Was the Catechetical School of Clement, Origen et al Connected with the Church of St. Mark?

I received this question just now by email from Dimitri in Corinth and it demonstrates what I love about the internet. Like-minded people can get acquainted with one another. The short answer to the question is - yes, I have always thought that the description of the Catechetical School connects it to a graveyard. The location proposed by Harry Tzalas for the Church of St. Mark reflects a similar landscape. It is difficult for me to get into all the particulars again but I have already once proposed that there were a great number of Christian saints, Alexandrian Patriarchs buried in the environs of the Church of St. Mark. This is reflected in the Passio Petri Sancti among other documents.

The real question in this study is whether Demetrius, the figure called 'bishop' at the time Clement and Origen were mere 'heads' of the Catechetical School was really considered to be an authentic Patriarch by those who frequented the Church of St. Mark. What little information we have about him suggests that he was an outsider.

As such one has to wonder whether Clement and Origen were really 'shadow Patriarchs' whose authority was actively suppressed by Demetrius who became the appointed bishop FROM ROME.

It is noteworthy that records indicate that 'Demetrius' was appointed governor of Egypt in 189 CE. I am not even sure that the term 'bishop' was used in Egypt. Remember it is Demetrius who appoints three 'OTHER bishops' to posts in Egypt.

One can even imagine that the territory of the Alexandrian Patriarch was limited by the Roman government to the province of Egypt. Various signs point to the idea that the original authority of the Patriarch extended into Gaza, Judea and Libya and Cyreniaca if not further.

I can't stress enough that even though scholars speak of 'the Alexandrian Church' the Church of St. Mark was actually in a region just outside of the walls of the city proper called 'Boucolia.' It was Philo and other Jewish writers who encouraged identifying this Jewish quarter as 'Alexandria' for obvious political reasons. Their Greek contemporaries certainly disagreed with this notion.

At the same time, I am not even sure that Demetrius ever left the walls of Alexandria to visit the Church of St. Mark for any extended period of time. If he did he was undoubtedly accompanied by a heavy contingent of armed men for this region was notoriously lawless.

I have always said that the division of Alexandria into geographical 'zones' in the Arian period, with the Arians controlling Boucolia and the Egyptian countryside and the Greek Christians firmly in control on cities with a large Greek speaking populations held true in the late second century. The only difference is that there WERE NO CHRISTIANS in Alexandria proper while Clement and Origen were writing. I think that by the late third and fourth centuries Greeks came to Egypt from outside in great numbers. Later the evil triumvirate of Constantine, Hosius and Alexander (later Athanasius) begin shipping loyal orthodox to the cities of Egypt to water down the native religion.

The bottom line is that I STRONGLY SUSPECT that Clement and Origen were the true Patriarchs of the Church of St. Mark in the period when Demetrius was 'bishop of Alexandria.' I even suspect that the original term for bishop was 'gnostic' and that when Clement speaks of 'we gnostics of Alexandria' he refers to the Patriarchs who preceded him.

But that's just me ...