5 - Self-Introductions and Clement’s Miscellanistic Vocation

Summary

Classical scholars have often singled out the miscellany as a very open-ended genre that requires active participation from the reader, who is called to miscellanise, to select what is beneficial to his or her situation in the moment. Clement, meanwhile, has been cast either as a mere conduit of the divine logos delivering a fixed message, or as a sophist seeking to legitimise his wares in the marketplace of competing philosophies. Implicit in these portrayals of Clement’s authorial voice is a theological question of the relation between author, reader, text and God. By juxtaposition and comparison with imperial miscellanies, we see that Clement reinterpreted this relationship in light of his Christian spirituality and theology. He attributes his vocation to ‘the Saviour himself’ and portrays the reading and writing of notes as a spiritual and ascetic practice, shaped in light of eucharistic devotion and a psalmic prayer. He situates it within the life-generating tradition of the apostles and depicts his own, exemplary journey of discovery culminating in miscellany-making in chaste love, imaged as rest with the bee that anthologises the scriptural meadow in Egypt.