Clement of Alexandria

Titus Flavius Clemens (c.150 – c. 215), known as Clement of Alexandria, was a Christian theologian who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. A convert to Christianity, he was an educated man who was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. As his three major works demonstrate, Clement was influenced by Hellenistic philosophy to a greater extent than any other Christian thinker of his time, and in particular by Plato and the Stoics. His secret works, which exist only in fragments, attest that he was also familiar with pre-Christian Jewish esotericism and Gnosticism. Among his pupils were Origen and Alexander of Jerusalem.

Clement is regarded as a Church Father, like Origen. He is venerated as a saint in Orthodox Christianity, Eastern Catholicism and Anglicanism. He was previously revered in the Roman Catholic Church, but his name was removed from the Roman Martyrology in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V on the advice of Baronius.