Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

On this episode we're going to be talking about Clement.

Now the question is, which Clement, there are a number of Clemens in the early church.

The Clement we want to talk about is the first one, and he goes all the way back to the first century.

This is Clement of Rome. He was Bishop in Rome from 88 to 99.

We need to distinguish him from another very well known Clement in the early church

and that would be Clement of Alexandria. He dominated the second half of the

second century, born sometime around 150 and died sometime around 215 and we'll come back and

talk about that Clement some other day but today it's all about Clement of

Rome we actually know very little about Clement of Rome.

We know that he was Bishop over Rome

at an intense time of persecution.

And we have one writing that comes down to us

from the hand of Clement, and sometimes we call it his first

epistle or sometimes we call it the letter of Clement to the Corinthians. The

opening chapter tells us the Church of God which sojournes at Rome, to the Church of

God sojourning at Corinth.

We also read in these opening lines of this epistle of the sudden and successive calamitous events.

Now what Clement is referring to here is more than likely the persecution

under the Emperor Domitian.

Domitian was Emperor from 81 to 96. The Roman historian Pliny

calls him the Beast from Hell. One of the things that Domitian did was

...