[1] The story is as follows. The vase had been taken from a church by a Frankish soldier after the battle of Soissons, and the bishop had requested Clovis that it might be restored. But the soldier who had taken it refused to give it up, and broke it into fragments with his francisca, or battle-axe. Some time afterwards, when Clovis was reviewing his troops, he singled out the soldier who had broken the vase, upbraided him for the neglect of his arms, and dashed his francisca to the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up, the king clove his skull with the words: “Thus didst thou serve the vase of Soissons.”
CLOWN (derived by Fuller, in his Worthies, from Lat. colonus, a husbandman; but apparently connected with “clod” and with similar forms in Teutonic and Scandinavian languages), a rustic, boorish person; the comic character in English pantomime, always dressed in baggy costume, with face whitened and eccentrically painted, and a tufted wig. The character probably descends from representations of the devil in medieval miracle-plays, developed partly through the stage rustics and partly through the fools or jesters (also called clowns) of the Elizabethan drama. The whitened face and baggy costume indicate a connexion also with the continental Pierrot. The prominence of the clown in pantomime (q.v.) is a comparatively modern development as compared with that of Harlequin.
CLOYNE, a small market town of Co. Cork, Ireland, in the east parliamentary division, 15 m. E.S.E. of the city of Cork. Pop. (1901) 827. It gives its name to a Roman Catholic diocese, the cathedral of which is at Queenstown. Cloyne was the seat of a Protestant diocese until 1835, when it was united to that of Cork. It was originally a foundation of the 6th century. The cathedral church, dedicated to its founder St Colman, a disciple of St Finbar of Cork, is a plain cruciform building mainly of the 14th century, with an earlier oratory in the churchyard. It contains a few handsome monuments to its former bishops, but until 1890, when a monument was erected, had nothing to preserve the memory of the illustrious Dr George Berkeley, who held the see from 1734 to 1753. Opposite the cathedral is a very fine round tower 100 ft. in height, though the conical roof has long been destroyed. The Roman Catholic church is a spacious building of the early 19th century. The town was several times plundered by the Danes in the 9th century; it was laid waste by Dermot O’Brien in 1071, and was burned in 1137. In 1430 the bishopric was united to that of Cork; in 1638 it again became independent, and in 1660 it was again united to Cork and Ross. In 1678 it was once more declared independent, and so continued till 1835. The name, Cluain-Uamha, signifies “the meadow of the cave,” from the curious limestone caves in the vicinity. The Pipe Roll of Cloyne, compiled by Bishop Swaffham in 1364, is a remarkable record embracing a full account of the feudal tenures of the see, the nature of the impositions, and the duties the puri homines Sancti Colmani were bound to perform at a very early period. The roll is preserved in the record office, Dublin. It was edited by Richard Caulfield in 1859.
CLUB (connected with “clump”), (1) a thick stick, used as a weapon, or heavy implement for athletic exercises (“Indian club,” &c.); (2) one of the four suits of playing-cards,—the translation of the Spanish basto—represented by a black trefoil (taken from the French, in which language it is trèfle); (3) a term given to a particular form of association of persons. It is to this third sense that this article is devoted.
By the term “club,” the most general word for which is in Gr. ἑταιρία, in Lat. sodalitas, is here meant an association within the state of persons not united together by any natural ties of kinship, real or supposed. Modern clubs are dealt with below, and we begin with an account of Greek and Roman clubs. Such clubs are found in all ancient states of which we have any detailed knowledge, and seem to have dated in one form or another from a very early period. It is not unreasonable to suppose, in the absense of certain information, that the rigid system of groups of kin, i.e. family, gens, phratria, &c., affording no principle of association beyond the maintenance of society as it then existed, may itself have suggested the formation of groups of a more elastic and expansive nature; in other words, that clubs were an expedient for the deliverance of society from a too rigid and conservative principle of crystallization.
Greek.—The most comprehensive statement we possess as to the various kinds of clubs which might exist in a single Greek state is contained in a law of Solon quoted incidentally in the Digest of Justinian (47.22), which guaranteed the administrative independence of these associations provided they kept within the bounds of the law. Those mentioned (apart from demes and phratries, which were not clubs as here understood) are associations for religious purposes, for burial, for trade, for, privateering (ἐπὶ λείαν), and for the enjoyment of common meals. Of these by far the most important are the religious clubs, about which we have a great deal of information, chiefly from inscriptions; and these may be taken as covering those for burial purposes and for common meals, for there can be no doubt that all such unions had originally a religious object of some kind. But we have to add to Solon’s list the political ἑταιρίαι which we meet with in Athenian history, which do not seem to have always had a religious object, whatever their origin may have been; and it may be convenient to clear the ground by considering these first.