Hieromartyr Clement of Ancyra and Martyr Agathangelus

Clement was the bishop of Ancyra, the chief city of the Roman province of Galatia in Asia Minor, who according to his synaxarion endured roughly twenty-eight years of imprisonment and torture during the Great Persecution before being martyred. He is commemorated on January 23 together with Agathangelus, a younger companion who joined him in confession and shared in his sufferings.

By tradition Clement was born at Ancyra in 258 to a pagan father and a Christian mother. Orphaned young, he was raised in the Christian faith and led an ascetic life from boyhood. Sources relate that he advanced through the ranks of reader and deacon and was consecrated bishop of Ancyra at about the age of twenty. With the outbreak of the persecution under Diocletian his long ordeal of arrest, interrogation, and torment began.

The accounts describe Clement being carried from one place to another over many years — passing through Rome, Nicomedia, Amasea, and Tarsus — and being subjected to repeated tortures by a succession of governors and officials, yet never renouncing Christ. Agathangelus, a convert won during this imprisonment, attached himself to Clement and sought to die with him. The synaxarion relates that Clement was finally beheaded at the altar while serving the Liturgy, and that Agathangelus was likewise put to the sword.