HISTORY OF THE POPES

Heretics & Heresies
SIMON MAGUS.	CERINTHUS	MENANDER
SATURNINUS	BASILIDES	Ebionism and Ebionites.
LEUCIUS

 

PLATINA'S LIBER PONTIFICALIS.

 

SAINT PETER

 

AFTER the death and resurrection of Christ, and the completion of the days of Pentecost, the disciples received the Holy Ghost : and being filled with the spirit, they published the wonderful works of God in divers tongues, though most of them, especially Peter and John, were looked upon as utterly illiterate men. Their manner of living was measured by the common good; none of them challenged any propriety in anything; and whatsoever religious oblation was laid at their feet, they either divided it between themselves for the supply of the necessities of nature, or else distributed it to the poor. These disciples had each of them his province assigned to him : to St Thomas was allotted Parthia, to St Matthew Ethiopia, to St Bartholomew India on this side Ganges, to St Andrew Scythia, and Asia to St John, who after a long series of toil and care, died during his abode at Ephesus. But to St Peter, the chief of the apostles, were assigned Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia and Cappadocia; who being by birth a Galilean, of the city of Bethsaida, the son of John, and brother of Andrew the apostle, sat first in the Episcopal see of Antioch for seven years in the days of Tiberius.

This emperor was son-in-law and heir to Augustus, and for the space of twenty-three years his administration of the government had so much of change and variety in it, that we cannot reckon him altogether a bad, or absolutely a good prince. He was a man of great learning, and weighty eloquence; his wars he managed not in person, but by his lieutenants, and showed a great deal of prudence in suppressing any sudden commotions. Having by arts of flattery enticed several princes to his court, he never suffered them to return home again; as particularly among others, Archelaus of Cappadocia, whose kingdom he made a province of the empire. Many of the senators were banished, and some of them slain by him. C. Asinius Gallus the pleader, son of Asinius Pollio, was by his order put to death with the most exquisite torments; and Vocienus Montanus Narbonensis, one of the same profession, died in the Baleares, where Tiberius had confined him. Moreover historians tell us, that his brother Drusus was poisoned at his command. And yet upon occasion he exercised so much lenity, that when certain publicans and governors of provinces moved him to raise the public taxes, he gave them this answer, "that a good shepherd does indeed shear, but not flay his sheep".

Tiberius dying, C. Caesar, who, with a jocular reflection upon his education in the camp, had the surname of Caligula, succeeded him in the empire; he was the son of Drusus (son-in-law to Augustus) and nephew to Tiberius; the greatest villain in the world, and one who never did any worthy action either at home or abroad. His avarice put him upon all manner of oppression; his lust was such that he did not forbear to violate the chastity of his own sisters; and his cruelty was so great, that he is reported oftentimes to have cried out, "Oh! that all the people of Rome had but one neck!" At his command all who were under proscription were put to death; for having recalled a certain person from banishment, and enquiring of him what the exiles did chiefly wish for, — the man imprudently answering, that they desired nothing more than the death of the emperor — he thereupon gave order that every man of them should be executed. He would often complain of the condition of his times, that they were not rendered remarkable by any public calamities, as those of Tiberius had been, in whose reign no less than twenty thousand men had been slain by the fall of a theatre at Tarracina. He expressed so much envy at the renown of Virgil and Livy, that he was very near taking away their writings and images out of all the libraries; the former of whom he would censure as a man of no wit and little learning, the latter as a verbose and negligent historian; and it was his common bye-word concerning Seneca, ''That his writings were like a rope of sand."

Agrippa, the son of king Herod, who had been cast into prison by Tiberius for accusing Herod, was by him set at liberty, and made king of Judaea; while Herod himself was confined to perpetual banishment at Lyons. He caused himself to be translated into the number of the gods, and ordered the setting up his image in the temple of Jerusalem. At last he was assaulted and slain by some of his own officers, in the third year and tenth month of his empire. Among his writings were found two rolls or lists, one of which had a dagger, the other a sword stamped upon it for a seal; they both contained the names and characters of certain principal men, both of the senatorian and equestrian order, whom he designed to slaughter. There was found likewise a large chest filled with several sorts of poisons, which being at the cornmand of Claudius Caesar not long after thrown into the sea, it is reported that the waters were so infected thereby that there died abundance of fish, which the tide cast up upon the neighbouring shores.

I thought good to give this account of these monsters of men, that thereby it might the better appear, that God could then have scarce forborne destroying the whole world, unless He had sent His Son and His Apostles, by whose blood mankind, though equal to Lycaon in impiety, was yet redeemed from destruction. In their times lived that St Peter, whom our Saviour (upon his acknowledgment of Him to be the Christ), bespake in these words, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven"; and, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the power of binding and loosing". This apostle being a person of most unwearied industry, when he had sufficiently settled the churches of Asia, and confuted the opinion of those who maintained the necessity of circumcision, came into Italy in the second year of Claudius.

This Claudius, who was uncle to Caligula, and had been all along very contumeliously treated and buffooned by his nephew, being now Emperor, making an expedition into Britain, had the island surrendered up to him, — an enterprise which none before Julius Caesar, nor any after Claudius, durst undertake : he also added the Isles of Orkney to the Roman Empire. He banished out of the city of Rome the seditious Jews, and suppressed the tumults of Judaea, which had been raised by certain false prophets. And while Cumanus was appointed by him Procurator of Judaea, there were crushed to death in the porches of the Temple of Jerusalem during the days of unleavened bread, to the number of thirty thousand Jews. At the same time, also, there was a great dearth and scarcity of provision throughout the whole world; a calamity which had been foretold by Agabus the prophet. Being secure of any hostilities from abroad, he finished the aqueduct that had been begun by Caligula, whose ruins are yet to be seen in the Lateran. He attempted also, to empty the Lake Fucinus, being prompted thereto by the hope of getting not only honour and reputation, but profit and advantage by it; since there was a certain person who proffered to undertake that work at his own private charge, upon condition that the land when it was drained might have been granted to him for his reward. The mountain being partly undermined, partly cut through, the length of three miles, the passage was at the end of eleven years with much ado finished, there being no less than thirty thousand labourers continually employed in it. It was he likewise that made the harbour of Ostia, by drawing an arm of the sea on each hand, and so breaking the violence of the waves; a work, the footsteps of which are not to be seen at this day without wonder. Having put to death his wife Messalina for adultery, he afterwards, against all law both human and divine, married Agrippina the daughter of his brother Germanicus, by whom, in the fourteenth year of his Empire, he was poisoned with mushrooms prepared by her for that purpose.

In his time St Peter came to Rome, the principal city of the world, both because he judged it a seat best accommodated to the Pontifical dignity, and because likewise he understood that Simon Magus, a Samaritan, had planted himself there, who by his sorceries had so far seduced the people, that they believed him to be a god. For his statue had been already erected at Rome, between the two bridges, with this Latin inscription, "Simoni Deo Sancto" i.e., to "Simon the Holy God." This man while he stayed in Samaria, pretended faith in Christ so far as to obtain baptism from Philip one of the seven deacons, which afterwards abusing to ill ends, he laid the foundation of diverse heresies. To him was joined one Sebene, a shameless strumpet, who was his companion and partner in villany. To such a height of impudence did this lewd fellow arrive that he challenged St Peter to work miracles with him; and particularly he undertook to raise to life a dead child, which indeed at first seemed somewhat to move at his charms; but it being manifest presently that the child nevertheless continued dead still, at St Peter's command in the name of Jesus, it immediately arose. Simon being enraged hereat, proffered, as a further trial which of them was the more holy man and more beloved of God, to fly from the Capitol to the Aventine in the sight of all the people, provided Peter would follow him. While he was yet flying, at the prayer of Peter, who with hands lifted up to heaven, beseeched God not to suffer so great a multitude to be deluded with magical arts, down he fell and broke his leg, with grief of which misadventure he not long after died at Aricia, whither his followers had conveyed him after this foul disgrace. From him the heretics called Simoniaci had their original, who pretended to buy and sell the gift of the Holy Ghost, and who asserted the creation to proceed from a certain superior power, but not to be from God.

After this, St Peter applying himself both by preaching and example to the propagating of the Word of God, was by the Christian Romans earnestly desired that John, surnamed Mark, who was his son in baptism, and a person of a most approved life and conversation, might be employed by him in writing a Gospel. St Hierom saith, that he being a priest in Israel, a Levite according to the flesh, after his conversion to the Christian faith, wrote his Gospel in Italy, showing what he owed to his own parentage and extraction and what to Christ. Which Gospel, as we now have it, was approved by the testimony of St Peter. Being afterwards sent into Egypt, as Philo the Jew a famous writer tells us, after that by preaching and writing he had well formed the Alexandrian Church, being a man very eminent both for his life and learning, in the eighth year of the Emperor Nero, he died and was buried at Alexandria, in whose place succeeded Anianus.

The year before died James, surnamed Justus, the brother of our Lord, being the son of Joseph by another wife, or, as some will have it, sister's son to Mary, Christ's mother. Hegesippus, who lived near the Apostles' times, affirms of him that he was holy in his mother's womb, that he drank neither wine nor strong drink, nor ever tasted flesh, that he neither shaved, nor bathed, nor anointed himself, nor ever wore any other but linen garments. He was often accustomed to enter into the Holy of Holies, where he continued so incessantly in his prayers for the welfare of the people, that his knees were grown hard and callous like those of camels. But Festus leaving the government of Judaea, before Albinus his successor arrived there, the High Priest Ananus, the son of Ananus, requiring James publicly to deny Christ to be the Son of God, upon his refusal he gave order he should be stoned to death; who, after he had been thrown down headlong from a pinnacle of the Temple, continuing yet half alive, and with hands stretched forth towards heaven praying for his persecutors, was at last killed outright with a blow of a fuller's club. Josephus reports him to have been a man of so great sanctity, that it was the general belief that his murder was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem. This is that James, whom our Lord appeared to after His resurrection, and to whom, having blessed bread and broken it. He said, "Brother, eat thy bread, because the Son of man is risen." He presided over the church of Jerusalem thirty years, that is, to the seventh year of Nero. His sepulchre with an inscription, hard by the temple from which he had been cast down, was yet in being in Hadrian's time.

It is evident likewise that Barnabas, by birth a Cypriot, sumamed Joses, a Levite, died before St Peter's martyrdom. He being chosen together with Paul an apostle of the Gentiles, wrote only one epistle of matters concerning the Church, and that too is reckoned apocryphal. There happening to be a difference between him and Paul, occasioned by Mark a disciple, he, accompanied by the said Mark, went to Cyprus, where preaching the faith of Christ he was crowned with martyrdom. Paul, first called Saul, was descended of the tribe of Benjamin, of a town of Judaea, called Giscalis; which being taken in war by the Romans, he with his parents removed to Tarsus, a city of Cilicia. And being sent thence to Jerusalem to study the law, he had his education under the learned Gamaliel. After this, he became a persecutor of the Christians, and was present and assistant at the death of St Stephen the protomartyr. But as he was going to Damascus, being wonderfully converted to the faith, he be- came a chosen vessel; and took the name of Paul, from a proconsul of Cyprus, whom he had converted to Christianity. After this he, together with Barnabas, having travelled through divers cities, upon his return to Jerusalem, was by Peter, John, and James, chosen an apostle of the Gentiles.

In the twenty-fifth year after the death of Christ, which was the second of the Emperor Nero, he, with his fellow-captive Aristarchus, was as a free denizen sent bound to Rome; where continuing the space of two years under very little confinement, he was daily engaged in disputation with the Jews. Being at length set at liberty by Nero, he both preached and wrote many things. We have at this day fourteen of his epistles; one to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, one to the Galatians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Philippians, one to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, two to Timothy, one to Titus, and one to Philemon; that to the Hebrews is generally said to be his, though because of the difference of style and phrase from the rest, it is uncertain whether it were so or not; and there have been anciently divers who have entitled it, some to Luke, some to Barnabas, some to Clemens. St Peter also wrote two general epistles, though the latter is by many denied to be his for the same reason of the difference of style. But being so taken up with prayer and preaching, that he could not attend any other great variety of business, he constituted two bishops, viz., Linus and Cletus, who might exercise the sacerdotal ministry to the Romans and other Christians. The holy man applying himself entirely to these things, gained thereby so great and universal a reputation, that men were ready to worship him as a god.

The Emperor Nero being displeased hereat, began to contrive his death; whereupon St Peter, with the advice of his friends, that he might avoid the Emperor's envy and rage, departed out of the city by the Via Appia; and at the end of the first mile he travelled, to use the words of Hegesippus, meeting with Christ in the wa» and falling down and worshipping Him, he said, "Lord whither goest Thou?" to whom Christ replied, "I go to Rome to be crucified again". There is yet remaining a chapel built on the same place where these words were spoken.

Now St Peter believing this saying of our Saviour to relate to his own martyrdom, because Christ might seem to be ready to suffer again in him, went back to the city, and forthwith consecrated Clemens a bishop, and in these words recommended to him his chair, and the Church of God : "I deliver to thee the same power of binding and loosing which Christ left to me; do thou, as becomes a good pastor, promote the salvation of men both by prayer and preaching, without regard to any hazard of life or fortune." Having set these things thus in order, at the command of Nero, in the last year of his empire, he was put to death together with St Paul, though the kinds of their punishment were different. For St Peter was crucified with his head towards the ground, and his feet upwards, for so he desired it might be, saying, that he was unworthy to undergo the same kind of death with his Saviour. He was buried in the Vatican, in the Via Aurelia, near Nero's Gardens, not far from the Via Triumphalis which leads to the temple of Apollo. He continued in the see twenty-five years. But St Paul being on the same day beheaded, was interred in the Via Ostiensis, in the thirty-seventh year after the death of Christ. This is confirmed by the testimony of Caius the historian, who in a disputation against one Proculus a Montanist has these words : "I," says he, "can show you the victorious ensigns of the apostles; for you cannot pass the Via Regalis that leads to the Vatican, nor the Via Ostiensis, but you will find the trophies of those heroes that established this church", where certainly he refers to these two St Peter and St Paul.

In the forementioned gardens of Nero, were reposited the ashes of a multitude of holy martyrs. For a fire happening in the time of Nero, which raging for six days together, had wasted a great part of the city, and devoured the substance of many wealthy citizens, the blame of all which was laid upon the Emperor, he, as Tacitus tells us, being very desirous to quell the rumour, suborned false witnesses to accuse, and lay all the blame of that calamity upon the Christians. Whereupon so great a number of them were seized and put to death, that it is said the flame of their empaled bodies supphed the room of lights for some nights together. There are those who say this fire was kindled by Nero, either that he might have before his eyes the resemblance of burning Troy, or else because he had taken offence at the irregularity of the old houses, and the narrowness and windings of the streets; neither of which are improbable of such a man as he, who was profligately self-willed, intemperate, and cruel, and in all respects more lewd and wicked than his uncle Caligula. For he put to death a great part of the senate, and also without any regard to decency would in the sight of the people sing and dance in the public theatre. His dissolute luxury was such, that he made use of perfumed cold baths, and fished with golden nets, which were dragged with purple cords. Yet he took such care to conceal all these vices in the beginning of his empire, that men had generally great hopes of him. For being put in mind to sign a warrant according to custom for the execution of one that was condemned to die, "how glad," says he, "should I be that I had never learnt to write". He was very sumptuous in his buildings both in the city and elsewhere ; for the baths called by his name, and the Aurea Domus, and the Portico three miles long, were finished by him with wondrous magnificence; besides which he was at a vast expense to make the haven at Antiura, at the sight of which I myself not long since was wonderfully pleased. I return to his cruelty, which he exercised towards his master Seneca, towards M. Annoeus Lucanus the famous poet, towards his mother Agrippina, and his wife Octavia, towards Cornutus, the philosopher, Persius's master, whom he banished towards Piso, and in a word towards all those who were in any reputation among the citizens. In the end, he so highly provoked the rage and hatred of the people against him, that most diligent search was made after him to bring him to condign punishment; which punishment was, that being bound, he should be led up and down with a gallows upon his neck; and being whipped with rods to death, his body should be thrown into the river Tiber. But he making his escape four miles out of the city, laid violent hands upon himself in the country house of one of his freemen, between the Via Salaria, and Nomentana, in the thirty-second year of his age, and of his reign the fourteenth.

 

ST LINUS. Circa a.d. 68-78.

 

LINUS, by nation a Tuscan, his father's name Herculeanus, was in the chair from the last year of Nero to the times of Vespasian, and from the consulship of Saturninus and Scipio, to that of Capito and Rufus.

In this space of time there were no less than three emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, each of them reigning but a very little while.

Galba, a person descended of the most ancient nobility, being created emperor by the soldiers in Spain, as soon as he heard of the death of Nero, came immediately to Rome. But rendering himself obnoxious to all men by his avarice and sloth, through the treachery of Otho, he was slain at Rome near Curtius's lake in the seventh month of his reign; together with Piso a noble youth whom he had adopted for his son. He was doubtless a man, who before he came to the empire, was very eminent in the management both of military and civil affairs; being often consul, often proconsul, and several times general in the most important wars. That which makes me speak this in his praise, is the learning of M. Fabius Quintilianus, whom Galba brought with him out of Spain to Rome.

Otho, a man of better extraction by his mother's than by his father's side, who while he led a private life was very loose and effeminate, as being a great and intimate friend of Nero's, in the midst of tumults and slaughters, as I hinted before, invaded the empire. But being engaged in a civil war against Vitellius, who had been created emperor in Germany, though he got the better in three small skirmishes, one at the Alps, another at Placentia, the third at Castor, yet losing the day in the last and most considerable, which was at Bebriacum, he thereupon fell into so deep a melancholy, that, in the third month of his empire he stabbed himself.

Vitellius, concerning whose extraction there are different opinions, coming to Rome, and obtaining the empire, soon degenerated into all manner of lewdness, cruelty and gluttony, being used to make several meals in a day, and some of them to such an height of luxury, that there have been at one supper no less than two thousand fishes, and seven thousand fowl served up to his table. But having intelligence that Vespasian, who had been created emperor by the army in Judaea, was advancing with his legions, he at first determined to quit the empire; yet being afterwards encouraged by those about him, he took up arms, and forced Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, with his Flavian soldiers into the Capitol; which being set on fire, they were all burnt. Hereupon being surprised by Vespasian, and having no hope of pardon left him, he hid himself in a private chamber in the palace, from whence he was most ignominiously dragged and carried naked through the Via Sacra to the Scalse Gemoniae, where being quartered he was thrown into the river Tiber.

During this time Linus was successor to St Peter, though there are some who place Clemens here, and wholly leave out Linus and Cletus, who yet are sufficiently confuted not only by history, but also by the authority of St Hierom, who tells us, that Clemens was the fourth bishop of Rome after Peter, for Linus was accounted the second, and Cletus the third, notwithstanding that most of the Romans immediately after Peter reckon Clemens. To whom, though St Peter had as it were by will bequeathed the right of succession, yet his modesty was so great that he compelled Linus and Cletus to take upon them the pontifical dignity before him, lest any ambition of pre-eminence might be of ill example to after ages. This Linus by commission from St. Peter, ordained that no woman should enter the church but with her head veiled. Moreover, at two ordinations which he held in the city, he made eighteen presbyters and eleven bishops.

In his time lived Philo, a Jew of Alexandria, in whose writings there is so much wit and judgment, that, from the likeness there appears be- tween them, he deserved to have it proverbially said, either Plato does Philonize, or Philo does Platonize. By his learning and eloquence he corrected the rashness of Apion, who had been sent ambassador from the Alexandrians with complaints against the Jews. While he was at Rome, in the time of Claudius, he contracted an acquaintance with St Peter, and thereupon wrote several things in praise of the Christians.

Josephus also the son of Mattathias, a priest at Hierusalem, being taken prisoner by Vespasian, and committed to the custody of his son Titus, till that city was taken, coming to Rome during the pontificate of Linus, presented to the father and the son seven books of the Jewish war, which were laid up in the public library, and the author himself, as a reward for that performance, had most deservedly a statue erected to him. He wrote likewise twenty-four other books of antiquities, from the begin- ing of the world to the fourteenth year of the emperor Domitian.

As for Linus himself, though he had gained a mighty reputation by the sanctity of his life, by his power of casting out devils and raising the dead, yet was he put to death by Saturninus, the consul, whose very daughter he had dispossessed, and was buried in the Vatican near the body of St Peter, on the twenty-first day of September, when he had sat in the Pontifical See eleven years, three months, and twelve days. There are some who affirm that Gregory Bishop of Ostia, did, according to a vow which he had made, remove the body of this holy bishop to that place, and solemnly inter it in the Church of St. Laurence.

 

ST CLETUS. Circa 78-91.

 

CLETUS, born in Rome in the Vicopatrician region, son of Aemilianus, through the persuasion of Clemens, unwillingly took upon him the burden of the pontificate, though for his learning, life, and quality, he was a person of very great esteem and authority among all that knew him. He lived in the time of Vespasian and Titus, from the seventh consulship of Vespasian, and the fifth of Domitian, to the consulate of Domitian and Rufus, according to Damasus.

Vespasian, as I said before, succeeding Vitellius, committed the management of the Jewish War, which had been carrying on two years before, to his son Titus, which he, within two years after, with great resolution finished. For all Judaea being conquered, the city Hierusalem destroyed, and the temple levelled to the ground, it is reported that no less than six hundred thousand Jews were slain; nay, Josephus, a Jew, who was a captive in that war, and had his life given him because he foretold the death of Nero, and that Vespasian should in a short time be Emperor, relates that eleven hundred thousand perished therein by sword and famine, and that a hundred thousand were taken prisoners, and publicly exposed to sale. Nor will it seem improbable, if we consider that he tells us this happened at the time of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they came from all parts of Judaea to Jerusalem, as into a public prison; and especially on the day of the Passover, upon which they crucified Christ : being now to undergo the deserved punishment, both of their frequent revolts from the Roman government, and also of their villany and perfidiousness in putting to death the innocent Jesus.

Upon this victory over the Jews, the father and son were honoured with a triumph, both riding in the same chariot, and Domitian upon a white horse following them. The monuments of this triumph remain still in the Via Nova, where are to be seen engraven the candlesticks and the tables of the old law that were taken out of the temple and triumphantly brought away. Yet Vespasian exercised so much humanity towards the Jews, even when they were conquered, that for all those whom he found among them remaining of the House of David, as being of royal descent, he had a very good esteem. And indeed he always used his power with great moderation, being of so mild and merciful a temper, as to discharge even traitors with no other than a verbal correction, and to slight the discourses of insolent and talkative people, and in general to be forgetful of faults and injuries. He was looked upon as too much inclined to avarice, and yet he used no oppression for the getting of money, and what he had he employed in bounty and magnificence. For he both finished the Temple of Peace adjoining to the Forum, that had been begun by Claudius, and began that amphitheatre, a part of which is yet to be seen with admiration. He had so great an opinion of the bravery and merit of his son Titus, that upon occasion of certain tumults, raised by some ambitious men who aspired to the empire, he said publicly, "That either his son, or no man, would be his successor in the empire." And good ground he had to say so, for that Titus, both for his courage and integrity, was accounted the darling and delight of mankind. He was endued with an eloquence excellently suited to the times of peace, and with a courage to those of war; he was very merciful to offenders, and so kind and bountiful to all, that he never denied any man anything. Upon which occasion when some of his friends took the liberty to find fault with him as too profuse, he told them, "It was not fit that any man should depart sad out of the presence of a prince". And remembering at a certain time that he had not conferred any benefit in a whole day, he thereupon cried out to those about him, "My friends, I have lost a day." Never any emperor was superior to him in magnificence; the amphitheatre, together with the baths near adjoining, being perfectly completed and dedicated, and an hunting of five thousand wild beasts exhibited by him. He recalled from exile Mursonius Rufus, a famous philosopher, and was much pleased with the conversation of Asconius Paedianus, a most learned man. He died in the second year of his empire, and was carried to his sepulchre with so great and universal a lamentation, as if every man had lost a father.

There are some who write that Cletus succeeded Linus in the second year of Vespasian, who held the empire ten years. Whether that were so or no, it is certain that Cletus was a most holy and good man, and that he left nothing undone that might contribute to the enlargement and increase of the Church of God. In his time lived Luke, a physician of Antioch, one extraordinarily well skilled in the Greek language, a follower of St Paul the Apostle, and his constant attendant and companion in his travels. He penned the gospel, which is commended by St Paul, and which St Paul for a good reason calls his gospel. He wrote also the Acts of the Apostles, being himself an eyewitness of them. He lived eighty-four years, was married in Bithynia, and buried at Constantinople, whither his bones, together with those of Andrew the Apostle, were, in the tenth year of Constantius, conveyed out of Achaia.

At the same time likewise Philip returning out of Scythia, which, by his example and preaching he had kept stedfast in the faith for twenty years together, into Asia, died at Jerusalem. As for Cletus himself, having settled the Church as well as the times would bear, and ordained, according to St Peter's command, twenty-five presbyters, he was crowned with martyrdom in the reign of Domitian, and buried near the body of St Peter in the Vatican, April 27. There were many other martyrs about the same time, among whom is reckoned Flavia Domitilla, sister's daughter to Flavins Clemens the consul, who was banished into the island Pontia for the profession of Christianity. Cletus sat in the chair twelve years, one month, eleven days; and by his death the see was vacant twenty days.

 

ST CLEMENS. Circa a.d, 91-100.

 

CLEMENS, born in Rome, in the region of Mons Coelius, his father's name Faustinas, lived in the time of Titus's successor Domitian, who was more like to Nero or Caligula than to his father Vespasian or his brother, yet at the beginning of his empire he kept within some tolerable bounds, but soon after he broke out into very great enormities of lust, idleness, rage, and cruelty; crimes which brought upon him so great an odium, as almost entirely defaced the memory and renown of his father and brother. Most of the nobility he put to death, whereof most were by his order assassinated in the places whither he had banished them. He was so industriously idle as to spend the time of his privacy and retirement in killing flies with a bodkin; for which reason, when a certain person coming out of his presence was asked, whether any one were with Caesar, he answered merrily, "No, not so much as a fly." He arrived to such a height of folly and arrogance, as to expect divine honours, and com- manded that in all discourses and writings concerning him, the title of Lord and God should be given him. He was the second from Nero that raised a persecution against the Christians. Moreover, he gave order that all those of the lineage of David among the Jews, should by interrogatories and racking them to confession, be diligently searched after, and being found, utterly destroyed and extinguished. In the end, the divine vengeance overtaking him, he was in the fifteenth year of his empire stabbed to death in the palace by his own servants. His body was carried out by the common bearers, and ingloriously buried by Philix at her country house in the Via Latina.

Clemens was now (as I have said) the fourth Bishop of Rome from St Peter, Linus being accounted the second, and Cletus the third, though the Latins generally reckon Clemens next after Peter; and that he was designed so appears from his own letter to James, Bishop of Jerusalem, wherein he gives him the following account of that matter : "Simon Peter being apprehensive of his approaching death, in the presence of several brethren, taking hold of my hand, This," says he, "is the person, whom having been my assistant in all aflairs since I came to Rome, I constitute Bishop of that city; and when I showed my willingness to decline so great a burden, he expostulated with me in this manner :Wilt thou consult only thine own convenience, and deny thy assistance to the poor fluctuating Church of God when it is in thy power to steer it?". But he being a person of wonderful modesty, did freely prefer Linus and Cletus to that dignity before himself undertook it. He wrote in the name of the Roman Church a very useful epistle to the Corinthians, not differing in style from that of the Hebrews, which is said to be St Paul's. This epistle was formerly read publicly in several churches; there is another bearing his name which the ancients did not think authentic; and Eusebius in the third Book of his History, does find fault with a long disputation between St Peter and Apion, said to be written by our Clement. It is certain that John the Apostle, son of Zebedee and brother of James, lived to this time, who was the last penman of the Gospel, and confirmed what had been before written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The reason why he wrote last is said to be that he might confront and defeat the heresy of the Ebionites, who impudently denied Christ to have had a being before His birth of the Blessed Virgin; and accordingly we find him very particular in demonstrating the divinity of our Saviour. He wrote several other things, and among the rest his Revelation, during his banishment into the island Patmos by Domitian; who being afterwards slain and his acts for their excessive severity rescinded by the Senate, he returned to Ephesus in the time of Nerva, where he continued till the reign of Trajan, supporting the churches of Asia by his counsel and writings, till at last being worn out with age he rested in the Lord the sixty-eighth year after the Passion of Christ.

Our Clemens by his piety, religion, and learning made daily many proselytes to Christianity; whereupon P. Tarquinius the High-priest, and Mamertinus the city Praefect, stirred up the emperor against the Christians, at whose command Clement was banished to an island, where he found near two thousand Christians condemned to hew marble in the quarries. In this island there being at that time a great scarcity of water, which they were forced to fetch at six miles' distance, Clement going to the top of a little hill hard by, sees there a lamb, under whose right foot flowed miraculously a plentiful spring, with which all the islanders were refreshed, and many of them thereupon converted to the Christian faith. At which Trajan, being enraged, sent some of his guards, who threw Clement into the sea, with an anchor tied about his neck. But his blessed body was not long after cast on the shore, and being buried at the place where this miraculous fountain had sprung up, a temple was built over it. This is said to have happened September the fourteenth, in the third year of the Emperor Trajan. He was in the chair nine years, two months, and ten days. He divided the wards of the city among seven notaries, who were to register the acts of the martyrs ; and at the ordinations which he held according to custom in the month of December, he made ten presbyters, two deacons, and fifteen bishops. By his death the see was vacant two-and-twenty days.

 

ST ANACLETUS

 

ANACLETUS, an Athenian, son of Antiochus, was successor to Clement in the time of Trajanus. This Trajan's predecessor, Nerva Cocceius, was an excellent person both in his private and public capacity, just and equal in all his proceedings, and one whose government was very advantageous to the republic. Through his procurement the acts of Domitian being repealed by decree of the Senate, multitudes thereupon returned from banishment, and several by his bounty had the goods of which they had before been plundered, restored to them. But being now very old, and drawing near to the time of his death, out of his care of the public weal, he adopted Trajan, and then died in the sixteenth month of his reign, and of his age the seventy-second year.

Trajan himself, a Spaniard, surnamed Ulpius Crinitus, coming to the empire, surpassed the best of princes in the glory of his arms, the goodness of his temper, and the moderation of his government. He extended the bounds of the empire far and wide, reduced that part of Germany beyond the Rhine to its former state, subdued Dacia, and several other nations beyond the Danube; recovered Parthia; gave a king to the Albanians; made provinces beyond the Euphrates and Tigris; overcame and kept Armenia, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Silesia, Ctesiphon, and Babylon; and proceeded as far as the borders of India, and the Red Sea, where he left a fleet to infest those borders.

The ecclesiastical laws and constitutions of Anacletus were as follows, viz.: That no prelate or other clerk should suffer his beard or hair to grow long; that no bishop should be ordained by less than three other bishops; that the clergy should be admitted into holy orders in public only; and that all the faithful should after consecration communicate or be put out of the Church. By this means the Christian interest so increased, that Trajan, fearing lest the Roman state might be impaired thereby, gave allowance to a third persecution of the Christians, in which multitudes were put to death, and particularly Ignatius, the third bishop of the Church of Antioch after St Peter. Who being taken and condemned to suffer by wild beasts, as he was carried to Rome by his guards, whom he called his Ten Leopards, he all along in his passage encouraged and confirmed the Christians, by discourse with some, and by epistle to others; declaring his readiness to suffer in this manner : "Come cross, come beasts, come rack, come the torture of my whole body, and the torments of the devil upon me, so I may enjoy Christ." And upon the occasion of his hearing the lions roar, ''Corn," says he, "I am, let me be ground by the teeth of these beasts, that I may be found fine bread." He died in Trajan's eleventh year, and his bones were afterwards buried in the suburbs of Antioch. But Plinius Secundus, who was then governor of that province, being moved with compassion to see so many executed, wrote to the Emperor Trajan, informing him that incredible numbers of men were daily put to death, who were persons of an unblameable life, and who in no point transgressed the Roman laws, save only that before daybreak they would sing hymns to Christ their God, but that adulteries and the like crimes were disallowed and abominated by them. Hereupon Trajan gave order, that the magistrates should not make search after theChristians, but only punish those who voluntarily offered themselves. During this persecution Simeon, the kinsman of our Lord, son of Cleophas and bishop of Jerusalem, was crucified in the hundred and twentieth year of his age. These things which we have spoken of were acted in the time of this bishop and not of Cletus, as Eusebius in the third book of his history would have it; for Damasus makes out that Cletus and Anacletus differed both as to their country and manner of death—Cletus being a Roman, and suffering under Domitian, but Anacletus an Athenian, and suffering under Trajan. Our Anacletus having erected an oratory to St Peter, and assigned places of burial for the martyrs distinct from those of other men, and at one Decembrian ordination made five presbyters, three deacons, and six bishops; upon his martyrdom the see was vacant thirteen days, after he had sat in it nine years, two months, and ten days.