of the seals and of all but one of the trumpets not till the seer has received and swallowed the little Book that was sweet to the mouth, because it foretold the destruc- tion of the Church's enemies, but bitter to the belly for the tribulations that should precede the end, at which the elect themselves might almost fail not till the fresh commission is pronounced that he should prophesy again before peoples and kings do the predictions take definite shape, and the linea- ments of individual character and historical event emerge from the record. First of all the seer is now bidden to measure or separate the earthly Temple, with its altar and worshippers, from the outer court occupied by the Gentiles, who are to tread under foot the Holy City forty and two months. 1 By a literal inter- pretation of this passage the school of critics of whom Renan is a type seek at once to establish the date of the book as concurrent with the siege of Jerusalem, and to overthrow its credit by attributing to it a definite guarantee of the safety of the inner Temple, which was in every respect falsified. But the forty-two months have, and can have, nothing to do with any idea of the duration of Titus' siege ; they correspond to the 1,260 days of the prophecy of the Witnesses and to the three days and a half during which their corpses will lie un- buried, as well as to the 1,260 days, or 4 time, times, and half a time ', for which the Woman is sheltered in the wilderness, and to the forty-two months of the power of the Beast. 2 Twelve hundred and sixty days are exactly equal to forty-two months, or three and a half years ; and this period is the half of seven, the perfect number of God's rest, and denotes there- fore (like the ' midst of the week ' of Daniel ix 27) the broken imperfect nature of that which opposes itself to the Divine. Moreover the Temple of God with its worshippers is of course 1 Apoc. xi I, 2. 2 Apoc. xi 3, 9, II ; xii 6, 14; xiii 5. Dionysius of Alexandria (ap. Eus. H. E. vii 10) applies the last passage to the duration of Valerian's persecution. THE APOCALYPSE 213 to the Christian seer not the material temple of Jerusalem, but the earthly aspect of God's spiritual temple, the Church mili- tant, besieged and assaulted by the powers of the world, trodden under foot, all save the inner shrine where man cannot penetrate, during the allotted time. Synchronous with this same period is that of the Prophecy of the two Witnesses, in whom ancient exegesis (before Tyconius, who explained them allegorically as the Two Testaments, the Law and the Gospel) was unanimous in seeing a reference to two definite personages ; unanimous also in making them both out to be Old Testament saints risen again ; unanimous in accepting Elijah as the one, though Enoch, Moses, and Jeremiah are suggested in turn for the other. 1 Probably this whole tendency of interpretation was governed by the belief that the place of their martyrdom, the 1 Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified ', meant Jerusalem. But Jerusalem was not a great city, and in fact the 4 Great City ' never in the whole book means anything else than Rome ; 2 the parallels of Sodom and Egypt, the types of sin and of oppression, apply to Rome, but not to Jerusalem ; and these considerations, which are not open to doubt, must rule the meaning of the localisation of the Crucifixion. Whether the Romans or the Jews were ultimately responsible for the death of Christ was a topic on which the balance swayed from side to side in Christian circles according to the circumstances of the hour. The anti-Jewish polemic of the second century, represented by the Gospel of Peter, emphasized the washing of Pilate's hands as proof of his guiltlessness, and laid responsi- bility wholly on Herod and the Jews. For the victims of Roman persecution, on the other hand, for St. John at Patmos, our Lord was * crucified under Pontius Pilate ', as Captain of that 1 For Enoch we have Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, pseudo- Cyprian de pascha computes, Ephrem Syrus, Jerome, Augustine, and Andreas ; for Moses, Hilary of Poitiers ; for Jeremiah, Victorinus, quot- ing * omnes veteres nostri '. [In the pseudo-Cyprianic de montibus Sina et Si on which I believe myself to have proved to be a Roman document of the early third century, Journal of Theological Studies, vii 597-600 the two appear to be Enoch and Abel.] 2 Apoc. xvi 19 ; xvii 18 ; xviii 10, 16, 18, 19, 21. 214 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR noble army of his martyrs, who might all be said in a figura- tive but very real sense to have suffered, as so many had literally done, in the streets of the Great City. But it was on the identification of the City with the Jewish capital that the patristic explanation of the witnesses was based ; prophets at Jerusalem would naturally be Old Testament saints, and among them the most obvious were the two who had never known death, Enoch and Elijah, or the two who typified law and prophecy at the Transfiguration, Elijah and Moses. It is in favour of the latter pair that terms taken from their miracles are employed to describe the miracles of the Witnesses. Only (though we still differ with hesitation from so impressive a catena of ancient tradition) there seems to us to be no longer reason, when the reference to Jerusalem is removed, to limit the area of choice to the saints of the older dispensation ; rather, while we follow the main body of the Fathers in believing the witnesses to be individual prophets, yet since St. John elsewhere, when he enters into detail as close as this, seems to connect the future with what had happened or was happening in his own experience, the same may also be the case here. And who were the two great Witnesses of the Christian faith, the two- * candlesticks which stand before the Lord of the whole earth ', the two most illustrious victims of the Beast, 1 the martyrs whose bodies lay in the ' Great City ', and were to be, in another sense than it was given to St. John to foresee, gazed on by men 4 of all peoples and tribes and nations and tongues ' ? It is rash to suggest a view of so well- known a passage which we believe is new ; but if a recent commentator is near the mark in comparing with the two Beasts the two Witnesses as * designed to symbolize, one of them the Church's outward organization and polity, the other her spiritual and evangelical teaching ', 2 that would be an additional reason for seeing at least a partial reference to the persons of the two chief Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. 1 ' The Beast which cometh up out of the abyss ' (xi 7) is shown by xvii 8 to be Nero. 2 Archdeacon Lee in the Speaker's Commentary, ad loc. A general acknowledgment here must suffice for the help which in many cases we have found in this excellent piece of work. THE APOCALYPSE 215 After the episode of the two Witnesses the seventh trumpet sounds. Just as at the opening of the seventh seal there had been a silence in heaven, as of expectation of a crisis, for the space of a half- hour, followed soon after by thunders, lightnings, voices, and earthquake ; so here again similar phenomena accompany the blowing of the seventh trumpet. 1 The heavenly Temple opens, and the ark of God's covenant, the secret of His innermost purpose, is for a moment seen. The mystery of the Incarnation and the strife of celestial powers which it calls forth are now shadowed out for us that we may recognise afterwards the corresponding developments of the struggle upon earth. That the Man-child is the Incarnate Christ whose birth excites the enmity of the Dragon against him and his mother admits of no doubt. It is less easy to speak confidently about the Woman whose garment is the sun, and her coronal the stars, who flees into the desert to escape the Dragon, whose seed are all the faithful witnesses of Jesus. Neither the Church nor the Virgin Mary answers to all the elements of the picture ; for the Church can hardly be termed appropriately the mother of Christ, unless we understand exclusively the Jewish Church (which seems out of place), while his real mother's history in no sense that we know of anticipated the persecutions of the Bride. But then we remember that a similar difficulty meets us repeatedly in primitive Christianity. On the earliest sarcophagi a female figure is often depicted in the central place in such a way that it may be identified with the Blessed Virgin, or with the Church, or with the individual soul. Again, in the striking inscription 2 of Abercius, bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia at the end of the second century, the 'great clean fish from the fountain ', which is the Christian's food in the Sacra- ment of the Eucharist, is * held by a pure virgin '. In all these cases, and in St. John's Apocalypse as well, the figures of the Virgin Mother, the type of Christian womanhood, and 1 Apoc. viii I, 5 ; xi 15, 19. 2 Rediscovered by the energy and activity of Professor Ramsay, and through his means presented to his Holiness Pope Leo XIII for the Vatican Museum. [The text in Lightfoot, S. Ignatius \ 480.] 216 ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR of the Church personified as a woman, seem to melt into one another, and it is not easy to distinguish them. The remaining chapters with which we have to deal unfold the drama of the similar struggle which follows between the Woman's seed and the Dragon's representative, the Beast, worked out at any rate as it immediately presents itself to the mind of the seer in the death-grapple then proceeding between the Church of St. John's day and the Empire of Rome. All the various forms of wild animal life which in Daniel's vision had characterized the successive lordships of the world are concentrated before St. John's eyes in the representation of the last and greatest of them. Rising out of the sea and to St. John, alike as a Hebrew and in his station at Patmos, the sea is always the Mediterranean and therefore the West the Beast not only subdues to his sway all the nations of the world, but by the help of his minister the False Prophet compels them to acknowledge his mate- rial power as Divine. It is the horror excited by this blas- phemous claim of identity with God, almost more than the war waged against the saints, which oppresses the conscience of the seer ; and, without stretching the point too far, this would appear to be a valid argument for the days of Domitian rather than of Nero. No doubt the earlier emperor received this idolatrous homage : but his reign marks no such stage in the development of the cultus as Domitian's claim to the title 4 Our Lord and God \ ! At the same time we have, for our own part, no hesitation in accepting the identification popu- larised by Renan, but not invented by him, for it is at least as old as Victorinus of the head of the Beast stricken to death and healed with Nero and with the widespread expectation of his return. If any one is sceptical as to the immense influence upon popular Christian eschatology of this cycle of ideas about Nero, we venture to refer him to the chronicles and other authorities cited in an earlier paper of this volume. 2 St. John, it should be noticed, nowhere asserts that Nero was not killed in 1 Cf. Westcott, ' The Two Empires ; the Church and the World ' (Epistles of St. John, pp. 255, 262) : Ramsay, p. 275. 2 See above, pp. I43~5- [Cf. Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome, ii 511.] THE APOCALYPSE 217 A.D. 68 ; he does not commit himself to an identification with one or other of the false Neros : but he does look for Nero's resurrection from the abyss as a final manifestation of the anti- Christian spirit of the empire, ushering- in its final over- throw. How exactly St. John's system of the l seven kings ' is to be explained we do not pretend to decide. No doubt it is at first sight more easily interpreted if the book was written in A.D. 69 rather than twenty or twenty-five years later. Yet Victorinus felt no difficulty in reckoning back from Domitian as the sixth through Titus, Vespasian, Vitellius, and Otho, to Galba as the first. This calculation has the drawback that it does not really include Nero among the seven, and we prefer to suppose that St. John omits one of the three ephe- meral emperors as not fully recognised in the East, and makes Nero both the first and the eighth. In commencing the seven heads of the anti-Christian power with Nero rather than with Julius or Augustus the seer is faithful to the real meaning of the facts. Augustus was dead before the Christian Church was founded. His immediate successors can in no sense be said to have finally declared themselves against Christianity, and their position as heads of the Beast who makes war on the saints and overcomes them would be at least ambiguous. It is with Nero that the empire first ranges itself with Antichrist ; it will be in the second Nero that the identification will be complete. 1 One more element in the Apocalyptic conception of the powers banded against the Church is introduced in the seventeenth chapter the rider of the Beast, the Harlot with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication. The seer himself receives the explanation that this is the Great City which has dominion over the world, seated on her seven hills like the harlot on the seven-headed beast. As the 1 Of the Number of the Beast we need only say that the triple six is intended as a triple, that is, a complete, failure to reach the perfect number seven : corruptio optimi pessima. For the rest, Irenaeus' re- mark is the most sensible that if it had been needful that the name should be proclaimed openly in his own day, it would already have been proclaimed long ago by the seer himself and one of the solutions he mentions, Aarcipor, perhaps the most probable of any. ST. JOHN IN ASIA MINOR whore was drunk in the vision with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus, so in the mystical Babylon was found the blood of the prophets and saints and all them that were slain on the earth. This pre-eminence is not to be understood simply of the Neronian persecution, nor of such martyrs as belonged to the church of the City under the Flavian emperors: it includes also Christians condemned in the eastern provinces, and sent to suffer death, like St. Ignatius a little later, at Rome; 1 indeed if the hypothesis of St. John's having been in Rome himself be rejected, it must be these martyrs from his own churches who are chiefly in his thoughts. So direct is the responsibility of Rome for the persecution of the Church, that the first fore- taste of the execution of God's judgements is the desolation of the ' Great City ', when the ten kings who are the horns of the Beast the various kingdoms out of which the Roman empire grew shall turn to hatred of the harlot whose sin they have shared, and shall abandon her to desolation and shame. The City will be burnt with fire, the ruins will be the haunt only of unclean animals and of demons ; in one single day her sins and cruelty find an overflowing recompense. Only at a point later still does the vengeance on the Beast himself find its ac- complishment. The armies of heaven under their leader over- throw the combined forces of the kings and of the Beast ; the Beast and his minister, the False Prophet, are cast alive into the lake of fire ; Satan is bound for a period, and the thousand years 1 reign of the martyrs and saints who had not joined in the worship of the Beast in his time of power is ushered in. Here, then, the career of the Roman Empire as Satan's great instrument on earth is brought to a close ; in the resuscitation of the forces of evil which precedes the final consummation it is not mentioned and takes no part. In summing up at this point the historical position indi- cated by this strange yet powerful imagery, the one clear result is that a condition of things is contemplated where the State is pitted in a hand-to-hand struggle with the Christian Church, in which the life of one combatant could 1 Mommsen, R. P. ii 197 n. THE APOCALYPSE 219 only be purchased at the price of the death of the other. No one sudden outbreak of fury is an adequate explanation ; it is a continuous relation which has become so normal that no modification or relaxation of it is anticipated even as a possibility. St. John is the exponent of the indignant hatred which had been burnt into the conscience of the Christian community by the ruthless cruelty of a generation : the Apocalypse is hardly intelligible unless the savagery of Nero has become the settled policy of the Flavian house. Domitian was both the worst of his family and also the fiercest persecutor ; but his general attitude to the Church was not invented but inherited. By the gradual processes which pass unnoticed by historians, the ministers of government passed from accusations of crime to the accusation of Chris- tianity. The confession of the Name, the refusal to participate in the worship of the Emperor, was enough. The period from Vespasian to Trajan was a true reign of terror for the Church, and the strain and stress have left their visible marks on all the Christian literature of the period ; on the letter of St. Clement ; on the letters of St. Ignatius ; but most of all on the Apocalypse. 1 1 The recognition and inculcation of this truth is perhaps the greatest of the many merits of Professor Ramsay's book. Without it, the sequence of events loses all coherence ; admit it, and the rescript of Trajan brings itself into line with the history that leads up to it, not as the formulation of a new policy of proscription, but as the regulation and amelioration of a continuous tradition of repression. VIII ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH (Church Quarterly Review. October, 1894.) 1 . Sancti Clementis Romani ad Corinthios Epistulae versio latina antiquissima. Edidit D. GERMANUS MORIN, presbyter et monachus Ord. S. Benedict!. (Vol. ii of Anecdota Maredsolana : Maredsous and Oxford, 1894.) 2. The Apostolic Fathers'. Part I. . Clement of Rome: A Revised Text, with Introductions, Notes, Disserta- tions, and Translations. By the late J. B. LlGHTFOOT, D.D., Bishop of Durham. 2 vols. (London, 1890.) 3. Ueber die jungst entdeckte lateinische Uebersetzung des I. Clemensbriefs. Von A. HARNACK. (Sitzungsberichte der k. Preussischen Akademie der Wiss'enschaften zzi Berlin, March 8, '1894.) 4. Review by W. SANDAY. (Guardian, March 21, 28, 1894.) 5. Review by A. HlLGENFELD. (Wochenschriftfiirklassische Philologie, Berlin, April 18, 1894.) 6. Review by TH. ZAHN. (Theologisches Liter aturblatt, Leipzig, April 27, 1894.) THE origins of the Roman Church are wrapped in a veil of deep and hardly penetrable obscurity. * Strangers from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,' were among St. Peter's audience on the day of Pentecost ; and they and their suc- cessors who visited Jerusalem from time to time for the feasts would bring back some report of the new preaching which was agitating the centre of the Jewish world. Towards the ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE 221 end of the reign of Claudius, disturbances, apparently arising out of the Christian movement, were so violent among the Roman Jews that the government took the drastic measure of expelling the whole body from the City. It is this disloca- tion of the Jewish community which explains why the Church of the capital did not grow to the same extent, it would seem, as elsewhere out of the Synagogue. Even when St. Paul arrived there in bonds, the chiefs of the restored Jewish organization professed to have heard nothing, officially or unofficially, of the Apostle, and to know about the Christian sect just what we may suppose the rioters a few years earlier knew, that it was * everywhere spoken against '. Yet before this St. Paul had addressed to the Christian residents in Rome to them in the first place, even if the Roman Epistle was, like the Ephesian, a circular document the longest and most elaborate of all his letters. These Christians were probably for the most part men who had come across the preaching of the Gospel in one of the numerous Eastern cities, between which and the capital the intercourse of trade and commerce was close and continuous. It would follow naturally (especially if they were Gentiles rather than Jews) that the Roman Christian community did not as would have been the case if it had been a direct offshoot of the Jewish body spring into existence with at least such a partial organization ready to hand as the model of the synagogue, its services, and its officers, supplied. If we suppose that it came into being rather from the fortuitous concourse of independent atoms, waifs and strays from the more developed churches of the East, we shall better understand some of the marked features of these early days in Rome. We shall understand how St. Paul, writing at a date later than his description of the already elaborate organization of the Corinthian Church, speaks in the Roman Epistle, not of the fixed grades of Apostles, Prophets, and Teachers, but only of 'him that teacheth,' 4 him that exhorteth,' ' him that dispenseth,' * him that presideth,' ' him that doth works of mercy ' ; x and we shall understand, too, with what truth the tenacious tradition of the 1 Rom. xii 7, 8 ; I Cor. xii 28. 222 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE Roman Church could assert that she had the two great Apostles for her founders. St. Peter and St. Paul * founded ' the Church of Rome, not of course in the sense that a number of Christians did not exist there already (just as they might exist without a completely equipped Church in heathen parts to-day), but in the equally real sense that the permanent organization had yet to be supplied when the Apostles reached the capital, and that this it fell to their share to bestow. It is just the considerations we have been emphasizing which provide an answer to Renan's otherwise ingenious theory that the salutations of Romans xvi belong to a form of the Epistle addressed, not to the Roman Church at all, but to that of Ephesus. 1 He points out that, whereas Garrucci's investigations into the Jewish funeral inscriptions at Rome show the number of Latin names to be double the number of Greek, of the twenty-four Christians saluted by St. Paul sixteen bear Greek patronymics, seven Latin, and one Hebrew. He points out further that Priscilla and Aquila were at Ephesus when St. Paul wrote first to the Corinthians, and at Ephesus again when he sent his last Epistle to Timothy there, while Epaenetus, * the first-fruits of Asia ' (according to the true reading), would naturally belong to the same neighbourhood. 2 4 Quoi ! toute TEglise d'Ephese s'etait done donne rendez- vous a Rome ? ' he asks. But this was exactly what they did. Not only the church of Ephesus, but all the churches of the great oriental towns in the next generations we might say all the churches of the empire ' made rendezvous ' at Rome. 4 To this church/ writes St. Irenaeus, 4 on account of its more especial eminence, all other churches must needs gather ' ; and what was true of churches in St. Irenaeus' day began by being true of individual Christians in St. Paul's. Find any- where a large body of Christians, it was certain that some one or more of them would, on the errands of their profession or their trade, on business or pleasure, be met with at any given moment in Rome. Hence it came about that St. Paul had so many personal friends to greet in the capital which he had 1 Renan, Saint Paul> pp. Ixv-lxx. 2 Rom. xvi 3, 5 ; I Cor. xvi 19; 2 Tim. iv 19. AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 223 never visited ; hence also that their names are predominantly Greek. This floating- Christian element it was the mission of St. Paul and St. Peter to weld into the Roman Church of history. Some three years after he wrote to the Romans from Corinth [and therefore in A.D. 59, or at latest in A.D. 60] St. Paul, at the close of his eventful voyage from Caesarea, approached Rome as a prisoner. At Puteoli, where, after touching at Syracuse and Rhegium, he finally landed on Italian soil, 4 we found ' (St. Luke writes) ' brethren '. It was the first time since leaving Sidon that they had come across a Christian community, and its existence so far west must be attributed to the close connexion which had begun centuries before, and was to continue centuries after, between southern Italy, especially Campania, and the Greek East. Thenceforward the journey to Rome was completed by land along the familiar Appian Way, whose approach to the City the great paved road, the tombs that border it, the aqueducts that cross the Campagna in full view recalls the days of St. Paul better perhaps than anything else in the modern Italian capital. From Appii Forum and Tres Tabernae the Apostle was escorted by the Roman brethren who had come so far to meet him ; and seeing them * he thanked God and took courage '. In reaching Rome he had accomplished one great purpose ot his life ; and at Rome St. Luke's history, after it has traced his westward wanderings through Syria, Asia, Macedonia, and Achaia, takes final leave of him, as though one chapter in the history of the Church was brought to its adequate conclusion when the Apostle of the Gentiles first settled in the metropolis of the world. For two years St. Paul lived in his own hired house, free, not to come and go as he would, but at any rate to receive those who would come to him, and giving to the Roman Christians just what they had lacked before, the impetus and guidance of a chief. Four epistles fall within this period; most of all in that to the Philippians do we hear of the active preaching of the Gospel, and how the imperial guard and household (in its widest sense) was already the special scene 224 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE of the triumphs of the Cross. Acquitted on his trial and released from his quasi-captivity, St. Paul went east again to Asia Minor, to Crete, to Greece, and west probably as far as Spain ; l but his farewell epistle to Timothy shows him a prisoner again in the capital. Whether he had been re-arrested in the course of his missionary journeys, or whether rather the magnetism which drew him Romewards all his life made itself felt again, and he ' saw Rome ' once more of his own free will, it is impossible to say. We only know that it was at Rome that his labours ended with his death. His body was preserved near the Ostian Way, which was doubtless the scene of his execution. Of St. Peter's connexion with the Roman Church the fact is equally certain, but the details are less known to us. If the account we have given of the genesis of Roman Christianity is even approximately true, it follows that St. Peter's work there cannot have preceded St. Paul's Epistle. But it is a natural conclusion from the way in which Clement, Ignatius, Dionysius, and Irenaeus connect the names of the two Apostles, not only with Rome but with one another, 2 that at some time they were there together, and jointly organized the church of the metropolis, leaving after them Linus to be its first bishop. Among those who stood to one or other of them, perhaps to both, in the relation of a disciple, was Clement possibly a dependent or freedman of the Flavian family, so soon to rise to imperial rank in the person of Vespasian 3 who became 1 We know from Rom. xv 24 that St. Paul had long wished to travel to Spain : and St. Clement in his Epistle to the Corinthians, 5. 6, 7, says that St. Paul preached ' both in East and West ', and that he ' taught righteous- ness to the whole world and visited the boundary of the West ', rl TO rtpua TTJS dvo-foos eXOwv. It is conceivable that, as a Greek by language and perhaps by descent (although Roman by birth and residence), and writing to an Eastern Church, St. Clement might think of Rome as the West ; but it is more natural to suppose that to him Rome was the centre and Spain the West, and this better satisfies his language. A century later the Muratorian Fragment categorically states that St. Paul 'left Rome for Spain '. 2 Clem. Rom. ad Cor. 5 ; Ign. ad Rom. 4 ; Dion. Cor. ad Rom. ap. Eus. H.E. ii 25 ; Iren. adv. Haer. Ill iii 2. 8 Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome, i 6l. But (i) Clement is, like Anencletus, a common servile name ; (ii) we do not find that any member of the Flavian family (see the stemma in Lightfoot, i 17) AND THE EARLY ROMAN HURCH 225 after Linus and Anencletus third bishop of the Roman Church, and wrote in its name the Epistle to the Corinthians. * He had both seen the Apostles and communed with them, and had still the apostolic preaching ringing in his ears and the apostolic tradition before his eyes,' writes Irenaeus. If Ter- tullian adds that the Roman Church recorded that Clement was ordained by Peter, the statement may possibly be under- stood of his ordination to the presbyterate. 1 For one brief moment, towards the end of the lifetime ot the two Apostles, the obscurity of the history is illumined by the glare of persecution. In July A.D. 64 the fire broke out which destroyed half the City. Nero, who committed incest with his mother that he might understand the feelings ot Oedipus and murdered her that he might enter into the position of Orestes, craved experience in arson on a magni- ficent and unprecedented scale. But the populace, which had hitherto admired or tolerated the freaks of their ruler, mur- mured ominously, and Nero hastened to provide them with a fresh distraction in the sufferings of the victims whom he selected as the scapegoats of his crime. Twelve years earlier, the Christians, so far as there were any in Rome, had been confused by the government of Claudius with the Jews and involved in the same sentence of exile. But the Roman Church of A. D. 64 was mainly Gentile, and its distinct existence had begun to be understoo4 both by the government and by the public. Pomponia Graecina might have followed the example of other Roman ladies and adopted Jewish habits, without hindrance if not without criticism ; as a Christian she had been put on her trial as early as A.D. 58, though the domestic tribunal to which she was handed over made no difficulty in acquitting her. Acquittal, too, had been the Clemens before the Consul of A.D. 95, who at best was no older, probably a good deal younger, than St. Clement ; (iii) we have no knowledge that St. Clement of Rome bore the nomen Flavius, as his Christian namesake Clement of Alexandria certainly did. 1 Iren. adv. Haer. Ill iii 3 ; Tert. Praescr. Haer. 32. But Tertullian may only be drawing upon the forged Clementine literature, of which the immediate succession of Clement to Peter is the pivot. [Neither the Homilies nor the Recognitions are as early as Tertullian : but their common source may belong to the end of the second century.] 226 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE verdict only lately pronounced on St. Paul in Caesar's own court. But Christian trials were in the air ; and when once Christians were divested of the protection which their Jewish origin had secured them for Judaism, like all other national religions, was tolerated by the Empire, and Jewish, like other foreign, rites made practically uninterrupted way even in the capital it was a matter of caprice or chance when the central government would choose to set a precedent of condemnation. Christian prisoners might be found guilty in the first instance on account of the disturbances caused by their illegal prose - lytism, or in the end simply as involved in the nameless crimes, the secret organization, the treasonable aims, of the Society to which they belonged. The fire of Rome, and the emperor's effort to extricate himself from a perilous position, provided the occasion ; and from that day onwards the Church and the Empire were at issue in the world at large. But it was on the capital that the brunt of Nero's persecution fell ; the earliest primacy of the Roman Church was a primacy of suffering. So again two hundred years later the signal for the persecution of Decius was given by the martyrdom of pope Fabian, and that for the Valerian persecution by the martyrdom of pope Xystus. * You in Rome,' wrote a Carthaginian to a Roman confessor under Decius, ' have had a greater struggle, and therefore greater glory than we, for you have faced the great dragon, the precursor of Antichrist himself.' l It is not unlikely that the conviction of the nearness of the Second Coming and of the imminent destruction of the world by fire, so intense in the early days of the Church, may have become generally known, and have supplied just that element of plausibility in the charge of arson which was all that the emperor needed. The public, Tacitus tells us, 2 were not really deluded into transferring the responsibility to the shoulders of the Christians. But they were quite content that people whose l hatred of the human race ' that is, whose protest against the existing state of things in government, in business, in family life was notorious, should suffer for their crimes ' Ipsum anguem maiorem metatorem Antichrist! ', Cypr. ep. xxii I. 2 Tac. Ann. xv 44. AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 227 in general, innocent as they were believed to be of this one in particular. And even the authorities must soon have dropped the flimsy pretext. The l vast multitude ' who suffered vast enough to sate the thirst for blood and excite the commisera- tion even of Roman society cannot all have been seriously charged as conspirators even on fabricated evidence. Their very numbers made the transition from definite charges of crime to the comprehensive accusation of Christianity a natural and almost a necessary one. Exactly this transitional time is depicted for us in the one Christian document which may reasonably be believed to have emanated from Rome at this juncture. St. Peter's Epistle is addressed to the Christians of Asia Minor, among whom we must suppose that he, like St. Paul, had laboured on his westward journey. 1 It is written amid surroundings of trial and suffering, from great Babylon itself, the source of enmity against God's people enmity which extends against the Brotherhood throughout the world. The belief is general among the heathen that the Christians are evil-doers ; and the belief can only be refuted by good deeds and a * right con- versation in Christ '. But slander and social persecution are not all they have to suffer ; the law is put in motion against them, sometimes on the charge of definite crimes, murder, theft, evil-doing, interference with their neighbours 2 so that from this point of view it might still be said that Roman governors were sent 4 for praise of them that do well ', and 1 'Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia' (i Pet. i i) is the description, by the nomenclature of the Roman provinces, of all Asia Minor north of the Taurus. Ramsay argues that Christianity is not likely to have reached Pontus before A. D. 65, and adds that those who ' make Peter write to the congregations of Pontus during Nero's reign remove the story of early Christianity from the sphere of history into that of the marvellous and supernatural ' (The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 285). It is enough to say in answer either that St. Peter may have been in Pontus himself we have absolutely no knowledge of his movements for a space of quite ten years or that he is merely intending to make his enumeration geographically complete. 2 Ramsay shows that the strange aXXorptcTno-KOTro? of I Pet. iv 15, translated by Tertullian alieni speculator, ' refers to the ch irge of tampering with family relationships, causing disunion and discord, rousing discontent and disobedience among slaves, and so on,' p. 293 n. The chief references to persecution are: i 6, ii 12, iii 14-17, iv 12-16, v 9. Q2 228 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE 4 a life above suspicion ' was the best defence but sometimes also for the mere name of Christian. It is very clear that St. Peter writes in the time of transition from the serious inves- tigation of individual allegations to the simple ' Christianus es ? ' which is implied by Trajan's letter to Pliny to have been at that time, fifty years after Nero, the regular and already traditional process. Readers of Professor Ramsay's books will see that we have accepted his estimate of the relation of Christianity to the law implied in this Epistle, but not the date which he ascribes to it. For when are we to place this transition from the earlier to the later state of things ? Not, says Ramsay, under Nero, within whose reign 4 there is hardly enough time for such a development ' ; it must have been under the Flavian Emperors, probably about A.D. 75, that the mere profession of the Christian name was for the first time and finally made a suffi- cient ground for condemnation, and i Peter, which implies the change, at the most cannot be earlier than that year. To establish his view Ramsay rejects the obvious interpretation of Suetonius, who mentions Nero's regulations for the punish- ment of the Christians ' a class of persons characterized by a novel and mischievous superstition ' in the same list with other police measures of a permanent character ; and conjec- tures the issue of rescripts under the Flavian Emperors, of which nothing is known, though they must have been numerous enough or notorious enough to introduce and to stereotype a revolution in procedure. It is more rational to suppose that the transition was accomplishing itself in the capital (and St. Peter's Epistle does not necessarily imply more than this) during the violent outbreak under Nero. The ' vaster ' the multitude of prisoners brought to trial, the sooner would the point of inquiry tend to contract itself from the question of crime to the question of profession. It may well have taken as little time before Nero's victims began to perish on the simple charge of Christianity as it took before the victims of the French Revolution perished on the charge of aristocratic birth. No doubt if it can be shown to be impossible that the Epistle should fall under Nero, it might be better to suppose AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 229 that St. Peter was living ten years later, than that the Epistle was not his at all. But till that can be shown the reasons for the earlier date are strong. It is not only that the universal tradition of the Church first definitely mentioned, it may be, by Tertullian and Origen, but too unanimous and too wide- spread to have started with them places St. Peter's martyr- dom under Nero ; but the tradition is strikingly confirmed by the recorded manner of his death and place of burial. If St. Peter was crucified, as the Fourth Gospel implies, and was buried, according to Gaius the Roman presbyter, on the Vatican Hill, it is scarcely possible not to connect his martyr- dom with what Tacitus tells us of victims * fixed to stakes ' in the gardens of Nero close to that very spot. Two Christian documents of the next generation bear very clear traces of the impression which the Roman persecution under Nero had left on the minds of the Christians who sur- vived it. Both the Apocalypse of St. John and the Epistle of St. Clement were written under the second persecution, that of Domitian, and both recall the events of the first. No doubt throughout the intervening period, just as much during the reigns of Vespasian or Titus as during those of Nero or Domitian, Christianity remained a proscribed religion, and Christians from time to time suffered martyrdom for the Name. No doubt even Domitian's cruelties were not, as it were, a thunderbolt out of the blue, but only the capriciously violent application of existing law. We owe an immense debt to Ramsay's reminder of this aspect of Christian history ; but we must at the same time be careful not to forget the truth that underlay the traditional view of specific persecutions. Cer- tainly, in the Apocalypse of St. John, the reference back to Nero portio Neronis de crudelitate is Tertullian 's descrip- tion of Domitian is the keynote historically of the whole book ; and it was tentatively suggested in an earlier paper in this volume, that the recollection of Nero's days was bound up in the memory of the seer with the witness of St. Peter and St. Paul in the streets of the great City. 1 It seems equally clear that to St. Clement also, though the emperor is 1 Apoc. xi 3-12 ; see p. 214 supra. 2 3 o ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE not named, some definite outburst of unusual violence was present in his mind, which, if past, was yet near enough to be an example for the present generation ; and this can only be looked for in the persecution under Nero. The greatest and most righteous 4 pillars ' had striven unto death ; the 4 good Apostles ', Peter and Paul, had ended their toils in martyrdom ; and with them ' were gathered together a great multitude of the elect '. St. Clement's phrase recalls the multi- tude ingens of Tacitus, just as his statement that Christian women suffered as ' Danaids and Dirces ' agrees with what Tacitus tells us of the Christians who were dressed up in the skins of wild beasts and hunted to death, and with what Suetonius says of Nero's passion for adapting the punishment of criminals to scenic representation of the legends of Greek mythology. 1 Domitian's cruelties were directed especially against indi- viduals of mark and prominence ; and such were not wanting in the Roman Church. Flavius Clemens, the consul of A.D. 95 and heir-presumptive of Domitian he was the son of Flavius Sabinus, brother of the Emperor Vespasian suffered death on the charge of * atheism and Jewish customs ', 2 a periphrasis for Christianity perhaps rather due to the historian who records the facts than to the lawyer who drew the indictment. Domitilla, his wife and own niece of Domitian, was banished for the same crime to one of the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea ; the Coemeterium Domitillae, identified by de Rossi on the Ardeatine Way, was the property of this lady, and one of the earliest burying-grounds of Roman Christians. Less certain is the Christianity of Acilius Glabrio, another distin- guished victim of Domitian's last year of life. But at any rate the evidence is enough to show that Christianity, starting from among the freedmen and dependants of the imperial and noble houses, had before the end of the century worked its way up through the social scale, and was winning adherents in all ranks and stations of life. The Roman Church at least 1 Clem, ad Cor. 6. I (TTO\V TrXfjdos eKXcKTav) and Lightfoot's notes ; Tac. Ann. xv 44; Suet. Nero II, 12. 2 Dio Cassius, Epitome Hist. Ixvii 14. AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 231 was no longer open to the charge often brought against the Christian body, that l not many noble, not many wise \ but only those who sacrificed nothing in the way of wealth or position, would consent to degrade themselves to its member- ship. Clement the bishop presided over a community which the government might tolerate or might persecute, but could not wholly despise. It was in the name of this already powerful church that, either during or immediately after Domitian's persecution, he wrote to the Corinthians the memorable letter whose primary importance is that it gives us, within a generation after the Apostles' death, an authoritative representation of the temper and the conceptions of Roman Christianity. Of all the sub-apostolic writings the Epistles of Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apology of Aristides, the frag- ments of Papias the Epistle of Clement is by far the most considerable in bulk, except the Shepherd, while, unlike the Shepherd, not only its place but its date is fixed by critics ot the most different schools with some approach to unanimity. The Epistle to the Corinthians is not, indeed, impressed with the stamp of theological genius which characterizes the letters of Ignatius ; the facts recorded or implied in it want something of the unique interest of the statements of Papias ; yet there is a point of view from which, for the student of Christian history as a whole, it outweighs each and every one of them, for it is almost the only official document emanating from the Roman Church which we possess in its entirety earlier than the series of Decretals which begin with popes Damasus and Siricius in the second half of the fourth century. The Corinthian Christians were at open variance with their presbyters. As in St. Paul's time, the party spirit of the old Hellenic character still marked this, the most prominent of the Hellenic Churches. Respect for settled authority was uncongenial to their disposition, and the very fact that these presbyters had been in office so long which of itself was to the Roman Clement a sufficient reason against disturbing them may possibly have been to the fickle Greeks a main 232 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE cause for the agitation for a change of personnel. Episco- pacy was not yet localised at Corinth : the presbyters owed their appointment, some of them to the Apostles themselves, those of more recent date to other 4 men of repute ' eAAdyijuu^ avbpts in St. Clement's phrase most of whom had probably been, like Timothy and Titus, the personal disciples and repre- sentatives of an Apostle. The assent of the * whole Church ', that is, the clergy and laity of the Corinthian community, had been a natural or necessary concomitant of the ordination of presbyters, but the local body did not confer the pres- byterate and could not take it away. Nevertheless, at the instigation of one or two ringleaders, they had violently ejected from office some, or even all, of the constituted authorities of their Church. Report reached the Roman Christians of these irregularities, and the Epistle known as St. Clement's was dispatched as soon as the pressure of their own position permitted attention to be given to the affairs of other com- munities. This first of Papal decretals stands in marked relationship, both of similarity and of contrast, to later utterances of the Roman See. On the one hand, so far from insisting on the prerogatives of Peter and his successors, even the name of the pope, its writer, is not mentioned, and has to be gathered only from the unanimous tradition of the Church. But, on the other hand, if the Roman bishop is in the background, the Roman Church reveals the same imperial tendencies in the days of Clement I as in the days of Leo XIII or Pius X. The Corinthians had not consulted it ; the dispossessed presbyters had not appealed to it; the affair was no scandal of long standing; but promptly and decisively, if also affectionately and courteously, the Roman Church interfered in the internal concerns of her neighbour. There was, as yet, no theory of the independence of congregations or even of national churches. Wrong had been done ; the order of the Church and Apostolic tradition was set at naught ; it was every one's business to protest, and the church which could appeal to the memory of so many martyrs, and among them the princes of the Apostles the church which prized at once the orderly AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 233 traditions of the Jewish hierarchy and of the Roman govern- ment * already felt that in such a matter it was she beyond all other churches who could speak with authority, and that in some sense the 'elect throughout the whole world' were her care. But if certain persons should be disobedient unto the words spoken by Him through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger ; but we shall be guiltless of this sin. And we will ask, with instancy of prayer and supplication, that the Creator of the universe may guard intact unto the end the number that hath been numbered of His elect throughout the whole world, through His beloved Son Jesus Christ, through whom He called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to the full knowledge of the glory of His Name (c. 59. 1,2: the translation is Lightfoot's). If, from this point of view, the Epistle of Clement is important as containing the first germs of the development of the Roman supremacy, from another point of view it contains the first suggestion of the difference of emphasis and interest which in later centuries was to accentuate the rift between the Eastern and Western Churches. The moral and practical writing of the later Latin Fathers is as much anticipated by Clement as the doctrinal and speculative studies of the later Greeks by Ignatius. Ignatius, of all the sub- Apostolic writers the most daring and original, marks a real step in the syste- matization of the Creed, as the special teacher of the verity of our Lord's humanity and of his twofold nature. In something of the same way Clement's Epistle is the forerunner of the ethical work of Tertullian and Cyprian. The age of formal treatises marks the definite transition from the Apostolic and sub- Apostolic to the later generations, and of course we are still far off in Clement from Cyprian's books on envy and jealousy, on patience, on good works, on almsgiving ; but even a cursory glance reveals the ethical interest as uppermost in the writer's mind. At the very outset of the Epistle this keynote is struck in the description of the past glories of the Corinthian Church : For who that had sojourned among you did not approve your most 1 Clem, ad Cor. (Jewish), cc. 40, 41, 43 : (Roman) c. 37. 234 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE virtuous and steadfast faith ? Who did not admire your sober and forbearing piety in Christ ? Who did not publish abroad your magnificent disposition of hospitality? Who did not congratulate you on your perfect and sound knowledge ? c. (c. I. 2). Against envy, anger, double-mindedness, St. Clement dwells on faith, faith and obedience, faith and hospitality, faith and humility, faith and trust, faith and works, knowledge, reasonableness, love, self-sacrifice. 1 In all this he is no doubt not original. What interested him interested St. Paul before him. But the later writers stand to the Apostles somewhat in the same relation in which a modern specialist stands to the great scholars of the past, one side of whose work he takes up, develops, and advances to a further point, while yet he may find himself wholly unequal to vie with the breadth of their thought or their grasp of different studies and different points of view. Of all the virtues of which St. Clement treats, perhaps that brought into most prominence is pcn/ evaefiuv with Clem. Al. Strom, iv 17 against ywpov (vcrep&v of AC : Zahn has not noticed this, and blames our version for its want of literalness in rendering both x^P a an d X^P 05 by the same Latin word municipium. [\a>pav fvvfp&v in Apost. Const, viii 41 may perhaps have been suggested by this passage in Clem, ad Cor.\ * [It is fair to note that Harnack's interpretation maybe thought to find a parallel in the translation which the earliest or 'African' version, represented in the Fleury fragment, gives of Kara ras xo>pa? in Acts viii I 'circa ciuitates'.] AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 243 happens to be of considerably greater bulk than usual exactly at these two periods, and that, if we knew as much about the writings of the intermediate generations, we might well find that translators were at work in between the second century and the end of the fourth ; and he inclines to place the Latin Clement very nearly in the middle of the interval. But in any case, Harnack is right in seeing that the decision about Clement cannot be isolated. The subject opened up is a wide one, and we can do no more than touch the fringe of it ; but few lines of inquiry into the early history t>f Christianity will better repay investigation than the attempt to trace the process by which the Western Church, and especially the Roman Church, passed from a Greek into a Latin environ- ment, and the Latin version of St. Clement's Epistle must now be added to the scanty pieces of evidence at our disposal. When Christianity passed on its westward progress from Asia into Europe, from Jerusalem, Antioch, and Ephesus to Corinth and to Rome, it was still speaking the same tongue in which it had first learned to proclaim its world -wide message. Although the native Aramaic of Palestine had doubtless been the language in which our Lord had taught the multitude, or conversed with his disciples, it must have been in Greek that the Galilean Apostles had preached and catechized from the earliest days of the Church in Jerusalem. If there ever was a purely Aramaic- speaking Christianity in Galilee or elsewhere it died and left no sign. No book of the New Testament is extant in its original form in any lan- guage other than Greek. The Syriac versions of Northern Syria in their earliest form, the Gospel Harmony of Tatian, do not ascend beyond the second half of the second century. The more strictly Palestinian Syriac was represented till comparatively lately by a single lectionary of the eleventh century; and though earlier fragments dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries have come to light, there is every reason for concluding that this, like the other Syriac versions of the New Testament, is a translation from the Greek and posterior perhaps by many generations to the Apostolic age. It is therefore scarcely an exaggeration to R 2 244 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE speak of Greek as the mother-tongue of Christianity ; and of all the known languages of the world it was the best suited by its wide diffusion for the spread of a universal religion. The conquests of Alexander had rendered it the medium of communication throughout the Oriental world. As far east as Bactria and India the coins of the first century of the Christian era bear Greek inscriptions. From the Hellenic peninsula to Ephesus and Smyrna, to Antioch and Seleucia, to Caesarea and Alexandria, Greek was the language of travel and trade, as well as of education and culture. No other language in the East was more than merely local. The native tongues of Egypt or Syria were split up severally into more than one dialect ; the Lycaonian or Phrygian of the interior of Asia Minor were more partial still. The Roman Empire had indeed done something to bring its own Latin tongue into the East. Latin became at once the language of law and government ; east of the Adriatic, except in the Balkan lands, it never became much more. But, on the other hand, the con- centration of the Mediterranean countries into a single empire facilitated immensely the westward spread of Greek. It is probably true to say that Greek was better understood in the West than Latin was in the East in the earliest period of the history of the Christian Church. It was in a Greek garb, then, that Christianity made its appearance in the capital of the world. Not merely did St. Paul write in that language the Epistle which is the first evidence of the existence of the Roman Church ; not merely do the names of the Roman Christians whom he salutes tell, as we have seen, the same tale ; but the inheritance of Greek speech was passed on through several generations of Roman Christians. That they should use it in communicating with the churches of the East would not indeed be surprising. We might have expected that pope Clement would write in Greek to the Corinthians at the end of the first century, though scarcely perhaps that pope Cornelius should write to Fabius of Antioch, or pope Dionysius to his namesake of Alexandria, in the same language after the middle of the third. But it was just the same with the Roman Christians AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 245 at home among themselves. Hermas wrote out his revelations for the benefit of the local church it was to be Clement's business to communicate them to foreign churches and he wrote them in Greek. Fifty or a hundred years later still Hippolytus, the first great Roman writer and theologian, was composing treatise after treatise, exegetical,historical,polemical, and one and all in Greek. The earliest of the long series of the Latin writers of Christian Rome was Novatian, consecrated antipope in A.D. 251, whose de Trinitate and de ludaicis Cibis are the first extant contributions of the Roman Church to ecclesiastical Latin. 1 Very similar is the evidence of Roman Christian nomenclature. Hermas and Hippolytus are both Greek names. Of the ten second- century popes, eight bear Greek names (Euarestus, Alexander, Xystus, Teles- phorus, Hyginus, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherus), and two only, Pius and Victor, Latin. In the third century they are as nearly as possible equally divided. Yet gravestones even of third-century popes with Latin names are found inscribed with Greek characters, such as AOTKIC. In all probability the first half of the third century was the time of the transition, though custom might prolong the use of Greek for special purposes even later. There is some ground for supposing that Hippolytus, who was properly bishop of Portus, the harbour of Rome, but was certainly intimately mixed up with the ecclesiastical affairs of the capital itself, may have stood in some episcopal relation with the foreign Greek- speaking Christians who still thronged Rome at a time when the Roman Church itself was rapidly becoming Latinized. 2 Substantially the same phenomena reveal themselves in the history of other Western Churches. The first Christian communities in Gaul were colonies from the Churches of 1 [Two of the pseudo-Cyprianic treatises, the de aleatoribus and de montibus Sina et Sion, ought perhaps to take the place assigned in the text to Novatian. And in general I should now date the Latinization of the Roman church somewhat earlier.] 2 Photius, Bibliotheca cod. 48, says that Gaius, the author of the Labyrinth^ was related to have been a presbyter under popes Victor and Zephyrinus c. A. D. 190-217 and appointed fBvatv eVto-KOTros : now the real author of the Labyrinth was not the presbyter Gaius, but the bishop Hippolytus. 246 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE Asia Minor, and not only brought the Greek language with, them, but found it already firmly established in the valley of the Rhone. The Epistle which the brethren of Lyons and Vienne sent to the mother Churches in Asia and Phrygia was naturally in Greek. In the same language Irenaeus of Lyons wrote his great work Against Heresies, which was meant to appeal to the culture of the whole Christian world. In the preface to it he apologizes for the deterioration of his Greek style, which he attributes to the amount he had had to talk, not of Latin as we might have guessed, but of Celtic. We have less means in the case of the churches of this district, than in the case of Rome, of estimating at what date Greek finally yielded to Latin. But at least in the district round the mouth of the Rhone the traces of the survival of Greek are very curious, for we are told that at Aries a system of popular psalmody, introduced in the sixth century, used Greek and Latin equally. 1 And if the common view is correct, that the bilingual codex Bezae of the Gospels and Acts was in Gaul from the time it was written in the sixth century till the time when it comes to light in central France in the sixteenth, a knowledge of Greek must have survived in some parts till the tenth century, the date of the latest corrector of its Greek text. 2 The Church of Africa seems to have been founded at a later date than the Churches of the Rhone, and at a much later date of course than the Church of Rome.- But, on the other hand, it was bilingual and even predominantly Latin from the first. Its two earliest extant Acts of martyrdom the Acts of the Scillitan martyrs in A.D. 180, and the Acts of Perpetua and her companions at Carthage in A.D. 202 circulated in contemporary and parallel forms of Greek and Latin, though in both cases the Latin is obviously the true original. Tertullian wrote some of his treatises in both lan- guages, one at least in Greek only ; but Tertullian, however bilingual, was essentially a Latin writer. Long 1 before the 1 [See the life of Caesarius, bishop of Aries A.D. 503-543, by Cyprian of Toulon, as cited in Caspari, Quellen zur Geschichte des Tauf symbols, iii 219.] 2 [Southern Italy or Sardinia seems to me more probable than Gaul.] AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 247 time of Cyprian the African Church at least had become exclusively Latin. 1 Thus between the years A.D. 150 and 250 the Western Churches were slowly making the passage from the one lan- guage to the other; and the indispensable companions of their journey were the sacred books of their religion. It is no part of our subject to discuss or decide the vexed question whether all the forms of the Latin New Testament, as they meet us in the third and fourth centuries, were or were not variations from a common stock. Suffice it to say that though the Canonical books, or most of them, were doubtless the first, they can scarcely have been the only ones to be trans- lated. The edges of the Canon were not yet sharply defined. Some of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers e.g. the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas were scarcely distinguished from what were later on ranked exclusively as the writings of the Apostles. In any case, books which had proved themselves serviceable to the Christian communities in their original Greek dress, whether canonical or not, would prove themselves not less serviceable if translated for the benefit of Christians who spoke only Latin. In some few cases the names and dates of the translators are recorded for us. We know that Jerome and Rufinus at the end of the fourth century rendered many of Origen's works into Latin, and that Rufinus did the same for the pseudo- Clementine Recognitions and for the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, and Jerome for the latter 's Chronicle. But of the time and place of the earliest translators, to whom we owe the Latin versions of Barnabas and Hermas, of Clement and Irenaeus, no vestige of direct evidence is preserved ; what knowledge we can reach must be pieced together by slow and circuitous processes. 2 1 [Yet even then the names of some of the Biblical books were still Greek, witness * in libro Basilion ', ' Paralipomenon ', ' in Paroemiis ' ; and the chapter numbers of St. Cyprian's Testimonia were in Greek 2 In the case of the other Apostolic Fathers Ignatius, Polycarp, and Papias the evidence is insufficient to connect the versions at all with the early centuries of our era. That the Oracles of Papias were at 248 ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE The great work of Irenaeus (though strictly of course he is not to be classed with the Apostolic Fathers at all) is known to us as a whole only in the Latin ; as early as the end of the sixth century pope Gregory the Great could not find any copy of the Greek original in Rome. A handful of manu- scripts the earliest and best is the Claromontanus, lately at Cheltenham, now at Berlin all of them probably written in Gaul, contain a Latin version, barbarously literal, but not therefore the less valuable. Tertullian's treatise against the Valentinians has indisputably drawn upon the description of the same heretics in Irenaeus' first book ; and since the time of the Benedictine editor, Massuet, it had been generally admitted that the coincidences in Tertullian extend not simply to the subject-matter, but to the actual language of the Latin version, which would then become contemporary, or almost contem- porary, with Irenaeus' own lifetime. Dr. Hort, however, in our own day, has relied on the character of the Biblical text employed in the translation as betraying the fourth century rather than the second or third, and the question is still sub judice}- Both Gaul and Africa have been claimed as the fatherland of the translator. The Latin version of the Epistle of Barnabas is contained in a unique tenth-century MS, originally of Corbie in Picardy, taken thence with so many other treasures of the Benedictine monasteries to their central house of St. Germain-des-Pres at Paris, and removed during- the storms of the Revolution to St. Petersburg. It was used by the first editor, Menard, and has now been accurately edited by Hilgenfeld, and by Geb- hardt and Harnack. This MS is absolutely the only proof, save the occurrence of the name of the Epistle in the Biblical list of the bilingual codex Claromontanus of St. Paul, that Barnabas was known to the West ; we have therefore nothing but the internal character of the version itself to direct us, some time translated is not impossible, for a mediaeval catalogue of the Chapter Library at Nimes destroyed by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century contains among the Biblical books the notices librum Papie ; librum de verbis Domini. 1 [I myself believe that the translation is early not perhaps necessarily as early as Tertullian, but still not later than about A. D. 300.] AND THE EARLY ROMAN CHURCH 249 and here the only point that we can adduce we do not know how far it has been noticed before is that the Old Testament quotations (there are none of course from the New) present at intervals marked coincidences with the ' African ' version used by St. Cyprian. 1 The Shepherd of Hermas exists in Latin dress in two distinct but related versions. Of these the * vulgate ' is preserved in a large group of manuscripts, and was printed as long ago as 1513, from which time down to the nineteenth century it was the only form in which Hermas was known : the other or * Palatine ', so called from the Palatine codex at the Vatican which contains it, was discovered by Dressel, and is now accessible in Gebhardt and Harnack's edition. 2 But scholars are only as yet on the threshold of these inquiries, and immediate results are not to be anticipated. Over-hasty hypotheses and premature generalisations will not help in the end : it is to the accumulation of new material like our Latin Clement, and to the patient questioning and cross-questioning of the whole body of witnesses, singly and together, that we must look for real advance. 1 The strongest instance is the quotation from Isaiah Iviii 6-10 in Barnabas iii 3. 2 [Haussleiter has devoted a pamphlet (De Versionibus Pastoris Hermae Latinis, Erlangen, 1884) to proving that this was the earlier of the two, and of African origin, while the other and later is of Italian or Roman provenance. So far as a rather superficial study of the problem entitles me to speak, I should say that there was no doubt at all of the superior antiquity of the * vulgate ' version. It seems to me to date from the second or third century ; I should not like to assert the same of the other version. A sermon of St. Caesarius of Aries (Augustini opera, vol. v, appendix, sermon cccvii) begins with the words * Legimus in quodam libro, fratres karissimi, de ulmo et vite propositam nobis similitudinem ', and the whole sermon is based on the second of the Similitudes in the Shepherd, ' the Elm and the Vine.'] APPENDIX I ON THE VALUE FOR TEXTUAL PURPOSES OF THE LATIN VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT'S EPISTLE. (a) From the Church Quarterly Review. Oct. 1894, pp. 190-5. OUR earliest authority, the Alexandrine MS, is defective for a con- siderable portion of the concluding chapters. Here, then, from chapter 57 to chapter 63, we have only two other witnesses to con- sider, and the comparison will be easier, but the resulting text of course less certain in the case of three authorities than in the case of four. We have gone carefully through Lightfoot's apparatus criticus, and we find that the Latin (L) agrees with the Constantinopolitan (C) against the Syriac (S) some twenty-eight times, and some twenty times with S against C. But the solitary readings of the Syriac resolve them- selves to a very large extent into the explanatory additions and para- phrases natural to a Semitic translator. In important readings, where the Greek text underlying the Syriac is indubitable, the coincidences of the two versions against the Greek MS are very emphatic. The following are the most important instances : (i) 57. 7* ircnovQa)? restored by Lightfoot from S ; om. C ; confident L : (2) 59. 3 fry TrotoiWa C, redimit et vivificat S, salvas et vivificas L : (3) 59. 3 fvcpyfrrjv C, efyrnp S, inventor L : (4) 59. 4 aafj3e?y C, daOevfis S, infirmos L : (5) 60. i TTtordr C, mitt's (perhaps x/^oros) S, suavis L : (6) 60. 2* KaOapels C, Kaddpiaov S, purifica L I (7) 62. I irepi . . . TWV w^eXt/^tcorarcov fls cvdpcrov fiiov rots 6e\ov C, cvapeffTflv S,placere L I (9) 62. 2 TOV Trarepa /cat 6fov KOI KTI(TTT)V C, patrem et universi creatorem deum S, patrem et crealorem deum L, both again pointing to rov nartpa KU\ KTIO-T^I/ 6f6v. In THE LATIN VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT 251 only three of these nine cases (those marked with an asterisk) had Lightfoot given the preference to S over C ; but in every one of the remaining six, even in the at first sight strange tvpfrfjv Tn/ev^araw, we think that the reinforcement of S by L alters the balance, and the text ought to be changed accordingly. When we turn to the examination of various readings in the rest of the Epistle, where we had already not two but three authorities for the text to deal with, the excellence of L remains no less clear. In Lightfoot's selection of readings where the Alexandrine and Syriac are combined against the later Greek MS (AS against C ; Lightfoot, i 138), L all but invariably reinforces the two former. The only exceptions of any mark which we have noticed are i. i, impedimenta, which may seem rather to correspond to the 7repiarao-? of C than to the ncpmraxTfis of AS; 33. i, quid ergo die emus ? where L, like C, but probably inde- pendently of it, has replaced St. Clement's ' What shall we do then ? ' with St. Paul's * What shall we say then? ' from Rom. vi i ; and 65. 2, cum omnibus ubique qui vocati sunt a Deo per zpsum, where AS insert ' and ', wo TOV GfoO KOI dt avrov. In the vast majority of cases where AS stand united against C, Lightfoot had already seen that the two authorities must be preferred, and the accession of L puts all doubt out of the question. In one instance only, we think, did Lightfoot follow C, in reading fiera fttovs ai (rvvciSrjo-cws for p.r' c'Xeovf is seen to be not a relic of w an^eXe/TO (with Lightfoot), but a corruption of r^eXeiVa), as read by the rest ; in the same chapter the awkward ^ro> *nt, presumed to have been the reading of A, may well disappear ; and in 56. 5 we restore sense for nonsense if, with CSL, we read ' let not the oil of sinners anoint my head ' tXmov for eXeos instead of with A, ' the mercy of sinners.' And there are many minor variations of A against CS, not noticed in Lightfoot's table, where the accession of L to the majority renders A a less absolutely safe guide than Lightfoot took it to be. It is less easy to note the points of agreement of the Latin with the Syriac than with either Greek MS, double allowance having to be made for the difficulties and idiosyncrasies of translation. It must suffice to say generally that S has a large number of peculiarities some, at any rate, of which go back to its Greek exemplar unsup- ported in either the Greek or Latin authorities. But Lightfoot collects ten instances where it ' stands alone, and either certainly or probably or possibly preserves the right reading ', and in three of these it now receives the support of L : in 7. 4, ro> n-arpi avroO for the more developed TO> &a> Kal TrciTpl avrov of A, ra> irarpl avrov TO> 0e&> of C ; in 36. 2, (is TO (pus for the harmonistic els TO Qavfuto-rbv OVTOV s of A(C) ; and in 46. 8, ' it were better for him that a millstone should be cast about him and THE LATIN VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT 253 he be sunk in the sea, than that he should pervert one of my elect ' for the harmonistic ' offend one of my little ones ', where Lightfoot's admirable note had already given conclusive reasons in favour of the Syriac reading. Comparing L, then, with the other manuscripts, it is the habit of L to reinforce the majority ; it goes with AS against C, with CS against A, with AC against S, in the greater number of cases ; but it has also some marked agreements with A against CS, and with S against AC, none of importance, on the other hand, with C against AS. In any combination with A it is almost certain to be right ; in combination with S it is right almost always against C alone, but less often against A. Clearly, then, its value is greater than that of C, less than that of A. But we have still to investigate its character when it stands against all the other three. Against a combination of three A is certainly sometimes right, S occasionally, C perhaps never: where shall we put L? At this point we come across perhaps the most remarkable feature of the text of L its singular agreement with some patristic quotations, in especial those of Clement of Alexandria. 1 That Father, in the Stromateis, makes considerable use of the Epistle of his Roman name- sake, sometimes quoting him by name, sometimes only embodying his language ; but previous editors, acquainted with the loose way in which many of the early writers quote, had not laid quite sufficient stress on the value of this evidence. When it is reinforced, however, by a manuscript, it becomes clear that we have to deal not with lapses of memory, but with an actual second century text, two centuries at least earlier even than the Alexandrine MS. Thus, in a passage in c. 22, Clement of Alexandria is quoted in Lightfoot's apparatus eight times : six times (and in a seventh the Latin does not decide) he is in agree- ment with L, while the other authorities are combined and permuted in almost every possible way. In 51. i Clement reads did ras napf^ m-ao-eis TOV avTiKdpevov, and L very similarly propter quasdam [rivds for ray] incursiones contrarii, while the Greek MSS omit the noun in the barely intelligible reading did TWOS T&V TOV dvriKftpevov. In another remarkable variation (48. 5) the two versions stand midway between Clement of Alexandria and the Greek MSS: AC have fro* dyvos, SL 97-0) dyvos fv (pyois, Clem. Al. $ro> yopyos fv epyois, T)TO> dyvos. Against even the agreement of AC, the combination SL Clement seems always 1 See Morin, p. xiii ; Lightfoot, i 158. 254 APPENDIX I right ; compare the omission of QavfjuurTov QUTOV before S>s in 36. 2, and the reading CK\(KTS>V pov fitao-rpc^ai in 46. 8 (both already referred to on p. 252), where Clement reinforces the versions. But it is not only the quotations of Clement with which our version shows agreement: St. Basil quotes from 58. 2, (fj yap 6 6k, KOI 6 Kvpios 'lya-ovs Xpioro's, Kai TO Trvcvpa TO ayiov, where CS, but not L, insert a second fj before 6 Kvpios 'I. X. : Leontius and John of Damascus agree with SL in omitting the words /cara bidvoiav in 33. 4, where AC read TO eoxo>TaToi> KOI irapfjifyifas KUTU Siavoiav avdpunov : Jerome quotes 1 6. 2, and L agrees with him against A in omitting f)p.5>v and reading 'lijo-ovs Xpia-Tos for XpiarTos 'Irjvovs, though, conversely, L goes with the Greek MSS in reading TO o-KijTrrpoi/ TTJS /zeyoXa>o-vj^s TO &o{5, where S and Jerome have TO (TK^TTTpOV TOV 0COV Only. These tedious details have sufficed, it is hoped, to show two things : first, that the Latin version gives us a text entirely independent of any of our other witnesses, for it agrees and disagrees with each in turn ; secondly, that its text preserves a high degree of excellence, for its nearest affinities are with our most valuable witnesses with A, with Clement of Alexandria, with the Syriac version, rather than with C. No doubt the Alexandrine MS still remains our most valuable single authority ; and no doubt the Syriac version has some equally remark- able elements of excellence. But a Latin version is often helpful where the Syriac necessarily fails to decide between two alternatives ; and we do not think it is too much to claim the second place in the criticism of the Clementine text for dom Morin's discovery. (&) From the Journal of Theological Studies. October 1900, ii ^3-5- Few early Christian documents have had so fortunate a history in our own generation as the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians. For two centuries and a half it was only known in the mutilated text of the Alexandrian MS of the Bible (A) : and now within the last five and twenty years three complete copies have become known in the Constantinople or Jerusalem MS of the Greek (C), the Syriac version (S) at Cambridge, and the Latin version (L) at Namur. The two former of these were employed, and their evidence weighed, in bishop Lightfoot's great edition ; but dom Morin's discovery of the Latin version was subsequent to the bishop's death, and, failing treatment by the master hand, it was incumbent that the task of THE LATIN VERSION OF ST. CLEMENT 255 bringing the Latin into touch with the other witnesses to the original text should be undertaken. The edition of R. Knopf in Texte und Unfersuchungen 1 is undertaken with this object. Eighty-five pages are devoted to an exhaustive account of the authorities, and of their value in different permutations and combinations: and these are followed by a text, with elaborate critical apparatus, of the epistle itself. The Syriac and the two Greek MSS Knopf does not judge in the main much otherwise than Lightfoot, with whom he agrees in placing C last of the three. On the other hand he rates L, with justice, very highly the coincidence of its readings with Clement of Alexandria's quotations from his namesake is conclusive for the antiquity of its text 2 and it is natural that at least some degree of revision of the Greek text should follow. But if the text of the Epistle is to be substantially modified on the strength of the new witness, it is a thousand pities that the Latin text is not printed opposite the Greek, so that its evidence might be accessible in a completer form than that of any critical apparatus. As it stands, it is not so easy as it should be to check Knopf's results : but I cannot help thinking that his text is less satisfactory than his intro- duction, and that the last word has not yet been said upon the Latin evidence. Let me instance the list of vices in 35. 5. (i) A has dStKi'a dvofjiia n\cov(ia, (C) S (with Rom. i 29) d&iKt'a irdvrjpia ir\fovfia y and so Knopf, implying (ex silentio] the agreement of L. But L has iniquitas malicia cupiditas : and iniquus iniquitas are used in L, as indeed we should expect, with perhaps absolute regularity for avopos dvopia } cf. 56. 1 1 dSiKo>i> KCLL dvopaiv =. L impios et iniquOS, 60. I dvofjitas KOI dSwa'ay iniquitates et iniusticias. L therefore read di/o/zta somewhere in this passage, like A. (2) Greek /caTaXaXtay Qcoarvylav, L contumacias tt contumelias : Knopf adds ' als ob crrda-fis KOI vppidas ' (sic), which is hardly helpful. I suppose that the error of L arose in the Latin as is natural, seeing that the Latin version, made in the second or third century, had a history of 800 years at least behind the Namur MS and that some scribe erroneously substituted one of the commonest words in this epistle, contumacias, for contumelias, the true rendering 1 Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Band xx, Heft i, 1899: Der erste Clemensbrief. Untersucht und herausgegeben von Lie. Rudolf Knopf. Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung. 2 [It is satisfactory to me to find how closely my own conclusions, expressed in the Chttrch Quarterly Review for October 1894, pp. 250-254 of the present volume, agree with those of Knopf, though he gives, perhaps rightly, more weight to L in comparison with A than I had done.] 256 APPENDIX I of wzraXaXias : that the correct reading was afterwards inserted in the margin* : and that then in the next copy the marginal correction was reinserted in the text, but by error not in the place of contumacias but of the following word, whatever it was, which had represented QeovTvyiav. (3) V7T(pr)(j)aviav Tf KCU d\aoveiav Kfvo8oiav KOI a(f)i\ocviav ((i\oei/iav A), d superbiam et vanam gloriam et vaniiates et inhumilitatem L. Knopf for the last noun reads i\o8ogiav, from which word he asserts that inhumilitas is 'certainly' translated. A better defence of $iXo8otai/ from the Latin would be to suppose that inhumilitatem had got shifted out of place, and really represented vTreprjfyavlav or a\a(ovelav, so that vanam gloriam would = Kcvo8oiav, and vanitates i\o8ogiav. But in 1 6. 2 dXafrveias ovSe virfpyQavias is rendered cum sono gloriae nee cum superbia, and this seems decisive for making vanam gloriam = aXabm'ai>, and vanitates Kevo&ogiav. Inhumilitas will then represent the last word, whatever that was : yet it is not impossible that we ought to amend the Latin rather than the Greek, and read inhospitalitatem = dv), but in any case the longer reading of the Coptic and its allies is, both in this and in the last quoted passage, wrong, and the discovery of a dozen MSS as old as the Coptic and agreeing with it would not materially alter the balance of probabilities.] APPENDIX II TWO E'ARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS From the Classical Review. May 1892, pp. 205-209. I. IN the well-known life of St. Cyprian by his deacon Pontius occurs an enumeration of his chief literary productions, the full bearings of which do not seem to have been ever yet recognised. Pontius puts the case ( 7 : ed. Hartel, p. xcvii) that Cyprian, instead of retiring from his see into a voluntary exile during the persecution of Decius, had been martyred then rather than under Valerian eight years later : ' Finge enim tune ilium martyrii dignatione translatum. quis emolu- menlum gratiae per fidem proficientis ostenderet ? quis virgines ad congruentem pudicitiae disciplinam et habitum sanctimonia dignum velut frenis quibusdam lectionis dominicae coerceret? quis doceret paenitentiam lapsos, veritatem haereticos, schismaticos unitatem, filios dei pacem et evangelicae precis legem ? per quern gentiles blasphemi repei cussis in se quae nobis ingerunt vincerentur? a quo christiani mollioris affectus circa amissionem suorum aut, quod magis est, fidei parvioris consolarentur spe futurorum ? unde sic misericordiam, unde palientiam disceremus ? quis livorem de venenata invidiae malignitate venientem dulcedine remedii salutaris inhiberet ? quis martyres tantos exhortatione divini sermonis erigeret? quis denique tot confessores fromium notatarum secunda inscriptione signatos et ad exemplum martyrii superstites reservatos incentivo tubae caelestis animaret ? ' Of the identity of most of the references there has been and can be no reasonable doubt. I take the results as given by K. Goetz, Geschichlt dcr cyprianischen Litter atur (Basel, 1891) : ad Donatum, de habitu virginum, de lapsis, de unitate ecclest'ae, de dominica oratione, ad Demeiria- num, de mortalitate, de opere et eleemosym's, de bono patientiae, de zelo ei tivore, ad Fortunatum de exhortatione martyrii^ de laude martyrii. The sixth and the last of these identifications are the only ones on which a doubt might be raised. Under ' retorting on the heathen the EARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS 259 charges they brought against the Christians ', Dr. Sanday (Studia Biblica iii 275) has proposed to see a reference to the Quod idoladiinon sin/; but I do not doubt that Goetz is right with the ad Demetrianum. On the other hand the de laude martyrn, which indeed is put forward with less confidence, cannot be allowed to figure in the list. Certainly it is quoted as Cyprianic by Lucifer of Cagliari in the fourth century, and about the same time obtains a place in the Cheltenham list. Nor can one doubt that some real connexion with Cyprian enabled it to secure this position : Dr. Sanday says of it (/. c. p. 279) that it ' appears to be African in its origin ', and allusions in the eighth and fourteenth chapters to the great plague, 'aut non cotidiana cernimus funera', ' inter cruenta morborum populantium strage ', fix it as contem- porary with St. Cyprian's episcopate. But the Biblical text employed differs decidedly from that of Cyprian, whose quotations are remarkably consistent with themselves ; and even apart from the general evidence of style, this would be enough to justify the editors in relegating the piece to the appendix. And if so, while it is intelligible that it should have crept into the Cyprianic collection during the century which intervened before Lucifer, it is scarcely conceivable that it should have imposed upon the friend and biographer of the Carthaginian bishop. It is less easy to say what one would propose to put in its place as satisfying the last sentence of Pontius. If a single document is referred to, the claims of ep. Iviii, a letter to the people of Thibaris exhorting them to steadfastness under renewed trial, would be considerable ; compare especially the words in 9, ' muniatur frons ut signum del incolume servetur', with the rather curious phrase in Pontius. If a group of documents can on this occasion be postulated, the series of letters x, xxviii, xxxvii, xi, xxxviii, xxxix (perhaps also Iviii), which deal with the common subject of confession and martyrdom, and especially with the two stages of persecution (cf. x i, xxxviii i), are found together not only in the MSS but in the Cheltenham list, and may well have been put into connexion with one another before Pontius wrote. Pontius' references being now, except in the case of the final clause, established beyond cavil, it is natural to ask whether there is any principle which underlies, first, the omissions which the list shows when compared to the first volume of Hartel's edition, and, secondly, the order in which the books mentioned are arranged. Putting aside the last sentence eleven works are summarised, including all Cyprian's treatises with the exception of the Quod idola dii non sint and the Testimonia ad Quirinum ; and when it is remembered that both of TURNER S 2, 260 APPENDIX II these are independently placed by critics in the earliest period after Cyprian's conversion, and before the Decian persecution, and that on the other hand Pontius is mentioning only those books written later on in his episcopate, it might seem that their omission in this list is not only explicable but unavoidable. 1 No presumption against the genuine- ness of either could then be drawn from their non-appearance. To the other question Goetz supplies a very probable answer when he suggests that the order of the treatises mentioned is the actual order of their composition. From Cyprian's own correspondence (epp. liv 4, Ixxiii 26) we know that the de lapsis and de unitate ecclesiae belong to the time immediately succeeding his return to Carthage in A. D. 251, and the de bono patientiae to the much later controversy about Rebaptism in A.D. 256. From Pontius again we learn (Vita 9) that the de opere et eleemosynis was read to the Carthaginian community in the intermediate period of the great plague (A.D. 252 onwards). References to current events place the treatise on the Lord's Prayer in the year next after the Decian persecution, and connect that to Demetrianus and that on the Mortality with the plague. Internal evidence compels us to range the ad Donatum near the commence- ment of Cyprian's literary activity, and the de zelo et livore in close connexion with the tract on Patience at its end. To summarise these results, if we compare the order of Pontius with the order adopted, for instance, by archbishop Benson in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, we shall find that the two lists are with two or three exceptions identical. Archbishop Benson makes the Testimonia follow the ad Donatum and de habitu virginum, while if our explanation of Pontius' omission of the Testimonia is correct, it should certainly precede them, and they must be postponed to the period of his exile or return. In the second place Pontius puts the ad Demetrianum immediately before, instead of immediately after, the group of writings connected with the plague. Lastly the ad Fortunatum appears in the Vita as the very last of the eleven identified treatises, instead of three places higher up. The following table will make these points clearer : PONTIUS, Vita 7. Diet. Chr. Biogr. i 739 ff. quod idola dii non sint. 1. ad Donatum. ad Donatum. 2. de habitu virginum. de habitu "virginum. Testimonia ad Quirinum. 1 But an alternative explanation is possible ; see below, p. 262. EARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS 261 PONTIUS, Vita 7. Diet. Chr. Biogr. i 739 ff. 3. de I apsis. de lap sis. 4. de unit ate ecclesiae. de unit ate ecclesiae. 5. de dominica oratione. ad Demetrianum. 6. ad Demetrianum. de mortalitate. 7. de mortalitate. de opere et eleemosynis. 8. de opere et eleemosynis. ad Fortunatum. 9. de bono patientiae. de dominica oratione. 10. de zelo et h 'vore. de bono patientiae. 11. ad Fortunatum. de zelo et livore. Of these differences, internal evidence favours the position which Pontius assigns to the treatise on the Lord's Prayer, while in the other cases there is nothing to decide one way or the other ; but the credit of the list is by this time, I think, sufficiently shown to warrant us in following it in doubtful cases. So far, then, we seem to have in Pontius a contemporary and chronological collection of the chief portion of St. Cyprian's more formal writings. But another question follows : Is this correct order supplied to us by Pontius out of his own personal knowledge, or does he borrow it from an already published edition, so to speak, of his master's works ? It would be impossible to settle this on a priori grounds : but it is surely decisive that the order of Pontius is substantially the common order of the best MSS, from which as from a standard they diverge in one direction or another. Any one who will compare the tables drawn up by Dr. Sanday (I.e. p. 283) will at once be struck with the force of this. The MQ family (eighth century) differ only in inverting the de ecclesiae unitate and de dominica oratione ; but against this Pontius is supported by the great majority. The oldest MS (S saec. vi), together with two Oxford MSS (O 4 O 6 ), postpones no. 6 ad Demetrianum after nos. 7 and 8 ; and the Vatican MS T, with O 8 and the Paris MS H, inverts 7 and 8 as well; but in all other points these six MSS follow Pontius. 1 To put it another way, of thirteen 1 It ought to be noted here that by an oversight in Dr. Sanday's lists the ad Demetrianum is incorrectly omitted for O 4 O 5 , and both the ad Demetrianum and de bono patientiae for S : and also that though the de zelo et livore is not now extant in S, yet since the end of no. 9 (de bono patientiae) and commencement of no. II (ad Fortunatum) are both also wanting, it is not impossible that the lost gatherings may have contained no. 10 as well. [See on this point a paper of my own in the Journal of Theological Studies for January 1902, iii 282 ff. : and also an alternative (in my opinion less probable) explanation by dom John Chapman, /. T. S. t October 1902, iv 105 n.] 362 APPENDIX II arrangements in the MSS which Dr. Sanday records omitting that of the Cheltenham list six give the first five treatises in exactly the Pontian order, and four more with only one divergence ; seven give the group connected with the plague, nos. 6 7 8, in the same place as Pontius, although only one gives them in the same order; six give the final group of three in the Pontian place and order without variation. Now of course this extent of agreement between the Vita and the MSS cannot be fortuitous. Nor can it be supposed that the MSS, or rather their archetypes, copied their order from this allusive passage in the Life. The only tenable hypothesis which adequately explains the facts appears to me to be that, when Pontius wrote, the treatises of St. Cyprian had already been collected in their present order, and that Pontius being accustomed to read them in that order naturally followed it when he summarised their contents. And there is nothing improbable in this idea of an official collection of the treatises in the years immediately following St. Cyprian's martyrdom ; on the contrary, so great was his reputation among his contemporaries that it would be likely in itself that demand should have arisen for a complete edition of his chief writings, and likely also that such an edition, if put together in Carthage by those acquainted with his history, should contain them in the chronological order of their composition. It is also conceivable that the Testimonta, both on account of its character as a mere com- pilation of Biblical quotations and still more on account of its length it is more than half the length of the rest of the treatises combined was omitted from this collection, and circulated, like the letters or groups of letters, separately or as an appendix to the treatises. But it must be admitted that the absence of the Testimonia and of the Quod idola from the head of the lists in the MSS forms a serious objection to the primafacie explanation already put forward to account for their omission by Pontius. It will now seem equally possible that Pontius enumerated all the collected works though it still remains open to us to hold that as a matter of fact the two omitted treatises were the earliest. One interesting result follows if the hypothesis of a collected edition, made as early as A. D. 260 or 270, is substantiated ; for it implies that the codex had already begun to supersede the roll as the method of book-publication, since no roll would have contained all or anything like all of the works enumerated by Pontius. This change from papyrus to vellum was in progress between the early part of the third and the middle of the fourth century ; for while Origen's library at Caesarea EARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS 263 was formed of papyrus, it was restored about A. D. 350 by two successive bishops of Caesarea on vellum. But Dr. Sanday (I.e. p. 235) has shown that at least in Africa the movement was in full operation by the end of the third century, for the Bibles and sacred books confiscated during Diocletian's persecution were not rolls but codices. The pre- ceding investigation has established some presumption that in Carthage at any rate the change had been anticipated a generation before Diocletian, and that side by side with the Bible the works of a writer ranked so high by his contemporaries as St. Cyprian were already being transcribed upon the vellum codex. II. In a tenth-century MS (C) of various chronicles, no. 12266 in the Phillipps Library at Cheltenham (it came there in 1848), Mommsen discovered a list of the writings, firstly of the Old, secondly of the New Testament, and thirdly of St. Cyprian ; and in close proximity to the list were found two notes of time equivalent respectively to A. D. 359 and A.D. 365. These lists have been fully discussed, after Mommsen, by Dr. Sanday in the paper already referred to, published in the third volume of Studia Sibltca, and in an appendix to the same paper con- tributed by myself. But the chronicles contained in the MS were in 1891 published by Mommsen in Monumenta Germaniae Historic a, Chronica Minor a saec. iv-vii p. 78, and from his account it appeared that in the library of St. Gall there existed a sister MS a century older than the Cheltenham one. Dr. Hort communicated this information to Dr. Sanday, and in consequence I visited the St. Gall Stiftsbibliothek in September 1891, and was able through the courtesy of the authori- ties to make a collation of the Biblical and Cyprianic lists. A colla- tion having been already published by Mommsen himself in Hermes, vol. xxv p. 636, I confine myself to the Cyprianic list, which I print in full according to the St. Gall MS 133, p. 488 (G) : ci Indiculum caeli cypriani 1. ad donatum ccccx 2. ad uirgines d 3. de lapsis dccclxxx 4. de opere et helimosine dcclxx 5. ad demetrianum dxxxv 2. Read dl or dc 4. Read dclxx with C 5. Read dcxxxv 264 APPENDIX II dec 6. de ecclesiae unitate 7. de zelo et liuore 8. de mortalitate 9. de pacientia 10. ad fortunatum 11. de domini oratione 12. ad quirinum libri iiii ii iii 13. ad antonium 14. de calicae dominico 15. de laude martyrum 1 6. ad confessione martirum 17. monsi l et maximo 1 8. ad eosdem alia 19. de precando deum 20. ad clero 21. aurilio lectore pre 2 ordinatio ne 22. celerino 23. ad iabaianum 24. ad quintum 25. ad ephesius? xiii 26. ad ephesius ? 27. sententiae episcoporum 28. ad pompeium 29. ad stephanum 30. ad fidem 31. ad magnum 32. de marciale c 33. luci et egraium 34. felici et ceteris 35. de numedia conf 36. ad florentium 37. ad presbit 38. ad eosdem et diac 39. ad clerum urbis 9. Read dc ii. Read dcccxl 12 no. iii. Read M dcclxx 31. Read cclxxx [iiii] with C 33. Read ad eucratium xl luci 1 ? 38. Read xxv with C ccccxx dl d dccclx dec* 1 dl dccccl dcclxx del [ep. 55 ccccl [ep. 63 dcccxxx cxl [ep. 10 Ixx [ep. 28 cxx [ep. 37 cxc [ep. ii liiii cxi [ep. 38 c [ep. 39 dl [ep. 73 c [ep. 71 XXX cxx [ep. 70 dxx ccxc [ep. 74 c [ep. 72 ? cvi [ep. 64 clxxx 8 [ep. 69, part I cccl [ep. 67 xl [epp. 2, 78 XX [ep. 79 XXX [ep. 40 ccviii [ep. 66 Ixx" [ep. 54 XXX 4 [ep. 32 Ixx [ep. 20 1 [The Fleury palimpsest, h, has monsen in Acts vi ii.] 2 Possibly * pro ' m. i. 8 Possibly clxxxiiii. 4 This and the next line are added by a second hand at the foot of the page. EARLY LISTS OF ST. CYPRIAN'S WORKS 365 40. roman res cccxv [ep. 30 41. aduersus iud ccxc 42-49. ad cornilium viii oo cviii 50. uita Cipriani dc fiunt om uersi n 1 xvm d 40. Read Romanorum rescriptum, and ccxv with C Our two MSS, G and C, share mistakes together, and therefore descend from an archetype some way off from the original ; but they are independent of one another, and there are cases where each in turn preserves or indicates the true reading. The St. Gall MS in three cases verifies conjectures of my own as to the cyphers for the treatises, giving 880 instead of 980 for the de lapsi's, 860 instead of 740 for the ad Fortunatum, and 950 instead of 850 for the second book of the Testimonia. The lowering of the de unitate from 750 to 700 is also a gain; and the figures for the de patientia and de dominica oratione, if not yet quite correct, are much nearer the truth than those in the other MS. But again the figures of the Cheltenham MS are preferable for no. 4 (670 for 770), no. 31 (284 for 1 80 or 184), no. 38 (25 for 30), no. 40 (215 for 315). Finally the St. Gall MS has not nine but eight letters to Cornelius ; and this is doubtless right, since, although it is true that there are actually nine letters extant, only eight are grouped together in any of the MSS and eight is the figure given in the notice of St. Cyprian in Jerome's Chronicle. We also find, instead of the unintelligible adeprb with which the Cheltenham MS heads nos. 25 26, the scarcely more hopeful-looking adephesms? but it is not difficult to discover latent here the words we want ad episcopos ; I suppose the central letters had become blurred or illegible in the archetype, but that ep at any rate was still visible at the commencement. For the detailed proof which establishes the locality and date of this list as African of the fourth century, and in especial for the arguments in support of the identification of the various Cyprianic letters named in it with letters of the extant collection, I must be content to refer again to the essay and appendix in Studia Biblica. 1 Perhaps li for n, i. e. numero. 2 Mommsen gives for no. 25 ad efestus, altered by the first hand to ad ejphesius ; for no. 26 ad efhesius. He is probably right as to the scribe's having made an alteration : but I think the scribe's first idea must have been efesius or e/esms, and his second ephesius, in both cases. [I imagine that some early, and to later scribes unfamiliar, abbreviation by ' suspen- sion ' of the word * episcopos ' is ultimately responsible for the confusion. INDEX Abel, 213. Abercius, bp. of Hieropolis, 215. Abgar, king of Edessa, 134. Abraham, 137, 140, 234. Achaia, 175, 223. Acilius Glabrio, 230. Acts of Martyrs. See Carpus, Lyons, Paul and Thecla, Perpetua, Pionius, Poly- carp, Scillitan, Theodotus, Thomas. Acts of the Apostles, authenticity, 10 ; character, 133 ; contents, 165, 170- 174, 176, 187, 223; text, 177-180; use, 155 ; Christian ministry, 12, 28; references to particular passages, 4, 7, 12, 13, 20, 29, 47, 170, 171, 173, 174, 178, 179, 180, 183, 186, 252. Aelia. See Jerusalem. Aemilianus, emperor, 105, 128. Africa, 97-131 passim ; episcopate, 60, 75 ; exarchate and province, 47, 48, 50, 6 1 ; language, 246; African writings, 102, 144, 145, 246, 248. Africanus. See Julius Africanus. Agnes, St., Roman martyr, 148. church of, 154. Agrippa Castor, 202. Agrippinus, bp. of Carthage, 67. Albano, church at, 154. Alexander, bp. of Alexandria, 58, 59, 79- Alexander, magistrate, 183, 185. Alexander of Macedon, 134, 168. Alexander, pope, 245. Alexander Severus, emperor, 106, 135. Alexander the Phrygian, martyr, 23. Alexandria, in civil history, 70, 92, 105, *55> J 69, 244; in church history: origins, 70, 165 ; not two bishops at, 57-59 J position of bishop, 42, 43, 52, 69, 70, 88, 138; extent of juris- diction, 43, 47, 48, 62, 63, 68, 78, 79, 93 ; rivalry with Antioch, 46, 80, 94 ; visited by Jerome, 141. See also Demetrius, Dionysius, Peter, Alex- ander, Athanasius, Cyril. Alexandrine MS., 236, 237, 250-257 passim. Alogi, 204. Amasea, 44. Ambrose, bp. of Milan, St., 92. Ambrose, Hexaemeron, 241, 242. Amyntas, king, 169, 170, 175. Anacletus. See Anencletus. Ancyra, city and church of, 44, 83, 176, 177. council and canons of, 44, 64, 77, 83. Andrew (Andreas), commentator, 192, 196, 213. Andrew, St., 190. Anencletus (Anacletus, Cletus), pope, 144, 157, 158, 159, 224, 225. Anicetus, pope, 29, 156 ff., 162, 245. Anteros, pope, 149, 159. Anthimus, bp. of Tyana, 50. Antioch, civil position, 70, 165 ; in the Apostolic age, 12, 14, 22, 59, 70, 165, 190, 243; St. Ignatius, 8, 20, 165; history of, 44, 75 f., 83, 86, 94, 138, 161, 162, 165, 244; extent of jurisdiction, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 70, 88, 92-94 ; council and canons of, 41, 42, 64, 68, 78, 79, 80-87, 89, 90, 91 ; connexion with St. Peter, 7 !55> J 6s ; rivalry with Alexandria, 46, 80, 95. Antioch of Pisidia, in Acts of the Apostles, 171 ff., 178, 186; in Acts of Paul and Thecla, 183 ff, 187. Antiochus, king, 170, 172. Antipas, martyr, 203. Antonianus, bp. in Numidia, 98, 124. Antoninus Pius, emperor, 179, 202. Antonius, Marcus, 184. Apamea, 22, 174, 200. Apocalypse, 15, 20, 23, 144, 145, 166, 189, 191-219 passim, 229. Apollinaris, bp. of Hierapolis, 166. Apollonius, writer, 18, 19, 164. Apollos (Apollonius), 179. Apostoli, SS., church of, 150. Apostolic Constitutions and Canons. See Clement. Aquila, 222. Aquileia, 92, 141. Arabia, 63. Arabissus, 65. Area, 65. Archelaus, king, 1 70. Arethas, bp. of Caesarea, 196. Arius, 58. INDEX 267 Arius, adherents of, 79, 80, 84, 142. opposition to, 58, 77, 79, 141, 177. Aries, 74, 75, 130, 131. Armenia, 45, 46, 47. Aristides, Apology, 231. Arnobius, 141. Arrian, 186. Asia, province, 49, 61, 169, 170, 200; number of bishops, 60, 61 ; churches, 200-206, 246 ; diocese ', 49, 50, 88 ; exarch, 92 ; metropolitans, 93 ; con- nexion with St. Paul, 1 66, 173, 223, 224; with St. Peter, 227; with St. John, 200 ff. ; persecution, 202, 203. Asia Minor, 164-191 jfcttflJPfc Asiarchs, 187. Athanasius, St., Meletian controversy, 58; Arian controversy, 79, 80, 84; Apologia contra Arianos, 62. Athens, 17. Attalia, 170, 171, 172. Attalus, king, 169, 170. Aucher, J. B., 136. Augendus, cleric at Carthage, 117, 118. Augustine, St., bp. of Hippo in Numidia, 48; works, 97, 157, 158, 194, 213, 249 ; Donatism, 102, 146, 195 ; St. Cyprian's letters, 99, 100. Augustus, emperor, 170, 172, 181, 210; worship of, 183, 187, 203. Aurelian, emperor, 76. Aurelius, cleric at Carthage, 117. Aurelius, Marcus. See Marcus. Avitus, Spanish priest, 143. Baanes, scribe, 196. Balbina, cemetery of, 147. Bar Cochba, 138. Barnabas, St., 12, 22, 25, I7off., 179. Epistle, 2-9, 231, 236, 247 ff. Basil, St., bp. of Caesarea, 50, 65, 66; Epistles, 64, 65, 66, 97, 235; de SpiritUj 254. Basil, bp. of Seleucia, 181, 185. Basilides, Spanish bp., 74, 75, 130, 131. Basilides, Gnostic, 202. Beatus, commentator, 195, 196. Bede, 152, 195. Belisarius, 152. Benson, E. W., abp. of Canterbury, 71-96 passim ; Cyprian, 62,97, 115; article in Diet. Christ. Biogr., 104, n 6, 260. Beroea, 180. Beryllus, bp. of Bostra, 75. Bezae, codex, 177, 178, 179, 180, 246. Bickell, J. W., Geschichte des Kirchen- rechts, 61. Bigne, M. de la, Bibliotheca Patrum, 194, 206. Bingham, J., Antiquities, 57, 63, 68. Bithynia, 65, 169, 170, 173, 227. Boniface, St., bp. of Mainz, 36, 37. Bostra, 75, 76. Bright, W., Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils, 33, 46, 59, 62. Britain, 'diocese' of, 47, 50. Bruns, H. T., Canones Conciliorum, 7 1 - Bruttius, chronographer, 133. Bryennios, abp., 2, 237, 257. Byzantium, 176. Caecilian, bp. of Carthage, 145, 146. Caesarea (Cappadocian), church and city of, 43, 46, 47, 65, 66, 76, 92, 177, 196, 235. Caesarea (Palestinian), church and city of, 43, 52, 59, 76, 223, 244. Caesarius, chorepiscopus of Area, 65. Caesarius, St., bp. of Aries, 246, 249. Cagnat, R. , Cours d'Epigraphie Lattne, 105. Calama, 68. Caldonius, African bishop, 117, 119, 120, 121. Caligula, emperor, 184. Callistus, pope, opposition to Hippo- lytus, 60; confessor, 148, 162, 198; burial-place, 147, 150, 151 ; cemetery of, 148. Canterbury, 71. Cappadocia, kingdom of, 169, 170; province of, 49, 50, 64, 66, 170, 227 ; churches of, 50, 64, 65; persecution in, 106. Capsa, 127. Capua, 154. Carpus, Papylus, and Agatkonice, Acts of, 203. Carrhae, 211. Carthage, 98-127 passim; council of, 67, 74; martyrs, 143; traditores, 146, 147 ; connexion with Rome, 146. See also Agrippinus, Cyprian, Men- surius, Caecilian, Parmenian. Caspari, C. P., Quellen zur Geschichte des Tauf symbols, 246. Cassian, deacon of Rome, 145, 146. Cassiodorus, 194, 196. Catholics and Montanists, 10; and Meletians, 58, 59; and Donatists, 143, 146, 195, 196. Celerinus, confessor, 113, 116, 117, 145, 226. Celsus, 17. Centumcellae, 105, 128, 149. Cerdo, Gnostic, 139, 167. Cerinthus, Gnostic, 193, 208. 368 INDEX Chalcedon, council and canons of, 37, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53, 64, 73, 77> 9> 9 l > 9 2 , 93 5 chorepiscopi at, 65. Chapman, J., 261. Charles I, 236. Charles the Great, 36, 38. Cheltenham List, 100-103, 263; and see Sanday, W. ' Chrysostom, St. John, 43, 93, 97. pseudo, 181, 183; Biblical Synop- sis, 2. Cicero, 169. Cilicia, 64, 169, 170, 173, 198. Claromontanus, codex, 248. Claudius, emperor, 184, 210, 221, 225. Claudius Apollinaris, bishop, 191. Clemens, Flavius, consul, 199, 230. Clement of Alexandria, 25, 27, 29, 164, 192, 225, 235, 253, 254, 257. Clement of Rome, St., 16, 17, 21, 29, 57, 156 ff., 224, 225, 231; Epistle, 2, 3, 16, 28 ff., 57, 162, 219, 220-257 passim ; Latin version of, 238-256 ; Coptic version of, 257. pseudo-Clementine writings : Homi- lies, 183, 225, 236 ; Recognitions, 225, 236, 239, 247 ; Epistle to James, 1 57~ I 59> 239; Apostolical Constitu- tions and Canons, 86, 236; Apostolic Church Order, 61, 69. Cletus, pope. See Anencletus. Codex. See Alexandrine, Bezae, Claro- montanus. Coelesyria, 64. Colossae, 174, 190, 206. Comana, 21. Commodus, emperor, 162, 198. Conon, pope, 152. Constantia (Salamis), 46. Constantine, emperor, 77, 140, 151, 154, 160, 176. churches founded by, 154. Constantinople, jurisdiction of the church of, 42, 43, 46, 48, 52, 92, 93; council and canons of, 41, 42, 4.6, 5i, 65, 77, 88, 89, 90, 92; literature at, 2, 80, 101, 142 ; council of, A.D. 680, 152. Constantius, emperor, 59. Corinth, 21, 22, 165, 220, 221, 223, 231-235, 243. See Dionysius. Cornelius, pope, correspondence with Cyprian, 100, 101, 103, 120-122, 126, 128; with Fabius of Antioch, 98, 150, 244 ; Novatianist troubles, 55, 56, 59, 109, 118 ff., 140, 149; death, 105, 128; burial-place, 148. Councils, 67, 74; ana see Ancyra, Antioch, Aquileia, Carthage, Chal- cedon, Constantinople, Ephesus, Gan- gra, Iconium, Laodicea, Latrocinium, Neocaesarea, Nicaea, Philippopolis, Sardica, Synnada, Tyre. Crassus, 211. Crescens, bp. of Cirta, 99. Crete, 67, 224. Crispus, 140. Cureton, W., I. Cybistra, 65. Cyprian, St., bp. of Carthage, 97-131 passim ; on church organization, 25, 26, 45, 56, 67, 68; councils, 62, 74, 79, 146; martyrs, 23; Novatianism, 150; rebaptism, 196; correspondence, 74> 75> 97~ I 3 I > HO"; martyrdom, 139, 143, 144; festival, 148; Latin Bible, 249 ; use of Greek, 247 ; the Apoca- lypse, 192. Epistles, 26, 29, 56, 74, 75, 97-131 passim, 140, 145, 1 86, 198, 199, 226; de Mortalitate, 140; Testimonia, 247 ; writings generally, I39> 233, 258-265. pseudo, de pas c ha computus, 213; de montibus Sina et Sion, 213, 245; de aleatoribus, 245 ; de laude martyrii, 103, 259 ; adversus ludaeos, 103. Cyprian, bp. of Toulon, 246. Cyprus, 45, 46, 63, 94, 170, 172. Cyril, St., bp. of Alexandria, 46, 95. Cyril, St., bp. of Jerusalem, 194. Cyril Lucar, bp. of Constantinople, 103. Cyzicus, 200. Dacia, ' diocese ' of, 50. Damas, bp. of Magnesia, 21. Damasus, pope, 141, 147, 231. Dan, tribe of, 144, 145. Daniel, 193, 212, 216. Decius, accession, 105 ; defeat by the Goths, 126; called Antichrist, 116, 145, 226; persecution, 55, 98, 105- 118, 144, 145, 149, 150, 226, 258, 260. Decretals, 231, 232. Demas, 181, 182. Demetrius, bp. of Alexandria, 63, 67, 68. Demetrius, silversmith, 179, 180, 188. Derbe, 171, 172, 173, 180. Didache ('Teaching'), 1-32 passim, 201, .231, 237. Dinocrates, 184. Dio Cassius, 200, 203, 230. Diocletian, emperor, division of pro- vinces, 49, 50 ; choice of capital of the east, 176 ; persecution, 138, 145, INDEX 269 146, 150, 154, 155, 159, 160, 177, 263. Diognetus, Epistle to, 16. Dionysins, bp. of Alexandria, 25, 76, 98, 101, 102, 126, 128, 139, 193, 212, 244. Dionysius, bp. of Corinth, 21,67, 22 4> 235. Dionysius, pope, 76, 235, 244. Docetism, 202. Dollinger, J. J. I. von, Christenthum und Kirche, 59. Domitian, emperor, persecution, 134, i44> i45> J 99, 2I 9> 229. 230, 231; death, 143; worship of, 216; date of the Apocalypse, 191, 192, 201, 207 ; date of St. Clement's Epistle, 162. Domitilla, 199, 230. Domnus, bp. of Antioch, 76. Donatus, grammarian, 141. Donatists, 102, 141, 143 ff., 195 f. Bonus Montanus, 144. Duchesne, L., Le Liber Pontificates, 132, 148, 150, 151-155, 158. East or Oriens, 'diocese' of the, 43, 50, 88, 92, 93, 155. Edessa, 134. Egypt, secular organization of, 49, 50 ; languages of, 244 ; ecclesiastical organization of, 43, 47, 50, 63, 67, 78, 79, 88, 92, 93, 155 ; acceptance of the Apocalypse, 192, 193; martyrs of, 198 ; property of St. Peter's at Rome in, 155. See also Alexandria. Elegabalus, emperor, 134. Eleutherus, pope, 21, 23, 29, 156, 245. Elijah (Elias), 144, 213, 214. Emmaus. See Nicopolis. Enoch, 144, 213, 214. Epaenetus, 222. Ephesus, church of, 21, 43, 59, 70, 92, 200, 201, 222 ; council and canons of, 45, 46, 90-92, 94; connexion with St. Paul, 22, 165, 1 66, 174, 176, 1 80, 188, 190; connexion with St. John, 23, 191 ; in the Apocalypse, 200, 201, 202, 207, 208; language, 243, 244. Ephrem Syrus, St., 213. Epictetus, bp. of Assuras, 125. Epiphanius, St., Haeres., 26, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 156, 157, 158, 199, 204. Erasmus, 196, 197. Ermes. See Hermas. Ethiopia, 47. Euarestus, pope, 245. Eumenia, 21, 200. Eupater, 144. Euphratensis, 155. Euphrates, 210, 211. Eusebius, bp. of Caesarea, Chronicle, 19, 132, 134, ISS-H * H 2 > I 43, I 44, 161-163. Historia Ecclesiastica, 10, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 56, 60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 75, 76, 98, 101, 126, 138, 150, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 177, 187, 193, 194, 200, 202, 205, 208, 212, 224, 235, 247. Martyrs of Palestine, 199. Eustathius, bp. of Antioch, 83. Eutychian, pope, 161. Evaristus, Italian bp., 121. Fabian, pope, 105, 108, 109, 112, 139, 144, 148, 149, 150, 226. Fabius, bp. of Antioch, 150, 244. Falconilla, 184. Faustinopolis, 65. Faustinus, bp. of Lyons, 130. Felicissimus, 117, 118, 125. Felicitas, St., martyr, 102, 139, 143, 144, 148. Felix II, pope, 141, 150. Felix IV, pope, 152. Felix, St., church of, 151. Fell, J., Cypriani Opera, 97. Fidus, African bp., 125. Filocalus, 147. Firmilian, bp. of Caesarea, 29, 76, 106, 166, 172, 186. Flavius Sabinus, 230. Florennes MS., 238, 239. Florentius Puppianus, 129, 130. Florez, H., Tyconius, 195, 196. Fortunatianus, bp. of Assuras, 74, 1 24. Fortunatus, African bp., 119, 121. Fortunatus, schismatic bp. of Carthage, 125, 126. Fotheringham, J. K., 136. Fredegar, chronicler, 135. Fuscianus, prefect, 162. Gaius, Roman presbyter, 193, 229, 245. Galatia, kingdom, 169, 170; province I7off., 227 ; connexion with St. Paul, 1 67, 1 7 1 ff. ; North and South Galatian theories, 171-179. Galba, emperor, 217. Gallandi, Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, 194, 206. Galhenus, emperor, 105. Gallus, Trebonianus, emperor, 105, 126, 127,128, 129. Gangra, council and canons of, 77, 88. Garrucci, R., 222. Gaudentius, count, 143. Gaul, * diocese ' of, 47, 50 ; churches of, 27 INDEX 62, 63, 67, 68, 74, 75, 245 ; martyr- doms, 139; heresies, 130, 142 ; the Latin Irenaeus, 248. See also Lyons. Gebhardt, O. von, Die lateinischen Uebersetzungen der Acta Fault et Theclae, 181. Gebhardt, O. von, and Harnack, A., Barnabas, Hermas, 248, 249. Geminius Victor, 75. Genseric, king, 194, 195. Geta (Gettha), emperor, 144, 145, 146. Glabrio, Acilius, 230. Gnosticism, 139, 156, 181, 183, 202. Goetz, K., Geschichte der Cyprianischen Litteratur, 258, 259, 260. Goths, mission to, 47 ; campaign against Decius, 105, 108, 118, 126; defeat by Aemilianus, 128; siege of Rome under Witiges, 152. Grabe, J. E., Spicilegium, 181. Gregory the Great, St., pope, 39, 236, 248. Gregory II, pope, 152. Gregory the Illuminator, St., 46. Gregory, bp. of Nazianzus (father), 65. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. (son), 64, 65, 66, 185, 194. . Gregory, St., bp. of Nyssa, 61. Gregory, Spanish bishop, 141. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St., bp. of Neocaesarea, 62, 76, 166. Gregory, bp. of Tours, 152. Guardian newspaper, 71. Gundaphorus, king, 180. Hadrian, emperor, 188, 204. Halm, Sulpicii Severi Opera, 142. Harnack, A., Analecten zu Hatch, 57. Die Apostdlehre, 2. Die Lehre der zwblf Apostel, I, 2, 3, 8-n, 13, 16-18, 24, 31, 61. Ueber diejiingst entdeckte lateinische Uebersetzung des I. Clemensbriefs ; 220, 2 4 0, 2 4 I, 2 4 2, 243. on the chronology of the bps. of Antioch, 161, 162. on the date of Acts and the Ignatian Epistles, 10, ii. Harris, R., Study of Codex Bezae, 177. Hartel, W., S. Cypriani Opera, 97, 98, 100, 102, 259. Hatch, E., Bampton Lectures, 9, 10, 18, 21, 25, 33-36, 45-47, 53-56, 59- 64, 66, 67, 70. The Growth of Church Institutions, 33, 36-38, 40, 4i 44, 53, 54 56, 67, 68, 70, 83. Haussleiter, J., Die Kommentare des Victorinus, Tichonius und Hierony- mus zur Apokalypse, 189, 194, 195, 196. Haussleiter, J., Die lateinische Apoka- lypse der alien afrikanischen Kirche, 189, 195. De Versionibus Pastoris Hermae Latinis, 249. Hebrews, Epistle to the, 9, 12. Hegesippus, 16, 21, 26, 69, 133, 156, 157, 158, 163, 167, 200, 235. Helena, empress, 142. Heraclea, 43, 92. Herculanus, African bp., 117. Hennas, Shepherd of, 2, 3, n, 15, 16, 20, 26, 27, 30, 149, 150, 231, 235, 245, 247, 249. Hermogenes, 181, 182. Hero, bp. of Antioch, 162. Herod, 213. Hierapolis, 23, 191. Hierax, 172. Hierocles, Synecdemus, 51, 65. Hieronymianum, Marty rologium, no. Hieropolis, 215. Hilary, St., bp. of Poitiers, 213. Hilgenfeld, A., 220, 237, 241, 248. Hippolytus of Rome, bp. of Portus, 59, 60, 106, in, 245; scholar, 119, 245; confessor, 148, 149, 150; works, 25, 26, 134* !35> i44 J 47, J 6o, 162, 192, 193, 199, 213, 245. Hippo Regius, 48. Honorius, emperor, 146. Horrea Caeliae, 62. Hort, F. J. A., 161, 162, 263. The New Testament in the original Greek, 197, 248. Hostilianus, emperor, 127. Hydatius, chronicler, 143. Hyginus, pope, 21, 29, 245. Iconium, geographical position, 172, J 75. J 7 6 J connexion with St. Paul (Paul and Thecla), 171, 172, 175, 178, 179, 182, 183, 187 ; council, 67, 74 ; bishops of, 44, 76. Ignatius, St., bp. of Aniioch, 17, 27, 57, 62, 162, 165, 233, 235; his martyr- dom, 137, 139, 218. Epistles, i, 3, 8, n, 16, 18, 20, 21, 27, 29, 30, 60, 62, 97, 160, 200, 202, 205, 219, 224, 231, 236, 252 ; Latin version of, 239, 247. interpolated Epistles, 2, 86. Illyricum (Illyria), 50, 141, 175. Innocent I, pope, 94. Irenaeus, St., bp. of Lyons, his position, 62, 63, 68, 102 ; relation to the martyrs, 19, 23 ; the adversus Hoe- reses, 246; Latin version of, 247, 248; INDEX 271 on St. John, 191 ; on the Apocalypse, 192, 213, 217; on St Peter and St. Paul, 156, 157, 224 ; on Clement, 225, 235 ; on the Roman bishops, 21, 69, 156-158 ; on the Roman church, 222; on Polycarp, 27, 29, 162; on episcopacy, 26, 29. Isauria, 64, 169. Isidore, St., of Pelusium, 97. Italy, ' diocese ' of, 50, 92 ; Paul of Samosata, 76 ; canons of Sardica, 86 ; St. Cyprian, 113 ff. ; codex Bezae, 346. James, St., of Jerusalem, 20, 164. Epistle, 9. See also Clement. Jeremiah, 213. Jerome, St., his scholarship, 119; his letters, 97 ; on the Apocalypse, 194- 196, 213; on the Acts of Thecla, 185; on Clement, 241, 254; on Melito, 27; on Origen, 247 ; on Cyprian, 102, 105, 265; on Victori- nus of Pettau, 192, 194, 195. de Viris Illustribus, 101, 105, 158. Chronicle (see also Eusebius), 100, 136, 137, 139, HO, 143, 158, 159, 161, 247, 265. Jerusalem (Aelia), civil position, 51 ; church of, in the apostolic age, 12- H, 20 59> l6 4> 178, 220, 243; destruction of, 137, 190, 212 ; in the Apocalypse, 213, 214; episcopal list of, 21, 138; bp. of, at Antioch, 76 ; patriarchate of, 43, 44, 52, 53; Helena at, 142 ; Jerome at, 141 ; Avitus at, 143. Jews, 5-8, l86, 202, 203, 205, 220, 221. Jezebel, 203, 204. John, St., 10, 20, 23, 27, 29, 70, 144, 166, 167, 188, 189-219 passim. See also Apocalypse. Gospel according to -, 12, 27, 191, 193. John, bp. of Antioch, 94. John of Damascus, 254. John, deacon, 235, 241. John V, emperor, 205. Johnson, canonist, 81. Judas, Christian writer, 193. Judas Maccabaeus, 191. Judas, prophet, 13. Jude, St., grandsons of, 199. Julian, bp. of Apamea, 21. Julius, pope, 87, 141, 147; churches built by, 149, 150, 151. Julius Africanus, 134, 135, 162. Justin Martyr, 16, 17, 139, 167, 172. Apology, 139. Dialogue with Trypho> 1 6, 192. Juvenal, 4, 199. Keim, Th., 17. King, Edward, bp. of Lincoln, 71, 72, 80, 86, 88, 95. Kirchenordnung, Die Apostolische, 61, 69. Knopf, R., Der erste Clemensbrief, 255 256. Kuhn, E., Diestadtischeundburgerliche Verfassung des rbmischen Reichs, 33, 49, 65. Labyrinth, 245. Lactantius, 140. Lambaesis, 75, 115. Laodicea, city and church of, 21, 44, 174, 200, 205, 206 ; council and canons of, 64, 66, 88, 194. Latrocinium, 201. Lawrence, St., 102, 139, 143, 148. church of, 1 54. Lee, W., The Revelation of St. John, 189, 214. Leo the Wise, emperor, 46. Leo I, pope (Leonine Catalogue), 151, 158, 160. Leo II, pope, 152. Leontius of Byzantium, 254. Lepidius, 65. Leucius Charinus, Gnostic, 181. Liber Pontificate, 146, 151-155, 158, 159, 160. Liberian Catalogue, 104, 105, 116, 147- I5 1 . J53, 157, J 58, 159, *&>. Liberius, pope, 141, 147; Liberian basilica, 141. Libya, 78, 79. Lightfoot, J. B., bp. of Durham, S. Clement, 105, 116, 132, 133, 136, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 156, 157, 158, 159, l6o, l62, 200, 2l6, 220, 224, 230-242 passim. S. Ignatius, 27, 137, 138, 215. Commentaries on St. Paul, 7, 9, 176, 206. Linus, pope, 21, 29, 156, 157, 158, 224, 225. Lipsius, R. A., Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, 181. Lucian, Greek writer, 17, 1 8. 19. Lucian, confessor at Carthage, 1 13, 116. Lucian, presbyter at Jerusalem, 143. Lucifer, bp. of Cagliari, 101, 141, 259. Lucius, pope, 105, 128, 129, 140, 149. Luke, St., 47, 133, 170-174* 176-179. 1 86. See also Acts of the Apostles. Lycaonia, 166, 169, 172, 174, 175, 176, 179, 244. Lycia, 170. Lyons, martyrs, 19 ; importance of see, 63 ; Epistle of the churches of 272 INDEX Lyons and Vienne, 21, 69, 187, 192, 208, 246. See also Irenaeus. Lystra, 171,172,173, 178, 181,182,187. Macarius, presbyter at Rome, 121, 122. Maccabees, 134, 191. Macedonia, 50, 175, 178, 223. Magnesia, 21, 200. Malalas, John, 134. Malchion, presbyter of Antioch, 76. Mappalicus, martyr, no, HI. Marcellinus, pope, 145, 146, 147, 149, !59- Marcellinus, church of St., 154. Marcellus, op. of Ancyra, 83, 177. Marcellus, pope, 147, 159. Marcia, empress, 162, 198. Marcianus, bp. of Aries, 74, 75, 130, 131. Marcion, 158, 167. Marcus, pope, 141, 147. Marcus Aurelius, emperor : persecution, 137, J 39> !59 J 88. Mareotis, 62. Maria, Sta., in Trastevere, 150. Mark, St., 57, 70, 171. Martialis, Spanish bishop, 74, 130. Martin, St., bp. of Tours, 142. church of, ai Monti, 154. Massuet, 248. Matthew, St., Gospel according to, 4, 5,8. Maximian, emperor, 145. Maximilla, prophetess, 186, 204. Maximin the Thracian, emperor, 106, 150. Maximus, bp. of Alexandria, 76. Maximus, presbyter at Rome, 115, 121, 122,149. Maximus, Novatianist bp., 123. Megalius, bp. of Calama, 68. Melanius, Roman lady, 141. Meletius, bp. of Lycopolis, 58, 59, 199. Melito, bp. of Sardis, 10, 21, 27, 166, 205. Menard, Epistle of Barnabas, 236, 248. Mensurius, bp. of Carthage, 145, 146. Methodius, bp. of Patara, 192. Mettius, subdeacon at Carthage, 121. Miletus, 178, 190. Miltiades, pope, 160. Mommsen, Th., 102, 136, 263, 265. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol.i.fasc. i, 132, 135,142-150, 194, 203. The Provinces of the Roman Em- pire, 189, 199, 208, 211, 218. Montanist controversy, 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 35, 101, 177, 186, 204. Montanus, 18, 19. Morin, G., Sancti dementis Romani ad Corinthios Epistulae versio latina antiquissima, 220, 238, 239, 240, 253, 254. Moscow, patriarchate of, 44. Moses, 213, 214. Moses, presbyter at Rome, 115, 116, 117, 149. Muratorian Canon, 16, 150. Myra, 178, 185. Naples, 154. Nazianzus, 65. See also Gregory. Nemesianus (Nemessanus), 144, 146. Neocaesarea, 62. council and canons of, 64, 77. Nero, emperor, 188, 210, 225; persecu- tion of, 138, 142, 144, 149, 199, 207, 219, 225-230; antichrist, 143-145, 214-217. Nestorius, 65. Newman, J. H., cardinal, Callista, 107, 188. Nicaea, city of, 173 ; council and creed, 80; canons of, 41-45, 53, 59, 67, 73, 78, 80, 87, 88, 90, 91 ; on privileged churches, 42, 43, 52, 69, 70, 78, 88, 94 ; bishops and chorepiscopi at, 64, 65, 77- Niceforus, acolyte, 121. Nicolaitans, 201, 202, 203, 204. Nicomedia, 44, 173, 176. Nicopolis (Emmaus), 134. Nicostratus, Novatianist bp., 121, 149. Novatian (Novatianism), his writings, 245 ; his history and schism, 55, 56, 109, in, 115, 119-122, 140; No- vatianists, 58, 59, 74, 98, 106, 121- 124, 126, 130; the early chronicles on, 139, 140, 149, 150. Novatus, presbyter at Carthage, 118, 121, 123, 140, 149. Numidia, 48, 68, 115, 124, 125. Numidicus, presbyter at Carthage, 117. Nyssa, 65. Oecumenius, commentatcr, 196. Onesimus, bp. of Ephesus, 21. Onesiphorus, 181, 182, 187. Optatus, subdeacon at Carthage, 117. Optatus, bp. of Mileum, 157, 158. Oriens. See East. Origen, his history, 67, 75 ; his library, 262 ; translations of his writings, 241, 247; his reputation, 1 02, 136 ; on the apostles and apostolic writings, 192, 229; on 'teachers', 25, 26. Osrhoene, 67, 74. Ostia, 154. INDEX 273 Palestine, connexion with St. Paul, 173 ; language, 243 ; synods in, 67, 74; persecutions, 198, 199; accept- ance of the Apocalypse, 192. Palmas, bp. in Pontus, 68. Palmer, E., archdeacon, 8. Pamelius, 104. Pamphylia, 170, 171. Papias, 166, 191, 192, 231, 247. Papylus. See Carpus. Parmenian, Donatist bp. of Carthage, 195- Parnasus, 65. Parthians, 210. Patmos, 192, 197, 198, 199, 209, 213, 216. Paul, St., missionary journeys, 14, 22, 164-190, 224, 227; and Ephesus, 70, 173, 174, 191, 200, 201; and Corinth, 221,231; and the Roman Church, 69, 156, 157, 166, 191, 198, 214, 221-224; and the ministry, 29, 221; and the Roman Empire, 211, 226; martyrdom, 143, 144, 149, 214, 224, 229, 230; relics, 148, 224; Clement of Rome and, 224, 234; Epistles of, codex Claromontanus of, 248 ; basilica of, at Rome, 154, 158, 159- Epistle to the Colossians, 175. Epistles to the Corinthians, 3, 13, 15, 19, 20, 28, 31, 47, 171, 179, 183, 187, 221, 222. Epistle to the Ephesians, 3, u, 15, I 9 , 20, 25, 26, 31, 175, 221. Epistle to the Galatians, 171, 175, 177. Pastoral Epistles, 3, n, 15, 26, 28, 29, 31, 179, 182, 190, 222, 224. Epistle to the Philippians, 19, 31, 223. Epistle to the Romans, 12, 179, 221, 222, 223, 224, 244, 251. Paul and Thecla, Acts of, 180-187. Paul of Samosata, bp. of Antioch, 75, 76, 165. Paulus, martyr at Rome, 144. Pearson, J., Annales Cyprianici, 97, 104, 121, 127. de Successione Romanorum Ponti- ficum, 57. Peiresc, N. C. F. de, 147. Pentapolis, 78. Pepuza, 1 8. Peregrin us (see Lucian), 19. Perga of Pamphylia, 170, 171, 172. Pergamum, culture of, j68, 169; left to Rome by Attalus, 169 ; ' first city of Asia', 200; connexion with St. Paul, 174; in the Apocalypse, 200- 208 passim. Perpetua, St. (see also Felicitas), martyr- dom at Carthage, 102, 139, 143, 144, 148 ; Acts of, 24, 25, 26, 145, 184, 185, 246. Persia, church of, 47. Peter, St., in the Acts, 170, 220; in the Apocalypse, 214, 229; preaching and martyrdom at Rome, 143, 144, 149, 165, 191, 198, 229, 230; relics, 148, 155; and the church of Rome, 69, 87, 147, 155, iS 6 * !57 160, 222, 225; and the church of Antioch, 155, 165; in Clement, 230; in Ignatius, 27. Epistle of, 20, 29, 166, 167, 168, 175, 227, 228, 229. basilica of, 154, 155. pseudo, Gospel of , 213. Peter, St. (and Marcellinus), church of, T 54- Peter, bp. of Alexandria, 58. Petilian, Donatist bp. of Carthage, 146. Philadelphia, 196, 200, 202, 205, 207. Philip, St., at Hierapolis, 23, 166, 190, 191. daughters of, 10, 186. Philip the deacon, 28. Philip the Arabian, emperor, 106. Philip of Side, historian, 133. Philippi, 183. Philippopolis, 65. Philo, bp. from Libya, 141. Philocalian (see Filocalus), 147. Philomelium, 27, 200. See Smyrna. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, Bibliotheca, 134, 185, 236, 245. Phrygia, annexed by Amyntas, 169 ; in Roman Empire, 166, 1 76 ; con- nexion with St. Paul, 172-178 passim ; with Lyons, 69, 246 ; lan- guages, 244; cities and churches, 66, 172. Pionius, St., martyr at Smyrna, 143, 202 ; Acts of, 1 86. Pisidia, 169, 171, 172, 179. Pius, pope, 29, 149, 150, 159, 245. Pliny, 1 68, 228. Podandus. See Rege-podandus. Polemon, king of Pontus, 184. Polybius, bp. of Tralles, 21. Polycarp, St., bp. of Smyrna, 21,162, 188, 201 ; his martyrdom, 137, 143, 162, 163, 202, 205 ; his reputation, 27, 29, 166. Epistle of, 3, 16, 21, 231, 235, 236, 247. Martyrium (see also Philomelium and Smyrna), 185, 187, 205. 274 INDEX Polycrates, bp. of Ephesus, 10, 21, 22, 23, 167, 201, 205. Pompey, African bp., 99, 120. Pomponia Graecina, 187, 225. Pontianus, pope, 106, 136, 148, 149, 150, 159, 160. Pontius, Vita Cypriani, 103, 126, 258- 263 passim. Pontus, kingdom of, 169, 170, 184; province of, 169, 227; 'diocese' of, 43, 4 6 > 49, 5> 88 > 9 2 > 93 J synods, 67, 68, 74. Popes. See Alexander, Anencletus, Anicetus, Clement, Conon, Cornelius, Damasus, Dionysius, Eleutherus, Euarestus, Eutychian, Fabian, Felix, Gregory, Hyginus, Innocent, Julius, Leo, Liberius, Linus, Lucius, Mar- cellinus, Marcellus, Marcus, Miltiades, Pius, Pontianus, Silverius, Silvester, Siricius, Soter, Stephen, Telesphorus, Victor, Xystus. Porphyry, Russian bp., 196. Portus (Romae), 59, 135, 151, 245. Pothinus, bp. of Lyons, 21. Primasius, bp. of Hadrumetum, 194, J 95- Primus, bp. of Corinth, 21. Prisca (Priscilla), wife of Aquila, 179, 222. Prisca (Priscilla), prophetess, 186, 204. Priscilla, St., cemetery of, 147. Priscillianism, 142. Privatus, bp. of Lambaesis, 75, 79, 115. Prosper, chronicler, 145. Puppianus. See Florentius. Puteoli, 223. Pythodoris, 184. Quadratus, prophet and bp., 17, 27. Rahab, 234, 251, 257. Ramsay, W.M., 200, 215; The Church in the Roman Empire, 164-1 88 pas- stm, 189, 203, 216, 219, 227, 228, 229 ; The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, 33, 51. Rege-doara, 65. Rege-podandus, 65, 66. Renan, E., St. Pau/, 222 ; L? Anttchrist, 189, 198, 199, 208, 216. Revocatus, martyr at Carthage, 144. Ritschl, O., Cyprian von Karthago, 97, 104, no, 113, 121. Rogatianus, presbyter of Carthage, 117. Rome, church of (see also Popes) : characteristics, 232-235 ; Rome and the West, 43, 48, 87, 130; and the East, 93, 232; privileges according to the councils, 42, 52, 69, 78, 87 ; apostles and Rome, 69, 70, 143, 144, 156, 165, 191, 198, 214, 221-225 ; episcopal succession, 69, 105, 135, 138, 147, 150, 151, 156-163, 224, 225 ; churches, 150, 154, 155 ; clergy, I 5> X 53J chronicles, 146-155; per- secutions, 116, 128, 145, 146, 225- 230; martyrs, 102, 105, 139, 143, 144, 148, 218, 230; language, 139, 244, 245. Rome, empire of, 169, 170, 191, 203 ; in relation to the church, 108, 188, 190 ; as conceived of by the church, 210, 211, 213, 216, 218. history (in relation to the church of Rome): Pomponia Graecina, 187, 225; Clement, 224, 225, 231; Her- mas, 20, 245; Gnostics, 139, 167; Hegesippus, 156, 157; Irenaeus, 156, 248 ; Easter question, 67, 74, 153, 167; Hippolytus, 59, 106, 119, 135, 245 ; Novatianism, 55, 59, 98, 109, 118-123; Cyprian, 98, 99, 102, 109, 114-122, 126, 130, 131, 146 ; Paul of Samosata, 76; Eusebius, 138, 139, 161-163; Constantius, 59; Atha- nasius, 79; Jerome, 119, 141; Silverius, 152. Temple of, 203. . Jews at, 220, 221. Roediger, 136. Rossi, G. B. de, 230. Rufinus, 57, 101, 133, 241, 247. Ruinart, Th., Acta Sincera, no. Rushforth, G. McN., 203. Saar, 144, 145. Sabatier, A., 7. Sabellianism, 75. Sabinus, Spanish bishop, 75. Sagaris, bp. of Laodicea, 21. Salamis, 46, 170. Salmon, G., Non-Canonical Books, I, 5> 7 l6 - Sambathe (Sambatheum), 204. Sanday, W., The Cheltenham List of the Writings of Cyprian, 97, 259, 261, 262, 263, 265 ; review of dementis Romani epistulae versio latina, 220, 242. Sardica, council and canons of, 77, 85, 86, 87. Sardinia, 106, 149, 150, 246. Sardis, 21, 200, 204, 205. Sasima, 65. Saturninus, martyr at Carthage, 144. Saturus, martyr at Carthage, 144. Saturus, reader at Carthage, 117. INDEX 275 Scaliger, J. J., Thesaurus Temporum, 136. Schmidt, C., Epistle of St. Clement, Coptic Version, 238, 257. Schoene, A., Eusebi Chronicorum Ca- nonum quae supersunt, 132, 136. Schiirer, ., Die Prophetin Isabel in Thyatira, 204. Scillitan Martyrs, Acts of, 246. Scrivener, F. H. A., 177. Sebastian, St., martyr at Rome, 148. Secundus, bp. of Tigisis, 68. Secundus, Egyptian bishop, 79. Seleucia, 185. Sempronius, martyr at Rome, 144. Serapion, bp. of Antioch, 27, Severus, emperor, 106, 108, 193. Severus, patriarch of Antioch, 27. Shepherd. See Hermas. Sidonius, confessor at Rome, 121. Silas (Silvanus), 13, 173, 179. Silverius, pope, 152. Silvester, pope, 147, 153, 154; church of, 154. Simcox, W. H., The Revelation of St. John the Divine, 189. Siricius, pope, 231. Sixtus, pope. See Xystus. Smyrna (see also Polycarp) : geo- graphical position, 174, !7^> 200; Jewish community, 186 ; church and bishop of, 29, 59 ; in the Apocalypse, 201, 202, 206, 207; Ignatius at, 200; letter to the church of Philomelium (Martyrium Poly carpi}, 21, 27, 185, 187, 205. Socrates, church historian, 79, 133. Soden, H. v., Die Cyprianische Brief- sammlung, 97. Sopater (Sosipater), 179. Soter, pope, 21, 156, 245. Sozomen, church historian, 63, 133. Spain, ' diocese ' of, 47, 50 ; Priscil- lianism in, 142 ; in St. Cyprian's correspondence, 74, 75, 130; con- nexion with St. Paul, 224. Stephen, African bishop, 120. Stephen, pope, 75, 99, 100, 105, 129- 131, 140. Strato, Roman deacon, 145, 146. Suetonius Tranquillus, 140, 228, 230. Sulpicius Severus, 142, 145. Symeon, bp. of Jerusalem, 21. Syncellus, George, Byzantine chronicler, 135, 14, !59- Synesius, bp. of Gyrene, 63. Synnada, 200 ; council of, 67, 74. Syria, bishops of, 44 ; connexion with St. Paul, 223; languages, 244; Ig- natius and, 29, 62. Tacitus, 142, 199, 200, 206, 226, 229, 230. Tarsus, 44, 76. Tatian, 167, 243. Taylor, C., The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, i, 5. Teaching. See Didache. Telesphorus, pope, 29, 156, 245. Tertullian, 27,69, 109, 246; on coun- cils, 67, 74; on discipline, in ; on St. Peter (i Pet.), 227, 229; on St. John (Apoc.), 192, 198, 213 ; on Clement, 157, 158, 159, 225 ; Irenaeus, 248 ; Cyprian and, 101, 102 ; ethical writings, 101, 233. adversus Praxean, 101. Apology, 139, 140, 145. contra ludaeos, 140. Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 239- Thagora (Tagora), 68. Thamyris, 182. Thecla, 182-187, 190. Theocleia, 182. Theodore of Tarsus, abp. of Canter- bury, 39. Theodoret, bp. of Cyrrhus, 64, 133. Theodotus, St., Acts of, 177. Theonas, Arian bishop, 79. Theonas, Meletian bp., 58. Theophilus, bp. of Alexandria, 153. Theophilus, bp. of Antioch, 16. Thera, island in the Aegean, 209. Therapius, African bishop, 125. Thibaris, 128, 259. Thomas, St., Acts of, 180. Thomas of Heraclea (Harkhel), 194. Thrace, ' diocese ' of, 43, 46, 50, 88, 92, 93- Thraseas, bp. of Eumenia, 21. Thubunae (Tubunae), 144, 146. Thyatira, 200, 203, 204, 207, 208. Tiberius, emperor, 149, 210. Tigisis, 68. Timotheus, chorepiscopus, 65. Timothy, evangelist, 28, 173, 190, 232. Timothy, martyr at Carthage, 143. Timothy, martyr at Rome, 143. Titus, emperor, 212, 217, 229. Titus, evangelist, 29, 232. Trajan, emperor, 137, 144, 145, 162, 188, 219, 228. Tralles, 21, 174, 200. Tranquillus. See Suetonius. Trebonianus. See Gallus. Troas, 176, 180, 190. Trofimus, lapsed bp., 123, 125. Trogylium, 178. Trophimus, 179, 180. Tryphaena, 184, 185, 186. 276 INDEX Tyana, 50, 65. Tychicus, 179, 190. Tyconius, Donatist writer, 145, 194, 195, 196, 213. Tymium, 18. Tyre, 79, 84. Ulpian, 49. Urbanus, confessor at Rome, 121. Ursinus, anti-pope, 141, 150. Valens, emperor, 50,65, 136, 140. Valentinus (Valentinians), 139, 167, 248. Valentinus, church of St., 149, 150. Valerian, emperor, 105,129; persecu- tion of, 98, 104, 106, 128, 131, 146, 148, 150, 198, 212, 226, 258. Vespasian, emperor, 217, 219, 224, 229, 230. Victor, African presbyter, 125. Victor, pope, 10, 21, 74, 153, 163, 167, 245- Victorinus, St., commentator, bp. of Pettau, 192, 194, 195, 198, 203, 204, 206, 209, 213, 216, 217. Vienne, church of. See Lyons. Vigilius Afer, commentator, 194. Weizsacker, C. von, 171. Westcott, B. F., Epistles of St. John, 216; Gospel of St. John, 1 2 . Williams, G., Orthodox and Nonjurors, 53- Witiges, Gothic king, 152. Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 181. Xantippus, bp. of Thagora, 68. Xystus I, pope, 29, 245. Xystus (Sixtus) II, pope, 147, 161 ; martyrdom of, 102, 105, 139, 143, 144, 148, 226. Yonge, C. M., Pupils of St. John the Divine, 204. Yppolitus. See Hippolytus. Zahn, Th., review of dementis Romani epistulae versio latina, 220, 241, 242. Zephyrinus, pope, 136, 144, 245. Zoticus, bp. of Comana, 21. Oxford : Horace Hart, M. A., Printer to the University RETURN TO the circulation desk ot any University ot California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University ot California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW MAY 16 1997 NOV031997 LD 21-1 12,000(11/95) 1C U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES X 376157 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY