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374 celebrate the liturgy in the church of St. Sophia as a synod while they were without a metropolitan. He was silenced by a temporary imprisonment in the Pechersky Monastery, and the synod elected Clement, a monk of Smolensk. But how could he be ordained without applying to the patriarch at Constantinople? Here was a serious difficulty. The bishops found a way out of it by an ingenious device. In place of the imposition of the patriarch's hand, they laid on the candidate's head the reputed hand of St. Clement of Rome, which was among the precious relics that Vladimir had brought from Cherson. At a time when the corpses and bones of saints were valued as the greatest of treasures and credited with marvellous powers, such a use of the shrivelled hand of one of the most venerated successors of an apostle might be regarded as singularly efficatious. A curious feature of the incident is that the dead hand of a bishop of Rome is used to Hout the claims of the bishop of the rival city of Constantinople. The quarrel lasted for nine years. It got entangled with the civil feuds, which were so fierce that one prince, Igor, who had been sent to a monastery, was torn to pieces by the populace when he reappeared in the city of Kiev. Soon after this the Prince Isyaslaff was forced to flee, taking Clement with him. Meanwhile Niphont was despatched to Constantinople to seek a duly appointed metropolitan. The patriarch Luke was only too glad to comply with so loyal a request, and he consecrated a man named Constantine as bishop of Chernigoff, and despatched him with all due qualifications to Kiev ( 1136). Constantine proceeded to act with vigour in his new office, condemning the deeds of the unfortunate Isyaslaff and his metropolitan, Clement, and even suspending for a time all the clergy whom Clement had ordained. Thus apparently Russia was again brought into ecclesiastical submission to Constantinople. Niphont, who had stood out as a solitary Elijah among the priests of Baal, an in the midst of the all but universal rebellion, did not live to reach Kiev and enjoy his triumph. But he had earned an undying