Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/508

Rh 488 P P E D M East ; and that, even if his presence in Rome be admitted, his arrival there must have been long subsequent to that of his brother apostle, and his labours altogether subordi nate in importance, conclusions supported by the com plete silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles respecting both him and his work in the capital of the empire. On the other hand, it is urged that, as no known tradition assigns the martyrdom of Peter to any other place than Rome, every allusion to that event is implicitly an argu ment for his visit to the capital; and, generally speaking, it may be said that the most recent and authoritative research seems to point to the conclusion that he both visited Rome and taught there, but that his labours were carried on in a spirit of rivalry, not to say antagonism, to those of Paul, being bestowed exclusively on a Judaizing church, while those of his fellow-apostle were devoted to the Gentile community. Of the important feature which harmonizes perfectly with these conclusions namely, that the Church of Rome, attaching itself directly to the church at Jerusalem, became the depositary of a Jewish-Christian rather than of a Pauline tradition there can be no doubt whatever. The Jews The existence of a considerable poor Jewish element in at Home, R ome as early as the latter half of the 1st century is attested by numerous facts and allusions in the classical writers. The Jews were everywhere actively engaged in commercial pursuits, and formed an influential section in all great centres. Josephus tells us that, when on one occasion the Jews of Palestine presented a petition to the emperor Augustus, it was supported by no less than eight thousand of their countrymen resident in the capital. The chief quarters of this Jewish colony were in the Trastevere, about the base of the Janiculum ; and its members were distinguished by the fidelity with which they cherished their national customs and beliefs. Both Rome and the Jewish community in its midst must accordingly have appeared a field of primary importance in the work of evangelization ; and it is evident that the questions raised by the claims of Christianity would there be discussed with the greatest ardour, and the most strenuous endeavours be made to bring them to an ultimate issue. That such was really the case is suffi- Passage ciently proved by a well-known passage in Suetonius, who in Suet- relates that about the middle of the 1st century there ms. were cons t an t riots among the Jewish population, their ringleader being one &quot;Chrestus,&quot; and that Claudius in consequence expelled them from the city. There is no reason for supposing that this section of the community would be estranged to any great degree, by the pursuits and associations of their daily life, from those by whom they were surrounded. The influences that then pervaded alike the Roman literature, culture, and civilization were mainly Greek, and the Jewish element was no less affected by these influences than the Latin. Greek, again, was the ordinary medium of commercial intercourse throughout the Roman world, and the Jew was largely engaged in commerce. Greek therefore had, except in the Syrian provinces, become the language of his dairy life, as it had long been that of his sacred books read aloud in the synagogues, and of the annals of his race as recorded by the national writers. The importance of the passage above referred to in Suetonius, of which the very inaccuracy which it embodies is in itself highly significant, has perhaps hardly been .sufficiently recognized, for it not only records an important fact but it sheds light on subsequent history. It enables us to understand that, when the Jewish population was permitted to return to Rome, its members, whether adherents of the national faith or converts to the new, would, in common with the whole Christian community, feel the necessity of extreme caution lest their religious observances or their religious differences should again attract the notice of the Rofnan magistrate and expose them to fresh persecution. Of this character would appear to be the sentiments indicated in the epistle of Clemens Romanus (supposed by some to have been the same with the Clemens whose name is inserted as that of the third bishop of Rome) when he refers to the sudden and repeated &quot; calamities and adversities which are befalling us &quot; a passage generally interpreted as having reference to the persecution under Nero and the impending persecution under Domitian (Lightfoot, Append., p. 267). In such considerations as these we may fairly consider that we have a reasonable explanation of the fact that during the first two centuries of its existence we hear so little of the Christian church in Rome. With such considerations before us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that Greek was also the language of the early Christian church in Rome. In whatever propor tions, therefore, that church was composed of Christianized Jews or of Christianized pagans, its records would naturally be, as we find them to have been, in the Greek language. Hegesippus, &quot;the father of church history,&quot; makes a statement which is generally understood to imply that, being in Rome in the time of Anicetus (bishop 155 1 - 1 68 A.D.), he made a list of the bishops of the see. This list Earlie is not extant; but in Irenseus, who wrote his Adversus lists o Hxreses a few years later, we have another Greek list of Ko a twelve bishops, which shows the succession accepted at Rome in the time of Eleutherius, the contemporary of Irenaeus, and at the head of which stand the names of both Peter and Paul. To these lists are to be added two other Greek lists, the one in the Chronicon of Eusebius, the other in the Ecclesiastical History of the same writer. Of these, the former extends from Peter to Gaius (the last bishop before the Diocletian persecution), and gives the periods of office. It is derived from the Armenian translation, but is not contained in the version by Jerome. The first Latin list, the Catalogue Liberianus, supposed by Mommsen to have been derived from the Chronicon of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, and to have been in turn the original from which the Catalogus Felicianus (the oldest existing version of the Liber Pontificalis, see infra} was taken, is so called because it was compiled in the episcopate of Liberius, who succeeded 352 A.D. We have also two other Latin lists of some authority, in Augustine (Epist. 53; Migne, Patrol., xxxiii. 195) and in Optatus (De Schism. Don., ii. 3). It is undeniable that in all the foregoing lists there arc considerable discrepancies. The Liberian catalogue gives us a certain &quot; Cletus,&quot; as the immediate predecessor of Anacletus ; scholars like Mommsen and Lipsius are divided in opinion as to whether Anicetus was the pre decessor or the successor of Pius ; while, as regards the duration of each episcopate, there are equally important discrepancies. Bat difficulties like these cannot justly pre judice our acceptance of the general tradition with which they are associated ; they are rather to be looked upon as supplying valuable incidental evidence with respect to the status of the Roman episcopate ; and, while the lists themselves prove, on the one hand, that before the termina tion of the 3d century the office was held to be of such importance that its succession was a matter of interest to ecclesiastics living in distant sees, the variations that the lists present indicate not less clearly that the Roman bishopric at this period could not have held that position in relation to the church the parallel to that of the 1 For this date see article &quot; Pope&quot; in Smith s Diet, of Christian Antiquities, p. 1657.