06 — Sources and History
How 1 Clement survived, and what can be known of the man who wrote it. These files trace the manuscript tradition — the letter’s preservation in Codex Alexandrinus and the Jerusalem Codex, its Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions, and its near-canonical early standing (it was read aloud in some churches and bound with the New Testament in Alexandrinus) — and then weigh the historical Clement against the later legend, including the long-debated and probably mistaken identification with the consul Titus Flavius Clemens.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostolic Father)
The text of 1 Clement hung for centuries by a thread. Known and quoted in antiquity, it then nearly vanished from Western view; for a long time it was accessible only through the single, defective leaf of Codex Alexandrinus, until the rediscovery of the complete Greek text in the Jerusalem Codex in 1873 transformed the study of the letter, and further versions came to light in Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. That transmission history is itself a witness to the letter’s high early standing — it was publicly read at Corinth into the second century, ranked near Scripture, and copied at the end of a great biblical codex. The man behind the letter is far harder to recover. This section sets out the manuscript tradition, then asks what can honestly be known of the historical Clement as distinct from the accumulated legend, treating the Flavius Clemens identification as the live question it is.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Manuscript Tradition | 1 Clement in Codex Alexandrinus (5th c., the long-lost-then-defective witness), the Jerusalem Codex (Hierosolymitanus 54, AD 1056, Bryennios’s 1873 rediscovery), the Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions; the letter’s near-canonical early status — read in churches, listed in some canon-notices, bound with the New Testament. |
| The Historical Clement | What can be known of the man versus the later legend — the silence of his own letter, the conflicting later notices; and the both-sides question of his identification with the consul Titus Flavius Clemens (executed under Domitian, c. 95) and his wife Flavia Domitilla. |
See Also
- The Third Bishop of Rome — the succession lists, the other strand of the historical record
- The Letter to the Corinthians — the text whose transmission is traced here
- 2 Clement — transmitted alongside 1 Clement in the same codices
- The Anchor and the Sea — the legend against which the historical man is measured
- The Church Fathers — the transmission of the patristic corpus
References
- Holmes, Michael W. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
- Lightfoot, J. B. The Apostolic Fathers, Part I: S. Clement of Rome. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1890.
- Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History, 3.4, 3.15–16, 4.23. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1.
- Lona, Horacio E. Der erste Clemensbrief. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998.