<i>Secret Mark</i> in the Circle of Dutch Humanists

In its allegorical interpretation of the Mosaic food laws, Epistle of Barnabas 10:6 famously warns against emulating the “corrupter of children” (παιδοφθόρος)—a behavior linked to the rabbit’s annual acquisition of a “hole” (ἀφόδευσις), sometimes translated “anus.” Clement of Alexandria (Paed. 2.10.83) interprets παιδοφθόρος in this passage as someone engaging in παιδεραστία (“pederasty”), an association that is understandable given that παιδοφθορεῖν in Barn. 19:4a clearly refers to pederasty. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Clement of Alexandria’s Letter to Theodore—containing references to Secret Mark, an interpolated version of which appears to represent same-sex relations between Jesus and a youth (νεανίσκος)—turns up in a copy of Isaac Voss’s Epistolae genuinae S. Ignatii Martyris immediately after the Epistle of Barnabas. Taking at face value the paleographical evidence that Clement’s Letter to Theodore was inscribed in Voss’s volume not long after it appeared in 1646, this essay explores a suggestion, similar to one first made by Herbert Musurillo, that the inscription is located among Dutch humanists in Voss’s erudite Leiden Circle.