cred works. He also wrote many chansons, and his Mass
settings are, with one exception, parody settings on chan-
sons and motets by contemporary composers. He is most
remembered for his settings of souterliedekens, the Dutch
psalms. These three-voice pieces were the first polyphonic
settings of the psalms in Dutch, with the use of popular
song melodies as cantus firmi.
Clement VII (1478–1534) Pope (1523–34)
Clement was born Giulio de’ Medici at Florence, a bastard
nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent. During the Medici
exile from Florence (1494–1512) he traveled extensively
in Europe, gaining valuable experience. He took an active
part in the Lateran Council of 1512–17, being made arch-
bishop of Florence and a cardinal in 1513, and became po-
litical counselor to his cousin, Pope Leo X. He was a
candidate for the papacy in 1521 and was elected pope in
- His policy was shifty and weak. He attempted to
control Italy by supporting alternately Emperor CHARLES V
and Francis I of France. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 by
imperial troops, he was imprisoned in the Castel Sant’ An-
gelo for several months. In 1530 he crowned Charles (al-
ready German king) as Holy Roman Emperor at Bologna.
In 1533 he officiated at the wedding of his niece CATHER-
INE DE’ MEDICIto the future Henry II of France. Clement’s
vacillations over HENRY VIII’s petition for a divorce from
Catherine of Aragon were one of the causes of the king’s
repudiation of papal authority. His attempts to deal with
LUTHER’s revolt were also unsuccessful, and he failed to ef-
fect any reforms within the Roman Church. Clement VII
was a worldly figure, concerned for the advancement of
his family and his own posthumous fame. He was a patron
of such eminent artists as Raphael, Michelangelo, Ben-
venuto Cellini, and Sebastiano del Piombo (see Plate
XIV), and of Machiavelli and Copernicus.
Clement VIII (1536–1605) Pope (1592–1605)
He was born Ippolito Aldobrandini at Fano, near Pesaro,
and studied law at Padua, Perugia, and Bologna. He held
numerous offices in the Roman Curia, became a cardinal
in 1585, and was elected pope in 1592. Clement reduced
Spanish influence in the college of cardinals, and recog-
nized Henry IV as king of France in 1593. In 1598 he an-
nexed Ferrara to the Papal States, after the death of the
last duke without legitimate heirs. He arranged the Treaty
of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598, and tried to
resolve the controversy between the Jesuits and Domini-
cans concerning grace and free will. He was responsible
for a new standard edition of the Vulgate Bible (the Sis-
tine-Clementine version) and for revisions of the missal,
breviary, and pontifical.
Clitherow, Margaret (c. 1556–1586) English Roman
Catholic martyr
She married (1571) John Clitherow, a butcher, in her na-
tive city of York, whose family had Catholic connections,
and in 1574 she converted to Catholicism. Her active zeal
in her new faith caused her to undergo a lengthy period of
imprisonment, during which time she learnt to read. On
her release she set up a school in her house. In 1586 she
was charged with harbouring Catholic priests and attend-
ing Mass. She refused to plead, and, despite the objections
lodged on her behalf by a Puritan divine who had been
sent to talk with her in prison, she was sentenced to die by
peine forte et dure, that is, being crushed to death. She is
one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized
in 1970.clocks Although the clock has been described by Lewis
Mumford (Technics and Civilization) as “the key-machine
of the modern industrial age,” little of this significance can
have been apparent in the turret clocks which first began
to appear in the early 14th century. Driven by falling
weights, located in towers, controlled by a verge and foliot
escapement, and without hands, they served more as plan-
etaria than clocks. In addition, however, to displaying
such phenomena as the phases of the moon, and the mo-
tions of planets, they rang bells and, in this manner,
marked out the liturgical day for monks and other clerics.
Clocks soon, also, came to regulate the working day of
many residents of the rapidly growing towns. Such early
instruments were too massive and too expensive to make
and maintain to be anything other than the property of
princes or corporations.
After 1450 the turret clocks were joined by chamber
clocks. A common early design was the drum clock, a
squat cylinder with the dial on its uppermost surface. This
advance was made possible by the invention of the spring
drive. Springs, though portable, fail to deliver constant
power as they unwind. The solution consisted of attaching
the spring by a chain to a conically shaped fusee which
acted as an equalizing force as the spring unwound. Im-
provements in this basic design, together with the use of
more accurately produced parts, allowed clockmakers to
introduce the minute hand sometime in the 1470s. The
second hand followed almost a century later in the decade
1560–70. A more fundamental advance came with the
pendulum clock; conceived by GALILEOin 1637, the first
such clock actually constructed was the work of Christian
Huygens in 1653. The improvement in time-keeping was
astonishing: the best clocks had previously varied by
about 15 minutes a day, but early pendulum clocks re-
duced this to no more than 15 seconds.
See also: HOROLOGY; WATCHES
Further reading: Gerhard Horn-van Rossum, History
of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, transl.
Thomas Dunlap (Chicago. Ill.: University of Chicagocclloocckkss 1 10077