had even passed out of memory that 'bishop' and 'presbyter' were interchangeable titles in St. Paul's days.1

reports

There is thus no ground for doubting the existence but Jerome of an episcopal succession at Alexandria in the middle of the second century. But we have it on Jerome's evidence that this succession had some peculiarity. He is writing in a state of great indignation with the arrogance of deacons in the church of Rome.

Clement's position on many points is somewhat hard to define. His line of thought is not one which, like that of Irenaeus, leads him to speak much about the ministry. At the same time there is an intellectualism in his whole conception of religion, a recognition of a 'priesthood of knowledge' (for reffs. see Bigg B. L. p. 101 [ed. 2 pp. 134, 135]), which represents an opposite tendency to the 'priesthood of enthusiasm among the Montanists. This, we must acknowledge-whatever fascination Clement's gentle, pious, generous spirit has for us-had in it dangerous elements of Gnosticism, and led him even to shrink from attributing to our Lord real human feelings, a real flesh and blood like ours (Bigg B. L. pp. 93, 71 n.5 [ed. 2 pp. 126, 102 n.2}); it makes him in a measure depreciate mere faith, and desire to create 'a Church within a Church,' a Church of the spiritually enlightened (Bigg p. 85 f. [ed. 2 p. 117]). Thus it may have tended to make him depreciate the ministry which comes of ordination by comparison with the priesthood of knowledge, but there is no evidence of this. His point of view is not at all unecclesiastical. Christianity is not by any means to him a mere idea or philosophy; it is embodied in a visible society. Nor in the passage quoted is there anything to lead us to suppose that he shrank from recognising the necessity for orders in the Church, or their exclusive rights, any more than he shrank from recognising the exclusive prerogative of the Church. Dr. Bigg says no more than is true when he says: 'It is important to add . . . that Clement lays great stress upon the observance of the existing church discipline, the regular use of all the ordinary means of grace' (pp. 96, 97 [ed. 2 p. 130]). He very likely, however, did not recognise fully that the unworthiness of the minister hinders not the grace of the sacraments,' and he speaks of baptism administered by heretics as ovr oikciov kai yvńσlov vdwp (Strom. i. 19. 96). On this, and on his not using sacerdotal language of the ministry, see below pp. 176 f., 180 f.

Paed. iii. 12. 97: there are an infinite number of suggestions in the sacred books directed to select persons, some to presbyters, some to bishops and deacons, others to widows.'

a We should have some additional reason to believe that the episcopate was recognised at Alexandria as distinct from the presbyterate very early in the century, if the letter in which the emperor Hadrian, who visited Alexandria in A.D. 130, gives an account of his visit in writing to the consul Servianus could be accepted as genuine. Amidst the motley crowd of the devotees of all sorts of religions and superstitions, whose fickle inconsistency, as it appeared in his eyes, half amused and half disgusted him, he recognises the bishops of Christ' as distinct figures from the Christian presbyters. His words are as follows: 'Illic qui Serapim colunt Christiani sunt, et devoti sunt Serapi qui Christi se episcopos dicunt. Nemo illic archisynagogus ludaeorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes. Ipse ille patriarcha, cum Aegyptum venerit, ab aliis Serapidem adorare, ab aliis cogitur Christum.' The 'patriarcha ' is (no doubt) the Jewish patriarch. Lightfoot (Dissertation p. 225, Ignatius i. 464) accepts the letter as genuine: Mommsen Provinces of the Roman Empire E.T. ij. 256 n. decisively rejects it.

⚫ Ep. cxlvi. ad Evangelum.

that down to A.D. 233-265

the bishops stituted by

were con

mere

election.

Evidence cited in support of Jerome's

statement:

He (like other patristic writers of his time) wishes to emphasize, as a corrective to their self-assertion, the especial dignity of that priesthood which, with some highly important differences of function, presbyter and bishop share in common. His view will be considered later, but he illustrates it by a practice which he attributes to the church of Alexandria in earlier days, and with this illustration we are now concerned. Jerome then asserts that 'from the days of St. Mark the Evangelist down to the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters at Alexandria used always to appoint as bishop one chosen out of their number and placed upon the higher grade, just as if an army were to make the general, or deacons were to choose one of themselves whose diligence they knew and call him archdeacon. For what' (he asks) 'except ordination does a bishop do which a presbyter does not ?' The language of this statement is ambiguous, but Jerome seems to mean, as he was certainly understood to mean by later Latin writers, that there was no fresh consecration or ordination required in earlier days at Alexandria to make a presbyter bishop, but that he became bishop simply in virtue of his election by the other presbyters. There would thus have been a substantial identity between the two orders.

Now what other evidence is there in support of this statement of Jerome's? Jerome's influence was so great on the writers of the Carolingian age that they incorporated his assertions into their own. treatises on church offices without hesitation, but their agreement with him of course does not add any weight. Five witnesses, however, who may be reasonably supposed to have been independent of Jerome, have been adduced as bearing testimony

'The Latin is quoted in App. Note B, where there is some further discussion of the matter.

* See references in App. Note B, p. 315.

either in general to an original right of presbyters in Egypt to ordain, or to a particular right of the presbyters at Alexandria to appoint and consecrate their patriarch. Of these the two who are thought to point to the survival in Egypt of sporadic indications of the presbyter's right to ordain may be dismissed very shortly: in one case the reference is to confirmation not ordination, in the other case the ordaining presbyter claimed to be a bishop.

1

aster,

1. Lightfoot quotes Ambrosiaster, the elder con- 1. Ambrositemporary of Jerome, as saying in his Commentary c. 375 A.D. on the Pauline Epistles (Eph. iv. 12) that 'in Egypt the presbyters seal (i.e. ordain or consecrate) if the bishop be not present'; and the only point he himself raises is whether the reference is 'to the ordination of presbyters and not to the consecration of a bishop.' In a note he cites the Latin of the parallel passage in the same author's Questions on the Old and New Testament (ci. 5), 'Nam in Alexandria et per totam Aegyptum, si desit episcopus consecrat (v.l. consignat) presbyter.' It would seem as though the two words consecrare and consignare are treated as synonyms, both of them meaning 'to ordain,' whereas in fact it is doubtful if consecrare without further definition would mean " consecrate' in the sense of ' ordain,' and certain that consignare can mean nothing but 'confirm.' And consecrare has no sort of claim to be considered the true reading: it is not even mentioned in the apparatus to the critical text of the Quaestiones.2 What then Ambrosiaster tells us that the presbyters did in Egypt, in the bishop's absence, was to confirm. Even so he does not suggest that a presbyter could consecrate the chrism.3

1 Dissertation p. 231.

Vol. 50 of the Vienna Corpus of Latin Church writers; edited by Prof. A. Souter of Aberdeen.

• Didymus, who lived and taught at Alexandria, and was Jerome's own teacher, says quite absolutely : ἐπίσκοπος μόνος τῇ ἄνωθεν χάριτι τελεῖ τὸ χρίσμα (de Trin. ii. 15).

2. The case

2. At some point not many years before the of lachyras. council of Nicaea 'one Ischyras was deprived of his orders because he had been ordained by a presbyter only':1 and it has been suggested that the mere fact of such an ordination having occurred is a sign that the older traditions of the substantial identity of the bishop and the presbyter still survived in the byways of the Egyptian Church. But Athanasius' language, or rather the language he quotes from official letters of the years 335-340 A.D., does not countenance this. 'How then is Ischyras a presbyter? Who appointed him? Colluthus, was it not? This is the only plea left. But that Colluthus died a presbyter, and that his every ordination is invalid, and that all who were appointed by him in the schism have come out laymen and communicate on those terms, is plain and nobody doubts it.' 'Ischyras was ordained by the presbyter Colluthus, who imagined himself to be a bishop and who was later on readmitted by the synod under Hosius to his original grade of presbyter.' In fact there is not the least reason to suppose that Colluthus claimed to ordain as a presbyter: on the contrary he claimed to ordain as a bishop, but as he had only been a presbyter in the Church, and was made a bishop, and performed ordinations as a bishop, 'in the schism,' he himself when reconciled to the Church was treated as what

3

Lightfoot Dissertation p. 232 n.'.

* Athan. Apol. c. Ar. 11, 12 (quoting from a synodical letter of Egyptian bishops, A.D. 339 or 940) : οὗτος δέ ἐστιν ὁ πολυθρύλλητος Ισχύρας, ὁ μήτε ὑπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας χειροτονηθεὶς καί, ὅτε τοὺς ὑπὸ Μελετίου κατασταθέντας πρεσβυτέρους ̓Αλέξανδρος ἐδέχετο, μηδὲ ἐκείνοις συναριθμηθείς· οὕτως οὐδὲ ἐκεῖθεν κατεστάθη· πόθεν οὖν πρεσβύτερος Ισχύρας; τίνος καταστήσαντος; ἆρα Κολλούθου; τοῦτο γὰρ λοιπόν. ἀλλ' ὅτι Κόλλουθος πρεσβύτερος ὢν ἐτελεύτησε, καὶ πᾶσα χεὶρ αὐτοῦ γέγονεν άκυρος καὶ πάντες οἱ παρ' αὐτοῦ κατασταθέντες ἐν τῷ σχίσματι λαϊκοὶ γεγόνασι καὶ οὕτω συνάγονται, δῆλον, καὶ οὐδενὶ καθέστηκεν ἀμφίβολον. Cf. ib. 74 (Letter of Mareotic clergy, A.D. 335, to council of Tyre): Ισχύρας οὐδέποτε λειτουργὸς τῆς ἐκκλησίας γέγονεν . ἐκπεσὼν καὶ τῆς ψευδοῦς ὑπονοίας τοῦ πρεσβυτερίου.

See Apol. c. Ar. c. 76 (quoting Letter of Mareotic clergy, A.D. 335, to civil authorities): ὑπὸ γὰρ Κολλούθου τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου φαντασθέντος ἐπισκοπήν, καὶ ὕστερον ὑπὸ κοινῆς συνόδου Οσίου καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ ἐπισκόπων κελευσθέντος πρεσβυτέρου εἶναι, καθὸ καὶ πρότερον ἦν, κατεστάθη,

he was before his schism, namely a presbyter, and similarly those whom he had ordained were treated on reconciliation as what they had been before the schism, namely laymen. Everything that was done in schism was null and void: we have only to remember how strongly the current of feeling ran in early times against allowing any validity whatever to orders conferred and received outside the Church, and the whole matter becomes as simple as possible. No other interpretation really squares with the testimony of the documents.

see App. B.)

In regard then to any general right to ordain residing in Egyptian presbyters, the evidence comes to nothing at all: there is more substance in the witnesses who seem to confirm Jerome in the particular matter of the appointment of the Alexandrian patriarch, and to these we must now turn. One of (Eutychius them, the Arabic-speaking patriarch Eutychius, was cited as long ago as by Selden: but Eutychius' date is so remote from the times of which he treatshe wrote in the middle of the tenth century—that, as we have no means of controlling his story by knowledge of his sources, it seems best to cite and examine him at length in an appendix.1 The other two pieces of evidence have been brought to light since the first edition of this book was published: they are drawn respectively from the sayings of the Fathers of the desert and from the correspondence of the great Monophysite writer Severus.

and his

3. The Apophthegmata, or table-talk' as we may 3. Poemen put it, of the Egyptian Fathers are made up in large visitors, part of early and trustworthy traditions, and there is every reason to accept as genuine the saying 2 told

App. Note B, p. 315 ff.

• Disinterred from the collections of Apophthegms by abbot Butler in his edition of the Lausiac History of Palladius (Texts and Studies vi. part 1 [Cambridge 1898] p. 213).

C. 370 A.D.