was one Roman community among many, and that its practices cannot therefore be taken as in any way typical of third century Roman Christianity, the possibility that this chapter is derived from P, a document over which the Hippolytean redactor worked, means that such a system might well have been widespread among Roman churches at the end of the second century (before the redaction of REl) and would therefore have been as close to normative Roman practice as anything at that time. There was little