Born in Ireland, he founded a school for boys under the patronage of Charlemagne and figures in the Carolingian Renaissance of learning.
A monk of St. Gall, usually identified as Notker the Stammerer, who wrote a Life of Charlemagne dedicated to Charles the Fat (d. 888), says that Clement with his unnamed companion, both "Scots of Ireland"[1] travelling in the company of traders, arrived on the coast of Gaul "in the moment when Charlemagne had begun to reign as sole king" (i.e. ca 771); they set themselves up in the market as venders of learning.
[2] Clement was requested to remain in France as the master of a school of learning for boys both noble and common, that was established and supported by Charlemagne.
In 803, as an old man, Alcuin wrote from his retirement to Charlemagne, querulously commenting on "the daily increasing influence of the Irish at the School of the Palace".
The 17th-century hagiographer John Colgan, in his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (Louvain, 1645) says that he was living in 818, and gives the date of Clement's death as 20 March and the place as Auxerre, where he was interred in the church of Saint-Amator.