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November 23 | Feast day of St Clement (Pope Clement I, or Clement of Rome), martyr

(Convex wood sorrel, Oxalis convexula is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

St Clement, the fourth pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the first of the successors of the Apostle St Peter about whom anything definite is known, and the first of the ‘Apostolic Fathers’, is the patron saint of tanners, as, by tradition, he was one himself. His symbol is an anchor, as he was thrown into the sea tied to an anchor. He is also patron of boatmen, marble workers, mariners, sailors, sick children, stonecutters and watermen.

A Clement is mentioned by St Paul in Philippians, iv, 3, but there is no evidence to assume that he was this Clement, who is said to have been the third or fourth pope (the Vatican's Annuario Pontificio (2003) cites a reign from 92 to 99). A 9th century tradition says he was martyred in the Crimea in 102, but earlier sources say he died a natural death.

After Clement, or Old Clem as he was known to English blacksmiths, was martyred (if he was), two of his disciples prayed to find his remains: the sea retreated for 3 miles, and they could walk to where an angel-built chapel was, with St Clement's remains in a chest of stone, by the anchor. Every year the sea did so, on St Clement's day and remained dry for seven days.

Children in pre-Reformation England went in procession on this day, and at night, adults went out to beg a drink. Hence this day was marked with a pot on old ‘clog almanacs’. (A clog almanac was a primitive almanac or calendar, originally made of a 'clog', or log of wood. The sharp edge of each of its four faces was divided by notches into three months, every week being marked by a large notch. The face to the left of the notched edge contained the saints’ days, festivals, phases of the moon, and so on in Runic characters, for which reason the 'clog' was also called a Runic staff.)

Clementing

In the Midlands of England, children used to go 'clementing' for fruit and pennies, singing a rhyme about St Clement....

Sources include Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, p. 129; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911; Wikipedia et al

More after the jump.