St Clement I
Clement of Rome stands at the very headwaters of the papacy — the fourth pope in the ancient reckoning, after Peter, Linus, and Cletus. Tertullian records the Roman Church's memory that Clement was ordained by St Peter himself, and the Fathers from Origen to Jerome identified him with the 'Clement' whom St Paul names as his fellow-worker 'whose names are in the book of life' (Philippians 4:3). Whatever the precise links, he is an Apostolic Father in the fullest sense: a man who knew the apostles, and a living bridge between the age of the Twelve and the Church that followed. He is named to this day in the Roman Canon of the Mass, venerated at the altar among the first martyrs of Rome.
His monument is a letter. Around the year 96, while the Apostle John may still have been living at Ephesus, a faction at Corinth deposed its lawful presbyters, and the church of Rome wrote to set them right. The result — the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians — is among the oldest Christian writings outside the New Testament, and one of the most consequential. For here, at the close of the first century, is the church of Rome reaching across the sea to correct the internal affairs of another apostolic church, and doing so not with a suggestion but with command, expecting to be obeyed. And here, in plain words, is the doctrine of apostolic succession: that the apostles appointed bishops and deacons, and provided that when these died, 'other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.'
Of his death we have only a later tradition. By an account first attested in the fourth century, Clement was exiled to the Crimea under the Emperor Trajan and martyred by being cast into the sea bound to an anchor — which became his emblem ever after. His relics were said to have been recovered in the ninth century by St Cyril, apostle to the Slavs, and carried to Rome. The story is pious tradition rather than documented fact; but the Church keeps his memory as a martyr-pope, and his feast on 23 November.
To read Clement of Rome is to stand at the spring of the papacy, close enough to the Apostles to feel their breath. Here is a man who, by the Church's own memory, was ordained by Peter; who wrote while an Apostle may yet have been alive; and whose name is spoken at the altar in every traditional Mass to this day. When the modern critic asks whether the Roman primacy and the apostolic ministry were later inventions, the simplest answer is to hand him this letter and let him read it.
For what does Clement do? A church a thousand miles away has fallen into faction and cast out its lawful presbyters — and it is Rome that writes to set it right. Not Ephesus, where John is said still to have lived; not Antioch; not Jerusalem. Rome. And Rome does not plead; it commands: 'if any shall disobey the words spoken by Him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and serious danger.' The primacy that would be defined at Chalcedon and the Vatican Councils is already here in seed, acting before it is theorized.
And here, in words no later forger improved upon, is apostolic succession itself: the apostles, foreseeing strife over the episcopate, 'appointed those ministers' and 'gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.' The chain is drawn straight — God to Christ, Christ to the Apostles, the Apostles to the bishops, and onward by orderly succession to our own day. The Church does not reinvent her ministry in each generation; she receives it.
We keep the honest line between what is documented and what is dear. That Clement was ordained by Peter, that he is the Clement of Philippians, that he died lashed to an anchor in the Crimean sea — these are the Church's traditions, beautiful and old, but traditions. The bedrock is the letter, and the letter is enough. An Apostolic Father, a martyr in the Roman Canon, and a witness — from within living memory of the Twelve — that the Church Christ built on Peter was, from the very first, one, ordered, and obeyed from Rome.