Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/311

 HERMAS

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HERMAS

twelve mandates, or commandments, and ten simili- tudes, or parables. It commences abruptly in the first person: "He who brought me up sold me to a certain Rhoda, who was at Rome. After many years I met her again, and began to love her as a sister. " As Hermas was on the road to Cuma>, he had a vision of Rhoda, who was presumaljly dead. She told him that she was his accuser in heaven, on account of an unchaste thought he had once had concerning her, though only in passing; he was to pray for forgiveness for himself and all his house. He is consoled by a vision of the Church in the form of an aged woman, weak and helpless from the sins of the faithful, who tells him to do penance and to correct the sins of his children. Subsequently he sees her made younger through penance, yet wrinkled and with white hair; then again, as quite young but still with white hair — this is the Church of the forgiven. Lastly, she shows herself all glorious as a Bride — this is the Church of the end of the days. In the second vision she gives Hermas a book, which she afterwards takes back in order to add to it. He is to give this writing to the presbyters, who will read it to the people; another copy is for " Grapte", who will communicate it to the widows; and a third is to be sent by Clement to the foreign Churches, "for this is his office". We see here the constitution of the Roman Church: the pres- byters set over different parishes; Grapte (no doubt a deaconess) who is connected with the widows; Clement, the pope, who is the organ of communica- tion with other Churches; indeed, the constant com- munication between Rome and the rest of the Church in the second century is well known to us from other sources. The fifth vision, which is represented as taking place twenty days after the fourth, introduces " the Angel of repentance" in the guise of a shepherd, from whom the whole work takes its name. He deliv- ers to Hermas a series of precepts (tniituldta, 4vTo\al) as to the belief in one God, simplicity, truthfulness, chastity, long-suffering, faith, fear, continence, con- fidence, cheerfulness, humility, good desires. These form an interesting development of early Christian ethics. The only point which needs special mention is the assertion of a husljand's obligation to take back an adulterous wife on her repentance. The eleventh mandate, on humility, is concerned with false prophets who desire to occupy the first seats (that is to say, among the presbyters). It is possible that we have here a reference to Marcion, who came to Rome about 142-4 and desired to be admitted among the priests (or possibly even to become pope). After the man- data come ten similitudes (irapa/SoXai) in the form of visions, which are explained by the angel. The long- est of these (ix) is an elaboration of the parable of the building of a tower, which had formed the matter of the third vision. The tower is the Church, and the stones of which it is built are the faithful. But in Vis. iii it looked as though only the holy are a part of the Church; in iSim. ix it is clearly pointed out that all the baptized are included, though they may be cast out for grave sins, and can be readmitted only after penance.

The whole book is thus concerned with the Chris- tian virtues and their exerci.se. It is an ethical, not a theological, work. The intention is above all to preach repentance. A single chance of restoration after fall is given to Christians, and this opportu- nity is spoken of as something new, which had never been clearly published before. The writer is pained by the sins of the faithful and is sincerely anxious for their conversion and return to good works. As a layman, Hermas avoids dogma, and, when inci- dentally it comes in, it is vague or incorrect. It has been thought with some rea.son that he did not dis- tinguish the Son from the Holy Ghost, or that he held that the Holy Ghost became the Son by His Incar- nation. But his words are not clear, and his ideas

on the subject may have been rather misty and con- fused than definitely erroneous.

Authorship and Date. — It is not easy to decide whether the writer has given us a genuine fragment of autobiography and a true account of visions which he saw or imagined that he saw, or whether the entire work is fictitious both in form and in setting. Three dates are suggested by the variety of evidence avail- able. The reference to St. Clement as pope would give the date 89-99 for at least the first two visions. On the other hand, if the writer is identified with the Hermas mentioned by St. Paul, an earlier date be- comes probable, unless he wrote as a very old man. But three ancient witnesses, one of whom claims to be contemporary, declare that he was the brother of Pope St. Pius I, who was not earlier than 140-55. These three are (a) the Muratorian fragment; (b) the Liberian catalogue of popes, in a portion which dates from 235 (Hippolytus?) ; (c) the poem of Pseudo- Tertullian against Marcion, of the third or fourth century, (a) "Pastorem uero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae ecclesise Pio episcopo fratre ejus. Et ideo legi eum quidem oportet, se publicare uero in ecclesia populo neque inter prophetas completos numero, neque inter apostolos in fine temporum, potest" — "And very recently, in our own times, in the city of Rome, Herma wrote the Pastor, when his brother Pius, the bishop, sat upon the chair of the Church of the city of Rome. And therefore that [book] ought to be perused, but it cannot be publicly read to the people assembled in church, neither among the Prophets, whose number is complete, nor among the Apostles [who came] in the end of times." (b) "Sub hujus [Pii] episcopatu frater ejus Ermes librum scripsit, in quo mandatum continetur quiK [quod] prse- cepit ei angelus, cum venit ad ilium in habitu Pastoris" — "Under his [Pius's] episcopate, his brother Ermes wrote a book in which are contained the precepts which the angel delivered to him, coming to him in theguiseof a shepherd." (c) "Post hunc deinde Pius, Hermas cui germine frater, angelicus Pastor, quia tradita verba locutus." — "Then, after him, Pius, whose brother according to the flesh was Hermas, the angelic shepherd, because he spoke the words given to him." The three authorities are probably citing the same papal catalogue (of Hegesippus?). As (c) quotes some details from this list which are absent from (b), it would seem that he is independent of (b). (a) has added the inference that the "Pastor" may be read publicly, provided it be not numbered among the fourteen prophets, nor among the Apostolic writings. The statement that Hermas wrote during his brother's pontificate may similarly be an inference from the fact that it was in a list of popes, against the name of Pius, that the writer found the information that Her- mas was that pope's brother. He may have been an elder brother of the pope, who was probably an old man in 140. Hence it is quite possible that Hermas might have been past thirty when Clement died, at the time of his first and second visions. But because this is possible, it does not follow that it is very prob- able.

Older critics unanimously attributed the author- ship to the Hermas of Rom., xvi, 14 — Bellarmine, Cave, Le Nourry, Remi Ceillier, Lardner, etc., with Baronius, who strangely thought the same Hermas might have been brother to Pius I. In the middle of the eighteenth century Mosheim and Schrock preferred the testimony of the Muratorian Canon, which was published in 1740; but Gallandi and Lumper adhered to the earlier view. Zahn, in an early work (1S6S), stood by the reference to St. Clement and imagined a Hermas, neither known to St. Paul nor brother to St. Pius, but writing in the last decade of the first century. He was followed by Peters and Caspari. But Hefele had been teaching that we cannot refuse the contem-