Clementine literature

Clementine literature, diversified group of apocryphal writings that at various times were attributed to St. Clement I, bishop of Rome near the end of the 1st century. The writings include: (1) the so-called Second Letter of Clement (II Clement), which is not a letter but a sermon and was probably written in Rome about 140; (2) two letters on virginity, perhaps the work of St. Athanasius (died c. 373), bishop of Alexandria; (3) the Homilies and Recognitions, along with an introductory letter supposed to have been written by St. Clement to St. James “the Lord’s brother”; (4) the Apostolic Constitutions, a collection of early Christian ecclesiastical law; and (5) five letters that are part of the False Decretals, a 9th-century collection of partially forged documents.

Now generally considered the work of an unknown Apostolic Father, the Second Letter of Clement was accepted as a work of St. Clement by some and was regarded as canonical in the Codex Alexandrinus (a 5th-century manuscript of the Greek Bible) and by the later Syrian church. Thought to have been written circa 125–140, it emphasized a high doctrine of Christ and the importance of preserving the seal of baptism by maintaining the purity of the flesh for the resurrection. The genuine First Letter of Clement, which was also treated as Scripture by some early Christians, was frequently transmitted in manuscripts together with the Second Letter of Clement.

The two letters (actually treatises) on virginity are preserved in a Syriac manuscript from 1470. Originally written in Greek, they also survive in extracts from the original in the sermons of a Palestinian monk, Antiochus (c. 620), and in Coptic fragments, in which they are attributed to St. Athanasius. They were first mentioned (c. 375) by St. Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia (now Salamis, Cyprus), and were used in Egypt in the 4th and 5th centuries. They denounced violations of asceticism.

The Homilies (preserved in the Greek original) and the Recognitions (translated into Latin and into Syriac, both about 400 ce) contain a great deal of common material. They attempted to exalt the position of the Oriental churches in relation to Rome and were based on an earlier work, the Circuits of Peter, attested by St. Epiphanius and probably mentioned by the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea and by Origen, the theologian of the Greek church (early 3rd century). The Homilies are important for the information they give on Jewish-Christian heresy in the early centuries of the church, while the Recognitions show how, in an expurgated form, such literature could provide entertainment along with edification. In later times, the medieval story of Faust was based on the portrait of Simon Magus in the Recognitions.