Saint Catherine and the Clock: Possible Histories of Sound and Time in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century France

Abstract

This article charts the possible histories of sound and time inaugurated by a musical clock that was perhaps installed in the Benedictine Abbey of Sainte-Catherine-du-Mont, Rouen, in 1321. This clock is said to have played the advent hymn Conditor alme siderum [Dear Creator of the Stars] on its bells. The clock’s brief appearance in a later chronicle collection provides the cue for the article’s shape as a series of reflections on possible histories—historical analysis undertaken when the original object of research is empirically questionable. Commencing with an analysis of clocks with multiple bells from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the article shows that the clock at Rouen was not an anachronistic technology in the period. It then moves to consider the poetic temporalities of the hymn Conditor alme siderum, showing how multiple liturgical times were intertwined in the clock’s possible music. Turning from the object to the institution, the article then seeks out the historical and material conditions that may have made this clock possible at Sainte-Catherine’s. Finally, triggered by the connection of the clock to Saint Catherine herself, the article approaches sound and time through Catherine’s legend in the Legenda aurea and a sequence of images that can be arranged to reveal possible connections between sound, time, reason, devotion, and the suffering holy body.