As Christianity continued to transition from school churches to the monepiscopate, the role of hiddenness and openness in Christian teaching become an increasingly contested issue. Three writings associated with the so-called Hippolytan school – the Traditio apostolica, the Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum, and De Christo et antichristo – shed light on the tensions between hiddenness and secrecy in baptismal instruction.

The deployment of the Church Fathers for the definition and defense of “the correct faith” is reflected in a wealth of images, literary and visual, that showcase the divine inspiration of the patristic literature. Similar to what has been observed with regard to authors of biblical books, a select group of fathers was elevated in importance, among whom John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus were preeminent. This hierarchy is evidenced by visual images, indeed far more expressly than in literature.

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.