Hieromartyr Clement, Bishop of Ancyra or simply Clement of Ancyra (c. 258-312) (born in Ancyra

Ankara

Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....

 present-day Turkey) was a bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

 who served during the rule of Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...

 Diocletian

Diocletian

Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244  – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....

. He was arrested by Roman authorities and tried by Diocletian. Emperor Diocletian attempted to convert Clement to Paganism

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 but Clement refused and withstood tremendous torture. Clement was eventually beheaded by a Roman soldier whilst he was celebrating the Divine Liturgy

Divine Liturgy

Divine Liturgy is the common term for the Eucharistic service of the Byzantine tradition of Christian liturgy. As such, it is used in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Armenian Christians, both of the Armenian Apostolic Church and of the Armenian Catholic Church, use the same term...

 in the year 312. He is venerated on January 23 according the Gregorian calendar

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...

 and on February 5 according to the Julian calendar

Julian calendar

The Julian calendar began in 45 BC as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year .The Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months...

 in some Eastern Orthodox countries together with his disciple

Disciple (Christianity)

In Christianity, the disciples were the students of Jesus during his ministry. While Jesus attracted a large following, the term disciple is commonly used to refer specifically to "the Twelve", an inner circle of men whose number perhaps represented the twelve tribes of Israel...

 Agathangelus of Rome

Agathangelus of Rome

Saint Agathangelus of Rome , was a Roman deacon and disciple of Clement of Ancyra, was a martyr during the reign of emperor Diocletian. He met Clement when the latter was imprisoned in Rome, and traveled back to Ancyra with him where they were both beheaded...

.

External links

• Saint Patrick's church article on Clement.
• Iconograms article on Clement.
• Patron saint index for 23 January.
• OCA article for 23 January saints.