40 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacyin terms that were clearly practically interchangeable: both terms clearly emphasize
different aspects of the same office. Like Irenaeus’s ἐπίσκοποι, Clement’s πρεσβύτεροι
and ἐπίσκοποι have an “established office [ἱδρυμένος τόπος]” but not held individually,
as in the case of Irenaeus, but rather exercised collectively.^23 The “strife [ἔρις] over the
name of the bishop’s office [ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς]” was over a name that they
bore generically.^24
How then does it come about that Clement is identified by name in connection
with the letter? Dionysius in his letter to Soter has already answered this question: the
letter was sent διὰ Κλήμεντος, either written through him as secretary of the Roman
community or of the Roman presbyterate, or carried by him as messenger.^25 Neither
“secretary” nor “messenger” would characterize the sole Episcopal office of either an
Irenaean bishop or of a later pope. But the term “secretary,” if not “foreign secretary,”
well describes the role that Clement exercises in Hermas.
Hermas too mentions “presbyters” and “bishops” but no one single bishop, and thus
in a document with dating possibilities between a.d. 110–140, we find corroborated
the collective presbyteral government within the Roman community to which Clem-
ent’s evidence has pointed. Regarding Clement’s actual office, Hermas is instructed at
one point to write down his vision in two identical books, one to Grapte to read out to
the widows and orphans, but one to Clement. Clement’s audience is to be an external
one: he is to send his book “to the cities outside, for to him has been entrusted [ἐκείνῳ
γὰρ ἐπιτέτραπται]” this ministry. Clement therefore is a kind of foreign secretary with
the specific function of communicating with external churches. He is not sole bishop
of Rome. Hermas is to read the contents of his vision: to this city accompanied by the
presbyters who preside over the church [μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τῶν προσταμένων τῆς
ἐκκλησίας].^26
When therefore Hegesippus, in Eusebius’s quotation, speaks of Primus as “exer-
cising episcopal office [Πρίμου έπισκοπεύοντος]” in Corinth,^27 it is highly improbable
that he was regarded as supreme teacher in the later, Irenaean sense. Each presiding
presbyter or bishop, together with Primus, could be described as ἐπισκοπεύων, as “exer-
cising episcopal office” generically. His letters, if he wrote any, like those of Clement,
can be ascribed to him as secretary of the Corinthian presbyterate. Or like Polycarp he
can simply be a prominent name among his fellow presbyters. Hegesippus originally
prefaced his claim to have “established a succession” with “remarks about the epistle of
Clement to the Corinthians,” though Eusebius has not recorded what his actual words
were.^28 But clearly his construction of a Roman succession list that Irenaeus takes over
was intrinsically bound up with the figure of Clement whose true office we have unrav-
elled from his actual surviving letter.
We do not know what was Hegesippus’s model in compiling such a list. But we do
know what was that of Irenaeus. Clearly for him the office of bishop is the counter-
part to the president of a philosophical school, like the diadochoi of Plato, Aristotle,
Stoics, and Epicureans. Here was the guarantee that the true faith was taught uncon-
taminated by other influences. Not only was there to be a congruence between the
“law, prophets and the Lord” proclaimed in every city and in every succession, but
there needed to be a specific person inheriting the office with the right to teach. This