SAN CLEMENTE, A MUST SEE

Late in March we had visits from a couple of Bill's former students, Thomas and Gasper. While they toured much of the center of the city with Bill, I decided to preview the church of San Clemente recommended to me by the amazing Sarah, whose suggestions have never failed. And indeed, this church should be on everyone's must see list.
San Clemente is a 12th century church that was taken over by the Dominicans in the 17th century. In 1857 Father Mullooly began excavations under the church. Later in the 1900's when a drain from here to the Colosseum was being cut even more layers were uncovered. (Drains cause lots of things to happen in Rome - you could argue that they are one of the most important and underappreciated wonders of Rome!) Excavations and restorations continue to this day through several layers of occupation representing nearly 2000 years of occupation at this site.
Currently, the lowest level appears to be from the time of Nero's fire that leveled the whole area over which the church now stands. I say over because in Nero's time the ground was fully 60 feet below the present ground level. Some of the buildings that have been on this site since the fire include a large Roman house, with courtyard, a Mithraic temple from around the turn of the 3rd century, a 4th century church and 5th or 6th century catacombs.

There seems to have been quite a bit of religious activity on this site. During Roman Imperial times, Mithraism was a rather moralistic religion celebrated only by men, many of them in the Roman army. The Mithraic temple on the lowest level of the site appears to have been "built in the centre of a small courtyard belonging to a first-century insula or apartment house. [...] Here there took place the ritual meal that commemorated the victory banquet of Apollo and Mithras before the latter ascended to the Heavens." (Leonard Boyle, O.P., St. Clement's Rome.) Some think that an adjacent room was a Mithraic school of some kind. Christians may have had secret meetings in the Roman house at the lowest level. It is thought that the family owning the house was called Clemens and that eventually as Christianity became accepted in Rome, their house was converted to a church dedicated to Pope Clement.
Unfortunately, no photography is allowed in the lower levels of the church, but at least I can show you a bit of the church itself and this interesting box that was sitting in the courtyard. A little research thanks to Wikipedia, suggests that the writing around the figure is in a script called Glagolitic and was invented by Saint Cyril and his brother Saint Methodius, two of the "Apostles of the Slavs," who were preaching in vernacular Slavic and needed a way to write a translation of the Bible into Slavic.

As with so many Saints, there is a story that Saint Clement himself was martyred. He was the 4th Pope in Rome but was supposedly exiled to the Crimea and eventually drowned by the Romans for being too successful a preacher. They tied him to an anchor and tossed him into the Black Sea. According to Boyle's guide book to the church, there is no actual evidence of this martydom but there is a lovely (later) story relating to it involving all three of these saints. Apparently SS. Cyril and Methodius, in their travels, found the tomb of Clement which was has been built by angels under the water of the Sea of Azov. Once a year, the tide recedes enough for the tomb to be seen. One year, a young boy was caught by the returning tide and drowned. However, the next year, when the tide again withdrew and revealed the tomb, the child was found, safe and sound, inside the tomb! There is a beautiful fresco illustrating this story in the remains of the 4th century church. This fresco was painted towards the end of the 11th century (in case you were wondering how the timing worked!).

Hundreds of years after the death of Clement, the Cyril and Methodius traveled to the Crimea and "miraculously recovered" Clement's body and even the anchor to which it was tied from the tomb and brought them back to Rome to be interred in this church. Plenty of miracles to go around and plenty of subjects for medieval art. This church and its history is long and full of facts and stories, and I apologize for barely even beginning to touch on them here. Luckily there are plenty of resources if you, Dear Reader, would like to explore more.