ON SAINT CLEMENS,
POET AND CONFESSOR AMONG THE GREEKS.
CommentaryClemens, Confessor and Poet among the Greeks (Saint)
D. P.
The Greeks, in the printed Menaea and in Maximus Bishop of Cythera, today recall the memory of our Holy Father Clemens the Poet, To be numbered among the authors of Canons; who in the Ms. Synaxarium of Chifflet, "Ποιητὴς τῶν..."
κανόνων" is called. But in the Claromontan MS. on May 27 is given to the same the title "Confessor and Poet." The same on each day is referred to in the MSS. Menaea of July of Cardinal Mazarin. We judge that he is called Confessor because he suffered many things for the faith, perhaps under the Iconoclasts. We have found nothing else about him except a distich of this kind:
Τέρψας ὁ Κλήμης γηγενεῖς ᾠδαῖς κάτω, Ἀπῆλθε τέρψων, ὥσπερ οἶμαι, καὶ νόας.
Having charmed the earth-born with his odes here below, This Clemens has departed, I think, to charm also the Angels.
[2] Before the Greek Triodion, printed by the effort and care of the aforementioned Maximus, a frontispiece is seen, embracing the title of the book, copied from the front of a Ms. Triodion, although not expressed on the front of the Triodion, presenting the age of two or three centuries. In this with the ministry of three smaller figures and two greater Angels, occupying on either side the place of a column, round the title is led as if a chain of twenty-nine rings, mutually embracing each other, hanging from one more ornate relief at the top, representing Christ the Lord, with this little verse running down through the outermost shoulders of the side Angels:
Οἱ τὰ μέλη πλέξαντες ὑμνῶν ἐνθέων,
These have composed the modulations of sacred hymns.
[3] The half-icon of each of them, distinguished by the proper schema of habit and order, is seen within the aforesaid rings; and lest wandering conjecture should err, names are added around the head, as is wont in coins: and so they descend from the right side: Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who is venerated on May 12, where to the orthodox Philotheus the Patriarch is wrongly added: for the cause of faith expelled from his See under Leo the Armenian; Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, whose labors in restoring the Menaea with Saint John of Damascus we treated on March 11; Philotheus Patriarch of Constantinople, from the year 1362 to 1375 of the same century: but although the Emperor Cantacuzenus, under whom he flourished, heaps great praises upon him; yet as schismatic and heretic our Wagnereck rightly condemns him in the Prolegomena to the Mariana of Greek piety no. 28; and Leo Allatius proves that against George Palamas, the Pseudo-monk and the chief asserter of the Taboric light, he heaped up all the chapters of praise which are given separately to other Fathers. Philotheus therefore should be removed from this chain of sacred Poets, nor do I believe he would ever have been numbered with them, unless the same Nicephorus Callistus, a most pertinacious schismatic and heretic, had been the author and inventor of that chain, who ordered the Triodion itself and augmented it with Lessons teaching and confirming schism and heresy, which the said Leo Allatius rightly marvels that they remain hitherto without censure, and are permitted to the churches of the Catholic Greeks, with grave scandal of the simpler. But let us leave these things to be discussed by a greater tribunal, and let us weave the chain of the Hymnographers.
[4] To Philotheus succeeds Andreas Archbishop of Crete, of whom, as the author of the great penitential Canon, we said some things on April 2, treating of Saint Mary of Egypt. He is venerated on July 4 or June. Fifth in this order of the right side is John Metropolitan of Euchaita; and others of unknown age and faith; to whom, hitherto a writer unknown to us as to faith and age, Allatius in his Diatribe On the Writings of the Simeons attributes various encomia of the Saints, wrongly ascribed to Metaphrastes; of which we especially would wish to obtain two, in which are contained the Lives of a certain Saint Dorotheus the Younger and of Saint Eusebia at Euchaita, that if they are proved, we may give them their place in our work. Follows George Archbishop of Nicomedia. To him also the same Allatius restores various panegyrics, ignorantly transferred to Metaphrastes, treating many things about him in the Diatribe On the Georges: but at what time he lived, we have not yet found. Nearest to George and last among the Bishops are noted Methodius, Cyprianus, Anatolius: all unknown to us; for who would believe that the one set in the last place is Saint Anatolius, Leo Allatius wrote about all these, Patriarch of Constantinople under Theodosius the Younger? We might first more probably believe that he is the one who, under Saint Theodora, restored orthodoxy; but then he should have been placed before Philotheus and the other intermediate ones. Moreover, this series is closed by five writers from the secular order: Leo Despotes, Leo Magister, Basilius Pegoriotes, Justin, Sergius: about whom I can teach nothing.
[5] The aforementioned chain is filled on the left side from the monastic order by fourteen writers. Among these, known to us are John of Damascus, and with him equally brought up Cosmas, afterwards Bishop of Maiuma, of whom we shall treat on October 14; Joseph, commonly called Hymnographer, whose life we gave on April 3; Theophanes, surnamed Graptus, because of his forehead inscribed with insulting verses by the iconoclast Theophilus, who is commemorated on October 11 alone and again with his brother Theodore on December 27. The others are unknown to us: Byzantius, Stephanus Hagiopolites, and among others he mentions Clemens. Georgius Siceliotes, Simeon, Philotheus, Arsenius, Babylas, Ephrem of Caria, Andreas Pyrrhus or Rufus, and Studites. But who is here called by antonomasia? The great Theodorus? But he deserved to be placed among the first. Beneath all and as it were the binding of the twin series is placed Casia, you may doubt whether veiled in the manner of a matron or an Abbess: and named by no one else that I know, not even by Leo Allatius in Dissertation 1 On the Ecclesiastical books of the Greeks page 82, where he enumerates seventy-one Hymnographers, about whom he prefaces that he has treated too fully in the treatise On the Melodists of the Greeks. Among them is also he for whose sake we have treated these things, Clemens, named immediately after the noble Confessors Andreas Cretensis, Joseph and Theodore the Studites, Stephen Sabaita, Theodore Siceota, referred to before others, even before Simeon Magister and Logotheta, whom we otherwise call Metaphrastes, and who died at least in the 10th century. We have diligently sought whence that treatise of Allatius could be had: but neither at Rome nor at Paris, where more than elsewhere the works of this most erudite man are known, have they anything about it, who think they know most of his works: many even deny that anything was published by him with such a title. But he himself too clearly asserts it, that it can be denied, in the Diatribe On the Georges at the name of Georgius Siculus, where he excuses some things passed over by him, "since," he says, "in my treatise On the Melodists of the Greeks I have treated this more fully, lest I seem too often to sing the same song." If anyone therefore knows it, let him, I beg, suggest what concerns Clemens.