c. 150–215 CE · Christian theologian · teacher
Clement of Alexandria
Κλήμης ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς
In Alexandria: c. 180–202 CE
Taught a Christian gnosis steeped in Greek philosophy until the persecution of 202/203 drove him out. His Stromata quote hundreds of lost authors, among them the Gnostics Basilides, Valentinus and Epiphanes, and describe the 42 books of Hermes carried in Egyptian processions.
Their life and work
He was probably born in Athens, travelled in search of teachers, and found the last and best hidden in Egypt: the 'Sicilian bee', whom he does not name (Stromata 1.11). Eusebius, who read Clement naming Pantaenus as his teacher in the lost Hypotyposes, takes the bee to be Pantaenus (Ecclesiastical History 5.11.2). In the Tutor Clement says the Word first exhorts, then trains, and finally teaches (Tutor 1.1–3). The Exhortation to the Greeks and the Tutor, on Christian life, answer to the first two stages; whether the Stromata, the 'patchwork' of notes in which he sets Greek philosophy beside scripture and calls the true Christian the true Gnostic, are the teaching that completes the course is debated. Eusebius makes him head of the catechetical school after Pantaenus; how far the school was an institution before Origen is also debated.
Our device: Their emblem is a patchwork cloth. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks · c. 195 CE · Survives whole
- Clement of Alexandria, excerpting the Valentinian teacher Theodotus, Excerpts from Theodotus · c. 190–210 CE · Survives whole
- Clement of Alexandria, Stromata · c. 198–203 CE · Survives whole
Moments
- c. 180–231 CE · Clement and Origen teach Known: attested
In the show
- Heresiologists and early Christian doctrine, episode 2, at 43 secondsTranscriptHeresiologists and early Christian doctrine: why we know the early schools from their opponents.Known: attested
- Heresiologists and early Christian doctrine, episode 2, at 2 minutes 2 secondsTranscript“Clement of Alexandria was a little bit more um he was a little bit more amunable to you know particularly the Gnostic schools”Fair: Clement's 'true gnostic' and his careful quotation of Valentinian and Basilidean sources.Known: attested
- Baptism, anointing, and the Holy Spirit, episode 2, at 23 minutes 50 secondsTranscript“Basalian gnostics did not celebrate the incarnation of the Lord on or around the winter solstice”Clement is the source: the Basilideans kept the feast of the Baptism, on 15 or 11 Tybi, around 10 or 6 January (Stromata I.21.146).Known: attested
+ 3 more
- Path: Martinism and Reintegration, station 4Understand the anointing. The Basilidian feast of the Baptism, connected with the anointing at the Jordan.Known: attested
Sources (5)
- Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.11; 6.6; 6.13–14
- A. van den Hoek, Clement of Alexandria and His Use of Philo in the Stromateis (Leiden: Brill, 1988)
- Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.11.1–2
- Clement of Alexandria, Tutor 1.1.1–1.3.3
- B. A. Pearson, Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt (New York: T&T Clark, 2004)