St Clement

 Very little is known about the life of St Clement (92-101 AD). According to the oldest list of Roman bishops, he was the third successor to St Peter in Rome.

He is the author of an Epistle to the Corinthians which was written c. 96 AD in the name of the Church of Rome to deal with disturbances in the Church at Corinth. The letter is one of the earliest witnesses to the authority of the Church of Rome and was so highly regarded that it was read publicly at Corinth with the Scriptures in the 2^nd century.

St Clement is revered as a martyr: fourth-century accounts speak of his forced labour in the mines during exile to the Crimea in the reign of the emperor Trajan (98-117 AD) and his missionary work there which prompted the Romans to bind him to an anchor and throw him into the Black Sea. Sometime later, the accounts continue, the water receded, revealing a tomb built by angels from which his body was recovered.

The relics of St Clement are reserved beneath the high altar of the basilica and on 23 November, the Feast of St Clement, they are exposed for veneration and carried in solemn procession through the neighbouring streets.

SS Cyril & Methodius

Selected by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 for a ‘cultural and religious mission’ requested by the King of Moravia, these two brothers from Thessalonia began to teach and preach in the Slav language. St Cyril, a brilliant linguist, devised an alphabet, thus becoming the founder of the Slavonic literature. He also adopted Slavonic for the celebration of the liturgy, and circulated a Slavonic translation of the Scriptures.

According to St Cyril’s own report, in 861 AD he recovered the body of St Clement in the Crimea, together with the anchor. Invited to Rome in 867 AD by the Pope, SS Cyril and Methodius took these remains with them, arriving in 868 AD. The body of St Clement was solemnly escorted to and interred in San Clemente. A year later on 14 February St Cyril died in Rome. St Methodius asked for permission to take the body back to Greece. When the Pope and people of Rome would not allow this, St Methodius requested that the burial be in San Clemente itself.

During the French revolution the relics of St Cyril were placed in safekeeping and eventually were lost. In the 1960s the Irish Dominican Fathers discovered a small fragment of the relics. Pope Paul VI personally placed this fragment in the Basilica di San Clemente in the hope ‘that the sacred relics of St Cyril might be a cause of union with the See of Rome.’

ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY AND THE DOMINICANS