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A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

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January 23 · Bishop, Martyrs

St. Clement of Ancyra…

St. Clement of Ancyra and His Companions

A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

January 23
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1914)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Bishop
Martyrs

Early life

Selected sentences from the original account, unaltered.

Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 202 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

S. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, was the son of a heathen father and a Christian mother. When Clement was ten years old, his mother died. Being possessed of private means, on coming of age, he adopted a number of poor boys, and educated them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.

Make time for silence. Solitude and withdrawal to pray shape this life.

Give to people in need. The account records care for the poor.

Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.

Read more

The full original · 202 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Commemorated by the Greeks. The Greek Acts of these martyrs are not genuine.

S. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, was the son of a heathen father and a Christian mother. When Clement was ten years old, his mother died. Before her death, she summoned him to her side, and urged him not to desert Christ, whatever sufferings he might be called on to endure for His sake. Being possessed of private means, on coming of age, he adopted a number of poor boys, and educated them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He was at length ordained Bishop of Ancyra, his native city. In the persecution of Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303], he was taken and brought before the governor. He was treated with great barbarity, being torn with hooks, and his teeth and jaw broken with a large stone. As he lay among other prisoners that night in the jail, a bright light filled it, and the prisoners saw a man enter in dazzling garments, who held in his hand the Holy Eucharist, and therewith he communicated the bishop. But whether he were mortal priest, or an angel of God, no man knows. Along with Clement, one Agathangelus and many others, men, women, and boys suffered for Christ, whose names are written in the Book of Life.

Feast days

Feast: January 23

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Clement of Ancyra…'s story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on January 23
A

St. Asclas

January 23 · Martyr
St. John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria

St. John the Almsgiver

January 23 · Feast
St. Raymond of Peñafort

St. Raymond of Peñafort

January 23 · Feast
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.