CLEVES (Ger. Cleve or Kleve), a town of Germany in the kingdom of Prussia, formerly the capital of the duchy of its own name, 46 m. N.W. of Düsseldorf, 12 m. E. of Nijmwegen, on the main Cologne-Amsterdam railway. Pop. (1900) 14,678. The town is neatly built in the Dutch style, lying on three small hills in a fertile district near the frontier of Holland, about 2 m. from the Rhine, with which it is connected by a canal (the Spoykanal). The old castle of Schwanenburg (formerly the residence of the dukes of Cleves), has a massive tower (Schwanenturm) 180 ft. high. With it is associated the legend of the “Knights of the Swan,” immortalized in Wagner’s Lohengrin. The building has been restored in modern times to serve as a court of justice and a prison. The collegiate church (Stiftskirche) dates from about 1340, and contains a number of fine ducal monuments. Another church is the Annexkirche, formerly a convent of the Minorites; this dates from the middle of the 15th century. The chief manufactures are boots and shoes, tobacco and machinery; there is also some trade in cattle. To the south and west of the city a large district is laid out as a park, where there is a statue to the memory of John Maurice of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679), who governed Cleves from 1650 to 1679, and in the western part there are mineral wells with a pump room and bathing establishment. Owing to the beautiful woods which surround it and its medicinal waters Cleves has become a favourite summer resort.
The town was the seat of the counts of Cleves as early as the 11th century, but it did not receive municipal rights until 1242. The duchy of Cleves, which lay on both banks of the Rhine and had an area of about 850 sq. m., belonged before the year 1000 to a certain Rutger, whose family became extinct in 1368. It then passed to the counts of La Marck and was made a duchy in 1417, being united with the neighbouring duchies of Jülich and Berg in 1521. The Reformation was introduced here in 1533, but it was not accepted by all the inhabitants. The death without direct heirs of Duke John William in 1609 led to serious complications in which almost all the states of Europe were concerned; however, by the treaty of Xanten in 1614, Cleves passed to the elector of Brandenburg, being afterwards incorporated with the electorate by the great elector, Frederick William. The French held Cleves from 1757 to 1762 and in 1795 the part of the duchy on the left bank of the Rhine was ceded to France; the remaining portion suffered a similar fate in 1805. After the conclusion of peace in 1815 it was restored to Prussia, except some small portions which were given to the kingdom of Holland.
See Char, Geschichte des Herzogtums Kleve (Cleves, 1845); Velsen, Die Stadt Kleve (Cleves, 1846); R. Scholten, Die Stadt Kleve (Cleves, 1879-1881). For [Anne of Cleves] see that article.
CLEYNAERTS (Clenardus or Clénard), NICOLAS (1495-1542), Belgian grammarian and traveller, was born at Diest, in Brabant, on the 5th of December 1495. Educated at the university of Louvain, he became a professor of Latin, which he taught by a conversational method. He applied himself to the preparation of manuals of Greek and Hebrew grammar, in order to simplify the difficulties of learners. His Tabulae in grammaticen hebraeam (1529), Institutiones in linguam graecam (1530), and Meditationes graecanicae (1531) appeared at Louvain. The Institutiones and Meditationes passed through a number of editions, and had many commentators. He maintained a principle revived in modern teaching, that the learner should not be puzzled by elaborate rules until he has obtained a working acquaintance with the language. A desire to read the Koran led him to try to establish a connexion between Hebrew and Arabic. These studies resulted in a scheme for proselytism among the Arabs, based on study of the language, which should enable Europeans to combat the errors of Islam by peaceful methods. In prosecution of this object he travelled in 1532 to Spain, and after teaching Greek at Salamanca was summoned to the court of Portugal as tutor to Don Henry, brother of John III. He found another patron in Louis Mendoza, marquis of Mondexas, governor-general of Granada. There with the help of a Moorish slave he gained a knowledge of Arabic. He tried in vain to gain access to the Arabic MSS. in the possession of the Inquisition, and finally, in 1540, set out for Africa to seek information for himself. He reached Fez, then a flourishing seat of Arab learning, but after fifteen months of privation and suffering was obliged to return to Granada, and died in the autumn of 1542. He was buried in the Alhambra palace.
See his Latin letters to his friends in Belgium, Nicolai Clenardi, Peregrinationum ac de rebus machometicis epistolae elegantissimae (Louvain, 1550), and a more complete edition, Nic. Clenardi Epistolarum libri duo (Antwerp, 1561), from the house of Plantin; also Victor Chauvin and Alphonse Roersch, “Étude sur la vie et les travaux de Nicolas Clénard” in Mémoires couronnés (vol. lx., 1900-1901) of the Royal Academy of Belgium, which contains a vast amount of information on Cleynaerts and an extensive bibliography of his works, and of notices of him by earlier commentators.
CLICHTOVE, JOSSE VAN (d. 1543), Belgian theologian, received his education at Louvain and at Paris under Jacques Lefèbvre d’Etaples. He became librarian of the Sorbonne and tutor to the nephews of Jacques d’Amboise, bishop of Clermont and abbot of Cluny. In 1519 he was elected bishop of Tournai, and in 1521 was translated to the see of Chartres. He is best known as a distinguished antagonist of Martin Luther, against whom he wrote a good deal. When Cardinal Duprat convened his Synod of Paris in 1528 to discuss the new religion, Clichtove was summoned and was entrusted with the task of collecting and summarizing the objections to the Lutheran doctrine. This he did in his Compendium veritatum ... contra erroneas Lutheranorum assertiones (Paris, 1529). He died at Chartres on the 22nd of September 1543.