On November 23 the Church honors St. Clement I, the fourth Bishop of Rome, whose Letter to the Corinthians — written around 96 AD — is the earliest surviving Christian writing outside the New Testament. The letter was read in churches on Sundays alongside Scripture in the early centuries of the Church, and it still stands as the first exercise of the pastoral authority of the See of Rome beyond its own diocese.
Tradition holds that Clement was consecrated by St. Peter himself, and Irenaeus lists him as the third successor of Peter (Linus, Anencletus, Clement). A later tradition, recorded by Rufinus, holds that Clement was martyred by being thrown into the Black Sea with an anchor tied to his neck, during the persecution under the Emperor Trajan. His relics, including the anchor, were said to have been recovered and are venerated in Rome at the Basilica of San Clemente — one of the most extraordinary churches of the city. The upper basilica, a 12th-century church built after the Norman sack of 1084, stands on an early medieval church, which stands on a 1st-century Roman house — traditionally Clement's own house — and a Mithraic temple beside it. The three layers of San Clemente — Roman house, early church, medieval basilica — make it a living stratigraphy of Roman Christianity, and the 11th-century apse mosaic of the Triumph of the Cross is one of the masterpieces of medieval Roman art.
