PG001(col. 199-200): First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians: Title and Summary.

 (From the 1765 Venice edition of  André Galland's "Library of the Ancient Fathers", Tome 1, folio-size, p. 9)

Author:  André Galland

Googlebooks PDF: PG001

Of the holy Clement

the bishop of Rome

the Epistle to the Corinthians 1

written <in> the person of the Roman Church[[79]].

[Lat. trans. om.]

<With> J. B. Cotelier <as> translator.

Summary

     To the <letter> of the Corinthian Church, shaken up by both discord and sedition against the presbyters, the Roman Church responds.  It is grieved by the disagreement, and it exhorts the authors of the sedition, <having> taken up penance, <to obey> the presbyters.  It encourages hospitality, humility, concord, fear of God.  It expounds upon the promised resurrection, on preserving the order of sacred things.  It teaches that by the apostles both <that> bishops and deacons both were established and <that it was prescribed> how in the place of deceased bishops successors are to be furnished.  <That> bishops properly created and maintaining <their> duties should not be removed.  He desired that Claudius, Ephebus, Valerius, Vito, <and> Fortunatus, his messengers, be sent back shortly.

Notes

79. For this reason Irenaeus, book 3, chapter 3, says <it> was written "by the church which is at Rome", although others think that Clement was its author.  However, Clement preferred to inscribe it <with the name> of his Church <rather> than with <his> own name: either because then the leaders used to do nothing without the counsel of their Church, as Cyprian about himself explicitly <in> epistle 5 to his clergy mentioned with these words: "I could not write back alone; since from the beginning of my episcopate I established to do nothing separately by my own opinion without your counsel and without the consent of the people[[A]]"; or also lest he seem to consider <his> own <party interests>, if when the dignity and reverence corresponding to ecclesiastical men was to be restored among the Corinithians, either he alone, or the clergy with him, without the people addressed that Church.  Moreover, right reason demanded that if indeed the Corinthians had written earlier not to Clement alone, but to the Romans, Clement write back by the name of the Romans <and> not by <his> own. --Coustant.


My Notes
A. The texts in both printings I have of Migne fail to correspond exactly to what is in the Patrologia Latina volume for Cyprian.