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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'SHYPOTYPOSEIS: A FRENCH

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SIGHTINGI

I N the early Spring of 1779 a young French nobleman pulled uphis camel outside the ancient m onastery of Anba Makar, just off themain route between Alexandria and Cairo. He had in his pocket aletter of introduction from the Pacha, but the thirty-foot walls andthe total absence of gates seemed to make a ready welcome unlikely.Louis de Launay, comte d'Antraigues, had left France on 11 June1778 on board His M ajesty's Ship Caton, accompanying his uncle,the comte deSaint-Priest, French ambassador at the SublimePorte. He began to record his journey in the minutest detail, inmemoirs and letters, which ultimately found their way into theMunicipal L ibrary at Dijon.1 Little seemed to escape the attentionof this alert and enquiring travellerarchaeology, history, geo-graphy, political systems, social customs, religious practices. Hisstrong reactions to the injustices of despotism which he encounteredon his journey (Turkey, Egypt, Wallachia, Bessarabia, Poland,Austria) firmed uphis political position, which helped him tobecome a formidable revolutionary pamphleteer by 1789. And hisattention to detail was a good preparation for the work he was todo, from 1791 until his m urder in Barnes Terrace , near London, in1812, during which period he was the central figure in the counter-revolutionary 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 somedelay the head of house showed himself and invited d'Antraiguesand his party in. 'In' meant 'up': a chair was lowered in which he,his drogm an, and two companions were hauled up over the wall; the

1 The Mtmoires sur la Turquie consist of 855 folio pages written in d'A ntraigues'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 inConstantinople. They were written on the voyage (1778-9) and corrected atLaBastide, d'Antraigues' chateau in the Vivarais, between 1783 and 1785. Despite thetitle, they cover, in fact, his journey from Toulon via Misitra, Antiparos, MountAthos ('crawling with Greek monks, the seat of stupidity and superstition'), theDardanelles, Constantinople (where the plague was raging as usual), Egypt, Lesbos,Rhodes, Ephesus, Bulgaria, Bessarabia, Poland, Austria, and Strasbourg, homeagain toLa Bastide. The manuscript iskept inthe Fonds d'Antraigues at theBibliotheque de Dijon (d'Antraigues' son, Jules, returned to live in Dijon after theRestoration): Mss. 1534-5-6.[Journal ofTheoloficml StucHe*. N .S., Vol. 36, PL 1, April 19S3.]

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68 C. DUC KW ORT H AN D E. OSBORNArab guide and drivers, having been paid in advance, were left tocamp outs ide the walls .On the second day, he and his dragoman spent eight hours in thelibrary going through ancient manuscripts. His findings filled himwith delight . N ot only the autho rs repre sented , bu t the details ofthe develop me nt of han dw rit ing and o rtho gra ph y, the effect of t imeon different inks, the art of dating manuscripts, all fascinated him.T h e source of his information on these erudite m atters (hardly thestock-in-trade of a rather wild ex-officer and man-about-court) willbe referred to shortly. He had done sufficient homework before-han d to be able to recognize a tru ly rem ark able find: a sev en th-century manuscript of the Hypotyposeis (Outlines) of Clement ofAlexandria, the second-century Chris t ian apologis t and reputedmaster of Origen. He was aware that the work had always beenconsidered as lost , known only by fragments quoted by Eusebius .Eusebius describes them as summaries , interpretat ions , and narra-tives of all canonical scripture.2 But what d 'Antraigues saw wasquite different: 208 large folio pages of the work,. . . ecrites en lettres capitales dans le V I Ie siecle avec des notes a la marged'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 futcatechiste et pretre d'Alexandrie. II ecrivit plusieurs ouvrages, quelques-uns se sont conserves mais celui qu'on nom me Hypotiposes etait perdu. Onnomme Hypotiposes les descriptions d'objets quelconques peintes avectant de chaleur, peintes avec une si vive energie qu 'il semble au lecteur queles scenes qu 'on lui trace se passent sous ses yeux au mom ent qu'il en lit lerecit. Je ne sais si Clement avait atteint le but qu 'il se proposait sans douteen donnant ce titre a son ouvrage. Les Hypotiposes de St. Clement sontrassemblees dans un grand volume in folio de parchemin couvert en bois etgarni de plaques de losanges. II contient 208 feuilles.

D 'Antra igues saw a number of o ther manuscr ip ts which herecognized as valuablea third-century Polybius , a completeDiodorus of Sici ly dating from the third century, and a seventh-cen tury Pausanias and offered to buy them for a han dsom e price.But these impoverished monks refused, because they knew theFre nc h w ere addicted to mag ic, and these books were 'gram m ars ofthis diabolical ar t ' . They would rather burn the l ibrary down, theymaintained, than let them fal l into the hands of a Frenchman.N everth eless , the s imple vir tues of these ignorant m onks left a pro -found impression on him ; to have ro bb ed the m of a book w ould

* See discussion in section III below.



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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 69have been a cruel abuse of hospitali ty which men of letters mightcommit, but he was not such a 'vil escroc' as that .Let us look a l i t t le more closely at d 'Antraigues' claims, andhis ability to identify his finds. In the first place, there is somediscrepancy in accounts of his classical language competence. Hisbiographer, Leonce Pingaud, wri tes that when he completed hisstudies at the College d 'H arc ou rt in Paris , he ' s 'y imp regna, com m etous ses contemporains, des enseignements de l 'ant iqui te grecqueet romaine ' .3 One would indeed have considered this normal forthe period, and yet d 'Antraigues himself states in his unpublishedm em oirs of his jou rne y to the L eva nt tha t 'ne sachant pas le gre c' , hedepen ded on his drago m an, A danson , or A dam son, to t ranslate theparchment scrolls and books for him.

H ow , then , could he have spo tted such a rare and valuable m an u-script in a monastery library full of such items? The fact is that hispreparat ion for the jou rne y had been rathe r mo re studious than onewould have suspected, and he had been alerted to the Hypotyposeisas a work of extrem e rari ty wo rthy of acqu isit ion.Buried within the 700-odd manuscript pages of his memoirs onthe Levant l ie six pages, writ ten in another hand, recto and verso,entit led Recherches a faire dans le voyage de Constantinople. It isa guide to acquisit ions, intended for travellers to the Levant whoare not connoisseurs. It is divided into five sections:1. Marbres, Bronzes et medailles antiques;2. Manuscrits Grecs tant Ecclesiastiques que prophanes;3. M anuscrits de l'Ecriture Sainte;4. Historiens Prophanes;5. Geographies.T he docu m ent is anon ym ous, bu t there is a c lue to autho rship:II faut d'abord s'exercer a connoitre l'age des manuscrits en Lisantattentivement la Paleographie Greque [sic] que j 'imprimai in fol. en 1708.

I t was Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, the great Benedict ineerudit, originator of the science of palaeography, who publishedPaleographie grecque in 1708. T h e style of the Recherches a faire . . .is very s imilar to that of his L'Antiquite expliquee* (forthright, clear,sl ightly self-righteous , and po m po us ), bu t the aim is quite different.I n L'Antiquite expliquee M ontfaucon is concerned w ith what hasbeen discovered and recorded. In the Recherches a faire... he tre atsdiscoveries that still remain to be made. In the preface to the

* Pingaud, Vn Agent secret sous la Rivolution et VEm pire (Paris, 1893-4),PP- 13-14-4 Paris , 1716; Antiquity explained^...] tr. D. Hum phries (5 vols., London, 1721-2and Supplement, 1725).

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70 C. DUC KW ORT H AN D E. OSBORNSupplement to the Antiquiti he does mention the 'principal Storesfrom which I compiled this Supplement', saying 'the Levant andEgypt give several', and stressing the need to publish only 'whatis Curious and N ew . . . avoiding multiplying and swelling outvolumes with needless Repetitions' (p. i). This indicates that theemphasis on new discoveries which characterizes the Recherch.esafaire ... is entirely consonant with Montfaucon's impatience withthe practice of acquiring and recording items already known toantiquarians. There is, in this work, no mention of Clement's lostwork, or of other major items to which the Recherches afaire . . .draw attention as possible acquisitions. However, in the Recherchesafaire . . . Clement does figure:De Clement A lexandrin Le Pro treptique et le Pedagogue se trouvent assezsouvent dans nos Bibliotheques. Des Stromates il n'y a qu'un manuscritqui est a Florence dans la bibliotheque de St. Laurent. Les premieresfeuilles y manquent et de la vient que ce meme defaut se trouve dans toutesles editions. Un manuscrit bien entier de cet ouvrage serait fort precieux.On a perdu de Clement Alexandrin ses Hypotyposes. Si Ton en trouvaitquelque manuscrit dans le Levant, ce serait un tresor.

I t is clearly this reference which alerted d'Antraigues to the valueand rarity of the manuscript in the monastery of St. Macaire. Hehad taken in the advice offered by the great French scholar, just ashe had benefited from a reading of the Paliographie grecque in orderto explain to his reader (Princess Ghika) some of the intricacies ofancient manuscripts, identification of inks, and writing styles.What is not clear is what this handwritten copy of the Recherchesa faire . . . is doing in d'Antraigues' own manuscript. They hadappeared posthumously, just after Montfaucon's death and elevenyears before d'Antraigues' birth, in the Mercure de France ofJanuary 1742, under a different title: Memoire pour servir a"instruc-tion a ceux qui cherchent d'anciens monum ents dans la Grece et leLevant. Erudite though this was, for a young amateur liked'Antraigues, he had wide enough connections with men of lettersto have had his attention brought to it.One niggling doubt has to be dealt with: d'Antraigues has a greatreputation as a fantasizer and counterfeiter: he wrote novels andletters, and claimed they had been written by Jean-JacquesRousseau; he altered diplomatic reports in order to persuade theBritish Government to take up arms against the French Republic.Could he have invented the discovery of the Clement manuscripton the basis of Montfaucon's reference to it? First, two small dis-crepancies work against this theory: Montfaucon writes ClementAlexandrin and Hypotyposes, whereas d'Antraigues writes Clementd'Alexandria and Hypotiposes; and the details he gives of the



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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 71Hypotyposeis are not to be found in the Recherches a faire . . . (oranywhere else). Certainly, since d'Antraigues could show greatpowers of imagination where the depiction of feelings or dramaticscenes was concerned, one has to face up to the possibility that hefalsified the account of his discovery of the Clement manuscript.It is very difficult, however, to admit it as serious. Claimingdiscovery of a non-existent manuscript in memoirs which he neverattempted to publish seems rather unlikely for a young man whohad no intention of aspiring to membership of the Academie desInscriptions. Indeed, his account of the meetings of the ParisAcademies, in his unpublished novel, Henri et Cecile, is sodevastatingly satirical that membership would clearly have beena burden and an irrelevance to him.

The two events to which attention has been drawn abovethefact that d'Antraigues was made aware of the existence of Clement'smissing Hypotyposeis by his reading of Montfaucon, and hissubsequent sighting of it, lead inevitably to the problem of thesubsequent history of the manuscript of Clement's work. Does itstill exist?

IIThe report of D'Antraigues is remarkable because he saw manu-scripts which other visitors did not see and which appear to havesurvived various disasters.' As a matter of principle, monasticsbegan by renouncing all possessions, including books; howevera life of worship demanded books for use in church and collectionsgrew through the industry of the monks. Raids by barbarians onSt. Macarius in the early fifth century would have destroyed earlycollections. However, in the same century the emperor Zenogranted to the monks of St. Macarius an annual subsidy whichwas a permanent source of wealth and in the sixth century thepatriarchate of the Monophysite churches was moved to theircommunity. Before the end of the century the monastery was againsacked, and another final sacking occurred in 817; so thorough wasthe destruction that Evelyn White claimed 'Not a fragment ofmanuscript derived from this source can be ascribed to a date earlierthan the 9th century.'8

From this time on, the monastery did not look back. It suppliedthe patriarch and the bishops for northern Egypt, and in the MiddleAges it was the ruling monastery of Egypt. A library grew rapidly.* The following account is indebted at many points to H. G. Evelyn White, TheMonatterits of the Wadi Natrun, 1-3 (N ew York, 1926, 1932, 1933), supplementedby my own visit to the monastery in August 1983 (E.F.O.). Ibid., 1, p . xxiv.




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72 C. DU CK W OR TH AN D E. OSBORNCoptic manuscripts from the ninth to the thir teenth centuries , nowin the Vatican library, may be clearly identified. In the latter partof this period Arabic gained a general ascendancy over Coptic.Throughout this period the l ibrary of the monastery providedsources for investigation into church councils and rules. However,it seems that the collection was religious in orientation: 'Works ofsecular learning mu ch m ore , works of imagination were entirelyabsent . '7 There were few copies of the Bible, as distinct fromlectionaries . One copy of the Pentateuch, one of the Gospels andone copy of the E pistles are estab lished . Patristic litera ture is slight:'To the Egyptian mind metaphysical dogma seems to have beendistasteful. . . . T he re w as an obv ious ten den cy to select only themore practical [ethical] tracts or homilies of the Fathers. '8

In 1633, a Ca puch in, G il les de Loche s, told the Fre nch biblio -phile Peiresc of many rare book s in mo naster ies in Egyp t, including'A library of 8,000 volumes, of which no small part bore the marksof the Antonian Ag e. ' I n 1635, anoth er Capu chin desp atched toPeiresc, from St. M ac ariu s, a Psalter in six langua ges. T h e book w ascap tured by pirates bu t eventually came to the G ran d M aster of theK nig hts of St . John at M alta. H e presen ted i t to Cardinal Barb eriniwhose nam e i t has s ince born e. T h er e w ere other F ren ch vis i tors toSt. M aca rius in 1640 and 1644. I n 1682 and 1683 the chaplain to th eLevant Company, Rober t Hunt ingdon, v is i ted the monas tery andtook away a copy of the Gospels. Much more was taken by J. S.Assem anus who obtained 'Cod ices Co ptico sermone scriptos . . .opt imae notae ' .1 0 Sonnini did not vis i t St . Macarius during hisjou rne y in 1778, bu t at El Baramos he found m any Co ptic books.1 1In 1839, H en ry Ta ttam vis ited St . M acarius and found 'A beautifulcopy of the Epistles in C op tic whic h the m onk s refused to sell . '12 I n1844, Ti sch en do rf collected a grea t nu m be r of fragme nts and sawmanuscripts in disorder . Like those before him, he found materialin Coptic and Arabic only: ' I saw nothing Greek; all was eitherCoptic or Arabic. '1 3 However, one Grevil le Chester , in 1873, wasnot allowed to enter the Keep, because shortly before him themonastery had been robbed of its plate and 'all the valuablemanuscr ip t s ' .1 4 There are no traces in Europe of the manuscripts

7 White, The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun, 1, p. xxx. ' I bid. 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 Upp er and Low er Egypt, tr .H. Hunter (London, 1709), Evelyn W hite, Wadi Natrun, i, p. xxxix.11 From the diary of Tatta m 's stepdaughter, M iss Platt, Quarterly Revietc, lxxvii(1846-58).11 C. Tischendorf, Travels in the East (E. T. London, 1847), p. 52.14 Archaeological Journal, xxx, p. 106.




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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 73which are supposed to have been taken and Evelyn White issceptical concerning the claims;16 White's own work began in 1920and contin ued in 1921 when he collected ma ny fragm ents of Cop ticm an us crip ts. Before his untim ely death in 1924, he com pleted threevolumes of report on the manuscripts, history, and architecture ofthe m onasteries of W adi N atru n, especially St . Ma carius.D'Antraigues shows that the l ibrary was far more extensive thanEvelyn White concluded. The only modern visi tor who may haveseen what D'Antraigues saw was the Capuchin Gil les de Locheswho wrote of an Egyptian monastery l ibrary of 8,000 books.1 6White comments 'Almost certainly this was the l ibrary of theSyrian monastery. '1 7 A recent inspection of that library by oneof us does not encourage such a conclusion. While de Loches, i tmight seem, could hardly have missed the particular treasureswhich D'Antraigues mentioned, he probably did not have thechance to inspect closely. The l ibrary of St. Macarius was morelikely to have numbered 8,000 than that of the Syrians.

W as there a scare in the desert som e years after D 'A ntr aig ue svisited? N ap ole on 's visi t to Eg ypt and the brief period of F ren chdominance certainly affected St. Macarius. In the inside cover ofone of the Coptic lectionaries there are some vivid sketches ofFr enc h soldiers in the uniform of N apo leon 's t ime. At such t imesthe treasures of the past were not secure. Monks are properlyconcerned with the preservation of whatever has been handed downto them. Their austeri ty and spiri tual force derive from theirproximity in heart to their faithful past. 1 8 Even if there were a scareafter D'Antraigues' visi t , that would explain only the subsequentdisappearance of the treasures. I t would not explain why no onebefore D'Antraigues saw them. In our opinion there is no problemin the concealment of these manuscripts before and after the visit ofD 'An traig ues . So me m onks knew the value of their inheri tance anda m ona stery has m ore facil it ies for conc ealm ent tha n could be foundin most bui ldings. The surprise is that D'Antraigues saw what hedid: pe rh ap s his let ter from the Pacha m ade the difference. T at tamrecords a com m on experience when he visi ted the Syrian m onastery.H e was told by the mon ks that they had n o more b ooks than were inthe church, 'Upon which he told them plainly that he knew theyhad. They laughed on being detected and after a short conference

" Evelyn W hite, 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 awriter in the Quarterly Review, lxxiii (1846), p. 45." This strong sense of the past is true of the Coptic Church in general; it is focusedwithin the monasteries.


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74 C. DU CK W OR TH AN D E. OSBORNsaid he should see them.' 1 9 Further , D'Ant ra igues no tes tha t themonks saw something sinister in Greek manuscripts . They couldbe used for magical purposes; i t were better that the l ibrary shouldbe burnt down than that a Frenchman should enhance his occul tpowers .2 0

I l lAll of which leads us to consider the importance and nature of theHypotyposeis. What does the t i t le mean? There is a general useof the word as 'sketch' or 'outl ine notes' . I t is used by SextusE m pir icu s as a ti tle for his description in outl ine of the philo sop hyof Pyrrho;1 1 Proclus gives such an outline of the principles ofas t ronomy. i 2 Plot inus contrasts such a sketch with a thoroughtreatment or working out of a subject . 1 3 The Lat in equivalent ofadumbratio indicates that the Latin fragments preserved by Cassio-dorus belong with the Hypotyposeis..**

T he w ord occurs twice in the N ew Testam ent Let te rs to Tim oth y .In the first case it has an ethical rather than a literary meaning andmeans 'model ' or 'pat tern ' . 'But for this reason I received mercytha t in m e first C hr ist Je su s sho uld be show n with all long-su ffering,as a pattern for those who were going to believe in him to lifee terna l . '2 5 In the second example the l i terary or verbal meaning isevide nt, but the saving pow er is equally im po rtan t: 'H old fast to thepatte rn of saving word s, which you have heard from m e, in the faithand love which are in Christ . ' 2 ' This deposit is to be guarded bythe Holy Spiri t who lives within the believer. From the use in thePastorals the associations of power and tradit ion are added to thenotions of brevity.

Quinti l ian speaks of a VTTOTVTTWOIS as a style of writing whichappeals to the eye m ore than to the ear, a form of vivid desc ription :'quaedam forma rerum ita expressa verbis ut cerni potius videaturquam audi r i ' .2 7He gives an example: ' Inflamed with crime and anger he enteredthe forum; his eyes were on fire and cruelty streamed from everyfeature of his face.'11

Quarterly Review, btxvii (1845), P- 57- See n. 12 above. M iss Pla tt's diary waspublished 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 quidemsubtitiliter, sed aliqua incaute'. ** 1 Tim . i. 16.** 2 Tim. i. 14. " Institutio Oratorio, 9.2.40.


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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 75Did Cle m ent use the wo rd merely in its general sense of 'outl in e 'or also in the vivid sense of Quin tilian with o ve rtone s of pow er andtradit ion from the Pastoral Epis t les? D'A ntra igu es believed that the

vivid sense was appropriate and his opinion would have beenguided by the opening part of the wo rk. Clem ent frequently definedhis genre of writ ing in his opening paragraphs. The only otherevidence available to us is in the fragments that have beenpreserved. Do they suppor t D 'Antra igues ' account?Eusebius indicates the two pers is t ing elements of the Hypo-typoseis where Clement 'has put forward his expositions of theScr ip tures and h is traditions' .%i These two e lements are com-plementary s ince the tradit ions contain further information aboutthe writers and the matter of scr ipture. Pantaenus is mentioned inthe work, s ince Clement 's knowledge of scr ipture and of tradit ionderived from him." The whole of the canonical scr ipture rfjsevStaOr/Kov ypa


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76 C. DU CK W OR TH AN D E. OSBORNiii. 16) on ear th , they did not see him before m en did (fragm ent 16).To wash the feet of the saints (i Tim. i. 10) is to perform the lowestservice un asha m ed (fragment 18).

Tradi t ions concerning the apos t les are more extended. The twogospels with genealogies were written first, then Mark wrote whathe had learned from Peter . Wh en Pe ter learned of M ark 's writ ing heneither hindered nor helped its diffusion. Last of all John wrote aspir i tual Gospel (H.E. , 6 .14.5/7) . 1 a second account, Peter showsmore enthusiasm and authorizes Mark 's work to be read in thech ur ch es (H .E ., 2.15.1 f.) . Paul wrote the letter to the H eb rew s inHebrew and Luke translated i t into Greek; but Paul did not put hisnam e to the let ter because the Heb rew s were prejudiced against himand because he was sent to the Gentiles whereas his lord had beensent to the Hebrews (H.E. , 6 .14.2/4) .Eusebius owes some of his most colourful material to Clement.T h e L ord c om mit ted knowledge to James the Jus t , John, and Peter ;they passed it on to the other apostles who passed it on to theSeventy. Jam es the Jus t was throw n dow n from a pinnac le andbeaten to death with a ful ler 's club; the other James was beheaded(H .E . , 2 .1.4) . Even the behe ading of Jam es was no ordinary execu-

tion. His accuser was so moved by the testimony of James that heconfessed faith in C hri st forthw ith. W he n he asked Jam es to forgivehim, after a brief reflection, 6Xiyov oKeipapevos, James wished himpeace and kissed him, 'and so they were both beheaded together '(H .E. , 2 .10 .3).T h e Hypotyposeis are clearly more than a summary, an outline ora collection of notes. They are related to Scripture and provideexegeses and tra dit ion s. T he y do this in crisp no te form b ut w ith thepower and vividness which are designated by Quinti l ian, 'ut cerni

potius videatur quam audir i ' ,3 4 as character is t ic of Hypotyposeis .D 'Ant ra igues ' accoun t35 indicates the quali t ies which marked oneof the f irst com m entaries on Scrip ture by a writer w ithin the chu rchunive rsal . T h ey were aimed no t s imply at the removal of obsc uri ty,but at helping the message of the text to stand up and speak; this isthe goal of good exegesis. All of which shows how important theyare and why they deserve our at tention. They reinforce the con-clusion gained elsewhere that the secret tradition of Clement wasa way of interpret ing Scripture, not an addit ional document.8 'M Institutio Oratorio, 9.2.40." 'Hypotyposeis are descriptions of certain objects, depicted with such warm th,portrayed with such a lively energy that the scenes presented to him are taking placebefore his eyes at the very m oment w hen he reads the account of the m.'" On Clement's apostolic tradition see Strom. 6.7.61 and 6.8.68.



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C L E M E N T 'O F A LE X AN D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 77I V

One quest ion remains. Why were the Hypotyposeis neglected?T he answer is simp le. T he y were considered by Phot ius and othersto be heretical .37 So me of Clement 's exegeses of Scrip ture wereunacceptable to la ter orthodoxy. This was maintained most force-fully by Phot ius ; but Photius leaves us with a prob lem: the onequotat ion which he gives does not mean what he th inks it me a n s . Itdoes not mean that there are two separate logoi, but rather that onelogos is present in three waysin the mind of the Fa the r , in theincarnate Son, and in the hearts of me n . The confusion of Pho t iuscannot be cleared up quickly but we can make some progress. Wecan show that Clement did not mean what Phot ius thought hemean t . We do not thereby establish that Clement could not havesaid anything contrary to la ter orthodo xy, we simply show that hedid not deny the central idea of his own thought .

Clement descr ibed God and the son of God in t e rms of con-t emporary Pla ton ism. God was TO ev, a simple bare uni ty ,3 8 abovethe categories of human though t and the t e rms of human speech ,reached only by a process of abstract ion, a via negativa. The son ofG od was ev TroLvra, a complex uni ty , embracing in his powers thecircle of all existing things. To believe was to be ' indissolubly madeone in h im' ,3 9 and to know him was to enshrine him within one 'ssoul, 'the one saviour individually to each and in c o mmo n to all ' .4 0Clement em phasizes the unity of God t h roughou t his ent i re work,4 1adding that not only is God one God, and the Logos one Logos , butthey are together one Go dhe ad. 4 1 It is on the gro un ds of plurali ty andimmoral i ty that he attacks pagan deit ies. It is by constant referenceto the one first principle of all things that he shat ters the Gnos t i canti theses of God and m atter , just ice and goodness. Clement foundin the eV and the ev navra of contemp orary Pla ton ism, the vehicle fora contemporary s ta tement of Christ iani ty and a weapon to disarmGnost ic sects and pagan polytheism. These concepts were com-bined through the leading idea of the day, tha t of a cosmic mind 4 3from which came a Geistmetaphysik.** The claim of Pho t ius isimpor t an t , not because of the brand of heterodoxy, but because

" Many considered the offending phrases to be interpolations." Strom. 5.12.81. M Strom. 4.25.156. " Strom. 7.3.16.41 Th e theme of unity governs Clem ent's account of goodness and of truth as wellas 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 N um enius, Frag. 25 (Leemans). See H. J. Kramer, Der Ursprung derGeistmetaphysik (Amsterdam, 1964), pp. 42 f.44 Ibid., p. 126.


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78 C. DU CKW ORT H AN D E. OSBORNof the rift which i t makes in Clement 's thought. If Clement speaksin the Hypotyposeis of two divine logoi and makes one of themremote from the hearts of men, then the basis of his previousthought is abandoned. Phot ius at t r ibutes to Clement the view thatthere are two divine logoi of whom not even the lesser appeared tomen. He quotes Clement as saying, 'The son is also called logos,equivocally with the paternal logos, but it is not the latter whichbeca m e flesh. N or indeed is i t the paternal logos, bu t a certain p ow erof God, a kind of emanation of his logos that became nous andinhabi ted the hearts of men. '

I t has been widely agreed that Phot ius has misinterpreted thisquotat ion al though the extent of his misinterpretat ion is notagreed.4 6 Photius ' misinterpretat ion goes much deeper than hasbeen real ized. Clement 's argument in the passage quoted is point-less if he believed in the existence of two div ine log oi.48 H e does notuse Logos in the plural when speaking of the Godhead.T h e rest of the t rouble com es from the diversi ty of m eanings thatthe w ord Log os can have. W e may no tice two of these in a passage ofC l e me n tBut he who has given us being and life, has also given us logos because hewished that we should live both reasonably and well. For the logoi of thefather of all is not the speech which proceeds from him but the wisdom andmanifest goodness of God and at the same time the almighty and trulydivine power, known even to those who do not confess him , the omnipotentwill. (Strom. 5.1.6.)

In the first sentence logos means rationali ty, the quali ty of therational mind. In the second sentence logos is a divine being, not aqual i ty .4 7This s imple ambigui ty led to the object ions which Clement istrying to refute in the Photius quotations. These objections are:(1) The Logos of God became flesh for the salvation of men.This impl ies tha t God became aXoyos, wi thou t logos, irrational.T o th is it had been claimed by Apolog ists that logos was two-

" Th . Zahn, Supplementum C lementinum (1884) in Forschungen su r Geschichte desneuUttamentlichen Kanons, iii, maintained that Photius erred in saying that even thelesser logos did not become incarnate, but maintains nevertheless that the Son isdistinct from the Logos of the Father.* The phrase comes from R. P. Casey, 'Clement and the two divine Logoi',J. T.S. xxv (19 24), pp. 43 -5 6. Casey surveys man y aspects of the problem, conclud esthat the Stoic distinction was useful to Christians but led to careless expressions likethat of Clement." G. W. Butterworth, Clement of Alexandria (Loeb Classical Library, London,1919), p. 20: 'The Greek Logos means either "W ord" [personal] or "rational w ord","reason" [impersonal]. All through his writings Clement plays upon this doublemeaning of Logos'


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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 79fold:48 \6yos evSiadtTOs and Xoyos npofopixos, and that only the logosprophorikos came forth from the Father to be the creator andSaviour of men. This distinction is not clear in Clement and couldbe refuted when he refuses to speak of the Logos of the Father asprophorikos on the grou nd s that this descript ion beli t t les the personof the divine Logo s. In s tead , Clem ent realizes the equivocation andsays 'T h e Son is called logos equivoca lly (6fuvvpM>s) the rationalityof the Father is called 6 Xoyos, but it is not the latter that becameflesh. ' The key word here is ofiwvvfMuis. Clement is pointing to thesimple equivocation on which the argument res ts . This interpreta-tion of the passage is confirmed by the following sentence, whichis an answer to the natural objection to the first sentence. Thisobjection may be formulated as follows:

(2) God gives logos (rationality) to men. This implies that Godbecomes dXoyos, without logos.T h is objection is the natura l rejoinder to Cle m en t 's reply tothe f irs t objection. The equivocation is removed. Clement replies' I t is not the logos-rationality of the Father, but a certain Svva^iis ofGod, as it were an anoppoia of this logos which became nous andhas entered into the hearts of men. ' God does not lose his logos-rationality when he gives man logos-rationality. An dnSppoia of thislogos becomes nous. The logos of God is not weakened in theprocess. Again Clement here speaks of the rationality, reasoningpower of the mind as nous after describing it elsewhere60 as logos.His purpose is to avoid the confusion which was behind theobjection. He speaks elsewhere of the logos of God giving menlogos as well as other things.6 1 The object ionif God 's Logosgives us logos may not God run short of logos?is not a sillyobjection. Clement answers it by saying that it is not the narpfosXoyos that we receive but an avSppoia of his logos which becomesnous in our hearts .

The advantages of this interpretat ion are:6 a(a) I t makes sense of both parts of the quotation and explainswhy they follow one another.(b ) I t explains why narpcfyos Xoyos or irarpiKOs Xoyos is heredis t inguished from the Son. Clement elsewhere uses the terms assynonymous wi th the Son, meaning Logos-Person. He would not

on his own initiative have spoken of the rationality of the F ath er and" Theophilus , Ad Autolycum, 2, 10, 22. Tertullian, Apol. 21, Adv. Prax. 5, usesratio and termo to make the same distinction." Cf. Plotinus, Em. 2.3.11 and Plato, Phaedrus 251 B.* For logos as hum an rationality see Strom. 5.1.6. " Ibid." If there are two divine logoi in Photius's sense, the second sentenc e is non sense.'Nor is it the logos of the Father b ut as it were an effluence of the logos of G od .'


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80 C. DU CKW ORTH AN D E. OSBORNattr ibu ted a qual ity to the Fath er because of i ts anth rop om orph ictone . But h ere he is using som eone else 's term s and he is concern edto show that rationality rather than irrationality is a quality of theFa the r .(c) I t would be quite easy for Photius to misunderstand whatClement was saying. The Hypotyposeis were Scr ip ture com-mentaries and Clement 's exegesis is striking rather than simple. Heleaves out steps which only a few could readily supply and makesallusions which only a few could readily understand.

(d ) I t does not contradict the chief points which Clementexpounds in the rest of his writ ing. The idea of ' two logoi ' mademany serious students regard these sentences as an interpolation.(e) I t is anoth er instance of a com m on p he no m en on in C lem ent.Apparent incoherence frequent ly conceals important points andsubtle argument. Clement 's language can never be divorced fromhis argument; it is no accident that he does not use ' logos' in theplural when talking of God's work with man. The important thingabout logos is that it can, like light, admit of distinction withoutseparation. Clement is saying that when the light of logos shines inthe incarnation and in human reason, i t is not extinguished in God.Rather i t only shines in the incarnation and in the human mindbecause the logos of the Father is united with it at its source.

O ne hu nd re d years ago in 1884, Z ah n 6 3 put forward a substantialcase for divided logos, defending the Photius quotation as genuinebecause it reflected ideas of Clement found in other works. Zahncommented 'Clemens unterscheidet a lso den Sohn-Logos, welcherals a l lgemeine Vemunft durch die Herzen der Menschen gezogenund dann Fleisch geworden ist , von dem eigentlichen Logos, derVernunft des Vaters . '6 4 This is not what the fragment says, as helater admits, but attention must be given to Zahn's claim thatClement habitually makes this division. He puts forward threea rgumen t s :

1. Clement makes a sharp dist inct ion between the t ranscendentFather and the Son who proceeded from God as the 'Verursacherund Mittler der Weltschopfung' and afterwards became flesh.But Clement makes an equally strong emphasis on the unity ofFa the r and Son 'the Son in the Fa the r and the Fathe r in the So n '

6 6and calls both Father and Son avap\os dpxij.682. Clement often calls the 'Son-logos' a divine power. Stahlinlists six references to the Son as Svva/Ms of God. In (Strom. 6.6.47)

" T h. Zahn, Supplementum CUm entmum, 142 ff. " Ibid., p. 144." Paed . 1.5.24. Cf. Paed. 1.8.62, tv yap ifufxu, 6 6t6s." Strom. 4.25.162; Strom. 7.1.2.




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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 81the Lord is described as Suvauis TOV Oeov and weakness or inabilityto save is consequently excluded from him. (Clement is speakingof the souls in Hades.) This power of God which is the Lord iseverywhere and works eternally. In Strom. 7.2.9 the same idea ofa naTpiKT) Suvafiis is used to emphasize universality of operation.I n Strom. 5.1.6 the Logos is Svvafus TOV 9eov in a passage whiche m p h a s i z e s t h e f a c t t h a t h e i s TrayKpa-rffi ical TO~> OVTI 9eia . . . OeXr/naTravroKpaTopiKov.In the final appeal of the Protrepticus the Xoyos TOV deov isdescribed among other things as hvvay.is TWV OXWV (Prot. 12.120).A passage in Excerpta uses the expression to emphasize proximityto the Father and omnipotence (Exc. Theod. 4.3) . Eve ry one of thesereferences is against Zahn's inference that Suva/itj TOV deov or TOVTTaTp6s in Clement implies that there is an inferior Son-Logos whois eine gottliche Kraft. In each case proximity to the Father , andomnipotence or omnipresence are emphas ized .

Zahn mentions three passages . The f irs t {Prot. 110) speaks of7} Svvafiis 17 6tiK-17 prep aring the gro un d for our L ord so that our L ordcou ld fulfil his wo rk quick ly as a resu lt of th e divine ca re. N o stric tidentity is asserted of this divine power and the Lord; but thereis a strict identity asserted of the Lord, Saviour, Divine Word,6 avfpcoTa,Tos omws Oeos, the equal of the Lo rd of the U nive rse, Son ,Word in God who became f lesh. The second and third passages(Strom. 5.1.6. and Strom. 7.2.9) have been dealt with above.

3. Za hn 's third argu m ent begins with an interpretat ion of Strom.5.1.6 in which he admits the exclusion of any sharp distinctionbetween the Son-logos and the Logos of the Father . He adds thatthe Photius fragment only says that we must not identify theSon w ith the rationality of G od . Bu t it expresses a tend enc y ofClement 's theology 'auf Verselbstandigung der Logosvorstel lunggegeniiber dem einen unerzeugten Gott ' .5 7 This tendency f indsexpression in Prot. 98.

From this examination of Zahn's treatment it will be seen thatno valid arguments are given for believing that Clement made adivis ion between a paternal L ogos and a So n-L ogo s. W e must turnto Prot. 98 and see w heth er this mak es the distinction o r no t. I n thisparagraph Clement shows the folly of those who make and worshipidols. N o sculptor has ever ma de a brea thing image and given i thum an organ s, life and the prom ise of imm ortal i ty. O nly the creatorof all things apioroTexvas Trarqp has formed this living image of ourhu m an ity. T h e Oly mp ian Z eus is an image of this hu m an image andfar removed from the truth. There are four levels of realityfirstthere is God himself, then there is his Word. Thirdly there is the

" Zahn, SuppUmentum, p. 146.



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82 C. DU CK W OR TH AN D E. OSBORNtrue man the N ous that is in man and causes man to be described asmade in the image and likeness of God, made like the divine Logosin the thoughts of the heart and thus logikos. Last come the statueswhich are not even an image of the rational man, but are earthyimages of the visible earth -bo rn part of man and therefore far fromthe truth.68T he suggestion by Zahn that G od and N ous are two separableentities and that the logos is the image of the latter is untenable.N owhere in the writings of Clement is there any suggestion of aseparation of the N ous of the Father, from the Father. N ous is oneof the names of God and is used as the equivalent to 'God'. 09Clement writes 'for his word is the image of God and the divineword is the true Son of N ou s, the archetypal light of light'. T hesubject of each proposition is the samethe divine Logos. Thesecond proposition repeats and develops the first. T he Logos is thetrue son of N ous, inheriting h is qualities, being light from light. Ifwe take Logos and N ous as proper names the sentence makes sense.If we take either or both of them as an abstract entity, we are landedin a hopeless confusion.

Another passage which speaks of man as an image of God andfollows the Platonic theme of an image of an image, is found inStrom. 7.3.16. In the soul of the righteous man or the gnostic isenshrined the ruler, king, creator, law, eternal word, only begotten,who is the image of the glory of the Father who is king of all andalmighty. Th e eternal word seals the righteous man according to hisown image to make a third divine likeness. The re is no suggestion ofmore than one Logos unless we take the glory of the Father as anintermediate being between the word and the Father and take thethird likeness to mean tha t the re are three likenesses other than Godhimself. The text does not support this idea and it is not consistentwith Clement's thoughts elsewhere. Clement is working with alogical scheme exactly like that of Plato in Republic 10 where thereare three entitiesthe form, the craftsman's copy, and the artist'scopy of the copy. The artist is described as an imitator who isconcerned with the third product of nature and who is himself inthird place from the king and the truth (Republic S97e).

There remain the passages from the Excerpta ex Theodoto towhich Casey makes special reference.81 They are far from consistentor conclusive. We read in 19.1 that the essential Logos, in the" T he allusion here is to Ada m, mad e 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.




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C L E M E N T O F A L E X A N D R I A 'S HYPOTYPOSEIS 83beginning, became a Son without a change in substance and thathe became f lesh working through the prophets . The saviour is thechild of this logos. The logos of this logos is the image of theinvisible God, the first-born of all creation. It is impossible toidentify the essential logos with a transcendent logos of the Fathersince it became Son and flesh. Again in the Excerpta 8 the essentialunity of the Logos is emphasized in contrast to the plurality ofValent in ian em anat ions . Th e em phas is thro ugh out is on the perfectidenti ty and the unity of personali ty and action within the Logos.'Le Logos ' , says Sagnard, 'es t absolument un et identique a lui-meme (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 les tade de sa m anifestat ion . '8 1 He re as e lsewhere C lement emphas izesthe unity of the logos and any attempt to find the two logoi wouldrun counter to the whole course of his argument which is s tatedmost clearly in Excerpta 8: 'But we affirm the one self-same logosGod in God of whom it is also said that he is in the bosom of theFather , one God inseparable, indivis ible. 'Conclusion. T h e Hypotyposeis provide a unique source for earlyChris t ian thought. I t seems probable that the accusations ofPh oti us were influential in discou ragin g the use of this wo rk. On th eevidence of Photius and on the basis of Clement 's thought else-where we may more r ightly conclude that the accusations werew ithou t gro un d. Only wh en terminolog y is divorced from theargument in which i t occurs can the case of Zahn s tand. Patr is t icstudy has suffered enough through the isolation of the logos ofterminology from the logos of argument. With the destruction ofPhotius ' objections, there is even more reason to look at thefragments and to hope that we may yet recover the full text of theHypotyposeis.

C O L I N D U C K W O R T HE R I C O S B O R N

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


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