Exploring a coincidence -- Part1:The cult of St Clement and Viking ruling elites

The conventional explanation for the origin of the Clement hereditary surname in England is that it developed from the personal name Clement which itself became adopted in the late Anglo-Saxon period because of the popularity of the early Christian saint, Clement (Reaney, 1967; Hanks & Hodges, 1988). To date in England the I-Y33765 mutation has only been confirmed in men with this surname whose direct-line male ancestry is from rural parishes surrounding the port city of Bristol. As I have discussed in earlier articles on this blog, the genetic evidence from four FTDNA Big Y tests suggests that the I-Y33765 SNP formed in southern Scandinavia during the first Viking age and was subsequently brought to England in the early eleventh century by a Swedish mercenary who was possibly in the service of Cnut the Great. In this article and in the next I want to explore why the English descendants of this Scandinavian Viking seem to have adopted the hagionym of a 1st century martyred Pope as their family name.  

  

 The martyrdom of Pope Clement, circa 100AD 

To begin I intend to give a summary of the Clement cult and it's significance for Viking ruling elites.  Early Christian records suggest Clement was the third Pope, and probably the only one appointed by St Peter.  He was martyred at the end of the first century by being thrown into the Sea of Azov, Crimea, tied to a ships anchor.  Here it is worth stressing that his exile from Rome to Crimea and his subsequent martyrdom were both results of his exceptional ability to convert pagans to Christianity which made him unpopular with the Roman authorities.  Almost eight centuries after his death, in 867-8, St Cyril and St Methodius brought the supposed remains of Clement to Rome where they were enshrined in the Basilica of San Clemente.   Because of the manner of his martyrdom St Clement became regarded as the patron of sailors and those in peril of drowning.

 

Interior of the Basilica San Clemente, Rome.  The saints supposed relics are enshrined under the high alter.  The inset image is of a Ukrainian coin minted in 2006.  It shows Prince Vladimir holding a model of his Tithe Church in which he enshrined relics of St Clement at Kiev. 

The next important element of the story is that in the late tenth and eleventh century the cult of St Clement became very influential among the ruling Viking elites in Ukraine, Norway, England and Denmark. 

This process began when Prince Vladimir of the Kievan Rus acquired other putative remains of St Clement from Crimea and housed these in 996 at his Tithe Church in Kiev (Garipzanov, 2013).  In this way Vladimir hoped to use the cult of St Clement to suggest the status of Kiev was on a par with that of Rome, by its possession and veneration of the remains of a Pope appointed by St Peter himself.  Vladimir may also have thought that Clement's proven missionary prowess might assist him with the conversion of his Slav subjects.  However in addition the Kievan rulers actions introduced the cult to Scandinavian Varangian (aka Viking) merchants and mercenaries who frequented his capital while journeying along the river network that connected the Baltic and Black Sea.   

The Norwegian ruling dynasty of Olaf Trygvasson and his grandson Olaf Haraldsson, who both had close connections with the Kievan Rus, in turn brought the cult to Norway (possibly with more supposed relics) by founding churches dedicated to St Clement at Olso (Liden, 2007) and at Trondheim. The remains of the wooden church at Trondheim were discovered and excavated in 2016 (see illustration).  Dendrochronology of surviving timbers has shown that trees used in the construction were felled in 1008-9AD.  

Excavation in 2016 of Church of St Clement, Trondheim, Norway (top) and remains of Church of St Clement, Oslo, Norway (bottom) 

Further, it seems likely that at about this time St Clement became more broadly identified with the newly Christian political elites across Scandinavia possibly because of the saint’s supposed ability to both achieve Christian conversion among pagans and to protect those traveling by water (Crawford, 2008a). Clearly these dual characteristics would make Clement an attractive guardian for any newly Christianized Viking whether he should be a humble mercenary or a mighty Sea King.

Olaf Haraldsson eventually became King of Norway in 1015 but his reign was ended in 1029 when Cnut the Great invaded his country.  Olaf escaped via Sweden and went into a short exile in Kiev but in 1030 was killed trying to regain his Norwegian throne at the Battle of Stiklestad.  He was subsequently declared a saint in 1164 and still has great significance for the Norwegian national identity.  

Church of St Jorgensbjerg, Roskilde, Denmark.  Originally dedicated to St Clement and dating from 1030-35 during the reign of Cnut the Great

It has been suggested (Crawford, 2006) that, as part of Cnut the Greats political struggle to control Norway, he decided to actively introduce the Clement cult, possibly from his English realm, into his Danish kingdom. This view seems particularly well supported by the early dedications to the saint at the churches founded in Lund and Roskilde. The date of the Roskilde Clement church can be estimated from a coin hoard probably deposited at its foundation.  The English, Danish and German coins in the hoard suggest the building was built around 1030 and so definitely during Cnut’s reign and concurrent with his Norwegian campaign. Hence this indicates that there was also a “battle” for St Clement patronage between Danish and Norwegian dynasties at a time of existential conflict.  Cnut's eventual military victory being proof that his claim had found favour with a martyred Pope and his desire to demonstrate this saintly approval underlines the importance of St Clement to these Scandinavian rulers and to their followers during the eleventh century.

The number of medieval churches dedicated to St Clement in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England is also interesting in this regard.  In Denmark twenty six examples are known, in Norway six, Sweden just one (at Visby, Gotland) but in England nearly fifty (Crawford, 2006).  In a comprehensive ten year study of the cult of St Clement in Scandinavia and in England Barbara Crawford (2008b) has examined the hypothesis that the growth of the Clement cult in England was directly linked to the ruling Danish royal dynasty and its followers.  From her findings it does appear that some dedications can be linked to patronage by the Danish elite following Cnut’s accession to the English crown in 1016. This is another element of the cults history that is important for the speculations that follow.

At this point it seems to me, we can begin to see the possible significance of the coincidence which prompted this discussion.   Namely, that we have a group of English men who share a Viking age Y-DNA mutation, I-Y33765, that was brought from Scandinavia to England by a follower of the Danish ruling dynasty and now we have seen that this group of I-Y33765 men also share a surname, Clement, that originates  from the name of a saint whose cult was apparently popular with the aforementioned ruling elite.   There is little doubt that for both mutation and family name to be found in the south west of England supposedly linked by the eleventh century Anglo-Scandinavian ruling class is an intriguing coincidence but is it anything more? It seems to me that at the distance of a millennium this curiosity is an unexpected discovery that is well worth fuller exploration.

In the next article I intend to present some evidence for the cult of St Clement in the environs of eleventh century Bristol where I suspect our Scandinavian Y-DNA eventually became paired with the hagionym and produced our Clement family identity at sometime around the middle of the thirteenth century.   

References

Crawford, B.E.(2006) The Cult of St Clement in Denmark, Historie, p235-282

Crawford, B.E (2008a) The Saint Clement dedications at Clementhorpe and Pontefract Castle: Anglo-Scandinavian or Norman?, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks Ed. Julia Barrow, Andrew Wareham, Ashgate Publishing, p 189-210 

Crawford, B.E (2008b) The Churches Dedicated to St. Clement in Medieval England. A Hagio-geography of the Seafarer´s Saint in 11th Century North Europe. St. Petersburg: Axioma, 237 pp.

Garipzanov, I.H (2013) The Journey of St Clement’s Cult from the Black Sea to the
Baltic Region, in From Goths to Varangians. Communication and Cultural Exchange
between the Baltic and the Black Sea, Ed. Line Bjerg, John H. Lind, and Søren M.
Sindbæk, Aarhus University Press, p 369–80.  

Hanks, P. & Hodges, F.(1988) The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames, Oxford University Press

Liden, H-E (2007) The Church of St Clement in Oslo, in West over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea‐Borne Expansion and Settlement  Before 1300.  A Festschrift in honour  of Dr Barbara E.Crawford , Ed. Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Wells, Leiden and Boston, Brill.  The Northern World, 31 p 251-2

Reaney,P.H.(1967) The Origin of English Surnames, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London