Clement, a name of great celebrity in antiquity, was a disciple of Paul and Peter, to whom he refers as the chief examples for imitation.
The interval between Clement and Paul, and the tran-sition from the apostolic to the apocryphal, from faith to superstition, appears in the indiscriminate use of the Jewish Apocrypha, and in the difference between Pauls treatment of scepticism in regard to the resurrection, and his disciples treatment of the same subject.
Clement points not only to the types in nature, the changes of the seasons and of day and night, but also in full earnest to the heathen myth of the miraculous bird, the phoenix in Arabia, which regenerates itself every five hundred years.
Saint Clement I, the bishop of Rome also called Clement of Rome and Clemens Romanus, was either the third or fourth pope, before or after Anacletus.
Liber Pontificalis believes that Clement of Rome had personally known Saint Peter, and states that he wrote two letters (the second letter, 2 Clement is no longer ascribed to Clement) and that he died in Greece in the third year of Trajan's reign, or 100.
Clement is also the hero of an early Christian romance or novel that has survived in at least two different versions, known as the Clementine literature, where he is identified with Domitian's cousin T. Flavius Clemens.
Feeds |
Contact