Clemente da Osimo

Clemente da Osimo, known in English as Blessed Clement of Osimo, was a thirteenth-century Italian Augustinian friar and Prior General of his order. He was born in Osimo, in the Marche region of central Italy, during the first half of the thirteenth century; the precise year of his birth is not recorded in surviving sources. Nothing reliable is known of his family background or of his youth. He entered the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine, which had received canonical unity only in 1256 when Pope Alexander IV gathered various groups of hermits under the Rule of Saint Augustine. Clemente's early years in religion are likewise poorly documented, but he came to be regarded as a man of austere life, learning, and practical judgment.

In 1271 Clemente was elected Prior General of the Augustinian Order. He occupied that office for much of the remainder of his life, though there was at least one interruption in his tenure. As head of the order he worked to stabilize its still-recent unification, to promote regular observance in the convents, and to encourage the intellectual formation of the friars. The Augustinians were expanding rapidly in Italy and beyond, and the generalate required both diplomatic skill in dealing with the papacy and firmness in internal discipline. Clemente obtained confirmations of the order's privileges from the Holy See and sought to give the congregation a coherent legislative framework.

He is especially remembered for his collaboration with Blessed Agostino Novello, a former jurist who had entered the order and who served as a close associate. Together they prepared a revised set of constitutions, which were approved at the general chapter held at Regensburg in 1290. These constitutions helped to define Augustinian life for subsequent generations. Clemente continued in office until his death. He died at Orvieto on 8 April 1291 and was buried in the Augustinian church of that city. Later tradition reported that his body was found incorrupt, which encouraged local devotion.

A cult in his honor developed in Orvieto and in his native Osimo. In 1761 Pope Clement XIII confirmed that cult, thereby granting Clemente the title of Blessed. His feast is observed on 8 April, particularly by the Augustinian Order. Relics have been kept in Orvieto; some were later given to Osimo. Unlike many medieval saints, Clemente did not become the subject of an elaborate legendary vita; the historical record presents him primarily as a reformer and organizer of the Augustinian Order in the decades after its foundation. Surviving information about his personal spirituality remains limited, and later Augustinian writers have had to reconstruct his career largely from the acts of chapters and from the institutional history of the order.