Clementine literature

The Clementine literature (also referred to as the Clementine Romance or Pseudo-Clementine Writings) is a late antique third-century Christian romance containing an account of the conversion of Clement of Rome to Christianity, his subsequent life and travels with the apostle Peter and an account of how they became traveling companions, Peter's discourses, and finally Clement's family history and eventual reunion with his family. To reflect the pseudonymous nature of the authorship, the author is sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Clement. In all likelihood, the original text went by the name of Periodoi Petrou ("Circuits of Peter"); sometimes historians refer to it as the "Grundschrift" ("Basic Writing").

Though lost, the original survives in two recensions known as the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Recognitions. The overlap between the two has been used to produce a provisional reconstruction of the Circuits of Peter. Respectively, the original titles for these two texts were the Klementia and the Recognitions of the Roman Clement. Both were composed in the fourth-century. In turn, there was plausibly a second-century document (referred to as the Kerygmata Petrou ("Preaching of Peter")) that was used as a source for the original Clementine literature text. The Kerygma is thought to consist of a letter from Peter to James, lectures and debates of Peter, and James's testimony about the letters recipients.

Some believe that the original was lost due to the substantially greater popularity of its recensions in the Homilies and Recognitions.