You are on page 1of 17

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS: A FRENCH EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SIGHTING I IN the early Spring of 1779 a young French nobleman pulled up his

camel outside the ancient monastery of Anba Makar, just off the main route between Alexandria and Cairo. He had in his pocket a letter of introduction from the Pacha, but the thirty-foot walls and the total absence of gates seemed to make a ready welcome unlikely. Louis de Launay, comte d'Antraigues, had left France on 11 June 1778 on board His Majesty's Ship Caton, accompanying his uncle, the comte de Saint-Priest, French ambassador at the Sublime Porte. He began to record his journey in the minutest detail, in memoirs and letters, which ultimately found their way into the Municipal Library at Dijon.1 Little seemed to escape the attention of this alert and enquiring travellerarchaeology, history, geography, political systems, social customs, religious practices. His strong reactions to the injustices of despotism which he encountered on his journey (Turkey, Egypt, Wallachia, Bessarabia, Poland, Austria) firmed up his political position, which helped him to become a formidable revolutionary pamphleteer by 1789. And his attention to detail was a good preparation for the work he was to do, from 1791 until his murder in Barnes Terrace, near London, in 1812, during which period he was the central figure in the counterrevolutionary espionage network in Europe. From the foot of the wall of the monastery, which he calls St. Macaire, he managed to attract the attention of one of the monks; the letter of introduction was hoisted aloft on a rope and after some delay the head of house showed himself and invited d'Antraigues and his party in. 'In' meant 'up': a chair was lowered in which he, his drogman, and two companions were hauled up over the wall; the
1 The Mtmoires sur la Turquie consist of 855 folio pages written in d'Antraigues' almost indecipherable hand. They are in the form of a long political introduction, followed by (copies of?) letters addressed to Princess Ghika of Moldavia, residing in Constantinople. They were written on the voyage (1778-9) and corrected at La Bastide, d'Antraigues' chateau in the Vivarais, between 1783 and 1785. Despite the title, they cover, in fact, his journey from Toulon via Misitra, Antiparos, Mount Athos ('crawling with Greek monks, the seat of stupidity and superstition'), the Dardanelles, Constantinople (where the plague was raging as usual), Egypt, Lesbos, Rhodes, Ephesus, Bulgaria, Bessarabia, Poland, Austria, and Strasbourg, home again to La Bastide. The manuscript is kept in the Fonds d'Antraigues at the Bibliotheque de Dijon (d'Antraigues' son, Jules, returned to live in Dijon after the Restoration): Mss. 1534-5-6.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

[Journal ofTheoloficml StucHe*. N.S., Vol. 36, PL 1, April 19S3.]

68

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

Arab guide and drivers, having been paid in advance, were left to camp outside the walls. On the second day, he and his dragoman spent eight hours in the library going through ancient manuscripts. His findings filled him with delight. Not only the authors represented, but the details of the development of handwriting and orthography, the effect of time on different inks, the art of dating manuscripts, all fascinated him. The source of his information on these erudite matters (hardly the stock-in-trade of a rather wild ex-officer and man-about-court) will be referred to shortly. He had done sufficient homework beforehand to be able to recognize a truly remarkable find: a seventhcentury manuscript of the Hypotyposeis (Outlines) of Clement of Alexandria, the second-century Christian apologist and reputed master of Origen. He was aware that the work had always been considered as lost, known only by fragments quoted by Eusebius. Eusebius describes them as summaries, interpretations, and narratives of all canonical scripture. 2 But what d'Antraigues saw was quite different: 208 large folio pages of the work, . . . ecrites en lettres capitales dans le VII e siecle avec des notes a la marge d'un autre caractere. He goes on to note details of the author and his work: Ce Clement d'Alexandrie vecut dans le second siecle de l'Eglise et fut catechiste et pretre d'Alexandrie. II ecrivit plusieurs ouvrages, quelquesuns se sont conserves mais celui qu'on nomme Hypotiposes etait perdu. On nomme Hypotiposes les descriptions d'objets quelconques peintes avec tant de chaleur, peintes avec une si vive energie qu'il semble au lecteur que les scenes qu'on lui trace se passent sous ses yeux au moment qu'il en lit le recit. Je ne sais si Clement avait atteint le but qu'il se proposait sans doute en donnant ce titre a son ouvrage. Les Hypotiposes de St. Clement sont rassemblees dans un grand volume in folio de parchemin couvert en bois et garni de plaques de losanges. II contient 208 feuilles. D'Antraigues saw a number of other manuscripts which he recognized as valuablea third-century Polybius, a complete Diodorus of Sicily dating from the third century, and a seventhcentury Pausaniasand offered to buy them for a handsome price. But these impoverished monks refused, because they knew the French were addicted to magic, and these books were 'grammars of this diabolical art'. They would rather burn the library down, they maintained, than let them fall into the hands of a Frenchman. Nevertheless, the simple virtues of these ignorant monks left a profound impression on him; to have robbed them of a book would * See discussion in section III below.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

69

have been a cruel abuse of hospitality which men of letters might commit, but he was not such a 'vil escroc' as that. Let us look a little more closely at d'Antraigues' claims, and his ability to identify his finds. In the first place, there is some discrepancy in accounts of his classical language competence. His biographer, Leonce Pingaud, writes that when he completed his studies at the College d'Harcourt in Paris, he 's'y impregna, comme tous ses contemporains, des enseignements de l'antiquite grecque et romaine'. 3 One would indeed have considered this normal for the period, and yet d'Antraigues himself states in his unpublished memoirs of his journey to the Levant that 'ne sachant pas le grec', he depended on his dragoman, Adanson, or Adamson, to translate the parchment scrolls and books for him. How, then, could he have spotted such a rare and valuable manuscript in a monastery library full of such items? The fact is that his preparation for the journey had been rather more studious than one would have suspected, and he had been alerted to the Hypotyposeis as a work of extreme rarity worthy of acquisition. Buried within the 700-odd manuscript pages of his memoirs on the Levant lie six pages, written in another hand, recto and verso, entitled Recherches a faire dans le voyage de Constantinople. It is a guide to acquisitions, intended for travellers to the Levant who are not connoisseurs. It is divided into five sections: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Marbres, Bronzes et medailles antiques; Manuscrits Grecs tant Ecclesiastiques que prophanes; Manuscrits de l'Ecriture Sainte; Historiens Prophanes; Geographies.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

The document is anonymous, but there is a clue to authorship: II faut d'abord s'exercer a connoitre l'age des manuscrits en Lisant attentivement la Paleographie Greque [sic] que j'imprimai in fol. en 1708. It was Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, the great Benedictine erudit, originator of the science of palaeography, who published Paleographie grecque in 1708. The style of the Recherches a faire . . . is very similar to that of his L'Antiquite expliquee* (forthright, clear, slightly self-righteous, and pompous), but the aim is quite different. In L'Antiquite expliquee Montfaucon is concerned with what has been discovered and recorded. In the Recherches a faire... he treats discoveries that still remain to be made. In the preface to the
* Pingaud, Vn Agent secret sous la Rivolution et VEmpire (Paris, 1893-4), PP- 13-144 Paris, 1716; Antiquity explained^...] tr. D. Humphries (5 vols., London, 1721-2 and Supplement, 1725).

70

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

Supplement to the Antiquiti he does mention the 'principal Stores from which I compiled this Supplement', saying 'the Levant and Egypt give several', and stressing the need to publish only 'what is Curious and New . . . avoiding multiplying and swelling out volumes with needless Repetitions' (p. i). This indicates that the emphasis on new discoveries which characterizes the Recherch.es afaire . . . is entirely consonant with Montfaucon's impatience with the practice of acquiring and recording items already known to antiquarians. There is, in this work, no mention of Clement's lost work, or of other major items to which the Recherches afaire . . . draw attention as possible acquisitions. However, in the Recherches afaire . . . Clement does figure:
De Clement Alexandrin Le Protreptique et le Pedagogue se trouvent assez souvent dans nos Bibliotheques. Des Stromates il n'y a qu'un manuscrit qui est a Florence dans la bibliotheque de St. Laurent. Les premieres feuilles y manquent et de la vient que ce meme defaut se trouve dans toutes les editions. Un manuscrit bien entier de cet ouvrage serait fort precieux. On a perdu de Clement Alexandrin ses Hypotyposes. Si Ton en trouvait quelque manuscrit dans le Levant, ce serait un tresor.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

It is clearly this reference which alerted d'Antraigues to the value and rarity of the manuscript in the monastery of St. Macaire. He had taken in the advice offered by the great French scholar, just as he had benefited from a reading of the Paliographie grecque in order to explain to his reader (Princess Ghika) some of the intricacies of ancient manuscripts, identification of inks, and writing styles. What is not clear is what this handwritten copy of the Recherches a faire . . . is doing in d'Antraigues' own manuscript. They had appeared posthumously, just after Montfaucon's death and eleven years before d'Antraigues' birth, in the Mercure de France of January 1742, under a different title: Memoire pour servir a"instruction a ceux qui cherchent d'anciens monuments dans la Grece et le

Levant. Erudite though this was, for a young amateur like d'Antraigues, he had wide enough connections with men of letters to have had his attention brought to it. One niggling doubt has to be dealt with: d'Antraigues has a great reputation as a fantasizer and counterfeiter: he wrote novels and letters, and claimed they had been written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; he altered diplomatic reports in order to persuade the British Government to take up arms against the French Republic. Could he have invented the discovery of the Clement manuscript on the basis of Montfaucon's reference to it? First, two small discrepancies work against this theory: Montfaucon writes Clement Alexandrin and Hypotyposes, whereas d'Antraigues writes Clement d'Alexandria and Hypotiposes; and the details he gives of the

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

71

Hypotyposeis are not to be found in the Recherches a faire . . . (or anywhere else). Certainly, since d'Antraigues could show great powers of imagination where the depiction of feelings or dramatic scenes was concerned, one has to face up to the possibility that he falsified the account of his discovery of the Clement manuscript. It is very difficult, however, to admit it as serious. Claiming discovery of a non-existent manuscript in memoirs which he never attempted to publish seems rather unlikely for a young man who had no intention of aspiring to membership of the Academie des Inscriptions. Indeed, his account of the meetings of the Paris Academies, in his unpublished novel, Henri et Cecile, is so devastatingly satirical that membership would clearly have been a burden and an irrelevance to him. The two events to which attention has been drawn abovethe fact that d'Antraigues was made aware of the existence of Clement's missing Hypotyposeis by his reading of Montfaucon, and his subsequent sighting of it, lead inevitably to the problem of the subsequent history of the manuscript of Clement's work. Does it still exist? II The report of D'Antraigues is remarkable because he saw manuscripts which other visitors did not see and which appear to have survived various disasters.' As a matter of principle, monastics began by renouncing all possessions, including books; however a life of worship demanded books for use in church and collections grew through the industry of the monks. Raids by barbarians on St. Macarius in the early fifth century would have destroyed early collections. However, in the same century the emperor Zeno granted to the monks of St. Macarius an annual subsidy which was a permanent source of wealth and in the sixth century the patriarchate of the Monophysite churches was moved to their community. Before the end of the century the monastery was again sacked, and another final sacking occurred in 817; so thorough was the destruction that Evelyn White claimed 'Not a fragment of manuscript derived from this source can be ascribed to a date earlier than the 9th century.'8 From this time on, the monastery did not look back. It supplied the patriarch and the bishops for northern Egypt, and in the Middle Ages it was the ruling monastery of Egypt. A library grew rapidly.
* The following account is indebted at many points to H. G. Evelyn White, The Monatterits of the Wadi Natrun, 1-3 (New York, 1926, 1932, 1933), supplemented by my own visit to the monastery in August 1983 (E.F.O.). Ibid., 1, p. xxiv.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

72

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

Coptic manuscripts from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, now in the Vatican library, may be clearly identified. In the latter part of this period Arabic gained a general ascendancy over Coptic. Throughout this period the library of the monastery provided sources for investigation into church councils and rules. However, it seems that the collection was religious in orientation: 'Works of secular learningmuch more, works of imaginationwere entirely absent.' 7 There were few copies of the Bible, as distinct from lectionaries. One copy of the Pentateuch, one of the Gospels and one copy of the Epistles are established. Patristic literature is slight: 'To the Egyptian mind metaphysical dogma seems to have been distasteful. . . . There was an obvious tendency to select only the more practical [ethical] tracts or homilies of the Fathers.' 8 In 1633, a Capuchin, Gilles de Loches, told the French bibliophile Peiresc of many rare books in monasteries in Egypt, including 'A library of 8,000 volumes, of which no small part bore the marks of the Antonian Age.' In 1635, another Capuchin despatched to Peiresc, from St. Macarius, a Psalter in six languages. The book was captured by pirates but eventually came to the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John at Malta. He presented it to Cardinal Barberini whose name it has since borne. There were other French visitors to St. Macarius in 1640 and 1644. In 1682 and 1683 the chaplain to the Levant Company, Robert Huntingdon, visited the monastery and took away a copy of the Gospels. Much more was taken by J. S. Assemanus who obtained 'Codices Coptico sermone scriptos . . . optimae notae'. 10 Sonnini did not visit St. Macarius during his journey in 1778, but at El Baramos he found many Coptic books. 11 In 1839, Henry Tattam visited St. Macarius and found 'A beautiful copy of the Epistles in Coptic which the monks refused to sell.'12 In 1844, Tischendorf collected a great number of fragments and saw manuscripts in disorder. Like those before him, he found material in Coptic and Arabic only: 'I saw nothing Greek; all was either Coptic or Arabic.' 13 However, one Greville Chester, in 1873, was not allowed to enter the Keep, because shortly before him the monastery had been robbed of its plate and 'all the valuable manuscripts'. 14 There are no traces in Europe of the manuscripts
7 White, The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun, 1, p. xxx. ' Ibid. P. Gassendi, Miscellanea, 5, De vita Peireskii, 5 (Lugduni, 1658). 10 J. S. Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1, Praef. 10. 11 C. N. S. Sonnini de Manoncourt, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, tr. H. Hunter (London, 1709), Evelyn White, Wadi Natrun, i, p. xxxix. 11 From the diary of Tattam's stepdaughter, Miss Platt, Quarterly Revietc, lxxvii (1846-58). 11 C. Tischendorf, Travels in the East (E. T. London, 1847), p. 52.
14

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

Archaeological Journal, xxx, p. 106.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

73

which are supposed to have been taken and Evelyn White is sceptical concerning the claims;16 White's own work began in 1920 and continued in 1921 when he collected many fragments of Coptic manuscripts. Before his untimely death in 1924, he completed three volumes of report on the manuscripts, history, and architecture of the monasteries of Wadi Natrun, especially St. Macarius. D'Antraigues shows that the library was far more extensive than Evelyn White concluded. The only modern visitor who may have seen what D'Antraigues saw was the Capuchin Gilles de Loches who wrote of an Egyptian monastery library of 8,000 books.16 White comments 'Almost certainly this was the library of the Syrian monastery.' 17 A recent inspection of that library by one of us does not encourage such a conclusion. While de Loches, it might seem, could hardly have missed the particular treasures which D'Antraigues mentioned, he probably did not have the chance to inspect closely. The library of St. Macarius was more likely to have numbered 8,000 than that of the Syrians. Was there a scare in the desert some years after D'Antraigues visited? Napoleon's visit to Egypt and the brief period of French dominance certainly affected St. Macarius. In the inside cover of one of the Coptic lectionaries there are some vivid sketches of French soldiers in the uniform of Napoleon's time. At such times the treasures of the past were not secure. Monks are properly concerned with the preservation of whatever has been handed down to them. Their austerity and spiritual force derive from their proximity in heart to their faithful past.18 Even if there were a scare after D'Antraigues' visit, that would explain only the subsequent disappearance of the treasures. It would not explain why no one before D'Antraigues saw them. In our opinion there is no problem in the concealment of these manuscripts before and after the visit of D'Antraigues. Some monks knew the value of their inheritance and a monastery has more facilities for concealment than could be found in most buildings. The surprise is that D'Antraigues saw what he did: perhaps his letter from the Pacha made the difference. Tattam records a common experience when he visited the Syrian monastery. He was told by the monks that they had no more books than were in the church, 'Upon which he told them plainly that he knew they had. They laughed on being detected and after a short conference
" Evelyn White, Wadi Natrun, i, p. xli. " P. Gassendi, De vita Peireskii, p. 5. " Evelyn White, Wadi Natrun, i, p. xxxvii. This opinion was also given by a writer in the Quarterly Review, lxxiii (1846), p. 45. " This strong sense of the past is true of the Coptic Church in general; it is focused within the monasteries.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

74

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

said he should see them.' 19 Further, D'Antraigues notes that the monks saw something sinister in Greek manuscripts. They could be used for magical purposes; it were better that the library should be burnt down than that a Frenchman should enhance his occult powers. 20 Ill All of which leads us to consider the importance and nature of the Hypotyposeis. What does the title mean? There is a general use of the word as 'sketch' or 'outline notes'. It is used by Sextus Empiricus as a title for his description in outline of the philosophy of Pyrrho; 11 Proclus gives such an outline of the principles of astronomy. i2 Plotinus contrasts such a sketch with a thorough treatment or working out of a subject.13 The Latin equivalent of adumbratio indicates that the Latin fragments preserved by Cassiodorus belong with the Hypotyposeis..** The word occurs twice in the New Testament Letters to Timothy. In the first case it has an ethical rather than a literary meaning and means 'model' or 'pattern'. 'But for this reason I received mercy that in me first Christ Jesus should be shown with all long-suffering, as a pattern for those who were going to believe in him to life eternal.' 25 In the second example the literary or verbal meaning is evident, but the saving power is equally important: 'Hold fast to the pattern of saving words, which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ.' 2 ' This deposit is to be guarded by the Holy Spirit who lives within the believer. From the use in the Pastorals the associations of power and tradition are added to the notions of brevity. Quintilian speaks of a VTTOTVTTWOIS as a style of writing which appeals to the eye more than to the ear, a form of vivid description: 'quaedam forma rerum ita expressa verbis ut cerni potius videatur quam audiri'. 27 He gives an example: 'Inflamed with crime and anger he entered the forum; his eyes were on fire and cruelty streamed from every feature of his face.'
Quarterly Review, btxvii (1845), P- 57- See n. 12 above. Miss Platt's diary was published privately; extracts are given in this review article. M See above p. 68. 11 Pyrronoioi hypotyposeis, ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1842). 11 Hypotyposis astronomicarum potitumum, ed. C. Manitius (Leipzig, 1909). " Ertn. 6.3.7, opposed to ifepyaata. " Cassiodorus, de inst. div. litt. 8, says that Clement wrote 'multa quidem subtitiliter, sed aliqua incaute'. ** 1 Tim. i. 16. ** 2 Tim. i. 14. " Institutio Oratorio, 9.2.40.
11

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

75

Did Clement use the word merely in its general sense of 'outline' or also in the vivid sense of Quintilian with overtones of power and tradition from the Pastoral Epistles? D'Antraigues believed that the vivid sense was appropriate and his opinion would have been guided by the opening part of the work. Clement frequently defined his genre of writing in his opening paragraphs. The only other evidence available to us is in the fragments that have been preserved. Do they support D'Antraigues' account? Eusebius indicates the two persisting elements of the Hypotyposeis where Clement 'has put forward his expositions of the Scriptures and his traditions' .%i These two elements are complementary since the traditions contain further information about the writers and the matter of scripture. Pantaenus is mentioned in the work, since Clement's knowledge of scripture and of tradition derived from him." The whole of the canonical scripture rfjs evStaOr/Kov ypa<jrfjs was the subject of his concise expositions
e7TiTeTfj.rjfj.evas SiTfyrjoets.30

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

Cassiodorus 31 notes that Clement is said to have made an exposition of 'the divine scriptures of the Old and the New Testament from the beginning to the very end in the Greek language'. Photius is more specific. The Hypotyposeis treat passages of old and new scripture giving exegesis and interpretation in summary form Comments on difficult phrases are brief.'3 The veiling of women (because of the angels) does not refer to real angels in Heaven who could see through any veil. The angels here are just and virtuous men who could be tempted by an unveiled face (Fragment i on 1 Cor. xi. 10). The expression Kara aapxa means sinful behaviour when it applies to us but to know Christ Kara oapxa. was to know him when he was in the flesh and subject to physical passions (Fragment 2 on 2 Cor. v. 16). The crucifying of the flesh in Gal. v. 24 could be either Christ's flesh which is our body, or could be our own selves which we crucify along with our lusts because we belong to Christ. For the second interpretation Se is important; for the first interpretation Se is redundant (fragment 7). There is an interesting story on Jesus' healing of the leper of whom the priests had said, 'No one will heal this man except the Christ alone if he comes.' When healed, he was sent to give testimony to the priests that 'Christ has come, believe in him' (fragment 12). The brief comments on 1 Timothy are vivid and striking. Christ appeared to angels (1 Tim.
n " H.E., 6.13.2. H.E., s.i 1.1. * H.E., 6.14.1. 11 Inst.div. litt.,Praef. " Bibl. Cod. 109. ** The fragments are set out in the third volume of O. Stahlin, Clemens AUxandrinus (G.C.S. 17).

76

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

iii. 16) on earth, they did not see him before men did (fragment 16). To wash the feet of the saints (i Tim. i. 10) is to perform the lowest service unashamed (fragment 18). Traditions concerning the apostles are more extended. The two gospels with genealogies were written first, then Mark wrote what he had learned from Peter. When Peter learned of Mark's writing he neither hindered nor helped its diffusion. Last of all John wrote a spiritual Gospel (H.E., 6.14.5/7). 1 a second account, Peter shows more enthusiasm and authorizes Mark's work to be read in the churches (H.E., 2.15.1 f.). Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews in Hebrew and Luke translated it into Greek; but Paul did not put his name to the letter because the Hebrews were prejudiced against him and because he was sent to the Gentiles whereas his lord had been sent to the Hebrews (H.E., 6.14.2/4). Eusebius owes some of his most colourful material to Clement. The Lord committed knowledge to James the Just, John, and Peter; they passed it on to the other apostles who passed it on to the Seventy. James the Just was thrown down from a pinnacle and beaten to death with a fuller's club; the other James was beheaded (H.E., 2.1.4). Even the beheading of James was no ordinary execution. His accuser was so moved by the testimony of James that he confessed faith in Christ forthwith. When he asked James to forgive him, after a brief reflection, 6Xiyov oKeipapevos, James wished him peace and kissed him, 'and so they were both beheaded together' (H.E., 2.10.3). The Hypotyposeis are clearly more than a summary, an outline or a collection of notes. They are related to Scripture and provide exegeses and traditions. They do this in crisp note form but with the power and vividness which are designated by Quintilian, 'ut cerni potius videatur quam audiri', 34 as characteristic of Hypotyposeis. D'Antraigues' account 35 indicates the qualities which marked one of the first commentaries on Scripture by a writer within the church universal. They were aimed not simply at the removal of obscurity, but at helping the message of the text to stand up and speak; this is the goal of good exegesis. All of which shows how important they are and why they deserve our attention. They reinforce the conclusion gained elsewhere that the secret tradition of Clement was a way of interpreting Scripture, not an additional document. 8 '
M

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

Institutio Oratorio, 9.2.40. " 'Hypotyposeis are descriptions of certain objects, depicted with such warmth, portrayed with such a lively energy that the scenes presented to him are taking place before his eyes at the very moment when he reads the account of them.' " On Clement's apostolic tradition see Strom. 6.7.61 and 6.8.68.

CLEMENT'OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS IV

77

One question remains. Why were the Hypotyposeis neglected? The answer is simple. They were considered by Photius and others to be heretical.37 Some of Clement's exegeses of Scripture were unacceptable to later orthodoxy. This was maintained most forcefully by Photius; but Photius leaves us with a problem: the one quotation which he gives does not mean what he thinks it means. It does not mean that there are two separate logoi, but rather that one logos is present in three waysin the mind of the Father, in the incarnate Son, and in the hearts of men. The confusion of Photius cannot be cleared up quickly but we can make some progress. We can show that Clement did not mean what Photius thought he meant. We do not thereby establish that Clement could not have said anything contrary to later orthodoxy, we simply show that he did not deny the central idea of his own thought. Clement described God and the son of God in terms of contemporary Platonism. God was TO ev, a simple bare unity, 38 above the categories of human thought and the terms of human speech, reached only by a process of abstraction, a via negativa. The son of God was ev TroLvra, a complex unity, embracing in his powers the circle of all existing things. To believe was to be 'indissolubly made one in him', 39 and to know him was to enshrine him within one's soul, 'the one saviour individually to each and in common to all'. 40 Clement emphasizes the unity of God throughout his entire work,41 adding that not only is God one God, and the Logos one Logos, but they are together one Godhead. 41 It is on the grounds of plurality and immorality that he attacks pagan deities. It is by constant reference to the one first principle of all things that he shatters the Gnostic antitheses of God and matter, justice and goodness. Clement found in the e V and the ev navra of contemporary Platonism, the vehicle for a contemporary statement of Christianity and a weapon to disarm Gnostic sects and pagan polytheism. These concepts were combined through the leading idea of the day, that of a cosmic mind 43 from which came a Geistmetaphysik.** The claim of Photius is important, not because of the brand of heterodoxy, but because
M " Strom. 5.12.81. Strom. 4.25.156. " Strom. 7.3.16. The theme of unity governs Clement's account of goodness and of truth as well as his account of God. * Paed. 1.5.24 and Paed. 1.2.4. 41 This is seen most clearly in the development from Xenocrates, Frag. 16 (Heinze), and Numenius, Frag. 25 (Leemans). See H. J. Kramer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik (Amsterdam, 1964), pp. 42 f. 44 Ibid., p. 126. 41

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

" Many considered the offending phrases to be interpolations.

78

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

of the rift which it makes in Clement's thought. If Clement speaks in the Hypotyposeis of two divine logoi and makes one of them remote from the hearts of men, then the basis of his previous thought is abandoned. Photius attributes to Clement the view that there are two divine logoi of whom not even the lesser appeared to men. He quotes Clement as saying, 'The son is also called logos, equivocally with the paternal logos, but it is not the latter which became flesh. Nor indeed is it the paternal logos, but a certain power of God, a kind of emanation of his logos that became nous and inhabited the hearts of men.' It has been widely agreed that Photius has misinterpreted this quotation although the extent of his misinterpretation is not agreed.46 Photius' misinterpretation goes much deeper than has been realized. Clement's argument in the passage quoted is pointless if he believed in the existence of two divine logoi.48 He does not use Logos in the plural when speaking of the Godhead. The rest of the trouble comes from the diversity of meanings that the word Logos can have. We may notice two of these in a passage of Clement But he who has given us being and life, has also given us logos because he wished that we should live both reasonably and well. For the logoi of the father of all is not the speech which proceeds from him but the wisdom and manifest goodness of God and at the same time the almighty and truly divine power, known even to those who do not confess him, the omnipotent will. (Strom. 5.1.6.) In the first sentence logos means rationality, the quality of the rational mind. In the second sentence logos is a divine being, not a quality. 47 This simple ambiguity led to the objections which Clement is trying to refute in the Photius quotations. These objections are: (1) The Logos of God became flesh for the salvation of men. This implies that God became aXoyos, without logos, irrational. T o this it had been claimed by Apologists that logos was two" Th. Zahn, Supplementum Clementinum (1884) in Forschungen sur Geschichte des neuUttamentlichen Kanons, iii, maintained that Photius erred in saying that even the lesser logos did not become incarnate, but maintains nevertheless that the Son is distinct from the Logos of the Father. * The phrase comes from R. P. Casey, 'Clement and the two divine Logoi', J. T.S. xxv (1924), pp. 43-56. Casey surveys many aspects of the problem, concludes that the Stoic distinction was useful to Christians but led to careless expressions like that of Clement. " G. W. Butterworth, Clement of Alexandria (Loeb Classical Library, London, 1919), p. 20: 'The Greek Logos means either "Word" [personal] or "rational word", "reason" [impersonal]. All through his writings Clement plays upon this double meaning of Logos'

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS


48

79

fold: \6yos evSiadtTOs and Xoyos npofopixos, and that only the logos prophorikos came forth from the Father to be the creator and Saviour of men. This distinction is not clear in Clement and could be refuted when he refuses to speak of the Logos of the Father as prophorikos on the grounds that this description belittles the person of the divine Logos. Instead, Clement realizes the equivocation and says 'The Son is called logos equivocally (6fuvvpM>s) the rationality of the Father is called 6 Xoyos, but it is not the latter that became flesh.' The key word here is ofiwvvfMuis. Clement is pointing to the simple equivocation on which the argument rests. This interpretation of the passage is confirmed by the following sentence, which is an answer to the natural objection to the first sentence. This objection may be formulated as follows: (2) God gives logos (rationality) to men. This implies that God becomes dXoyos, without logos. This objection is the natural rejoinder to Clement's reply to the first objection. The equivocation is removed. Clement replies 'It is not the logos-rationality of the Father, but a certain Svva^iis of God, as it were an anoppoia of this logos which became nous and has entered into the hearts of men.' God does not lose his logosrationality when he gives man logos-rationality. An dnSppoia of this logos becomes nous. The logos of God is not weakened in the process. Again Clement here speaks of the rationality, reasoning power of the mind as nous after describing it elsewhere60 as logos. His purpose is to avoid the confusion which was behind the objection. He speaks elsewhere of the logos of God giving men logos as well as other things. 61 The objectionif God's Logos gives us logos may not God run short of logos?is not a silly objection. Clement answers it by saying that it is not the narpfos Xoyos that we receive but an avSppoia of his logos which becomes nous in our hearts. The advantages of this interpretation are:6a (a) It makes sense of both parts of the quotation and explains why they follow one another. (b) It explains why narpcfyos Xoyos or irarpiKOs Xoyos is here distinguished from the Son. Clement elsewhere uses the terms as synonymous with the Son, meaning Logos-Person. He would not on his own initiative have spoken of the rationality of the Father and
" Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, 2, 10, 22. Tertullian, Apol. 21, Adv. Prax. 5, uses ratio and termo to make the same distinction. " Cf. Plotinus, Em. 2.3.11 and Plato, Phaedrus 251 B. * For logos as human rationality see Strom. 5.1.6. " Ibid. " If there are two divine logoi in Photius's sense, the second sentence is nonsense. 'Nor is it the logos of the Father but as it were an effluence of the logos of God.'

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

80

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

attributed a quality to the Father because of its anthropomorphic tone. But here he is using someone else's terms and he is concerned to show that rationality rather than irrationality is a quality of the Father. (c) It would be quite easy for Photius to misunderstand what Clement was saying. The Hypotyposeis were Scripture commentaries and Clement's exegesis is striking rather than simple. He leaves out steps which only a few could readily supply and makes allusions which only a few could readily understand. (d) It does not contradict the chief points which Clement expounds in the rest of his writing. The idea of 'two logoi' made many serious students regard these sentences as an interpolation. (e) It is another instance of a common phenomenon in Clement. Apparent incoherence frequently conceals important points and subtle argument. Clement's language can never be divorced from his argument; it is no accident that he does not use 'logos' in the plural when talking of God's work with man. The important thing about logos is that it can, like light, admit of distinction without separation. Clement is saying that when the light of logos shines in the incarnation and in human reason, it is not extinguished in God. Rather it only shines in the incarnation and in the human mind because the logos of the Father is united with it at its source. One hundred years ago in 1884, Zahn 63 put forward a substantial case for divided logos, defending the Photius quotation as genuine because it reflected ideas of Clement found in other works. Zahn commented 'Clemens unterscheidet also den Sohn-Logos, welcher als allgemeine Vemunft durch die Herzen der Menschen gezogen und dann Fleisch geworden ist, von dem eigentlichen Logos, der Vernunft des Vaters.' 64 This is not what the fragment says, as he later admits, but attention must be given to Zahn's claim that Clement habitually makes this division. He puts forward three arguments: 1. Clement makes a sharp distinction between the transcendent Father and the Son who proceeded from God as the 'Verursacher und Mittler der Weltschopfung' and afterwards became flesh. But Clement makes an equally strong emphasis on the unity of Father and Son'the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son' 66 and calls both Father and Son avap\os dpxij.68 2. Clement often calls the 'Son-logos' a divine power. Stahlin lists six references to the Son as Svva/Ms of God. In (Strom. 6.6.47)
" Th. Zahn, Supplementum CUmentmum, 142 ff. " Paed. 1.5.24. Cf. Paed. 1.8.62, tv yap ifufxu, 6 6t6s. " Strom. 4.25.162; Strom. 7.1.2. " Ibid., p. 144.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

81

the Lord is described as Suvauis TOV Oeov and weakness or inability to save is consequently excluded from him. (Clement is speaking of the souls in Hades.) This power of God which is the Lord is everywhere and works eternally. In Strom. 7.2.9 the same idea of a naTpiKT) Suvafiis is used to emphasize universality of operation. In Strom. 5.1.6 the Logos is Svvafus TOV 9eov in a passage which
emphasizes the fact that he is TrayKpa-rffi ical TO~> OVTI 9eia . . . OeXr/na
TravroKpaTopiKov.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

In the final appeal of the Protrepticus the Xoyos TOV deov is described among other things as hvvay.is TWV OXWV (Prot. 12.120). A passage in Excerpta uses the expression to emphasize proximity to the Father and omnipotence (Exc. Theod. 4.3). Every one of these references is against Zahn's inference that Suva/itj TOV deov or TOV TTaTp6s in Clement implies that there is an inferior Son-Logos who is eine gottliche Kraft. In each case proximity to the Father, and omnipotence or omnipresence are emphasized. Zahn mentions three passages. The first {Prot. 110) speaks of 7 } Svvafiis 1 7 6tiK-17 preparing the ground for our Lord so that our Lord could fulfil his work quickly as a result of the divine care. No strict identity is asserted of this divine power and the Lord; but there is a strict identity asserted of the Lord, Saviour, Divine Word, 6 <f>avfpcoTa,Tos omws Oeos, the equal of the Lord of the Universe, Son, Word in God who became flesh. The second and third passages (Strom. 5.1.6. and Strom. 7.2.9) have been dealt with above. 3. Zahn's third argument begins with an interpretation of Strom. 5.1.6 in which he admits the exclusion of any sharp distinction between the Son-logos and the Logos of the Father. He adds that the Photius fragment only says that we must not identify the Son with the rationality of God. But it expresses a tendency of Clement's theology 'auf Verselbstandigung der Logosvorstellung gegeniiber dem einen unerzeugten Gott'. 57 This tendency finds expression in Prot. 98. From this examination of Zahn's treatment it will be seen that no valid arguments are given for believing that Clement made a division between a paternal Logos and a Son-Logos. We must turn to Prot. 98 and see whether this makes the distinction or not. In this paragraph Clement shows the folly of those who make and worship idols. No sculptor has ever made a breathing image and given it human organs, life and the promise of immortality. Only the creator of all things apioroTexvas Trarqp has formed this living image of our humanity. The Olympian Zeus is an image of this human image and far removed from the truth. There are four levels of realityfirst there is God himself, then there is his Word. Thirdly there is the " Zahn, SuppUmentum, p. 146.

82

C. DUCKWORTH AND E. OSBORN

true man the Nous that is in man and causes man to be described as made in the image and likeness of God, made like the divine Logos in the thoughts of the heart and thus logikos. Last come the statues which are not even an image of the rational man, but are earthy images of the visible earth-born part of man and therefore far from the truth.68 The suggestion by Zahn that God and Nous are two separable entities and that the logos is the image of the latter is untenable. Nowhere in the writings of Clement is there any suggestion of a separation of the Nous of the Father, from the Father. Nous is one of the names of God and is used as the equivalent to 'God'.09 Clement writes 'for his word is the image of God and the divine word is the true Son of Nous, the archetypal light of light'. The subject of each proposition is the samethe divine Logos. The second proposition repeats and develops the first. The Logos is the true son of Nous, inheriting his qualities, being light from light. If we take Logos and Nous as proper names the sentence makes sense. If we take either or both of them as an abstract entity, we are landed in a hopeless confusion. Another passage which speaks of man as an image of God and follows the Platonic theme of an image of an image, is found in Strom. 7.3.16. In the soul of the righteous man or the gnostic is enshrined the ruler, king, creator, law, eternal word, only begotten, who is the image of the glory of the Father who is king of all and almighty. The eternal word seals the righteous man according to his own image to make a third divine likeness. There is no suggestion of more than one Logos unless we take the glory of the Father as an intermediate being between the word and the Father and take the third likeness to mean that there are three likenesses other than God himself. The text does not support this idea and it is not consistent with Clement's thoughts elsewhere. Clement is working with a logical scheme exactly like that of Plato in Republic 10 where there are three entitiesthe form, the craftsman's copy, and the artist's copy of the copy. The artist is described as an imitator who is concerned with the third product of nature and who is himself in third place from the king and the truth (Republic S97e). There remain the passages from the Excerpta ex Theodoto to which Casey makes special reference.81 They are far from consistent or conclusive. We read in 19.1 that the essential Logos, in the
" The allusion here is to Adam, made from earth and divine breath. " Strom. 4.25.155. 10 R. P. Casey, 'Clement', J.T.S. xxv (1924), p. 46. " F. Sagnard, Climent d'Alexandra, Extraiti de Thiodole, Sources Chritietmes (Paris, 1948), p. 96.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS

83

beginning, became a Son without a change in substance and that he became flesh working through the prophets. The saviour is the child of this logos. The logos of this logos is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. It is impossible to identify the essential logos with a transcendent logos of the Father since it became Son and flesh. Again in the Excerpta 8 the essential unity of the Logos is emphasized in contrast to the plurality of Valentinian emanations. The emphasis throughout is on the perfect identity and the unity of personality and action within the Logos. 'Le Logos', says Sagnard, 'est absolument un et identique a luimeme (ev TairrorlJTi) (19, 1; 19, 2; 19, 4). II est appele Fils (19, 1), Principe, Logos, Sauveur (ou Vie) (19, 2b) suivant l'aspect ou le stade de sa manifestation.' 81 Here as elsewhere Clement emphasizes the unity of the logos and any attempt to find the two logoi would run counter to the whole course of his argument which is stated most clearly in Excerpta 8: 'But we affirm the one self-same logos God in God of whom it is also said that he is in the bosom of the Father, one God inseparable, indivisible.' Conclusion. The Hypotyposeis provide a unique source for early Christian thought. It seems probable that the accusations of Photius were influential in discouraging the use of this work. On the evidence of Photius and on the basis of Clement's thought elsewhere we may more rightly conclude that the accusations were without ground. Only when terminology is divorced from the argument in which it occurs can the case of Zahn stand. Patristic study has suffered enough through the isolation of the logos of terminology from the logos of argument. With the destruction of Photius' objections, there is even more reason to look at the fragments and to hope that we may yet recover the full text of the Hypotyposeis.
COLIN DUCKWORTH ERIC OSBORN

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of California, Los Angeles on May 20, 2013

*' F. Sagnard, Clhnent d'Alexandrie, Extraites de Thiodote, Sources Chrttiemut (Paris, 1948), p. 96.

You might also like