The Clementine Recognitions And Homilies.

        The impulse toward Christian fiction, which had found expression in the second and third centuries in the Acts of the individual apostles-Paul, John, Peter, Thomas, and Andrew-in the early years of the fourth century probably between 313 and 325, resulted in two considerable works, the Recognitions and the Homilies of Clement. The Homilies have come down to us in Greek, but the Recognitions are preserved in full only in a Latin translation by Rufinus.

        The Recognitions, in ten books, ostensibly written by Clement of Rome in the first person, describes a journey of Clement to Palestine, his meeting with Peter, and his life with him; the discussions they had about all sorts of religious and doctrinal matters; and the marvelous way in which Clement's long-lost parents and brothers are restored to him. It is to this feature of the narrative that it owes its name, the Recognitions.

        The twenty Homilies relate extended conversations between Peter and Clement, in which spiritual matters are discussed very much as in the Recognitions. Both works seem to rest on an earlier piece of fiction about Clement, a sort of Clement romance, written probably about A.D. z6o, but now lost; and this in turn probably drew upon two conflicting sources, one Jewish-Christian and Gnostic in color, the other Catholic and anti-Gnostic-the latter probably the Acts of Peter, which had so much to say about Simon Magus who also appears prominently, especially in the Recognitions. Such sources would explain the strange mixture of heretical and orthodox elements that the Clementines exhibit. The author was no doubt a Catholic Christian, and probably unconscious of the heretical character of some of his materials. The Homilies are introduced by letters from Peter and Clement to James of Jerusalem, designed to give them credibility.