Clement, Bishop of Ancyra

Clement was born around 258 at Ancyra in Galatia of a Christian mother named Sophia, his father having died before his birth. He was raised in piety and ordained reader as a young man. When the persecution of Diocletian broke out in 303, Clement — then twenty years old — became its principal target in Ancyra: he was successively brought before nine separate governors over a period of twenty-eight years, each one applying the contemporary fashion of tortures, each one defeated by his persistence.

The synaxarion preserves a long catalog of the torments: scourging, the rack, the iron claws, fire, exposure to wild beasts in the amphitheater. Among the many converts of his confession was his disciple Agathangelus, a young man from Rome who had been sent to assist in the trial as a court official and who became Clement's pupil, traveled with him from city to city through his imprisonments, and was eventually crowned at his side.

Clement was finally beheaded at the altar of his own church at Ancyra during a Liturgy that he was celebrating in old age. Agathangelus was beheaded a moment later. Their joint feast falls on January 23.