from the Moluccas by the Dutch. That power exerted great and inhuman efforts to obtain a complete monopoly of the trade, attempting to extirpate all the clove trees growing in their native islands, and to concentrate the whole production in the Amboyna Islands. With great difficulty the French succeeded in introducing the clove tree into Mauritius in the year 1770; subsequently the cultivation was introduced into Guiana, Brazil, most of the West Indian Islands and Zanzibar. The chief commercial sources of supply are now Zanzibar and its neighbouring island Pemba on the East African coast, and Amboyna. Cloves are also grown in Java, Sumatra, Réunion, Guiana and the West India Islands.
Cloves as they come into the market have a deep brown colour, a powerfully fragrant odour, and a taste too hot and acrid to be pleasant. When pressed with the nail they exude a volatile oil with which they are charged to the unusual proportion of about 18%. The oil is obtained as a commercial product by submitting the cloves with water to repeated distillation. It is, when new and properly prepared, a pale yellow or almost colourless fluid, becoming after some time of a brown colour; and it possesses the odour and taste peculiar to cloves. The essential oil of cloves—the Oleum Caryophylli of the British Pharmacopoeia—is a mixture of two substances, one of which is oxidized, whilst the other is not. Eugenol, or eugenic acid, C10H12O2, is the chief constituent. It is capable of forming definite salts. The other constituent is a hydrocarbon C15H24, of which the distilling point differs from that of eugenol, and which solidifies only with intense cold. Oil of cloves is readily soluble in alcohol and ether, and has a specific gravity of about 1.055. Its dose is 12-3 minims. Besides this oil, cloves also contain two neutral bodies, eugenin and caryophyllin, the latter of which is an isomer of camphor. They are of no practical importance. The British Pharmacopoeia contains an infusion of cloves (Infusum Caryophylli), of which the strength is 1 part in 40 of boiling water and the dose 12-1 oz. Cloves are employed principally as a condiment in culinary operations, in confectionery, and in the preparation of liqueurs. In medicine they are tonic and carminative, but they are little used except as adjuncts to other substances on account of their flavour, or with purgatives to prevent nausea and griping. The essential oil forms a convenient medium for using cloves for flavouring purposes, it possesses the medicinal properties characteristic of a volatile oil, and it is frequently employed to relieve toothache. Oil of cloves is regarded by many dental surgeons as the most effective local anaesthetic they possess in cases where it is desired, before cutting a sensitive tooth for the purpose of filling it, to lower the sensibility of the dentine. For this purpose the cavity must be exposed to cotton wool saturated with the oil for about ten days.
CLOVIO, GIORGIO GIULIO (1498–1578), Italian painter, by birth a Croat and by profession a priest, is said to have learned the elements of design in his own country, and to have studied afterwards with intense diligence at Rome under Giulio Romano, and at Verona under Girolamo de’ Libri. He excelled in historical pieces and portraits, painting as for microscopical examination, and yet contriving to handle his subjects with great force and precision. His book of twenty-six pictures representing the procession of Corpus Domini, in Rome, was the work of nine years, and the covers were executed by Benvenuto Cellini. The British Museum has his twelve miniatures of the victories of the emperor Charles V. In the Vatican library is preserved a manuscript life of Frederick, duke of Urbino, superbly illustrated by Clovio, who is facile princeps among Italian miniaturists. He was called Macedo, or Macedone, to connect him with his supposed Macedonian ancestry.
CLOVIS [Chlodovech] (c. 466–511), king of the Salian Franks, son of Childeric I., whom he succeeded in 481 at the age of fifteen. At that date the Salian Franks had advanced as far as the river Somme, and the centre of their power was at Tournai. On the history of Clovis between the years 481 and 486 the records are silent. In 486 he attacked Syagrius, a Roman general who, after the fall of the western empire in 476, had carved out for himself a principality south of the Somme, and is called by Gregory of Tours “rex Romanorum.” After being defeated by Clovis at the battle of Soissons, Syagrius sought refuge with the Visigothic king Alaric II., who handed him over to the conqueror. Henceforth Clovis fixed his residence at Soissons, which was in the midst of public lands, e.g. Berny-Rivière, Juvigny, &c. The episode of the vase of Soissons[1] has a legendary character, and all that it proves is the deference shown by the pagan king to the orthodox clergy. Clovis undoubtedly extended his dominion over the whole of Belgica Secunda, of which Reims was the capital, and conquered the neighbouring cities in detail. Little is known of the history of these conquests. It appears that St Geneviève defended the town of Paris against Clovis for a long period, and that Verdun-sur-Meuse, after a brave stand, accepted an honourable capitulation thanks to St Euspitius. In 491 some barbarian troops in the service of Rome, Arboruchi (Άρμόρνχοι), Thuringians, and even Roman soldiers who could not return to Rome, went over to Clovis and swelled the ranks of his army.
In 493 Clovis married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, niece of Gundobald and Godegesil, joint kings of Burgundy. This princess was a Christian, and earnestly desired the conversion of her husband. Although Clovis allowed his children to be baptized, he remained a pagan himself until the war against the Alemanni, who at that time occupied the country between the Vosges, and the Rhine and the neighbourhood of Lake Constance. By pushing their incursions westward they came into collision with Clovis, who marched against them and defeated them in the plain of the Rhine. The legend runs that, in the thickest of the fight, Clovis swore that he would be converted to the God of Clotilda if her God would grant him the victory. After subduing a part of the Alemanni, Clovis went to Reims, where he was baptized by St Remigius on Christmas day 496, together with three thousand Franks. The story of the phial of holy oil (the Sainte Ampoule) brought from heaven by a white dove for the baptism of Clovis was invented by Archbishop Hincmar of Reims three centuries after the event.
The baptism of Clovis was an event of very great importance. From that time the orthodox Christians in the kingdom of the Burgundians and Visigoths looked to Clovis to deliver them from their Arian kings. Clovis seems to have failed in the case of Burgundy, which was at that time torn by the rivalry between Godegesil and his brother Gundobald. Godegesil appealed for help to Clovis, who defeated Gundobald on the banks of the Ouche near Dijon, and advanced as far as Avignon (500), but had to retire without being able to retain any of his conquests. Immediately after his departure Gundobald slew Godegesil at Vienne, and seized the whole of the Burgundian kingdom. Clovis was more fortunate in his war against the Visigoths. Having completed the subjugation of the Alemanni in 506, he marched against the Visigothic king Alaric II. in the following year, in spite of the efforts of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, to prevent the war. After a decisive victory at Vouillé near Poitiers, in which Clovis slew Alaric with his own hand, the whole of the kingdom of the Visigoths as far as the Pyrenees was added to the Frankish empire, with the exception of Septimania, which, together with Spain, remained in possession of Alaric’s grandson Amalaric, and Provence, which was seized by Theodoric and annexed to Italy. In 508 Clovis received at Tours the insignia of the consulship from the eastern emperor, Anastasius, but the title was purely honorific. The last years of his life Clovis spent in Paris, which he made the capital of his kingdom, and where he built the church of the Holy Apostles, known later as the church of St Geneviève. By murdering the petty Frankish
- ↑ 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.”
