Saint Clement I

Pope and Martyr

Feast Day

November 23

Life

d. 99

Born

Rome (traditional)

Clement I was the third or fourth Bishop of Rome after Saint Peter (the early lists vary in placing him third or fourth), with his pontificate dated by the most reliable ancient witnesses to roughly 88 to 99. He is named in the Roman Canon among the Roman bishops linked directly to the apostles. Saint Irenaeus, writing around 180, says Clement had seen the blessed apostles, conversed with them, and had the preaching of the apostles still echoing in his ears.

Around the year 96, while Saint John the Apostle was still alive at Ephesus, Clement wrote on behalf of the Roman Church the Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians, the so-called First Letter of Clement, intervening to settle a factional dispute that had deposed the lawful presbyters at Corinth. The letter is the earliest substantial Christian document outside the New Testament and the earliest known instance of the Roman Church exercising authority outside its own city - a fact regularly cited as evidence of an early consciousness of papal primacy. The later legend that Clement was martyred under Trajan by being tied to an anchor and drowned in the Black Sea is recorded by Saint Gregory of Tours and others; Saints Cyril and Methodius, Apostles to the Slavs, are credited with discovering relics venerated as Clement's in Crimea in the ninth century and bringing them to Rome, where they rest at the Basilica of San Clemente.