Educate in the Ancient World: Clement of Alexandria’s «The Pedagogue» and the Rules of Civility

Abstract

Many ancient authors wrote about the concern of the elite for educational matters and recorded the most widely accepted rules on how to behave in society. First the Greeks and then Roman writers shed light on the concern about this type of norms, and how they related to the ideals of life peculiar to each of these eras. Among these authors, Clement, Bishop of Alexandria between the second and third centuries of our era, stands out. This influential Greek author wrote The Pedagogue, a fundamental text in the history of education in Antiquity. Based on a hermeneutical study of this work and its context, we set out to determine how it helped to restore the Classical standards of civility, and a related code of social behaviour that served to lay the foundations of Christian pedagogy. This analysis enables us to see how the clerics’ concern for social behaviour paved the way for an integrational type of formation that encompassed all the different aspects of the life of man. Based not only on their intellectual, physical and moral education, but also their emotional development, this paideutic model sought to regulate all manifestations of civilians’ daily behaviour, and their relationship with the society in which they were immersed.

Keywords

• Paideia
• urbanidad
• ideales de vida
• herencia clásica
• pedagogía cristiana