If you hear a wailing and gashing of teeth, both anguished sounds will be emanating from me. Why? Because my rudimentary archaeological endeavours in my garden continue to unearth clay pipes The darned things show no sign of becoming rare and valuable. Other people find great treasures of one sort of another; I find clay pipes. Mostly broken ones at that.
The contents of my bin will be household waste. Period. But back in May 2018 a beautifully set relic (a bone) of St Clement (1st century Pope and martyr, whose feast day is today, 23 November. See https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=37) was found in a central London bin by waste collection company Enviro Waste. Yes, really. You can read about it here https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/01/relic-claimed-to-be-bone-from-st-clement-rescued-from-the-bin, here https://rcadc.org/relic-of-st-clement-found-in-trash-now-in-safe-keeping-at-westminster-cathedral/ and here https://www.cbcew.org.uk/relic-of-pope-st-clement-i-goes-on-display-in-westminster-cathedral/
Mind you, the Smithsonian Magazine warns here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bone-saint-clement-found-londons-trash-180968954/ that it’s “highly unlikely” the bone in question belonged to St Clement. In fact, it’s probably a forgery made in the medieval period to fleece devout believers.
Well, there are problems when it comes to the relic being the real thing. The story of St Clement’s martyrdom involves being “tied to the anchor of a boat and thrown overboard” (see image at the top of this article), so to begin with it rather depends upon where he suffered this fate. If in a harbour or close to land with observers on the land to see more or less where it happened, maybe his body could have been recovered.
But what if they took him out to sea? The chances of finding him then are greatly diminished, if not eliminated altogether. After all, locating his body underwater in those days would have depended upon the strength and capacity of human lungs, not the fancy equipment we have now. Hellfire, the Titanic has been found now and just think how far down that is! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreck_of_the_Titanic.
Ah, but it seems Clement’s body was recovered by his disciples Cornelius and Phoebus. The miraculous events that followed are described thus: “….[They] commanded to all the others to pray to our Lord that he would show to them the body of his martyr; and anon the sea departed three miles away far, so that all they might go dry foot thither, and there they found a habitacle* in a temple of marble which God had made and ordained, and found the body of St. Clement laid in an ark or a chest, and the anchor thereby, and it was showed to his disciples that they should not take away the body from thence….” I find it a little hard to believe, although the sea can retreat suddenly if a tsunami is coming! You can read the story in this link: https://www.christianiconography.info/goldenLegend/clement.htm :
Once St Clement’s remains were back on land his relics “….were translated to Constantinople (860) [and] some ….found their way to Rome….and were deposited in the church of San Clemente, where they are still reverently preserved. These consist of bones, some reddened earth, a broken vase containing some red matter, a little bottle similarly filled, and an inscription stating that these are the relics of the Holy Forty Martyrs of [Sebaste], and also of Flavius Clement….” See here https://earlychurchhistory.org/martyrs/forty-martyres-of-sebaste/.
So what if the relic found in London is the genuine article? Looking a little further for information, I learned that it was one of a number of items stolen from a car. “Obviously the thief in question was not an historian, nor a ‘good Catholic’, else the 2,000 year old relic would not have been found by workers of Enviro Waste.” Indeed, he or she is probably bruised all over from kicking themselves!
Anyway, as of 19 June 2018 the relic has been safely at Westminster Cathedral. “It was presented to the cathedral by Mr. James Rubin of Environ Waste and was received by Archbishop George Stack, who serves as the chair of the Patrimony Committee of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales….The relic will be on display at the Treasurers [sic] of Westminster Cathedral Exhibition, which is available to visit by the general public.” See here https://westminstercathedral.org.uk/the-cathedral/treasures/.
I do hope it’s genuine, and not lingering evidence of the sin of simony, see here https://www.britannica.com/topic/simony.
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