Clement Ier

Holy Clement of Rome or Clement Romain (in Latin Clemens Romanus ) bishop of Rome, was the fourth pope, following Anaclet. One also regards it as one of the apostolic fathers. Festival the November 23rd.

It is difficult to identify this Clement with that which holy Paul in the Épître in Philippiens mentions (4, 3). It is probably about one freed from T. Flavius Clemens, which was Consul at the same time as his cousin, the Emperor Domitien.

Pasteur d' Hermas (Vision 2,4,3) evokes a Clement who had as a function to maintain the contact between the various Churches; one has to him in fact added this function to allot the letter to him to the Church of Corinthe.

Saint Clement Ier is the fourth Pape of the Catholic church, according to the list of Irenee of Lyon written in 180, of 88 with 97 according to the chronology of Eusèbe de Césarée at the 4th century. Clément Ier is assimilated by certain authors of the first years of Christianity to the consul Flavius Clemens, assassinated by Domitien. In fact the only certainty it is that this third successor of Pierre is the author of a letter which is the first document in favor of the supremacy of the bishop of Rome. Indeed, it must intervene with the Church of Corinthe in prey with serious internal disorders between rival factions which are addressed either to Jean, the last still alive apostle, or in Clément.

Clement is very venerated in Russia because of a tradition which makes it die in exile in the Crimea. Because of the same tradition of the presence of its relics at an end of the " road of Varègues in Grecs" , the first built church of wood in Scandinavia was dedicated to him.

This last writing a letter, in Greek, which is a true talk on the faith such as she was lived at the end of. It skilfully mingles a paternal kindness with a firmness and an innate direction with the authority. It imposes the re-establishment in their function of priests who had been dislocated their functions and the setting with the variation of the Church of the troublemakers. It is about the oldest theological text of Christianity, if one excludes of course the Évangile S. Oubliée as from the 4th century, this letter is found at the 17th century in the Codex Alexandrinus . In 1894, a Belgian Bénédictin finds with Namur a manuscript of the 11th century containing the translation in popular Latin of the letter of Clement, translation going back to 2nd or, that is to say almost contemporary of its writing.

Saint Clément is the owner of the marines to be martyrisé, according to the tradition, precipitate at the sea-bed an anchor of navy fixed on the neck.

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