[6] Nature, lxxi. (Jan. 5, 1905), p. 221.
CLIMAX, JOHN (c. 525-600 A.D.), ascetic and mystic, also called Scholasticus and Sinaïtes. After having spent forty years in a cave at the foot of mount Sinai, he became abbot of the monastery. His life has been written by Daniel, a monk belonging to the monastery of Raithu, on the Red Sea. He derives his name Climax (or Climacus) from his work of the same name (Κλῖμαξ τοῦ Παραδείσου, ladder to Paradise), in thirty sections, corresponding to the thirty years of the life of Christ. It is written in a simple and popular style. The first part treats of the vices that hinder the attainment of holiness, the second of the virtues of a Christian.
Editions.—J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, lxxxviii. (including the biography by Daniel); S. Eremites (Constantinople, 1883); see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897); Gass-Krüger in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie, Bd. 9 (1901). The Ladder has been translated into several foreign languages—into English by Father Robert, Mount St Bernard’s Abbey, Leicestershire (1856).
CLIMBING[1] FERN, the botanical genus Lygodium, with about twenty species, chiefly in the warmer parts of the Old World, of interest from its climbing habit. The plants have a creeping stem, on the upper face of which is borne a row of leaves. Each leaf has a slender stem-like axis, which twines round a support and bears leaflets at intervals; it goes on growing indefinitely. It is a favourite warm greenhouse plant.
[1] The word “climb” (O.E. climban), meaning strictly to ascend (or similarly descend) by progressive self-impulsion, with some apparent degree of laborious effort and by means of contact with the surface traversed, is connected with the same root as in “cleave” and “cling.” For Alpine climbing, &c., see [Mountaineering].
CLINCHANT, JUSTIN (1820-1881), French soldier, entered the army from St Cyr in 1841. From 1847 to 1852 he was employed in the Algerian campaigns, and in 1854 and 1855 in the Crimea. At the assault on the Malakoff (Sept. 8th, 1855) he greatly distinguished himself at the head of a battalion. During the 1859 campaign he won promotion to the rank of lieut.-colonel, and as a colonel he served in the Mexican War. He was made general of brigade in 1866, and led a brigade of the Army of the Rhine in 1870. His troops were amongst those shut up in Metz, and he passed into captivity, but soon escaped. The government of national defence made him general of division and put him at the head of the 20th corps of the Army of the East. He was under Bourbaki during the campaign of the Jura, and when Bourbaki attempted to commit suicide he succeeded to the command (Jan. 23rd, 1871), only to be driven with 84,000 men over the Swiss frontier at Pontarlier. In 1871 Clinchant commanded the 5th corps operating against the Commune. He was military governor of Paris when he died in 1881.