1 Peter 5:3
Neither as lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart.
Open 1 Peter 5:3 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- neque ut dominantes in cleris, sed forma facti gregis ex animo.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- μηδʼ ὡς κατακυριεύοντες τῶν κλήρων ἀλλὰ τύποι γινόμενοι τοῦ ποιμνίου·
Haydock's commentary
Neither as domineering over the clergy.2 This may not only signify over the inferior ministers, who were subject to the bishops or priests, but also over the particular flocks which fell to their share, or to their lot to take care of. See the Greek. (Witham)
2 In cleris, ton kleron. Though I have followed the Rheims Testament, and translated over the clergy, I believe kleroi, in the plural number, is scarce used for clerici, or men, but rather for shares and parts of Christ's flock, to signify that every bishop or priest should not domineer over those under him, whether inferior ministers or lay persons.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Letter CCIX
9. Since, then, the most blessed Pope Boniface, speaking of Bishop Antonius, has in his epistle, with the vigilant caution becoming a pastor, inserted in his judgment the additional clause, “if he has faithfully narrated the facts of the case to us,” receive now the facts of the case, which in his statement to you he passed over in silence, and also the transactions which took place after the letter of that man of blessed memory had been read in Africa, and in the mercy of Christ extend your aid to men implor ing it more earnestly than he does from whose turbulence they desire to be freed. …
St Gregory the Great The Book of Pastoral Rule, That the ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, but, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evildoers
Supreme rule, then, is ordered well, when he who presides lords it over vices, rather than over his brethren. But, when superiors correct their delinquent subordinates, it remains for them anxiously to take heed how far, while in right of their authority they smite faults with due discipline, they still, through custody of humility, acknowledge themselves to be on a par with the very brethren who are corrected; although for the most part it is becoming that in our silent thought we even prefer the brethren whom we correct to ourselves. For their vices are through us smitten with the vigour of discipline; but in those which we ourselves commit we are lacerated by not even a word of upbraiding. …