Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clement Scotus I
CLEMENT Scotus I (fl. 745) was a bishop, doubtless a native of Ireland, resident in the Frankish realm in the time of St. Boniface, archbishop of Mentz, against whose attempts to introduce the complete Roman discipline into Germany he strenuously, but in vain, contended. The archbishop cited him before a synod in 743 or 744, at which Carloman and Pippin were present, and Clement was deprived of his priesthood and condemned to imprisonment for sundry acts and opinions deemed heretical (Monum. Mogunt. pp. 133, 137, 149; Willibald, Vit. S. Bonif. vii. p. 458). Pope Zacharias, to whom the affair was reported, approved Boniface's action, and confirmed the former part of the sentence (June 22, 744; Ep. xlviii. p. 133). The charges against Clement were first that he had a wife (Boniface calls her a concubine) and two children; more than this, that he justified marriage with a deceased brother's wife, in conformity with the Jewish law. In dogmatic theology he held views which seemed to contradict the Latin doctrine of predestination; and he asserted that Christ on his rising from the dead 'delivered all who had been Kept in prison, faithful and unbelievers, worshippers of God as well as idolaters.' This description, drawn by his enemy, probably indicates that Clement maintained a universalism of some sort. He was also accused of denying the canons of the church and rejecting the authority of SS. Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory (see for the whole, Monum. Mogunt. pp. 133, 140, 141, 146). He had in fact brought into collision with the unfriendly rigour of Latin Christianity those freer usages and more speculative habits of thought which prevailed in the churches of Ireland, at this time the fountain-head of literary culture and missionary enterprise for the west of Europe. The German opponents of Boniface, who seem to have been in a majority (cf. Ep. lxvi. p. 187), must have supported Clement; for when the matter was brought before a synod at Rome, 25 Oct. 745 (not 746 or 748, as was formerly supposed; cf. Histoire litteraire de la France, iv. 83, 109), Deneard, Boniface's representative, stated that the archbishop was powerless to close his mouth. The synod confirmed Boniface's action, anathematised Clement, and once more declared him to be deprived of his orders (see the Acts, pp. 136-48; cf. Ep. li. p. 151, liii. p. 155) ; but in spite of this sentence Clement persisted in his opinions, and so soon as 5 Jan. 747 we find the mild pope writing again to Boniface, enjoining him to re-examine the whole question at a council which was shortly to be held in Germany, and to do his best to bring Clement to repentance; should he prove contumacious, he was to be sent on to Rome (Ep. lxiii. pp. 182, 183). The issue of the affair is not known; but it is probable that Clement's case from the beginning was prejudiced by the fact that his opinions were mixed up in all the proceedings with those of a certain Adelbert, who held views of a very fanatical character. Clement, on the other hand, to judge even from the meagre and distorted accounts of his doctrine which we possess, seems to represent in some ways the free characteristics of Irish theology which found a lasting and vital expression in the writings of his great countryman, John Scotus, a century later.
This Clement has been often confounded with the subject of the following article; cf. Dempster, 'Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot.' iii. 177, 178.
[The correspondence of Zacharias and Boniface, the Acts of the Roman Synod, and the Life by Willibald, are all in the Monuments Moguntina (Jaffe's Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, vol. iii.), Berlin, 1866. Compare Gfrörer's Allgemeine Kirchengeschichte, iii. 526–33 (Stuttgart, 1844), and Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, v. 76–80 (Stebbing's translation, 1849).]