277 



CLEMENCIN, DIEGO. 



CLEMENS, TITUS FLAVIUS. 



273 



Isaure the original foundation of the poetical academy known by the 

 name of the floral games. But that academy was fouuded long before 

 Isaure by the troubadours, and was called the college of ' la gaie 

 science,' or ' gai f9avoir.' The first authenticated meeting on record 

 dates from the year 1323 ; they then assembled in a garden outside of 

 Toulouse. The registers of this college, till about 1500, make no 

 mention of Isaure. It may be about this latter period that she founded 

 the prizes of gold and silver flowers, from which the academy took its 

 more recent name. A quarto black letter volume of short poetic 

 pieces was published at Toulouse in 1505, entitled 'Dictas de Dona 

 Clemensa Isaure.' The accounts of Isaure's life and adventures which 

 are found in several compilations appear very problematic. (Encydo- 

 pfdie Methodique, His/oire, art. 'Isaure;' Moreri, Nouv. Biog. Gen.; 

 Noulet, de Dame Ck'mcnce laaure, autstituce a, 31. D. la Vitrr/e Marie, 

 Toulouse, 1852.) 



CLEMENCIN, DIEGO, a patriotic Spanish statesman, and an 

 author distinguished for the purity of his Castilian style, was, accord- 

 ing to his opponent, Puigblancb, the eon of a Frenchman. He was 

 born in the city of Murcia on the 27th of September 1765, entered 

 the college of San Fulgencio in that city at the age of nine, distin- 

 guished himself EO much that he was engaged to draw up a plan for 

 the reform of the studies of the college while he was jet a pupil, aud 

 was appointed professor of theology and philosophy before he was 

 twenty-one. He gave up the church, for which he was intended, and 

 iu which a brilliant prospect was opening before him, from attachment 

 to a lady, whom he married iu 1798, afttr an engagement of ten years, 

 and with whom he lived happily for upwards of thirty. The Duke of 

 Usuna made him tutor to his children, and while he held the post he 

 arranged the duke's magnificent library, which was afterwards thrown 

 open to the public. The favourite, Godoy, to whom the duke waa 

 obnoxious, drove him into an honourable banishment by appointing him 

 ambassador first to St. Petersburg and then to Vienna ;. but his diplo- 

 matic duties never carried him further than Paris, where Clemencin, who 

 accompanied him, made good use of the libraries of the capital. On his 

 return to Madrid in 1801 he was appointed member of the Academy of 

 History, and for the remainder of his life continued in honourable 

 connection with thai body, of which he was for a long time the secre- 

 tary. In July 1807 he read before it his 'elogio,' or eulogy on Queen 

 Isabella the Catholic, the patroness of Columbus, which was first 

 printed by the academy in 1821, bo long was the course of literature 

 and study in Spain interrupted by revolution and war. Of these 

 calamities Clemencin had his full share. Early in 1807 he had been 

 appointed editor of the official 'Gazette' of Madrid, as well as of 

 the ' Mercuric,' formerly conducted by Clavijo. [CLAVIJO.] The 

 day after the patriotic insurrection of the 2nd of May 1803, the 

 first outbreak of the great Peninsular war, which was suppressed for 

 the moment with violence by the French, who then had military pos- 

 session of Madrid, Murat, their commander, sent for Clemencin, and 

 denmuiled of him huw he came to insert in t!u ' Gaceta ' an article 

 which had appeared just before the outbreak, hi which hu contra- 

 dicted, and with truth, an article in some of the French journals 

 respecting Ferdinand of Spain, then a prisoner at Valencay. Clemen- 

 cin replied, that ho printed nothing without an authorisation from 

 the Spanish government. " Very well," replied Murat, " then unless 

 the order for the insertion of that article is produced within an hour 

 you shall be shot." The threat would doubtless have been carried 

 into effect, but that the official who had transmitted the order, who 

 waa Cienfuegos, a poet of some note, was found within the prescribed 

 tune by the French soldiers sent in search of him, aud brought from 

 his bed, where he lay ill, to Murat, who sent him prisoner to France, 

 where he died in the course of the following year from*grief and 

 indignation. Clemencin, who joined the cause of the patriots, was 

 first engaged in editing a journal for the junta of Aragon, then as 

 member of the Cortes of Cadiz, besieged by the French and assailed 

 by the yellow fever, in drawing up and supporting the constitution 

 of 1812. The absolutist reaction on Ferdinand's return iu 1814, sent 

 him to a country retirement at Fuenfria, a place to which he was 

 much attached, and where, when the tunes were against him, he waa 

 accustomed to devote himself to literary pursuits amid the pleasures 

 of the country. In the second constitutionalist outburst of 1820 

 Clemenciu was again deputy for Murcia, and first secretary, then pre.fi 

 dent of the Cortes, in which capacity, as also in that of minister, he 

 found it necessary to address some strong language to King Ferdinand 

 Such however was the general respect for his high character and his 

 literary acquirements, that on the second reaction of 1823 he was oiilj 

 baiiUhed from Madrid, and in 1827 obtained permission to return 

 after four years of his favourite Fuenfria. The third constitutioua 

 period of .Spain raised him higher iu honours than ever ; but the; 

 came too late he bad lost his wife, lie was appointed to draw up 

 the oath to be taken by the present queen, was named priucipa 

 librarian to her majesty, and also a ' procer del reyno,' or peer of tin 

 kingdom. He was also appointed to the somewhat less desirable offic 

 of censor of the press, pursuant to the new decree on the press of th 

 date of the 2nd of May 1833. He died of cholera, on the 30th o 

 July 1S34, at Madrid. 



During all this active and stormy life Clemenciu had found leieur 

 for many literary undertakings, aa well as for numerous labours o 

 philanthropy, having as early as It04 taken a prominent part as 



member of the association of the ' Buen Pastor,' or ' Good Shepherd,' 

 or the amelioration of the Spanish prisons. Among his early works 

 re translations of portions of scripture and of the classics, the 

 Epistles of St. John, the Germauia of Tacitus, &c. ; his later are chiefly 

 n subjects of Spanish history. His 'Eulogy on Queen Isabella," 

 with its annexed dissertations, was the first important work on the 

 ubject, and though partly superseded by the better-known history of 

 'rescot, is one of which it would still be desirable to see a translation 

 u English. A French translation by Amanton which appeared at 

 Paris in 1847 is of the 'Eulogy' only without the Dissertations, 

 md thus conveys a very erroneous notion both of the merits 

 and the magnitude of the original, which occupies the whole sixth 

 volume of the 'Memoirs of the Spanish Academy of History,' the 

 Eulogy ' taking up fifty-four pages, and the ' Dissertations,' twenty-one 

 n number, upwards of 500. During one of his compelled retire- 

 ments to Fuenfria, Clemencin composed his great work, the ' Com- 

 mentary on Don Quixote,' first published along with the text of the 

 novel in six quarto volumes, Madrid, 1833-39, of which only the first 

 ,hree saw the light during the author's lifetime. Ticknor in his 

 History of Spanish Literature ' describes it as one of the best com- 

 mentaries on any author ancient or modern. The English reader will 

 >erhaps be disposed to find fault with what the Spanish biographer 

 Alvarez terms the " admirable prolixity " of the commentator, who 

 thinks it necessary to relate the story of Orpheus, the Thracian 

 musician, as well as that of Eoque Guinart, the Catalan robber; but 

 almost the only fault to bo found with the commentary, which 

 exceeds the text in volume, is that it gives too much. It is matter of 

 surprise that nearly twenty years should have elapsed from the date 

 of its publication without its having been made available to the 

 English admirers of Cervantes. [SAAVEDRA.] Clemenciu also com- 

 posed a dissertation on the 'History of the Cid,' another on the 

 ' Geography of Mediaeval Spain, &c.,' aud was one of the committee 

 appointed by the Spanish Academy for the reformation of Spanish 

 irthography, who proposed the system now generally adopted. His 

 Lecciones de Gramatica y Ortografia Castellana' were first published 

 after his death in 1842. 



CLEMENS, TITUS FLA'VIUS ALEXANDRTNUS, was born 

 about the middle of the 2nd century of our era. According to St. 

 Epiphanius he was an Athenian, and at first a follower of the Stoic 

 philosophy; but according to others he belonged to the Platonic 

 school, an opinion which seems countenanced by the manner in which 

 he speaks of Plato aud his philosophy in many passages of his writings. 

 He says in his ' Stromateis' (lib. i.), that "he had for teachers several 

 learned and excellent men ; one an Ionian, who lived iu Greece, 

 another from Magna Groecia, a third from Coclosyria, a fourth from 

 Egypt, and others who had received the Christian doctrine iu the East, 

 of whom one was from Assyria, and the other from Palestine, of an 

 ancient Hebrew family ; but that at last he found in Egypt one superior 

 to all, with whom he remained." This was Panta;uius, whom he 

 repeatedly mentions in his works, and who kept a Christian school at 

 Alexandria, in which capacity Clemens succeeded him. St. Jerome 

 says that Clemens was teacher of the catechumeni in that city. He 

 was ordained presbyter of the church of Alexandria, where he appears 

 to have remained the rest of his life. His death is believed to have 

 happened about A.D. 220. Among his disciples were Origen, and 

 Alexander, afterwards bishop of Jerusalem. 



Clemens left many works, in which he has mixed with the precepts 

 of the Christian doctrine and morality, which it was his object to 

 inculcate, much information concerning the learning, philosophy, 

 history, and manners of the heathens. Of the earlier Christian writers, 

 he is the most conversant with the science and learning, with the 

 opinions and practices, of the various nations of that day ; aud his 

 works are extremely interesting, as showing the state of society, both 

 among Heathen and Christian subjects of the Roman empire at that 

 early time. They also coutaiu much information on ancient history, 

 chronology, and the various schools of philosophy ; many extracts from 

 aucieut writers, whose works are lost ; and also accounts of the early 

 heresies and schisms which divided the primitive Christian church. 

 The works of Clemens which have come down to us are : 1. ' Exhor- 

 tation to the Greeks,' 1 book. This is an exhortation addressed to the 

 heathens to abandon their false gods, whose absurd stories and 

 obscene adventurea ho exposes by the testimony of tho poets and 

 philosophers of antiquity. 2. ' Prcdagogus,' in 3 books. This Is a 

 treatise on Christian education. His satire of the vices and follies of 

 the age is caustic and humorous, and reminds us at times of Juvenal. 

 When we reflect that he lived under the reigns of Caracalla and 

 Heliogabalus, we do not feel inclined to suspect him of exaggeration. 

 3. ' Stromateis,' iu 8 books. Tho word stromateis he has used to mean 

 a party-coloured or patch-work ; " opus varie coutextum," from the 

 multifarious kind of information, religious and profane, auecdotical, 

 historical, aud didactic, put together without much regard to order or 

 plan. Clemens says that he adopted this want of arrangement " to 

 veil the doctrines of Christianity under the maxims of profane philo- 

 sophy, in order to screen them from the eyes of tho curious and the 

 uninitiated, that; those only who are intelligent and will give them- 

 selves the trouble of studying, may understand the meaning." 

 Probably also he found this style of composition better adapted for 

 his multifarious information, and best suited to his old age, in which 



