Refusing, he was thrown into the Black Sea with an iron anchor around his
neck.³
It was about 96-98 AD that Pope Clement wrote an epistle attempting to
heal the ruptures in the Church of Corinth sparked by an insurrection
against the bishop and presbyters that resulted in their deposition. This
epistle was accorded an authority in the early Church second only to
Scripture itself. As Eusebius writes:
“Clement has left us one recognized epistle, long and wonderful,
which he composed in the name of the church of Rome…in many
churches this epistle was read aloud to the assembled worshippers
in early days, as it is in our own.”
4
From the point of view of Church history, patrology and apologetics, St.
Clement’s letter is of enormous significance, particularly as the better
element of the Corinthians sought a remedy for their ills not from St. John
who was then still alive, but from the successor in Peter’s Chair:
The primacy and universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome:
“The Church of God which sojourns in Rome to the Church of God
which sojourns in Corinth...Owing to the sudden and repeated
calamities and misfortunes which have befallen us, we must
acknowledge that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our
attention to the matters in dispute among you” (Address; 1, 1).
Apostolic succession:
“The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus
Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is
from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly
arrangements, then, are by God’s will. Receiving their instructions
and being full of confidence on account of the resurrection of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the word of God, they
3
Around the year 868, St. Cyril, while in the Crimea to evangelize the Kazars, dug
up some bones in a mound together with an anchor and had them translated to
Rome, whereupon they were deposited by Pope Adrian II in the high altar of the
basilica of St. Clement.
4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3, 4, 80.
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