Literature.—A copious bibliography will be found in Harnack, Chronologie, vol. ii., or in Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altk. Lit. Either of these will supply the names of works upon Clement’s biblical text, his use of Stoic writers, his quotations from heathen writers, and his relation to heathen philosophy. A valuable book is de Faye, Clém. d’Alex. (1898). For his theological position see Harnack, Dogmengeschichte; Hort, Six Lectures on the Ante-Nicene Fathers; Westcott, “Clem, of Alex.” in Dict. Christ. Biog.; Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alex. (1886). A book on Clement’s relation to Mysticism is wanted.
(C. Bi.; J. D.)
[1] Zahn thinks we have part of them in the Adumbrationes Clem. Alex. in epistolas canonicas (Codex Lindum, 96, sec. ix.). They were perhaps intended as a completion of the preceding course.
CLÉMENT, FRANÇOIS (1714-1793), French historian, was born at Bèze, near Dijon, and was educated at the Jesuit College at Dijon. At the age of seventeen he entered the society of the Benedictines of Saint Maur, and worked with such intense application that at the age of twenty-five he was obliged to take a protracted rest. He now resided in Paris, where he wrote the 11th and 12th vols. of the Histoire littéraire de la France, and edited (with Dom Brial) the 12th and 13th vols. of the Recueil des historiens des Gauls et de la France. The king appointed him on the committee which was engaged in publishing charters, diplomas and other documents connected with French history (see Xavier Charmes, Le Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, vol. i., 1886, passim); and the Academy of Inscriptions chose him as a member (1785). Dom Clément also revised the Art de vérifier les dates, edited in 1750 by Dom Clémencet. Three volumes with the Indexes appeared from 1783 to 1792. He was engaged in preparing another volume including the period before the Christian era, when he died suddenly of apoplexy, at the age of sixty-nine. The work was afterwards brought down from 1770 to 1827 by Julien de Courcelles and Fortia d’Urban.
CLÉMENT, JACQUES (1567-1589), murderer of the French king Henry III., was born at Sorbon in the Ardennes, and became a Dominican friar. Civil war was raging in France, and Clément became an ardent partisan of the League; his mind appears to have become unhinged by religious fanaticism, and he talked of exterminating the heretics, and formed a plan to kill Henry III. His project was encouraged by some of the heads of the League; he was assured of temporal rewards if he succeeded, and of eternal bliss if he failed. Having obtained letters for the king, he left Paris on the 31st of July 1589, and reached St Cloud, the headquarters of Henry, who was besieging Paris. On the following day he was admitted to the royal presence, and presenting his letters he told the king that he had an important and confidential message to deliver. The attendants then withdrew, and while Henry was reading the letters Clément mortally wounded him with a dagger which had been concealed beneath his cloak. The assassin was at once killed by the attendants who rushed in, and Henry died early on the following day. Clément’s body was afterwards quartered and burned. This deed, however, was viewed with far different feelings in Paris and by the partisans of the League, the murderer being regarded as a martyr and extolled by Pope Sixtus V., while even his canonization was discussed.
See E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome vi. (Paris, 1904).