The Catechetical School

The see that Mark founded became, within two centuries, the intellectual capital of early Christianity. The Catechetical School of Alexandria — the Didascalion — under Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen, pioneered Christian theology, biblical exegesis, and the engagement of the faith with Greek philosophy, and stamped the whole Alexandrian tradition with its allegorical reading of Scripture. This file traces the school that grew in the shadow of the See of St. Mark and made his foundation the most learned church of the ancient world.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

A School in the City of Learning

Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, was the greatest center of learning in the ancient Mediterranean — home of the Library and the Museum, of Jewish scholarship (Philo, the Septuagint translation), and of every current of Greek philosophy. The Christian church that Mark planted there grew up in this intellectual atmosphere, and it produced, by the late second century, a catechetical school that became famous throughout Christendom. Eusebius describes it as “a school of sacred learning… established… which has continued to our day, and which we have understood was managed by men of great ability and zeal for divine things” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.10.1; trans. McGiffert, NPNF II/1). Whether it began as a formal institution or as the teaching circle of individual masters is debated, but by the time of Pantaenus it was a recognized center for the instruction of catechumens and the higher study of the faith.

Pantaenus, Clement, Origen

Eusebius names the great masters of the school in succession:

Pantaenus (d. c. 200), “a man distinguished for his learning,” formerly a Stoic philosopher, is described as head of the school and as a missionary who is said to have gone “as far as India” preaching the gospel (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.10; trans. McGiffert, NPNF II/1). He is the first head of the Alexandrian school whom Eusebius names.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215), Pantaenus’s pupil and successor, is the first major figure whose works survive. In his great trilogy — the Protrepticus (exhortation to the Greeks), the Paedagogus (the Instructor), and the Stromateis (Miscellanies) — Clement set out a Christian gnosis, a true knowledge that fulfills and surpasses Greek philosophy, holding that philosophy was for the Greeks “a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ” as the Law was for the Jews (Clement, Stromateis 1.5; trans. ANF 2). Clement is also, importantly for this collection, one of the chief witnesses to the origin of Mark’s Gospel (in Eusebius, HE 2.15, 6.14; see Peter and the Gospel) — and the figure to whom the disputed “Secret Gospel of Mark” letter is attributed (see Reception and the Secret Mark Question).

Origen (c. 185–c. 254), the greatest of the Alexandrians, took charge of the catechetical instruction while still young, by Eusebius’s account at about eighteen, after the persecution scattered the church’s teachers (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.3; trans. McGiffert, NPNF II/1). Origen’s vast output — the Hexapla (his six-column edition of the Old Testament), the commentaries and homilies, the On First Principles (Peri Archon), and the apologetic Against Celsus — made him the most influential biblical scholar and theologian of the pre-Nicene Church. (Certain of Origen’s speculative opinions were later condemned, and his legacy in the Orthodox Church is qualified accordingly; the school’s method and learning, however, decisively shaped Christian theology.)

The Alexandrian Method: Allegory

The school gave the Church a distinctive way of reading Scripture: the allegorical or spiritual method. Inheriting techniques from Philo’s allegorical reading of the Old Testament, the Alexandrians sought beneath the literal sense a deeper, spiritual meaning — Christological, moral, and mystical. Origen systematized this into a theory of multiple senses of Scripture (body, soul, and spirit corresponding to literal, moral, and spiritual meanings; Origen, On First Principles 4.2). The Alexandrian allegorical method would later be balanced by the more literal-historical theoria of the school of Antioch, and the two together formed the exegetical inheritance of the Orthodox Church. The Alexandrian tradition of reading the whole of Scripture as pointing to Christ is a permanent feature of patristic and Orthodox exegesis.

The Fruit of Mark’s Foundation

The Catechetical School is the historical demonstration of how rich the foundation of St. Mark proved to be. From the church the evangelist planted came not only a line of bishops (see The See of St. Mark) but the intellectual engine of early Christian theology — the masters who first set the faith in sustained dialogue with Greek thought, who built the tools of Christian biblical scholarship, and who trained the bishops and theologians of Egypt. The Alexandrian see would go on to produce Athanasius, the champion of Nicaea and of the full divinity of the Son, and Cyril, the architect of Orthodox Christology and the defender of the title Theotokos (see St. Cyril of Alexandria) — both heirs of the learning the catechetical school had nurtured. That the see of an evangelist remembered for his short, plain, action-driven Gospel (see The Gospel of Mark) became the most philosophically sophisticated church of the ancient world is one of the providential ironies of Church history, and a measure of how the seed Mark sowed at Alexandria grew. The school’s later history was disrupted by the persecutions, by the Arian controversy, and ultimately by the divisions of Chalcedon, but its formative role in Christian theology was already secured.

See Also

References

  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 5.10, 6.3, 6.6, 6.14. Trans. Arthur C. McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1. 1890.
  • Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis (Miscellanies) 1.5. Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2.
  • Origen. On First Principles 4.2. Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4.
  • Pearson, Birger A. Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt. New York: T&T Clark, 2004.
  • Young, Frances M. Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.