Saint Clement of Rome (died c. 99)

A Christian of the first Roman generation

On Clement's origins, history is cautious and tradition is rich. His name, very common in Rome, is not enough by itself to identify him. Three ancient leads intersect. The first, advanced from Origen onward, then by Eusebius and Jerome, connects him with the Clement whom Saint Paul greets as his "fellow worker" in the Epistle to the Philippians; but that Clement was more probably a Philippian, and the identification remains uncertain.^[7][8] The second, popular in the nineteenth century, identified him with the consul Titus Flavius Clemens, a relative of the emperor Domitian put to death around 95; the ancients never suggested it, and this hypothesis is now set aside.^[9] The third, retained by the Catholic Encyclopedia, sees in him a freedman or son of a freedman of the imperial household, which would explain the names Claudius and Valerius borne by the messengers of his letter.^[10]

What can be held with assurance matters more than these debates: Clement belongs to the small group of Roman Christians who heard the apostolic preaching with their own ears. He writes in a city where the memory of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, under Nero, is still burning — he speaks of it, moreover, as a recent and close event.^[11][12]

Disciple of the apostles Peter and Paul

Ancient tradition insists on this direct link with the apostles. Tertullian, around 200, affirms that the Church of Rome holds that Clement was ordained by Peter himself.^[13] Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, around 180, specifies that Clement "had seen the blessed apostles and conversed with them," so that he still had "their preaching in his ears and their tradition before his eyes."^[14] This closeness is no decorative detail: it grounds the spiritual authority of his letter. When Clement writes to Corinth, it is not a theorist speaking, but a man who received the faith from the very mouths of those who had followed Christ.

"Clement had seen the blessed apostles and conversed with them; he still had their preaching in his ears and their tradition before his eyes." — Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, III, 3, 3^[15]

The third successor of Peter

The ancient lists — Irenaeus, Eusebius — place Clement third among the successors of Peter, fourth bishop counting Peter: Peter, Linus, Anacletus (or Cletus), then Clement.^[16][17] The Liber Pontificalis, following the order of the Liberian Catalogue, names him for its part immediately after Linus, before Cletus and Anacletus.^[18] Jerome notes that many Latins held him to be the second after Peter, but he too knows the more solid order.^[19] This does not contradict Tertullian's testimony: Clement may have been ordained by Peter well before succeeding him on the see of Rome, after Linus and Anacletus.^[20][21] His episcopate is traditionally dated to the last years of the first century, down to around 99-101, under the reign of Trajan.^[22][23]

With him, the government of the Church is never separated from holiness: he is a pastor who corrects because he loves peace, and who commands while praying. The institutional detail of this succession is treated in the article on Pope Saint Clement I; here, we retain the saint: the man of God whom the Church enrolled very early among its venerated martyrs.^[24]

The Letter of the Church of Rome to the Corinthians, commonly called 1 Clement, is among the oldest Christian documents preserved outside the New Testament — it was long presented as the very first. It is most often dated to the end of Domitian's reign, around 96.^[25][26] It was so venerated in antiquity that it was read publicly in some Churches alongside the Scriptures.^[27] Beyond its historical interest, it is a text of spirituality of remarkable depth, wholly directed toward the peace and holiness of the Body of Christ.

A letter born of a quarrel

The occasion is painful: at Corinth, a few ambitious members have deposed legitimately appointed presbyters, though these had committed no fault. Clement diagnoses the root of the evil: jealousy and a spirit of rivalry, which he illustrates with a long gallery of biblical examples, from Cain and Abel down to the recent persecutions.^[28][29] The whole letter is a therapy for discord: to bring the community back to the humility, order and charity that come from God.

Humility, the remedy for discord

The first remedy Clement proposes is humility. He sets it squarely against the boasting and pride tearing Corinth apart, and he roots it in the very example of Christ, "the sceptre of the majesty of God," who came not in splendour but in lowliness.^[30] Humility is for him no sentimental weakness: it is the condition of peace, because it disarms rivalry at its source.

"Christ belongs to the humble in heart, not to those who exalt themselves above His flock. The sceptre of the majesty of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the pomp of pride, though He could have done so, but in humility." — Saint Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, 16, 1-2^[31]

The praise of charity

The spiritual summit of the letter is a praise of charity that directly continues Saint Paul's hymn to those same Corinthians (1 Cor 13). Clement sees in it the bond that unites to God and covers a multitude of sins; charity alone can sew back together what jealousy has torn.^[32]

"Charity unites us to God; charity covers a multitude of sins; charity bears all things, is patient in all things. There is nothing base, nothing proud in charity; charity knows no schism, charity does not rebel, charity does all things in concord." — Saint Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, 49, 5^[33]

This page makes Clement a spiritual master as much as a pastor: he does not merely order the restoration of the presbyters; he shows that the true reform of a community passes through the conversion of the heart to love.

The Phoenix, sign of the resurrection

To strengthen hope, Clement resorts to an image that marked the whole tradition: the Phoenix, that bird of Arabia which, after five hundred years, consumes itself and is reborn from its own ashes. He sees in it a sign given by the Creator Himself of the resurrection of the dead.^[34] The argument surprises the modern reader, but it reveals the saint's supernatural confidence: all creation is strewn with figures announcing God's faithfulness to His promises.

"Let us consider the extraordinary sign that occurs in the regions of the East, that is, toward Arabia. There is a bird called the Phoenix. Alone of its kind, it lives five hundred years; and when the hour of its dissolution draws near, when it must die, it makes itself a nest of frankincense, myrrh and spices, into which it enters in the fullness of time, and it dies." — Saint Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, 25, 1-2^[35]

The great prayer of the Church of Rome

The letter closes with a vast prayer of intercession (chapters 59 to 61), often presented as one of the oldest liturgical prayers preserved outside the New Testament.^[36][37] In it the Church of Rome beseeches God to save those in distress, to raise the fallen, to feed the hungry, to deliver captives, to heal the sick and to convert the erring.^[38] Already visible is the soul of a liturgy: the pastor who corrected turns toward God and embraces in prayer the whole of humanity, down to the rulers, for whom he asks that they exercise power in peace.

The account of Clement's martyrdom comes to us from the Greek Acts (or Passion), a late hagiographical composition: critics date it at the earliest to the fourth century, and Rufinus, around 400, is one of the first to present Clement clearly as a martyr.^[39][40] The Church therefore carefully distinguishes what is historically certain from what belongs to pious legend — without despising the latter, for it nourished centuries of devotion and shaped the saint's iconography.

Exile in Chersonesus under Trajan

According to the Passion, the emperor Trajan banished Clement to the edge of the Empire, in Chersonesus (present-day Crimea), and condemned him to forced labour in a stone quarry.^[41][42] There he finds thousands of Christians already deported, suffering cruelly from lack of water. Far from giving in to discouragement, the saint turns his condemnation into an apostolate.

The miracle of the lamb and the spring

The account then reports a famous prodigy. At prayer, Clement sees a lamb standing on a hill, at the very spot where water will gush forth. He strikes the ground with his pickaxe, and an abundant spring bursts out, quenching the thirst of a whole people.^[43][44] The miracle, recalling Moses bringing water from the rock, brings about many conversions among the prisoners and the pagans of the region; tradition speaks of a great number of churches founded on this occasion.^[45]

The Passion thus reports that Clement, lifting his eyes, is said to have seen a lamb standing on a height; having gone to the place where the lamb had stood, he struck the ground with his pickaxe and a spring of clear water gushed forth from it.^[46][47]

The anchor and the sea

These conversions draw repression. By order of the emperor, Clement is taken out to sea and cast into the waves with an iron anchor tied around his neck — a manner of death that would become his inseparable attribute.^[48][49] The image of the saint thrown overboard, like Jonah, would impose itself on all Christian art: it speaks both of the violence of the torment and of the serenity of the witness who goes down into the waters as into a baptism of blood.

The sanctuary beneath the waves and the child found again

The legend then adorns itself with a marvel dear to antiquity. Each year, says the Passion, the sea withdrew on the anniversary of the martyrdom, uncovering a marble sanctuary built by angels where the saint's body rested.^[50][51] One variant reports that a child, forgotten in the sanctuary when the waters returned, was found alive a year later, at the next tide — an account medieval art gladly illustrated.^[52]

These episodes are not history in the strict sense, and the Church does not ask anyone to believe them; but neither are they to be despised. They translate, in the figurative language of hagiography, a profound conviction: a martyr's death is no defeat, and God keeps the bodies of His saints to the very end.

What history retains

The degrees of certainty must be distinguished honestly. The following table summarises the state of knowledge.

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes an honest clue: the absence of any tradition of Clement's burial in Rome argues rather in favour of a death in exile, which gives a real foundation to the Chersonesus account, even stripped of its marvellous ornaments.^[53]

The translation of the relics by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius

One of the most certain chapters of Clement's history comes nearly eight centuries after his death. Around 860-861, on his way to evangelise the Khazars, Saint Cyril — the apostle of the Slavs, with his brother Methodius — stops in Crimea and uncovers, in a mound, bones accompanied by an anchor, which he identifies as the relics of Saint Clement.^[54][55] The Catholic Encyclopedia judges the account of this translation "manifestly truthful," even if the anchor remains the only real clue to identity.^[56]

Cyril reverently carries these relics and brings them to Rome. Around 868, Pope Adrian II lays them, together with those of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in the high altar of the Basilica of Saint Clement.^[57] This gesture seals a magnificent bond: the evangeliser of the Slavs restores to Rome the body of one of the first popes, and Cyril himself will be buried in that same basilica.

The Basilica of Saint Clement in Rome

The Basilica of Saint Clement (San Clemente) is one of the most moving sanctuaries in Rome, for it literally superimposes the ages of the Church. The present building was erected at the beginning of the twelfth century by Pope Paschal II; beneath it lies an older church, going back to the time of Constantine or shortly after, already mentioned by Jerome and attested by inscriptions of Popes Damasus and Siricius in the fourth century.^[58] Excavations begun in 1858 revealed, below these two levels, ancient rooms which tradition connects with the house of Clement; the chamber directly beneath the altar was doubtless the saint's primitive memoria.^[59]

The feast of November 23

Saint Clement was enrolled very early in the Roman canon of the Mass, among the martyrs named. The Latin Church celebrates his feast on November 23, today an optional memorial in the Roman calendar; the Byzantine tradition commemorates him on November 25.^[60][61] His memory has remained universal: few first-century saints have kept so continuous a place in the liturgy.

Patron of sailors and marble workers

Because of his martyrdom, the anchor became Clement's symbol, and hence his maritime patronage. He is invoked as patron of sailors, boatmen and seafaring people.^[62] The stone quarry of his exile earned him, by another logic, the patronage of marble workers and stonecutters; he is also invoked for sick children — a distant echo of the legend of the sanctuary child.^[63]

Iconography: the anchor and the spring

In art, Clement is immediately recognisable by his attributes: the papal tiara or mitre, the book, and above all the anchor of his torment.^[64] The most frequent scenes show him cast into the sea from a boat, or striking the rock from which the spring gushes, or celebrating Mass. This stable iconography, from Byzantium to the Romanesque frescoes of San Clemente, fixed the saint's face in Christian memory for centuries.

Saint Clement of Rome is not merely an archive piece. His figure combines three things today's reader gains from retaining. First, a faith rooted in the apostles: he holds what he received, and transmits it without adding or subtracting. Second, a spirituality of peace: in a community torn by ambition, he seeks not to defeat one camp, but to heal hearts through humility and charity. Third, a witness unto blood: the pastor who wrote on humility lived it to the point of going down into the sea, anchor around his neck, as one goes down into God's rest.

His Letter remains, nineteen centuries later, a manual of unity for every Christian community tempted by division. And his anchor, planted in the Church's iconography, remains what it always meant for Christians: the very symbol of the hope that holds the soul firm amid storms.

• Pope Saint Clement I — the pontificate, the apostolic succession and the ecclesiological argument of the Letter to the Corinthians.
• Saint Irenaeus of Lyon — the witness who, around 180, hands down the order of the first bishops of Rome and the authority of Clement's letter.
• Saint Ignatius of Antioch — another Apostolic Father, whose relics rest with Clement's in the Basilica of Saint Clement.