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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > H > Hermas


HERMAS

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(First or second century), author of the book called "The Shepherd" (Poimen,
Pastor), a work which had great authority in ancient times and was ranked with
Holy Scripture. Eusebius tells us that it was publicly read in the churches, and
that while some denied it to be canonical, others "considered it most
necessary". St. Athanasius speaks of it, together with the Didache, in
connection with the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, as uncanonical
yet recommended by the ancients for the reading of catechumens. Elsewhere he
calls it a most profitable book. Rufinus similarly says that the ancients wished
it to be read, but not to be used as an authority as to the Faith. It is found
with the Epistle of Barnabas at the end of the New Testament in the great
Siniatic Bible Aleph (fourth century), and between the Acts of the Apostles and
the Acts of Paul in the stichometrical list of the Codex Claromontanus. In
accordance with this conflicting evidence, we find two lines of opinion among
the earlier Fathers. St. Irenæus and Tertullian (in his Catholic days) cite the
"Shepherd" as Scripture. Clement of Alexandria constantly quotes it with
reverence, and so does Origen, who held that the author was the Hermas mentioned
by St. Paul, Romans 16:14. He says the work seems to him to be very useful, and
Divinely inspired; yet he repeatedly apologizes, when he has occasion to quote
it, on the ground that "many people despise it". Tertullian, when a Montanist,
implies that Pope St. Callistus had quoted it as an authority (though evidently
not as Scripture), for he replies: "I would admit your argument, if the writing
of the Shepherd had deserved to be included in the Divine Instrument, and if it
were not judged by every council of the Churches, even of your own Churches,
among the apocryphal and false." And again, he says that the Epistle of Barnabas
is "more received among the Churches than that apocryphal Shepherd" (On Pudicity
10 and 20). Tertullian was no doubt right, that the book had been excluded at
Rome from the Bible Instrumentum, but he is exaggerating in referring to "every
council" and to a total rejection, for the teaching of the "Pastor" was in
direct contradiction with his own rigid views as to penance. His earlier use of
it is paralleled by the Acts of Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas, before the end of
the second century, but there is no trace of it in St. Cyprian, so that it would
seem to have gone out of use in Africa during the early decades of the third
century. Somewhat later it is quoted by the author of the pseudo-Cyprianic tract
"Adv. aleatores" as "Scriptura divina", but in St. Jerome's day it was "almost
unknown to the Latins". Curiously, it went out of fashion in the East, so that
the Greek manuscripts of it are but two in number, whereas in the West it became
better known and was frequently copied in the Middle Ages.




CONTENTS

The book consists of five visions, twelve mandates, or commandments, and ten
similitudes, or parables. It commences abruptly in the first person: "He who
brought me up sold me to a certain Rhoda, who was at Rome. After many years I
met her again, and began to love her as a sister." As Hermas was on the road to
Cumae, he had a vision of Rhoda, who was presumably dead. She told him that she
was his accuser in heaven, on account of an unchaste thought he had once had
concerning her, though only in passing; he was to pray for forgiveness for
himself and all his house. He is consoled by a vision of the Church in the form
of an aged woman, weak and helpless from the sins of the faithful, who tells him
to do penance and to correct the sins of his children. Subsequently he sees her
made younger through penance, yet wrinkled and with white hair; then again, as
quite young but still with white hair — this is the Church of the forgiven.
Lastly, she shows herself all glorious as a Bride — this is the Church of the
end of the days. In the second vision she gives Hermas a book, which she
afterwards takes back in order to add to it. He is to give this writing to the
presbyters, who will read it to the people; another copy is for "Grapte", who
will communicate it to the widows; and a third is to be sent by Clement to the
foreign Churches, "for this is his office". We see here the constitution of the
Roman Church: the presbyters set over different parishes; Grapte (no doubt a
deaconess) who is connected with the widows; Clement, the pope, who is the organ
of communication between Rome and the rest of the Church in the second century
is well known to us from other sources. The fifth vision, which is represented
as taking place twenty days after the fourth, introduces "the Angel of
repentance" in the guise of a shepherd, from whom the whole work takes its name.
He delivers to Hermas a series of precepts (mandata, entolai) as to the belief
in one God, simplicity, truthfulness, chastity, long-suffering, faith, fear,
continence, confidence, cheerfulness, humility, good desires. These form an
interesting development of early Christian ethics. The only point which needs
special mention is the assertion of a husband's obligation to take back an
adulterous wife on her repentance. The eleventh mandate, on humility, is
concerned with false prophets who desire to occupy the first seats (that is to
say, among the presbyters). It is possible that we have here a reference to
Marcion, who came to Rome about 142-4 and desired to be admitted among the
priests (or possibly even to become pope). After the mandata come ten
similitudes (parabolai) in the form of visions, which are explained by the
angel. The longest of these (ix) is an elaboration of the parable of the
building of a tower, which had formed the matter of the third vision. The tower
is the Church, and the stones of which it is built are the faithful. But in Vis.
iii it looked as though only the holy are a part of the Church; in Sim. ix it is
clearly pointed out that all the baptized are included, though they may be cast
out for grave sins, and can be readmitted only after penance.

The whole book is thus concerned with the Christian virtues and their exercise.
It is an ethical, not a theological, work. The intention is above all to preach
repentance. A single chance of restoration after fall is given to Christians,
and this opportunity is spoken of as something new, which had never been clearly
published before. The writer is pained by the sins of the faithful and is
sincerely anxious for their conversion and return to good works. As a layman,
Hermas avoids dogma, and, when incidentally it comes in, it is vague or
incorrect. It has been thought with some reason that he did not distinguish the
Son from the Holy Ghost, or that he held that the Holy Ghost became the Son by
His Incarnation. But his words are not clear, and his ideas on the subject may
have been rather misty and confused than definitely erroneous.




AUTHORSHIP AND DATE

It is not easy to decide whether the writer has given us a genuine fragment of
autobiography and a true account of visions which he saw or imagined that he
saw, or whether the entire work is fictitious both in form and in setting. Three
dates are suggested by the variety of evidence available. The reference to St.
Clement as pope would give the date 89-99 for at least the first two visions. On
the other hand, if the writer is identified with the Hermas mentioned by St.
Paul, an earlier date becomes probable, unless he wrote as a very old man. But
three ancient witnesses, one of whom claims to be contemporary, declare that he
was the brother of Pope St. Pius I, who was not earlier than 140-55. These three
are (a) the Muratorian fragment; (b) the Liberian catalogue of popes, in a
portion which dates from 235 (Hippolytus?); (c) the poem of Pseudo-Tertullian
against Marcion, of the third or fourth century. (a) "Pastorem uero nuperrime
temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae
ecclesiae Pio episcopo fratre ejus. Et ideo legi eum quidem oportet, se
publicare uero in ecclesia populo neque inter prophetas completos numero, neque
inter apostolos in fine temporum, potest" — "And very recently, in our own
times, in the city of Rome, Herma wrote the Pastor, when his brother Pius, the
bishop, sat upon the chair of the Church of the city of Rome. And therefore that
[book] ought to be perused, but it cannot be publicly read to the people
assembled in church, neither among the Prophets, whose number is complete, nor
among the Apostles [who came] in the end of times." (b) "Sub hujus [Pii]
episcopatu frater ejus Ermes librum scripsit, in quo mandatum continetur quae
[quod] praecepit ei angelus, cum venit ad illum in habitu Pastoris" — "Under his
[Pius's] episcopate, his brother Ermes wrote a book in which are contained the
precepts which the angel delivered to him, coming to him in the guise of a
Shepherd." (c) "Post hunc deinde Pius, Hermas cui germine frater angelicus
Pastor, quia tradita verba locutus." — "Then, after him, Pius, whose brother
according to the flesh was Hermas, the angelic shepherd, because he spoke the
words given to him." The three authorities are probably citing the same papal
catalogue (of Hegesippus?). As (c) quotes some details from this list which are
absent from (b), it would seem that he is independent of (b). (a) has added the
inference that the "Pastor" may be read publicly, provided it be not numbered
among the fourteen prophets, nor among the Apostolic writings. The statement
that Hermas wrote during his brother's pontificate may similarly be an inference
from the fact that it was in a list of popes, against the name of Pius, that the
writer found the information that Hermas was that pope's brother. He may have
been an elder brother of the pope, who was probably an old man in 140. Hence it
is quite possible that Hermas might have been past thirty when Clement died, at
the time of his first and second visions. But because this is possible, it does
not follow that it is very probable.

Older critics unanimously attributed the authorship to the Hermas of Rom., xvi,
14 — Bellarmine, Cave, Le Nourry, Rémi Ceillier, Lardner, etc., with Baronius,
who strangely thought the same Hermas might have been brother to Pius I. In the
middle of the eighteenth century Mosheim and Schroeck preferred the testimony of
the Muratorian Canon, which was published in 1740; but Gallandi and Lumper
adhered to the earlier view. Zahn, in an early work (1868), stood by the
references to St. Clement and imagined a Hermas, neither known to St. Paul nor
brother to St. Pius, but writing in the last decade of the first century. He was
followed by Peters and Caspari. But Hefele had been teaching that we cannot
refuse the contemporary witness of the Muratorian Fragment, and this view has in
the end prevailed amongst scholars, being now almost universally received. The
question remains how we are to explain the mention of St. Clement. It was
suggested above that Hermas may have been older than his brother Pius. But
Harnack, holding that monepiscopacy was unknown in Rome until Anicetus, the
successor of Pius, has no difficulty in holding that Clement really lived into
the beginning of the second century, and that Pius was the most prominent among
the priests at Rome even before 140. He therefore dates part of Visio ii, the
kernel of the whole, before 110, and the final redaction not earlier than 135,
nor later than 145. It is indeed true that the book itself describes the various
parts as having been written down successively, and the process may well have
taken three or four years, but hardly a decade or two. Perhaps the most probable
view is that the historical data in the book are fictitious; the author was
really the brother of Pope Pius, and wrote during his brother's pontificate. The
evils of the Church in his day which he describes are not impossible in the
first century, but they certainly suit the second better. There is a possible
reference to Marcion's visit to Rome about 142, and there is a probable
reference to Gnostic theories in Simil. viii, ix. The writer wished to be
thought to belong to the preceding generation — hence the name of Clement, the
most famous of earlier popes, instead of the name Pius. We cannot even be sure
that the writer's name was really Hermas. It is a suitable name for a slave,
being a shortened form of Hermogenes, Hermodorous, or some such word. Dr. Rendel
Harris has urged in an interesting essay that where Hermas describes twelve
mountains in Arcadia (Simil. ix, 1), the description of the locality is taken
from Pausanias. Dr. Armitage Robinson thought that we must even suppose that
Hermas knew the place himself, and had been brought up in Arcadia. But all this
is inconclusive, though plausible. The notion of De Champagny (who was followed
by Dom Guéranger), that the "Shepherd" is made up of two works, the one (Vis.
i-iv) by the disciple of St. Paul, the remainder by the brother of Pope Pius, is
sufficiently refuted by the unity of style and matter, as Baumgaertner has
shown. The same is to be said of Hilgenfeld's opinion, that we have before us a
fusion of works by three authors. Spitta has brought into patristic study the
method he has applied to the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse, and he
finds in Hermas traces of a Christian enlargement of a Jewish writing, as
Voelter had said of the Apocalypse. It is natural that Voelter should have
approved this theory, but Spitta has not been followed by patristic scholars.
Haussleiter formerly attributed only Vis. v-Simil. x to the brother of Pius,
regarding Vis. i-iv as an addition made at the end of the second century in
order to recommend the book as the work of Hermas, disciple of St. Paul. But
that personage is not even mentioned.

There is but one direct quotation in the "Shepherd", and that is from the
apocryphal book of "Eldad and Modat, who prophesied to the people in the
wilderness", and the reference is apparently ironical. But there are many
indirect citations from the Old Testament. According to Swete, Hermas never
cites the Septuagint, but he uses a version of Daniel akin to that of
Theodotion. He shows acquaintance with one or other of the Synoptic Gospels,
and, since he also uses that of St. John, he probably knew all three. He appears
to employ Ephesians and other Epistles, including perhaps I Peter and Hebrews.
But the books he most certainly and most often uses are the Epistle of St. James
and the Apocalypse. His matter is rather dull to us moderns, and the simplicity
of his manner has been characterized as childish. But the admiration of Origen
was not given to a work without depth or value; and, even with regard to the
style, Westcott has reason to say ("On the Canon", pt. I, ch. ii): "The beauty
of the language and conception in many parts has never been sufficiently
appreciated. Much of it may be compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress' and higher
praise than this cannot be given to a book of its kind." There is indeed some
resemblance between the intensity and directness of the ancient Roman Catholic
and that of the persecuted Puritan, however antipodean the antithesis between
the individualism of the one and the conception of a Universal Church which
dominate the whole thought of the other.

The "Shepherd" was first printed in Latin by Faber Stapulensis (Lefèvre
d'Etaples) in "Liber trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum" (Paris,
1513); better edition by Fell (Oxford, 1685), and especially by Hilgenfeld
(Leipzig, 1873), and von Gebhardt (Leipzig, 1877). This version, which is
contained in many manuscripts, and has been frequently reprinted in the editions
of the Apostolic Fathers, is known as the Vulgate. It was certainly known to the
author of the "Adversus aleatores" (third or fourth cent.), and possibly to
Tertullian, and the translation was probably made in the second century. Another
version is contained in a single manuscript (Vat. Palat. 150, saec. xiv), and
has been printed by Dressel, "Patres Apost." (Leipzig, 1857 and 1863), and von
Gebhardt and Harnack ("Patres Apost.", Leipzig, 1877). It is of the fifth
century, according to Harnack, and the translator has used the Vulgate version
as an aid. Haussleiter's attempt to show that the Palatine is the older is
rejected by Harnack and Funk. An Ethiopic version was discovered in 1847 by
d'Abbadie; it has unfortunately a few lacunae and accidental omissions. It seems
to have been made in the year 543. The Greek original was first known from a
fourteenth-century manuscript on Mount Athos. The well-known forger Simonides
stole four of the leaves and copied the rest. But he sold to the library of the
University of Leipzig a Greek version which he had composed himself. This was
published in 1856 by Rudolf Anger, with preface and index by Dindorf. The fraud
was soon discovered. The four leaves and Simonides' copy were procured by the
library, and the true readings were published by Anger in the "Leipziger
Repertorium der deutschen und auslaendischen Literatur", III (1856), 138. Since
then the six leaves which remain on Mount Athos have been collated by J.
Armitage Robinson. The Codex Sinaiticus discovered by Tischendorf and published
by him in 1862, contains the "Pastor", but in both manuscripts the end is
wanting. Two fragments of the book are found on a papyrus leaf from the Fayoum,
now at Berlin.




SOURCES

On the MSS. of the Vulgate version, see HARNACK, Gesch., I, 51; DELEHAYE in
Bull. crit., 1894, p.14; EHRHARD, Altchristl. Litteratur, 104. The Palatine MS.
has been carefully collated by FUNK in Zeitschr. fuer die oesterreich. Gymn.,
XXXVI (1885), 245. On the date and style of the Palatine version. HAUSSLEITER,
De versionibus Pastoris Hermae latinis (Erlangen, 1884); IDEM in Z. fuer wiss.
Theol., XXXVI (1883), 345. For the Ethiopic version, see D'ALBADIE and DILLMAN,
Hermae Pastor, with Latin translation, in Abhandlungen fuer die Kunde des
Morgenlandes, II (Leipzig, 1860), 1. The true Greek text appeared first in
DRESSEL, Patres Apostolici (Leipzig, 1857 and 1863), and has been frequently
republished in similar collections, as by HILGENFELD (1866 and 1881), GEBHARDT,
and HARNACK (1877-); LIGHTFOOT and HARMER with English translation (1891), FUNK
(1901). On the Athos MS., LAMBROS and ROBINSON, A Collation of the Athos Codex
of the Shepherd (Cambridge, 1888); HILGENFELD in Z. Weiss. Theol., XXXII (1889),
94. The Berlin Papyrus is given in facsimile by WILCKEN, Tafeln zur aelteren
griechischen Palaeogr. (Leipzig, 1891); a citation is found in a papyrus in
GRENFELL and HUNT, The Oxyrhynchus papyri, I (London, 1898), 8. On both papyri
see DIELS and HARNACK in Sitzungsber. der K. preussischen Akad. der Wiss.
(Berlin, 1891), p. 427, and EHRHARD in Theolog. Quartalschrift, LXXIV (1892),
294.
The literature dealing with Hermas is very large, and only a selection is here
mentioned. The best introduction and notes, in Latin, are by FUNK, Patres
Appostolici, I (Tuebingen, 1901). An excellent summary account by BARDENHEWER,
Gesch. der altkirchl. Litt., I (Freiburg im Br., 1902), 557-578; see also
HARNACK, Gesch. der altchr. Litt., I, 49, and Chronol., I, 257; KRUGER (who
dates the book c. 100), Gesch. der altchr. Litt. (1895), 29; ZAHN, Der Hirt des
Hermas untersucht (Gotha, 1868); IDEM, Gesch. des N.T. Kanons, I (1888), 326;
NIRSCHL, Der Hirt des Hermas (Passau, 1879); BRUELL, Der H. des H. (Freiburg im
Br., 1882); RENDEL HARRIS, Hermas in Arcadia in Journal of Soc. of Bibl. Lit.
and Exeg. (1887, and reprinted, Cambridge, 1888). On Hermas's use of the N.T.
see the works of WESTCOTT, ZAHN, GREGORY, etc. on the Canon; and C. TAYLOR, The
witness of Hermas to the four Gospels (London, 1892); IDEM, Hermas and the Cebes
(an attempt to show that Hermas has used the pinakes of the Stoic philosopher
Cebes) in Journal of Philo., XXVIII (1900), 276. On the plural authorship, DE
CHAMPAGNY. Les Antonins, I (Paris, 1863); SPITTA, Zur Gesch. und Litt. des
Urchristentums, II (Goettingen, 1896); VOELTER, Die Visionen des Hermas, die
Sibylle, und Klemens von Rom (Berlin, 1900). For the unity, LINK, Die Einheit
des Hermasbuches (Freiburg im Br., 1889); FUNK in Theol. Quartalschr., LXXXI
(1899), 321; STAHL, Patrische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1901-), gives the date as
165-70, after the appearance of Montanism; REVILLE, La valeur du temoignage
historique du Pasteur d'Hermas (Paris, 1900). On the theology of the Shepherd,
LINK, Christi Person und Werk im Hirten des Hermas (Marburg, 1886); BENIGNI in
Bessarione, VI (1899); HEURTIER, Le dogme de la Trinite dans l'epitre de S.
Clem. et le Pateur d'H. (Lyons, 1900). Further bibliography in RICHARDSON,
Synopsis; CHEVALIER, Repertoire, and BARDENHEWER, loc. cit.


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Chapman, J. (1910). Hermas. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07268b.htm

MLA citation. Chapman, John. "Hermas." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07268b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Don Ross.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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