Clement of Ancyra

The Holy Hieromartyr Clement was Bishop of Ancyra, the city now called Ankara, in Galatia. He suffered many torments in the time of Diocletian, spent long years in prisons, and was put to the sword for the faith. The Church remembers him on 23 January.

According to tradition he was born around 258 at Ancyra, to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Euphrosyne. She is said to have foretold his martyrdom, and she died when he was twelve. His mother's friend Sophia took him into her house as a son and brought him up in the faith. Sophia sheltered many abandoned children, and Clement began to teach them and prepare them for baptism. At eighteen he was already a priest, and at twenty he was chosen bishop of his native city. Young in years, he had the wisdom of an elder and lived on bread and vegetables.

In the time of Diocletian he was told to renounce the faith, first with gentle promises, then with threats, prison and torture. When he refused he was beaten and chained, then sent to Rome and handed to the co-⁠emperor Maximian. Tradition tells that before Diocletian the emperor set instruments of torture on one side and gifts on the other, and Clement chose the former. According to Saint Dimitry of Rostov the tortures were so cruel that even the pagan onlookers were moved to pity. Even in chains he healed the sick and led people to faith, among them the Roman soldier Agathangelus, who became his disciple and companion. The two were imprisoned again at Ancyra by order of a local ruler, Quirinus. There Agathangelus was put to death, and Clement was after some time freed by the Christians of the city.

Once free, he served in an underground church until a Roman soldier beheaded him as he was celebrating the Divine Liturgy, in the year 312. The Christians of Ancyra preserved his relics. It is said that early in the fourth century they were taken to Constantinople, where two churches bore his name, and that his head was carried to Paris after the crusaders sacked the city. Today his relics lie at the altar of the church of Our Lady in Trapani, Italy, while his holy head is kept in the Prousos monastery in Evrytania, Greece. Portions of his relics are at Zographou on Mount Athos and at Faneromeni on Salamis. The church of Saint Clement in Ankara is the only structure of the Byzantine era still standing in the city.