Pantaenus, chief of the catechetical school of Alexandria, in the latter
part of the 2nd cent. and perhaps the early years of the 3rd. Of his previous life little is known with certainty. We are not informed whether he was originally a Christian or became one by conversion. Our authorities agree, however, that he was trained in the Greek philosophy, and owed to this training much of his eminence as a teacher. Origen, in a passage preserved by Eusebius (H. E. vi. 19), names him as an example—the earliest, apparently, that he can adduce—of a Christian doctor who availed himself of his heathen learning. Eusebius tells us (ib. v. 10) that in his zeal for the faith he undertook the work of an evangelist in the East, and penetrated as far as India; where he found that St. Bartholomew had already preached the Word and had left there a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew characters, which was still treasured by the Christians there. Jerome (de Vir. Ill. 36) adds (but probably without authority) that Pantaenus brought this to Alexandria. He also represents that the people of India had heard his fame as a teacher and sent a deputation to solicit this mission. This is by no means incredible, considering the celebrity of Alexandria as a seat of learning. But Jerome raises a difficulty when he names Demetrius as the bishop by whom he was sent. For Eusebius places the accession of Demetrius to the patriarchate in the 10th year of Commodus (H. E. v. 22; cf. Chron.), 189; while he represents Pantaenus as head of the Alexandrian school in his 1st year (H. E. v. 9, 10) and distinctly conveys that this appointment was after his return from his Indian mission.
There is a like conflict of authority concerning the relation of Pantaenus to
Clement of Alexandria. Eusebius (v. 11) unhesitatingly assumes that Pantaenus is
the unnamed master whom Clement in his Stromateis (i. p. 322, Potter) places
above all the great men by whose teaching he was profited, "last met, but first
in power," in whom he "found rest." To this authority we may add that of Pamphilus, who was principal author of their joint Apology for Origen; for Photius (Bibl. cxviii.) states on the authority of that work (now lost) that Clement "was the hearer of Pantaenus and his successor in the school." This information Pamphilus no doubt had from his master Pierius, himself head of the same school, a follower of Origen and probably less than 50 years his junior. Maximus the Confessor (Scholia in S. Greg. Naz.) styles Pantaenus "the master" (καθηγητὴν) of Clement. But Philip of Side (c. 427) in his Hist. Christiana, as we learn from a fragment first pub. by Dodwell, made "Clement the disciple of Athenagoras, and Pantaenus of Clement." We unhesitatingly prefer the witness of Eusebius. Dodwell's attempts to discredit it are ineffectual. This contradiction, however, and the difficulty as to the chronology of Pantaenus, may be solved, or at least accounted for, if we suppose that Pantaenus was head of the school both before and after his sojourn in India, and Clement in his absence. Origen afterwards thus quitted and resumed the same office. If Pantaenus was the senior, Clement was the more brilliant; and at the close of the 2nd cent. it may well have seemed a question which was master and which disciple. This hypothesis agrees with the probable date of Clement's headship; and likewise with the note in the Chronicon of Eusebius, under year of Pertinax, or 2nd of Severus (c. 193), where we read that Clement was then in Alexandria, "a most excellent teacher (διδάσκαλος) and shining light (διέλαμπε) of Christian philosophy," and Pantaenus "was distinguished as an expositor of the Word of God." Thus also Alexander, bp. of Jerusalem (ap. Eus. H. E. vi. 14), in a letter to Origen, couples the names of Pantaenus and Clement (placing, however, Pantaenus first), as "fathers," and speaks of both as recently deceased. This letter shows, further, that this Alexander and the illustrious Origen himself were almost certainly pupils of Pantaenus.