custom of very many churches down to his own time. In the same place (and in H. E. iv. 22) he reports that Hegesippus, whose historical work was written in the episcopate next after Soter's, and who had previously visited both Rome and Corinth, gives particulars concerning the epistle of Clement, and concerning the dissensions in the Corinthian church which had given rise to it. The epistle is cited as Clement's by Irenaeus (adv. Haer. iii. 3), several times by Clement of Alex., who in one place gives his namesake the title of Apostle (Strom. i. 7, iv. 17, v. 12, vi. 8); by Origen (de Princip. ii. 3, in Ezech. 8, in Joan. i. 29); and in fact on this subject the testimony of antiquity is unanimous. A letter which did not bear Clement's name, and which merely purported to come from the church of Rome, could scarcely have been generally known as Clement's, if Clement had not been known at the time as holding the chief position in the church of Rome.
(4) Last among those notices of Clement which may be relied on as historical, we place the statement of Irenaeus (l.c.) that Clement was third bp. of Rome after the apostles, his account being that the apostles Peter and Paul, having founded and built up that church, committed the charge of it to Linus; that Linus was succeeded by Anencletus, and he by Clement. This order is adopted by Eusebius, by Jerome in his Chronicle, and by Eastern chronologers generally.
A different order of placing these bishops can also, however, lay claim to high antiquity. The ancient catalogue known as the Liberian, because ending with the episcopate of Liberius, gives the order and duration of the first Roman episcopates: Peter 25 years, 1 month, 9 days; Linus 12 years, 4 months, 12 days; Clemens 9 years, 11 months, 12 days; Cletus 6 years, 2 months, 10 days; Anacletus 12 years, 10 months, 3 days: thus Anacletus, who in the earlier list comes before Clement, is replaced by two bishops, Cletus and Anacletus, who come after him; and this account is repeated in other derived catalogues. Irenaeus himself is not consistent in reckoning the Roman bishops. [ Cerdo.] The order, Peter, Linus, Clemens, is adopted by Augustine (Ep. 53 ad Generosum) and by Optatus of Milevis (de Schism. Donatist. ii. 2). Tertullian (de Praescrip. c. 32) states that the church of Rome held Clement to have been ordained by Peter; and Jerome (Cat. Scr. Ecc. 15), while adopting the order of Irenaeus, mentions that most Latins then counted Clement to have been second after Peter, and himself seems to adopt this reckoning in his commentary on Isaiah (c. 52). The Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 46) represent Linus to have been first ordained by Paul, and afterwards, on the death of Linus, Clement by Peter. Epiphanius (Haer. xxvii. 6) suggests that Linus and Cletus held office during the lifetime of Peter and Paul, who, on their necessary absence from Rome for apostolic journeys, commended the charge of the church to others. This solution is adopted by Rufinus in the preface to his translation of the Recognitions. Epiphanius has an alternative solution, founded on a conjecture which he tries to support by a reference to a passage in Clement's epistle, viz. that Clement, after having been ordained by Peter, withdrew from his office and did not resume it until after the death of Linus and Cletus. A more modern attempt to reconcile these accounts is Cave's hypothesis that Linus and after him Cletus had been appointed by Paul to preside over a Roman church of Gentile Christians; Clement by Peter over a church of Jewish believers, and that ultimately Clement was bishop over the whole Roman church. Still later it has been argued that the uncertainty of order may mean that during the 1st cent. there was no bishop in the church of Rome, and that the names of three of the leading presbyters have been handed down by some in one order, by others in another. The authorities, however, which differ from the account of Irenaeus, ultimately reduce themselves to two. Perhaps the parent of the rest is the letter of Clement to James [ Clementine Literature ] giving an account of Clement's ordination by Peter; for it seems to have been plainly the acceptance of this ordination as historical which inspired the desire to correct a list of bishops which placed Clement at a distance of three from Peter. The other authority is the Chronicle of Hippolytus, pub. A.D. 235 (see Chronicon Canisianum in D. C. B. 4-vol. ed., and the memoir of Mommsen there cited), for it has been satisfactorily shewn that the earlier part of the Liberian catalogue is derived from the list of Roman bishops in this work. The confusion of later writers arises from attempts to reconcile conflicting authorities, all of which seemed deserving of confidence: viz. (1) the list of Irenaeus, and probably of Hegesippus, giving merely a succession of Roman bishops; (2) the list of Hippolytus giving a succession in somewhat different order and also the years of the duration of the episcopates; and (3) the letter to James relating the ordination of Clement by Peter. The main question, then, is, which is more entitled to confidence, the order of Irenaeus or of Hippolytus? and we have no hesitation in accepting the former. First, because it is distinctly the more ancient; secondly, because if the earlier tradition had not placed the undistinguished name Cletus before the well-known Clement, no later writer would have reversed its order; thirdly, because of the testimony of the liturgy. Hippolytus being apparently the first scientific chronologer in the Roman church, his authority there naturally ranked very high, and his order of the succession seems to have been generally accepted in the West for a considerable time. Any commemoration, therefore, introduced into the liturgy after his time would have followed his order, Linus, Clemens, Cletus, or, if of very late introduction, would have left out the obscure name Cletus altogether. We conclude, then, that the commemoration in the order, Linus, Cletus, Clemens, had been introduced before the time of Hippolytus, and was by then so firmly established that even the contradictory result arrived at by Hippolytus (because he accepted as historically true the ordination of Clement by Peter as related in the Ep. to James) could not alter it. The Recognitions are cited by Origen, the contemporary of Hippolytus; and the account which their preface gives of Clement's
