Clement’s New Clothes. The Destruction of Old S. Clemente in Rome, the Eleventh-Century Frescoes, and the Cult of (Anti)Pope Clement III

Abstract

In the early 1100s, the fifth-century church of S. Clemente in Rome was buried beneath an entirely new basilica.  Inspired by suggestions published by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri (1998) and Valentino Pace (2007), the present article considers the possibility that this radical intervention constituted an act of damnatio memoriae or, better, of deletio memoriae, an obliteration of memory prompted by the nascent cult of miracles associated with Pope Paschal II’s enemy and rival, (anti)pope Clement III.  Clement III (Wibert of Ravenna) died in 1100, not long after the execution of an extensive fresco cycle in the early Christian basilica celebrating the miracles and cult of the first-century pope and martyr St. Clement I of Rome.  Resonances between these images and the prodigia attributed to Clement III may have invited analogies between the two Clements, especially during the turbulent early years of Paschal II’s pontificate, when Paschal, alarmed by reports of his adversary’s miracles, had Clement III’s corpse exhumed and thrown into the Tiber.

The perceived correspondences between the first-century pope and his eleventh-century namesake may have extended to their postmortem resting places – Clement I was martyred by being thrown into the Black Sea – as well as to their shared attributes, particularly the pontifical vestments and white hair prominently displayed in the frescoes. These attributes disappear in the early twelfth-century mosaic of Clement I on the apsidal arch of the new, upper church, where the saint is instead represented as a young man with dark hair, a dark beard, and an apostle’s clothing.  This extreme makeover in a work securely associable with Roman reform-party sponsorship effectively dissociated Clement I from the painted images in the earlier church and, very probably, from his eleventh-century namesake in the Tiber.