Saints This Month-23 November: Pope St. Clement

Pope St. Clement was the third successor of St. Peter and the first of the Apostolic Fathers. He was one of the leading figures in the first-century Roman Church and Tertullian claims that he was ordained by St. Peter himself. We know very little about St. Clement but many writings have been attributed to him. The only verified existing text is The First Epistle of Clement. In this letter to the troubled Church in Corinth, he asserts the apostolic authority of the bishops/presbyters over the Church. He also refers to the Old Testament as scripture and recommends that the Church in Corinth "take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle". This letter has also been seen as the first documentary evidence of Roman Primacy.

Clement is included in the Roman Canon (the first Eucharistic prayer) and tradition has asserted that Clement was mentioned by Paul in Philippians as a "fellow labourer in Christ". During the reign of the Emperor Trajan, Clement was banished from Rome to the Chersonesus in Greece and set to work on a stone quarry. Legend has it that while there he was the first person to refine iron ore and shoe a horse. Soon after arriving Clement found that the prisoners were suffering from lack of water. He knelt down in prayer and looking up, saw a lamb on a hill, went to where the lamb had stood and struck the ground with his pickaxe, releasing a gushing stream of clear water. This miracle resulted in the conversion to Christianity of large numbers of the local pagans and of his fellow prisoners. As punishment, Clement was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown from a boat into the Black Sea. A year or two before his own death in 869, Saint Cyril brought to Rome what he believed to be the relics of Saint Clement, bones he found in the Crimea buried with an anchor on dry land. They were enshrined in the Basilica di San Clemente, a church already mentioned by St Jerome. (Incidentally this Basilica has been in the care of the Irish Dominicans since 1667, when the English outlawed the Church in Ireland and the Irish Dominicans found refuge in various parts of Europe including Rome.)

Clement's time on the quarry has made him the patron saint of metal workers andblacksmiths. Traditionally in England, these workers celebrated his feast with "Old Clem" night feasts. The night began with the ritual "firing of the anvil". The appointed smith packed gunpowder into a small hole in an anvil, and then struck it soundly with a hammer, causing a small explosion. Anvil firing was also a test of the anvil’s durability: weak anvils would break under pressure, and had to be melted down and recast. The smith, or apprentice, dressed up in wig, mask and cloak to represent ‘Old Clem’ then led a procession of smiths through the streets, stopping at taverns along the way. This custom survived the reformation but died out in the twentieth century. However some rural parishes try to keep some of the old customs alive. The Cross of St.Clement or the Mariners Cross is also a reminder of this great Pope and Saint.