Clement, CLEMENS, or CLEMENT, is the name of seventeen Popes (q.v.). The first of the series, CLEMENS ROMANUS, is accounted one of the Apostolic Fathers (q.v.), and is reckoned variously as the second or third successor of St Peter in the see of Rome. A 9th-century legend makes him martyred in the Crimea in the year 102. His day is November 23. Origen (185-254) was the first to distinctly identify Clement with St Paul's 'fellow-labourer' (Phil. iv. 3); but this assumption has nothing to support it, while the ancient tradition makes Clement the disciple of St Peter. Moreover, on a name so common endless theories may be built. Distinguished German scholars, such as Hilgenfeld, and Harnack (doubtfully), have identified the bishop with Flavius Clemens, cousin of the Emperor Domitian, whose sons had been named successors to the empire, and who was consul in 95 A.D., and in the same year put to death on a charge of 'atheism' and 'Jewish manners.' The most probable view is that advanced by Lightfoot—that Clement was a freedman of Jewish parentage belonging to 'Cæsar's household'—strong arguments in support of which are set forth in his edition of the two Epistles. Of these, the so-called second epistle is really a homily, and is certainly not Clement's; but the first, although its genuineness has been earnestly disputed by the author of Peregrinus Proteus (Lond. 1879), is generally accepted. Chiefly hortatory and didactic, it is addressed to Corinthian Church, in which serious feuds had arisen, and treats of social dissensions and of the resurrection, which is illustrated by a curiously circumstantial account of the phoenix. It was probably written about 95 A.D., and it was widely known and highly esteemed at an early date. Clement would appear to have had some reputation among his contemporaries as a letter-writer; Hermas (q.v.) represents himself as directed by the angel to deliver a copy of his Shepherd to him, that he may transmit it to the cities abroad, 'for this function belongs to him.' To-day the epistle is chiefly of interest as the first though innocent step towards papal aggression, and for what Lightfoot calls its liturgical position. There is no respectable evidence that it was ever placed in the same catalogue with the canonical books, but in the church at Corinth it was publicly read from time to time, and by the 4th century this use had extended to other churches. For convenience of reading it would be attached to MSS. of the New Testament, as is the case in the famous Alexandrian MS. of the 5th century; but neither on this fact nor on its insertion in the forged Apostolic Canons can any argument be based; and it is only in the late Syriac MS. that it actually appears with the catholic epistles. The first edition was edited by Patrick Young in 1633, from the mutilated and incomplete Alexandrian MS., then in the king's library. This was the only copy known to the world until in 1875 Bryennios (q.v.) published a complete MS. (dated 1056) found at Constantinople, and in 1876 a complete Syriac MS. (1170) came into the possession of Cambridge University. See Lightfoot's scholarly and exhaustive edition (1869; appendix, 1877), where the second epistle will also be found. Quite a mass of literature has sprung up round the name of Clement, but the other works attributed to him—the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons (q.v.), two Syriac epistles on Virginity (MS. dated 1470; published 1752), the Clementine (the Recognitions and Homilies), and two epistles to James, which, with three forged Clementine letters, were in the 9th century incorporated in the notorious Isidorian Decretals—are all undoubtedly spurious. The Clementine is a fiction of which St Peter is the hero; it was regarded by Baur and the Tübingen school as the most notable outcome of the Ebionite party in the early Christian church, and on it much of their theory is based; the Recognitions (the Latin form, preserved by Rufinus) have been edited by Gersdorf (1838), the Homilies (the Greek form) by Schwegler (1847), Dressel (1853), and De Lagarde (1865).
For the Epistles to Virgins, see Beelen's edition (Louvain, 1856), and Funk (Tüb. 1881); for their source, see Cotterill's elaborate and convincing Modern Criticism (Edin. 1884).
CLEMENS, TITUS FLAVIUS, a celebrated father of the Christian church, was born probably at Athens, of heathen parents, about the middle of the 2d century, and resided during great part of his life in Alexandria, whence the epithet Alexandrinus. In his earlier years he devoted himself with great zeal to the study of philosophy, and wandered far and wide in quest of truth. The date of his conversion is unknown, but it is certain that after coming to Egypt, and listening to the prelections of Pantænus, he joined the Alexandrine Church, and was made a presbyter. Afterwards he became assistant to his master, whom he succeeded, about 190 A.D., as head of the celebrated Catechetical school. In 203 the persecution of the Christians under Severus compelled him to flee to Palestine. The only later notice we have of him is as the bearer of a letter from his pupil Alexander, afterwards Bishop of Jerusalem, to Antioch; and the date and place of his death are matters of pure conjecture, some writers putting it in 213, others as late as 220. His most distinguished pupil was Origen. Clement held a place in the Western martyrologies until the 17th century, when his name was omitted by Clement VIII. from the revised Roman martyrology; but in France, at least, he has never lost his title, his festival is still celebrated on the 4th December, and his name appears in the popular list of saints whose names may be given to children at baptism.
The chief writings of Clement that have survived, besides a practical treatise, Who is the Rich Man that is Saved, are the Missionary, the Tutor, and the Miscellanies, which form a connected series, probably continued in his lost Outlines, which was an investigation of the canonical writings. The first is an exhortation to the Greeks to abandon idolatry; the second, an exposition of Christian ethics; and the third, a collection of treatises and brief observations on Greek and Christian literature, designed as an introduction to Christian philosophy. They show that Clement, when he became a Christian, did not cease to be a philosopher. His liberal mind saw in science not a gift of devils, but of God through the Logos; Greek philosophy was part of the divine education of man, and his teaching is the result of the lofty purity of character that led him to seek the truth alike from heathen writers and from Christian heretics, believing that all that comes from God is good. The period in which he lived must also be taken into account: in his day all believers were regarded as in process of salvation; the distinction between the visible and invisible church had not yet been suggested, while Gnosticism offered to many minds an attractive solution of some obvious difficulties. Clement therefore distinguished between the ordinary believer and the Christian gnostic; above faith he placed knowledge, above salvation the more august glory and full spiritual life of the 'perfect man.' Faith implies knowledge, but imperfect knowledge; many things must be accepted in simple trust, until by contemplation and the practice of what is right the believer shakes himself free from the power of evil, and rises to intelligent sympathy with the divine will. And this system of spiritual evolution Clement extends to the future life, where the process of development is continued before the gnostic becomes as far as possible like God. Here are easily visible the germs of the later mysticism, just as his view of the Father as a pure Monad, undemonstrable, who can only be manifested through the Son, marks an important step in the progress of Neoplatonism. God and the cause of all things he sought to discover in the simplest thing conceivable; and he went equally astray in making Christianity only a philosophy, and, as a means to a perfect life, the fullness of what had been partial in the Greek systems. Yet two truths he nobly taught—the present recovery of the divine likeness, and that formulated doctrine is not an end but a means to final knowledge. Clement's extant works exhibit a man of pure and gentle spirit, of sincere piety, of wide reading and of wider sympathies, and with a noble conception of the purposes of God's providence; but his learning is undigested, his quotations are often careless, and his turgid, verbose style and desultory method appear to have repelled most scholars.
The best edition of his works is still that of Bishop Potter (1715), and others based on it; there is a translation in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library (1877-79), and a bibliography at the end of Dr Westcott's article in the Dictionary of Christian Biography (1877). Reference should also be made to Merk, Clemens von Alexandrien (Leip. 1879), to Winter's Ethik des Clemens (Leip. 1882), to Dr Bigg's Christian Platonists of Alexandria (Bampton Lectures, 1886), and to works by Eugène de Faye (1899) and F. R. Montgomery Hitchcock (1899).