The life of Clement and Agathangel
The governor of the province tortured him himself and could not shake him, so he sent him on to Diocletian at Rome, who, finding him whole and well after what had been reported, had him tortured worse and locked away, then passed him along to Maximian at Nicomedia. On the way his own disciple Agathangelus joined him of his own will, wanting to share what came.
What followed was years of it, one governor to the next, one city to the next, tortures that in the telling seem to run past what a body could survive: burned in lime, flayed, laid on heated iron, burned again with sulfur, and each time they were unharmed and sent on for more. Clement was shown once, in the wilderness between two of these trials, that his sufferings for Christ would run to twenty-eight years in all, and so they did. Agathangelus was beheaded before him. Clement himself was killed at the altar of a cave church at Ancyra, cut down by soldiers as he stood offering the Liturgy, two of his deacons dying with him.
