The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fig. 144.—An Hour-glass of the Sixteenth Century,—French Work.

History does not inform us who was the inventor of the striking machinery; but it is at least averred that it existed at the commencement of the twelfth century. The first mention of it is found in the “Usages de l’Ordre de Cîteaux,” compiled about 1120. It is there prescribed to the sacristan so to regulate the clock, that it “sounds and awakens him before matins;” in another chapter the monk is ordered to prolong the lecture until “the clock strikes.” At first, in the monasteries, the monks took it in turn to watch, and warn the community of the hours for prayer; and, in the towns, there were night watchmen, who, moreover, were maintained in many places to announce in the streets the hour denoted by the clocks, the water-clocks, or the hour-glasses.

The machinery for striking once invented, we do not find that horology had attained to any perfection before the end of the thirteenth century; but, in the commencement of the following it received its impulse, and the art from that time continued to progress.

To give an idea of what was effected at that time, we will borrow a passage from the earliest writings in which horology is mentioned; that is, from an unpublished book by Philip de Maizières, entitled “Le Songe du Vieil Pélerin:”—“It is known that in Italy there is at present (about 1350) a man generally celebrated in philosophy, in medicine, and in astronomy; in his station, by common report, singular and grave, excelling in the above three sciences, and of the city of Padua. His surname is lost, and he is called ‘Maistre Jehan des Orloges,’ residing at present with the Comte de Vertus; and, for the treble sciences, he has for yearly wages and perquisites two thousand florins, or thereabouts. This Maistre Jean des Orloges has made an instrument, by some called a sphere or clock, of the movement of the heavens, in which instrument are all the motions of the signs (zodiacal), and of the planets, with their circles and epicycles, and multiplied differences, wheels (roes) without number, with all their parts, and each planet in the said sphere, distinctly. On any given night, we see clearly in what sign and degree are the planets and the stars of the heavens; and this sphere is so cunningly made, that notwithstanding the multitude of wheels, which cannot well be numbered without taking the machinery to pieces, their entire mechanism is governed by one single counterpoise, so marvellous that the grave astronomers from distant regions come with great reverence to visit the said Maistre Jean and the work of his hands; and all the great clerks of astronomy, of philosophy, and of medicine, declare that there is no recollection of a man, either in written document or otherwise, who in this world has made so ingenious or so important an instrument of the heavenly movements as the said clock.... Maistre Jean made the said clock with his own hands, all of brass and of copper, without the assistance of any other person, and did nothing else during sixteen entire years, if the writer of the book, who had a great friendship for the said Maistre Jean, has been rightly informed.”

It is known, on the other hand, that the famous clockmaker, whose real name Maizières assumes to be lost, was called Jaques de Dondis; and that, in spite of the assertion of the writer, he had only to arrange the clock, the parts of which had been executed by an excellent workman named Antoine. However this may be, placed at the top of one of the towers of the palace of Padua, the clock of Jaques de Dondis, or of “Maistre Jean des Orloges,” excited general admiration, and several princes of Europe being desirous to have similar clocks, many workmen tried to imitate it. In fact, churches or monasteries were soon able to pride themselves on possessing similar chefs-d’œuvre.

Among the most remarkable clocks of that period, we must refer to that of which Froissart speaks, and which was carried away from the town of Courtray by Philip the Bold after the battle of Rosbecque in 1382. “The Duke of Burgundy,” says our author, “caused to be carried away from the market-place a clock that struck the hours, one of the finest which could be found on either side the sea; and he conveyed it piece by piece in carts, and the bell also. Which clock was brought and carted into the town of Dijon, in Burgundy, was there deposited and put up, and there strikes the twenty-four hours between day and night.”

It is the celebrated clock of Dijon which then as now was surmounted by two automata of iron, a man and a woman, striking the hours on the bell. The origin of the name of Jacquemart given to these figures has been much disputed. Ménage believes that the word is derived from the Latin jaccomarchiardus (coat of mail—attire of war); and he reminds us that, in the Middle Ages, it was the custom to station, on the summit of the towers, men (soldiers wearing the jacque) to give warning of the approach of the enemy, of fires, &c. Ménage adds that, when more efficient watchers occasioned the discontinuance of these nocturnal sentinels, it was probably considered desirable to preserve the remembrance of them by putting in the place they had occupied iron figures which struck the hours. Other writers trace the name even to the inventor of this description of clocks, who, according to them, lived in the fourteenth century, and was called Jacques Marck. Finally, Gabriel Peignot, who has written a dissertation on the jacquemart of Dijon, asserts that in 1422 a person named Jacquemart, clockmaker and locksmith, residing in the town of Lille, received twenty-two livres from the Duke of Burgundy, for repairing the clock of Dijon; and from that he concludes, seeing how short the distance is from Lille to Courtray, whence the clock of Dijon had been taken, that this Jacquemart might well be the son or the grandson of the clockmaker who had constructed it about 1360; consequently the name of the jacquemart of Dijon is derived from that of its maker, old Jacquemart, the clockmaker of Lille ([Fig. 145]).

Fig. 145.—Jacquemart of Notre-Dame at Dijon, made at Courtray in the Fourteenth Century.