Meanwhile, on the 20th of March 1871, he had introduced in the National Assembly at Versailles, on behalf of his Radical colleagues, the bill establishing a Paris municipal council of eighty members; but he was not returned himself at the elections of the 26th of March. He tried with the other Paris mayors to mediate between Versailles and the hôtel de ville, but failed, and accordingly resigned his mayoralty and his seat in the Assembly, and temporarily gave up politics; but he was elected to the Paris municipal council on the 23rd of July 1871 for the Clignancourt quartier, and retained his seat till 1876, passing through the offices of secretary and vice-president, and becoming president in 1875. In 1876 he stood again for the Chamber of Deputies, and was elected for the 18th arrondissement. He joined the Extreme Left, and his energy and mordant eloquence speedily made him the leader of the Radical section. In 1877, after the Seize Mai (see [France]: History), he was one of the republican majority who denounced the Broglie ministry, and he took a leading part in resisting the anti-republican policy of which the Seize Mai incident was a symptom, his demand in 1879 for the indictment of the Broglie ministry bringing him into particular prominence. In 1880 he started his newspaper, La Justice, which became the principal organ of Parisian Radicalism; and from this time onwards throughout M. Grévy’s presidency his reputation as a political critic, and as a destroyer of ministries who yet would not take office himself, rapidly grew. He led the Extreme Left in the Chamber. He was an active opponent of M. Jules Ferry’s colonial policy and of the Opportunist party, and in 1885 it was his use of the Tongking disaster which principally determined the fall of the Ferry cabinet. At the elections of 1885 he advocated a strong Radical programme, and was returned both for his old seat in Paris and for the Var, selecting the latter. Refusing to form a ministry to replace the one he had overthrown, he supported the Right in keeping M. Freycinet in power in 1886, and was responsible for the inclusion of General Boulanger in the Freycinet cabinet as war minister. When Boulanger (q.v.) showed himself as an ambitious pretender, Clemenceau withdrew his support and became a vigorous combatant against the Boulangist movement, though the Radical press and a section of the party continued to patronize the general.
By his exposure of the Wilson scandal, and by his personal plain speaking, M. Clemenceau contributed largely to M. Grévy’s resignation of the presidency in 1887, having himself declined Grévy’s request to form a cabinet on the downfall of that of M. Rouvier; and he was primarily responsible, by advising his followers to vote neither for Floquet, Ferry nor Freycinet, for the election of an “outsider” as president in M. Carnot. He had arrived, however, at the height of his influence, and several factors now contributed to his decline. The split in the Radical party over Boulangism weakened his hands, and its collapse made his help unnecessary to the moderate republicans. A further misfortune occurred in the Panama affair, Clemenceau’s relations with Cornelius Herz leading to his being involved in the general suspicion; and, though he remained the leading spokesman of French Radicalism, his hostility to the Russian alliance so increased his unpopularity that in the election for 1893 he was defeated for the Chamber, after having sat in it continuously since 1876. After his defeat for the Chamber, M. Clemenceau confined his political activities to journalism, his career being further overclouded—so far as any immediate possibility of regaining his old ascendancy was concerned—by the long-drawn-out Dreyfus case, in which he took an active and honourable part as a supporter of M. Zola and an opponent of the anti-Semitic and Nationalist campaign. In 1900 he withdrew from La Justice to found a weekly review, Le Bloc, which lasted until March 1902. On the 6th of April 1902 he was elected senator for the Var, although he had previously continually demanded the suppression of the Senate. He sat with the Socialist Radicals, and vigorously supported the Combes ministry. In June 1903 he undertook the direction of the journal L’Aurore, which he had founded. In it he led the campaign for the revision of the Dreyfus affair, and for the separation of Church and State.
In March 1906 the fall of the Rouvier ministry, owing to the riots provoked by the inventories of church property, at last brought Clemenceau to power as minister of the interior in the Sarrien cabinet. The strike of miners in the Pas de Calais after the disaster at Courrières, leading to the threat of disorder on the 1st of May 1906, obliged him to employ the military; and his attitude in the matter alienated the Socialist party, from which he definitely broke in his notable reply in the Chamber to Jean Jaurès in June 1906. This speech marked him out as the strong man of the day in French politics; and when the Sarrien ministry resigned in October, he became premier. During 1907 and 1908 his premiership was notable for the way in which the new entente with England was cemented, and for the successful part which France played in European politics, in spite of difficulties with Germany and attacks by the Socialist party in connexion with Morocco (see [France]: History). But on July 20th, 1909, he was defeated in a discussion in the Chamber on the state of the navy, in which bitter words were exchanged between him and Delcassé; and he at once resigned, being succeeded as premier by M. Briand, with a reconstructed cabinet.
CLEMENCÍN, DIEGO (1765-1834), Spanish scholar and politician, was born on the 27th of September 1765, at Murcia, and was educated there at the Colegio de San Fulgencio. Abandoning his intention of taking orders, he found employment at Madrid in 1788 as tutor to the sons of the countess-duchess de Benavente, and devoted himself to the study of archaeology. In 1807 he became editor of the Gaceta de Madrid, and in the following year was condemned to death by Murat for publishing a patriotic article; he fled to Cadiz, and under the Junta Central held various posts from which he was dismissed by the reactionary government of 1814. During the liberal régime of 1820-1823 Clemencín took office as colonial minister, was exiled till 1827, and in 1833 published the first volume of his edition (1833-1839) of Don Quixote. Its merits were recognized by his appointment as royal librarian, but he did not long enjoy his triumph: he died on the 30th of July 1834. His commentary on Don Quixote owes something to John Bowle, and is disfigured by a patronizing, carping spirit; nevertheless it is the most valuable work of its kind, and is still unsuperseded. Clemencín is also the author of an interesting Elogio de la reina Isabel la Católica, published as the sixth volume of the Memorias of the Spanish Academy of History, to which body he was elected on the 12th of September 1800.
CLEMENT (Lat. Clemens, i.e. merciful; Gr. Κλήμης), the name of fourteen popes and two anti-popes.
Clement I., generally known as Clement of Rome, or Clemens Romanus (flor. c. A.D. 96), was one of the “Apostolic Fathers,” and in the lists of bishops of Rome is given the third or fourth place—Peter, Linus, (Anencletus), Clement. There is no ground for identifying him with the Clement of Phil. iv. 3. He may have been a freedman of T. Flavius Clemens, who was consul with his cousin, the Emperor Domitian, in A.D. 95. A 9th- century tradition says he was martyred in the Crimea in 102; earlier authorities say he died a natural death; he is commemorated on the 23rd of November.
In The Shepherd of Hermas (q.v.) (Vis. 11. iv. 3) mention is made of one Clement whose office it is to communicate with other churches, and this function agrees well with what we find in the letter to the church at Corinth by which Clement is best known. Whilst being on our guard against reading later ideas into the title “bishop” as applied to Clement, there is no reason to doubt that he was one of the chief personalities in the Christian community at Rome, where since the time of Paul the separate house congregations (Rom. xvi.) had been united into one church officered by presbyters and deacons (Clem. 40-42). The letter in question was occasioned by a dispute in the church of Corinth, which had led to the ejection of several presbyters from their office. It does not contain Clement’s name, but is addressed by “the Church of God which sojourneth in Rome to the Church of God which sojourneth in Corinth.” But there is no reason for doubting the universal tradition which ascribes it to Clement, or the generally accepted date, c. A.D. 96. No claim is made by the Roman Church to interfere on any ground of superior rank; yet it is noteworthy that in the earliest document outside the canon which we can securely date, the church in the imperial city comes forward as a peacemaker to compose the troubles of a church in Greece. Nothing is known of the cause of the discontent; no moral offence is charged against the presbyters, and their dismissal is regarded by Clement as high-handed and unjustifiable, and as a revolt of the younger members of the community against the elder. After a laudatory account of the past conduct of the Corinthian Church, he enters upon a denunciation of vices and a praise of virtues, and illustrates his various topics by copious citations from the Old Testament scriptures. Thus he paves the way for his tardy rebuke of present disorders, which he reserves until two-thirds of his epistle is completed. Clement is exceedingly discursive, and his letter reaches twice the length of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Many of his general exhortations are but very indirectly connected with the practical issue to which the epistle is directed, and it is very probable that he was drawing largely upon the homiletical material with which he was accustomed to edify his fellow-Christians at Rome.
This view receives some support from the long liturgical prayer at the close, which almost certainly represents the intercession used in the Roman eucharists. But we must not allow such a theory to blind us to the true wisdom with which the writer defers his censure. He knows that the roots of the quarrel lie in a wrong condition of the church’s life. His general exhortations, courteously expressed in the first person plural, are directed towards a wide reformation of manners. If the wrong spirit can be exorcised, there is hope that the quarrel will end in a general desire for reconciliation. The most permanent interest of the epistle lies in the conception of the grounds on which the Christian ministry rests according to the view of a prominent teacher before the 1st century has closed. The orderliness of nature is appealed to as expressing the mind of its Creator. The orderliness of Old Testament worship bears a like witness; everything is duly fixed by God; high priests, priests and Levites, and the people in the people’s place. Similarly in the Christian dispensation all is in order due. “The apostles preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ then is from God, and the apostles from Christ. . . . They appointed their first-fruits, having tested them by the Spirit, as bishops and deacons of those who should believe. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife about the name of the bishop’s office. For this cause therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid, and afterwards gave a further injunction (ἐπινομήν] has now the further evidence of the Latin legem) that, if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. . . . It will be no small sin in us if we eject from the bishop’s office those who have offered the gifts blamelessly and holily” (cc. xlii. xliv.).