Clementi

“ CLEMENTINE LITERATURE, the name generally given to the writings which at one time or another were fathered upon Pope Clement I. (q.v.) , commonly called Clemens Romanus, who was early regarded as a disciple of St Peter. Thus they are for the most part a species of the larger pseudo-Petrine genus. Chief among them are: (1) The so-called Second Epistle; (2) two Epistles on Virginity; (3) the Homilies and Recognitions; (4) the Apostolical Constitutions (q.v.) ; and (5) five epistles forming part of the Forged Decretals (see Decretals) . ”

“ It has been needful to cite so much of the evidence proving that our Homilies and Recognitions are both recensions of a common basis, at first known as the Circuits of Peter and later by titles connecting it rather with Clement, its ostensible author, because it affords data also for the historical problems touching (a) the contents and origin of the primary Clementine work, and (b) the conditions under which our extant recensions of it arose. ”

“ Place and Time of Composition of the Clementine Writings.—The use made of the name of Clement had caused Rome to be accepted as the place of composition by the majority of critics, but the opposite arguments urged by Uhlhorn appear conclusive, and to, at least, the original document an Eastern origin must be assigned. Hippolytus mentions the arrival in Rome of an Elkesaite teacher c. A.D. 220, whose doctrines would seem to have been then quite novel at Rome, and not to have taken root there. ”

“ "It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina with a touch of indignation.
"Softly, my lady, lest, without knowing it, your love should make you sin. Who set thee, I pray, for a guardian angel over my welfare? I could scarce have a lovelier, true; but where is thy brevet? No. my lady: it is a greater than thou that sets me the bounds of my habitation. Perhaps He may give me a palace one day. ”

“ Others think that both books are expansions of another work which formed the basis. And others maintain that the one book is a rifacimento of the other by a different hand. Of this third party, some, like Cave, Whiston, Rosenmüller, Staüdlin, Hilgenfeld, and many others, believe that the Recognitions was the earliest [2] of the two forms: while others, as Clericus, Möhler, Lücke, Schliemann, and Uhlhorn, give priority to the Clementines. ”

“ Thus Eusebius implies (1) a spurious Clementine work containing matter found also in our Homilies at any rate; and (2) its quite recent origin. Next we note that an extract in the Philocalia is introduced as follows: “Yea, and Clement the Roman, a disciple of Peter the Apostle, after using words in harmony with these on the present problem, in conversation with his father at Laodicea in the Circuits, speaks a very necessary word for the end of arguments touching this matter, viz. ”

“ She was promised in marriage to a young lieutenant of the province, who was killed fighting against the protestants in Dauphiny, 1561. Clementia died of grief at the end of the next year, in the flower of her age. She was celebrated by the best writers of the time. Her poetry is esteemed elegant and correct, her measure smooth and harmonious. ”

“ Sandale per Clementina, sandale per Clementin'.
Clementina, Clementina, Cle-e-me-en-ti-na.
Herring boxes senza topses sandale per Clementina,
Herring boxes senza topses sandale per Clementina,
Che sciagura, Clementina, Che sciagura, Clementina,
Cara Clementina, cara Clementina-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.
(Bop)
Drove those ducklings to the water --- yep-roc!
Every morning, nine o'clock sharp -- oop-bop! -- beedle-ee-ah!
Stubbed her toe upon a splinter,
Stubbed her toe upon a splinter -- kloo-ga-mop! -- ooh -ooh!
Fell into the foamy brine,
Dig that crazy Clementine! Man! ”

“ It came to pass, no one knows how, that nothing done by little Clementine escaped the notice of My Lord Rector, for his eyes followed her always. When he lectured, he lectured to Clementine; whether he said words of Latin or of the vulgar tongue, he spoke them to her eyes; and he was ashamed of the learned nonsense he was speaking when he gazed on Clementine. Sleeping, he saw her walking so-and-so under the shadow of Gothic arch with leaf shadows on her face, and he dreamed of taking the parchment from her white fingers and—But here he always woke, though he tried [pg 158] to dream farther. ”

“ I saw him—the sentry—he is climbing up. Ah!" and again her voice rose to a cry as Wogan's foot grated on the window-ledge.
"Hush, mother! A cry will ruin us. It's not the sentinel," said Clementina.
[pg 179]
Clementina was laughing, and by her laughter the Princess-mother was in some measure reassured.
"Who is it, then?" she asked.
"Can you not guess?" said Clementina, incredulously. "It is so evident. Yet I would not have you guess. It is my secret, my discovery. I'll tell you." She heard a man behind the curtain spring lightly from the window to the floor. ”

“ Perhaps, my son, you will go up and see if Miss Bird is right.”
“My son” objected to being made a messenger of. “If the old fellar wanted to sleep, let him sleep. Don't you say so, Clem?”
Clementina always agreed with her brother; the two prevailed, and the “old fellar” was left to sleep, or toss and moan, or be consumed with fever and thirst, or otherwise entertain himself as he or fate should choose, while the family breakfasted at their leisure.
It is scarcely worth while to put Clementina and Arthur Clay in print. ”

“ Baur has treated of the Clementines in several works: the section in Die christliche Gnosis, pp. 300‒414, may especially be mentioned. Ritschl, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, enters more largely into the subject of the Clementines in his first ed. See also Lipsius, Quellenkritik des Epiphanios and Die Quellen der Römischen Petrussage, and an interesting review by Lipsius of Lehmann's work in the Protestantische Kirchenzeitung (1869) , pp. 477‒482. Cf. Lightfoot's Clement of Rome, part i. pp. 99 ff. and 406 ff.; and Harnack, Gesch. der Alt.-Ch. Lit. p. ”

“ Clementina (turns and ducks her head and shoulders: a rude imitation of a curtsy) : O, 'scuse me Miss' Em'line. I was jes' plum' crazy ovah dat fife. Golly, but dat's fine!
Mrs. Mortimer: You can play as well as a man, Clementina: come here. (Mrs. Mortimer takes Clementina's hand and leads her to Lincoln's picture.) Do you know who this is?
Clementina (looking very serious) : Suah I duz, Miss' Em'line; dis heah (lays her hand on picture) is de good Massa Linkum what said to all de people eve'ywha's, up in the Norf 'n' down in de Souf, dat dere shouldn't nevah no moah be any slaves anywha's. ”

“ “But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?” asked Clementina.
“Not very hard, my lady. Sometimes I wake up to find that I have been in an evil mood and forgetting him, and then life is hard until I get near him again. But it is not my work that makes me forget him. When I go a-fishing, I go to catch God’s fish; when I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of God’s wild creatures; when I read the Bible or Shakspere, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after its kind. ”

“ “I would I were in the kingdom of heaven, if it be such as you and Mr Graham take it for,” said Clementina.
“You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn’t wish it to be such as it is.”
“Can one then be in it, and yet seem to be out of it, Malcolm?”
“So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way with some.” ”

“ It is impossible that a person should fill an office of importance in the church in Rome, at the end of the first century, without leaving some tangible evidence that he had once an existence; but Clement, like a shadow, passes over the earth, without a single mark of any kind to prove he ever lived. There is a dispute, as to when and how he died. Some say he was banished into the Crimea by Trajan, and there suffered martyrdom by drowning. ”

“ Clement in that place, but after several years, at the request of the Prior at Thabor, he dwelt for a time with the Brothers of that House, and in the same year many died in the pestilence, amongst whom he also fell asleep in the Lord, and was buried with the other Brothers in that place on the eastern side of the cloister. This was his motto for the novices: “He that doth not accustom himself to exercises of humility at the beginning of his conversion, and doth not break down his own will, shall seldom become a good Religious.” ”

“ No pope has been the subject of more diverse judgments than Clement XIV. Zealous defenders credit him with all virtues, and bless him as the instrument divinely ordained to restore the peace of the Church; virulent detractors charge him with ingratitude, cowardice and double-dealing. The truth is at neither extreme. Clement’s was a deeply religious and poetical nature, animated by a lofty and refined spirit. ”

“ Though free from the grosser vices of his predecessors, a man of taste, and economical without being avaricious, Clement VII. was essentially a man of narrow outlook and interests. He failed to understand the great spiritual movement which was convulsing the Church; and instead of bending his mind to the problem of the Reformation, he from the first subordinated the cause of Catholicism and of the world to his interests as an Italian prince and a Medici. ”

“ Who is the rich man that shall be saved? (τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος) is the title of a practical treatise, in which Clement shows, in opposition to those who interpreted our Lord's words to the young ruler as requiring the renunciation of worldly goods, that the disposition of the soul is the great essential. Of other numerous works of Clement, of which only a few stray fragments have been preserved, the chief are the eight books of The Hypotyposes, which consisted of expositions of all the books of Scripture. ”

“ Clement, who had followed Tatian to the East, tracks Pantænus to Egypt, and comes with his Attic scholarship to be his pupil in the school of Christ. After Justin and Irenæus, he is to be reckoned the founder of Christian literature; and it is noteworthy how sublimely he begins to treat Paganism as a creed outworn, to be dismissed with contempt, rather than seriously wrestled with any longer.
His merciless exposure of the entire system of “lords many and gods many,” seems to us, indeed, unnecessarily offensive. ”

“ The real difficulty attaches not to the Second Person, but to the First. The Father in Clement’s mind becomes the Absolute of the philosophers, that is to say, not the Father at all, but the Monad, a mere point devoid of all attributes. He believed in a personal Son of God who was the Reason and Wisdom of God ”

“ Sir Clement is conscious he has acted dishonourably; yet the same unbridled vehemence, which urged him to gratify a blameable curiosity, will sooner prompt him to risk his life, than, confess his misconduct. The rudeness of his manner of writing to me, springs, from the same cause: the proof which he has received of my indifference to him, has stung him to the soul, and he has neither the delicacy nor forbearance to disguise his displeasure. I determined not to show this letter to Lord Orville, and thought it most prudent to let Sir Clement know I should not. ”

“ But I do not think, my dear Clement, that any one who possesses ever so little love to God and ingenuousness, will be able to take in, or even to hear, the things that are spoken against Him. For how is it that he can have a monarchic [1] soul, and be holy, who supposes that there are many gods, and not one only? ”

“ Clement only laughed at the petty reduction. "Oh yes! I see you save a few pounds."—"Few! more than twenty, Clement, in the year!"—"Well! and what is that? A mere trifle towards two hundred."—"Yet something towards it."—"Yes; but nothing to what my ticket may bring me."—"May bring. Of my money I am assured."—"Well, well, [Pg 167] my good fellow! follow your own plan; I shall follow mine. We both aim at the same point, and we shall see who attains it."—"But, my dear Clement—"—"Now, Paul, don't begin preaching. I am as old and as fit as you to govern myself. ”

“ He came to Rome (February, 1524) , and accompanied by a servant and an interpreter, rode on a white horse to the Vatican, and requested an interview with Cardinal Giulio, in the presence of other cardinals. Pope Clement also gave him audience, and accepted his credentials.
Clement VII (1523–1534) , one of the most excellent popes, an illegitimate scion of the Florentine Medicis, was sensible and kind, and earnestly desired to see Italy freed from the barbarians, that is, the Germans. But he reigned at a time when Europe had lost its balance. ”

“ For some ask, Since Linus and Cletus were bishops in the city of Rome before this Clement, how could Clement himself, writing to James, say that the chair of teaching was handed over to him by Peter? [5] Now of this we have heard this explanation, that Linus and Cletus were indeed bishops in the city of Rome before Clement, but during the lifetime of Peter: that is, that they undertook the care of the episcopate, and that he fulfilled the office of apostleship ”

“ He who observes faith with none cannot expect that faith will be observed with him. He who takes the sword must accept what the sword brings. And although an honourable motive, the desire to liberate Italy, and a natural motive, the desire to preserve the real independence of Florence and the papal power, may have partly influenced his actions, it is impossible to acquit Clement of a desire for personal and pontifical aggrandisement, while in the use of means for the accomplishment of these ends he showed neither rectitude, nor practical wisdom. ”