Pope St Clement 1
Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:30 pm
The online Catholic Encyclopedia has this -
Prior -Martyrdom
Of the life and death of St, Clement nothing is known. The apocryphal Greek Acts of his martyrdom were printed by Cotelier in his "Patres Apost." (1724, I, 808; reprinted in Migne, P.G., II, 617, best edition by Funk, "Patr. Apost.", II, 28). They relate how he converted Theodora, wife of Sisinnius, a courtier of Nerva, and (after miracles) Sisinnius himself and four hundred and twenty-three other persons of rank. Trajan banishes the pope to the Crimea, where he slakes the thirst of two thousand Christian confessors by a miracle. The people of the country are converted, seventy-five churches are built. Trajan, in consequence, orders Clement to be thrown into the sea with an iron anchor. But the tide every year recedes two miles, revealing a Divinely built shrine which contains the martyr's bones. This story is not older than the fourth century ...
... St. Clement is first mentioned as a martyr by Rufinus (c. 400). Pope Zozimus in a letter to Africa in 417 relates the trial and partial acquittal of the heretic Caelestius in the basilica of St. Clement; the pope had chosen this church because Clement had learned the Faith from St. Peter, and had given his life for it (Ep. ii). He is also called a martyr by the writer known as Praedestinatus (c. 430) and by the Synod of Vaison in 442. Modern critics think it possible that his martyrdom was suggested by a confusion with his namesake, the martyred consul. But the lack of tradition that he was buried in Rome is in favour of his having died in exile.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04012c.htm [bold and paragraphing by me]
Identity
Origen identifies Pope Clement with St. Paul's fellow-labourer (Philippians 4:3, "..help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life."), and so do Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome — but this Clement 'was probably a Philippian'.
In the middle of the nineteenth century it was the custom to identity The Pope with the consul of 95, T. Flavius Clemens [a nephew [or maybe great-nephew] of Vespasian], who was martyred by his first cousin, the Emperor Domitian. But the ancients never suggest this, and The Pope is 'said to have lived on till the reign of Trajan'. It is unlikely that he was a member of the imperial family. The continual use of the Old Testament in his Epistle suggested to Lightfoot, Funk, Nestle and others that he was of Jewish origin ...
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04012c.htm ['scare' quotation marks mine]