Hegesippus
We can begin to see that everything to do with Marcion hinges on what Hegesippus wrote in 147 CE. Irenaeus’s falsifications of Hegesippus moved this date back twelve years. In other words, Hegesippus a travelled from Corinth originally testifies to a certain ‘Marcellina’ in Rome under Anicetus is ‘Stage One.’ That Marcellina could be ‘Marcion’ is ‘Stage Two’ of the corruption where Marcion still arrives in Rome when another ‘eyewitness’ – Justin Martyr – still testifies to 147 CE. Then in ‘Stage Three’ we arrive at Against Heresies full blown corruption of a twelve-year delayed arrival of Marcion in Rome eyewitnessed by ‘Polycarp’ a bishop of the Asia Minor community ‘cut off’ by Victor to set up an ‘ecumenical precedent.’ I think there is a lot of naivete when it comes to the study of Patristic material. This is especially true with the case of Irenaeus’s writings where we have literally half a dozen versions of his original prostamata against the heresies and we continue to act as if Against Heresies is a verbatim historical record.
In order to untangle the development of ‘Marcion’ we have to go back to the original testimony of Hegesippus as preserved in Epiphanius. Hegesippus gives the order of Roman bishops in the following citation:
In any case, the succession of the bishops at Rome runs in this order: Peter and Paul, Linus and Cletus (Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος, Λίνος καὶ Κλῆτος), Clement, Evaristus, Alexander, Xystus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, and Anicetus, whom I mentioned above, on the list.
We should pay special attention to the first four names on the list where the first and second and third and fourth individuals are separated with the conjunction ‘and.’ The καὶ disappears in Irenaeus and Irenaeus takes the ten names that appear after ‘Peter and Paul’ to a consecutive list:
the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul … [who] having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate … To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric … To this Clement there succeeded Evaristus. Alexander followed Evaristus; then, sixth from the apostles, Sixtus was appointed; after him, Telephorus, who was gloriously martyred; then Hyginus; after him, Pius; then after him, Anicetus. Sorer having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherius does now, in the twelfth place from the apostles, hold the inheritance of the episcopate.
While Against Heresies interprets the passage from Hegesippus to represent a single line of Roman bishops established in one locale by the twin apostles, Peter and Paul we will argue against such an interpretation. The falsifying of the author’s identity from Hegesippus to Polycarp and the use of the material to support ecumenism is a clear giveaway. Nevertheless we should also take note of Gaius’s testimony regarding two separate tropaia for Peter and Paul to represent another important counterpoint. Why would there be two separate shrines associated with each apostle but only one line of bishops especially given the identification of Gaius himself as a specifically Pauline bishop? Moreover Roman tradition such as the Acts of Peter and the Kerygma Petrou hint or confirm this original separation. There are also hints that bishops of Rome after Paul might also have been buried in Ostia which we shall bring up shortly – the same line of bishops which seem to continue Gaius’s original claim of authority over the election of the bishop of the see of Peter. There is from the earliest commentators on Hegesippus a clear hesitation – a sense that the first names on the list contradict an understanding from some other source that every commentator that Clement was really the first bishop after Peter. Both Rufinus and Epiphanius wrestle with the problem of the additional references of Λίνος καὶ Κλῆτος and fail to come up with no satisfactory answer for the discrepancy.
Our solution to the dilemma was that the καὶ in succession list of Hegesippus – i.e. ‘Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος, Λίνος καὶ Κλῆτος’ – which discontinues after the first four names was used to designate separate lines of episcopal transmission – one for the churches of Peter and one for the churches of Paul. In other words, it is only through Against Heresies’s reinterpretation of Hegesippus’s material (as by Polycarp no less) that we arrive at the single line of transmission. Hegesippus was originally attesting to the same situation as Gaius – viz. two apostolic churches in Rome and the ‘kai’ that only appears in the first two groupings designates separate lines of transmission. The first clue to this situation is that Anicetus is - under the single succession list interpretation - the eleventh bishop from Peter (and Paul) in Irenaeus. When Against Heresies adds Soter and Eleutheros to the list Victor becomes the fourteenth. However all parties concerned recognize Victor as the thirteenth bishop from Peter. The only way Victor can have been the thirteenth and Eleutherius the twelfth and Anicetus the tenth successors to Peter is if the ‘kai’ distinguishes Paul from Peter and Cletus from Linus – taking not only one predecessor to Victor but also twelve years from the chronology of Marcion .
This is not the place to get into the dates given for Polycarp’s martyrdom and his visit to Rome, but it should be clear that the idea that there were only ten bishops of Rome between Claudius’s rule and Marcus Aurelius is problematic. There were by contrast thirteen Emperors in the same period. Perhaps more significantly the understanding of Peter and Paul sharing the governing of Rome only fits the period 161 – 180 when Marcus Aurelius ruled the Empire first with his adoptive brother and then with his son. Before this time – and perhaps down through the end of Commodus’s reign in 192 - there was no precedent for such a bizarre understanding for the appropriateness of this arrangement. As such we can circumstantially contextualize the falsification of Hegesippus to this period in the late second century. Originally there were two bishops of Rome who stood on top of two churches where Paul had supremacy over Peter.
That our surviving Roman episcopal lists might have inverted ‘Peter and Paul’ from an original ‘Paul and Peter’ is suggested by the survival of the specific reading Παῦλος καὶ Πέτρος in the long epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians as well as the explicit identification of Linus as belonging with Paul and ‘Cletus’ with Peter:
And what are the deacons but imitators of the angelic powers, fulfilling a pure and blameless ministry unto him, as the holy Stephen did to the blessed James, Timothy and Linus to Paul, Anencletus and Clement to Peter
Whoever developed the longer edition of the Ignatian letters clearly had access to a document which knew of separate episcopal lines of Paul and Peter and the understanding that Linus belonged to the Pauline line of bishops.
This situation is confirmed with specific reference to the existence of a tomb of Linus in Ostia that was known to various fifteenth century eyewitnesses:
Accensis autem subito cereis, fornicem c subterraneum ingredientes, quinqué ibi túmulos marmóreos ordine dispositos intuentur , quorum quilibet , apposita plumbea lamina , qnid contineret indicabat . Primus quidem corpus S . Lini papae , secundus S . Austerii martyris , tertius S . Constantiae , quartus S . Aurae virginis , quintus vero S . Monicae matris Augustini
The presence of Linus’s tomb in Ostia in a tradition is also confirmed by other contemporary writers including Plautina who says it was “solemnly placed it in the Church of St. Lawrence.” The connection with St Lawrence is interesting because the German archaeologists who discovered the basilica of Constantine in Ostia make clear that one of the clues they used to confirm the site is found in the Acta Sanctorum:
The holy deacon Laurence appeared to him in a dream, urging him to arrange to have a church built in his name at the gate which up to the present time is called Laurentia.
The authors note the passage provides “a topographical statement: the building is at the gate which is called 'Laurentia' thus in the neighbourhood of a city gate through which led the road to Laurentum.” Already Fevrier sees a connection between “St Lawrence” and “this church … built near the Laurentia gate: we can understand the pun that gave birth to the idea of the apparition. This door is to be identified with the Laurentina porta, which opens to the south-east of the Ostia enclosure and through which passes the road that leads to Laurente.” The result is that while we do not find confirmation that Paul was buried here, a next generation pontiff was and the existence of an Ostian papacy seems assured.