Clement of Alexandria, Saint

(born 150, Athens—died between 211 and 215, Palestine; Western feast day November 23; Eastern feast day November 24) Christian apologist, missionary theologian to the Hellenistic world, and leader of the catechetical school at Alexandria. He was converted to Christianity by Pantaenus, a former Stoic who preceded him as head of the Alexandria school. Clement believed that philosophy was for the Greeks what the Law of Moses was for the Jews, a preparatory discipline leading to the truth. He asserted that men lived first as citizens of heaven and second as earthly citizens, and he defended the right of an enslaved people to rebel against its oppressors. Persecution by the emperor Septimius Severus in 201–202 obliged him to leave Alexandria and take refuge with Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem. He was revered as a saint in the Latin church until 1586, when doubts about his orthodoxy led to the removal of his name from the list of Roman saints.