ringing devices. The new clocks quickly became objects of royal, noble, and municipal
pride, either in the form of gigantic tower clocks or fine miniature chamber clocks.
Froissart’s poem L’orloge amoureus (1369) describes the new machine in detail and
praises it lavishly. The cathedral at Strasbourg had an elaborate astronomical clock whose
fame extended the breadth of Europe. To punish the rebellious burghers of Courtrai,
Philip the Bold of Burgundy in 1382 confiscated their tower clock and put it to use in his
own capital, Dijon. An inventory of the possessions of King Charles V in 1380 gives
evidence of several chamber clocks in fine metalwork. A similar inventory of 1430 shows
the first evidence for spring-driven clocks among the possessions of the duke of
Burgundy.
The making of astronomical clocks, timekeepers accurate enough to be useful for
observational purposes, was the epitome of the clockmaker’s craft. Jean Fusoris (ca.
1365–1436), a physician and canon at Reims and later at Notre-Dame in Paris, was also
the headmaster of a shop making instruments and clocks. His astronomical timepiece for
the chapter at Bourges (ca. 1423) functioned until the 19th century.
In France, the clock was also adopted as a symbol of the virtue of temperance and the
quality of wisdom. Manuscript illuminations of Christine de Pizan’s Épistre Othea (ca.
1400) show Temperance adjusting a large clock. The image became conventional in
Burgundy toward 1450, when Temperance came to be shown with clock, bridle and bit,
spurs, eyeglasses, and a windmill. A French translation of Heinrich Suso’s Horlogium
Sapientiae, done in the early 1460s, shows Solomon as a clock repairman and Lady
Wisdom surrounded by timekeeping instruments. These illustrations show how integral
the clock had become to the European sense of order in natural and human affairs.
Bert S.Hall
Bedini, Silvio, and F.Maddison. Mechanical Universe: The Astrarium of Giovanni de’Dondi.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1966.
Drover, C.B. “The Thirteenth-Century ‘King Hezikiah’ Water Clock.” Antiquarian Horology
12(1980).
Landes, David. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1984.
Poulle, Émanuel. Un constructeur d’instruments astronomiques au XVe siècle:Jean Fusoris. Paris:
Champion, 1963.
White, Lynn T., Jr. “The Iconography of Temperantia and the Virtuousness of Technology.” In
Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E.H.Harbison, ed.
Theodore K.Rabb and Jerrold E.Seigel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
CLOTAR II
(584–629). The son of Chilperic I and Fredegunde, Clotar II reunified the Merovingian
kingdoms in 613 and passed on the kingdom intact to his son Dagobert I. It was during
Clotar’s reign that the Frankish aristocracy emerged as a major partner with the
monarchy in the administration of the kingdom.
Clotar II succeeded to the kingship at the age of four months, upon the assassination of
his father. Fredegunde held together a reduced kingdom for him until he came of age.
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