Spurious / pseudonymous
3rd–4th c. · 4th c. · 2 works
The Clementine literature, or Pseudo-Clementines, is a body of early Christian writings falsely attributed to St Clement of Rome; modern scholars therefore speak of their author as Pseudo-Clement. The works are built around a romance in which the young Clement, seeking truth, travels east, becomes a disciple of the Apostle Peter, accompanies him on his missionary journeys, and is at last reunited with the family from which he had been separated. Around this narrative frame the texts hang long doctrinal discourses, most famously Peter's extended disputations against the heresiarch Simon Magus. The pseudonymous attribution lent these otherwise unofficial writings the prestige of an apostolic-age name.
The literature survives in two principal recensions. The Homilies comprise twenty books preserved in the original Greek, prefaced by an Epistle of Peter to James, an adjuration, and an Epistle of Clement. The Recognitions, ten books named for the family's mutual recognition at the romance's climax, have lost their Greek original and survive chiefly in the Latin translation made by Tyrannius Rufinus (died 410), as well as in part in Syriac. Large portions of the two run almost word for word in parallel, while other sections correspond in subject and treatment, pointing to a shared archetype.
It is now widely held that the Homilies and Recognitions are independent reworkings of a single lost source, longer than either, sometimes identified with the Circuits of Peter (Periodoi Petrou) attested by Origen and Epiphanius. That common original was probably Jewish-Christian in character and composed in Syria, with scholars placing the surviving recensions roughly in the third to fourth centuries (commonly the mid-fourth). The Homilies in particular preserve Judaist-Ebionite tendencies: they exalt a true-prophet Christology over a redeeming one, treat the Mosaic Law as enduring, and display hostility toward Paul, features that made the corpus a valued witness to early heterodox Jewish-Christian currents.
Distinct from this romance are the separate pseudo-Clementine epistles, also circulated under Clement's name. Best known are the two Epistles to Virgins (De virginitate), exhortations to celibate ascetic life that scholars associate with a Palestinian or Syrian milieu and that are unrelated in authorship to the Homilies and Recognitions. Like the romance, these letters are pseudonymous, and their attribution to Clement reflects the wider ancient practice of writing under a revered apostolic-era name rather than any genuine connection to the Roman bishop.
Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica — Clementine literature · Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent) — Clementines · Encyclopedia.com — Pseudo-Clementines