Hieromartyr Clement, Bishop of Ancyra

Life

Clement was born in the year 258, in the city of Ancyra of a pagan father and a Christian mother. His pious mother Euphrosyne prophesied to her son a martyric death and left this world when Clement was twelve years old. Her companion Sophia took Clement into her house as a son, and aided his upbringing in the Christian spirit. So renowned was Clement for his virtuous life that he was chosen as Bishop of Ancyra in the twentieth year of his life. In his young years he acquired the wisdom of old age, and by great abstinence subdued and conquered his body. He fed himself only on bread and vegetables, and ate nothing that had been slaughtered and bloody. In the time of Diocletian he was tormented so terribly "as never anyone from the creation of the world." He spent twenty-eight years in torments and in prisons and eleven different tormentors tortured and tormented him. When they once struck him on the face, spat on him and broke his teeth, he called out to the tormentor Dometian: "You are honoring me, O Dometian, and not tormenting me, for the mouth of my Lord Jesus Christ was beaten thus and His cheeks were slapped, and behold, I the unworthy am now deemed worthy of this!" When he was brought before Emperor Diocletian in Rome, the emperor set on one side various instruments of torture and on the other gifts, honors, garments, money—everything that an emperor can bestow, and then told Clement to choose. Christ's martyr looked with contempt upon all the emperor's treasures, and chose the instruments of torture. And he was tormented unspeakably: piece by piece flesh was torn from his body, so that the bones gleamed white beneath the flesh. Finally he was slain by soldiers, in the year 312 in the church in Ancyra, when as hierarch he was serving the Divine Liturgy. The miracles of Saint Clement are countless.

From the Hymn of Praise

O infinite Creator, with my soul I bow to Thee,When I speak Thy name, I diminish Thee,And with every thought I diminish Thee with my own—What can the mind think before Thy abyss?