Astronomical clock (Besançon)

The astronomical clock in Besançon Cathedral

The astronomical clock of Besançon is housed in Besançon Cathedral. Besançon's present astronomical clock, made in 1860 by Auguste-Lucien Vérité fr:Auguste-Lucien Vérité of Beauvais to replace an earlier and unsatisfactory one made by Bernardin in the 1850s, differs from those in Strasbourg, Lyon and Beauvais. The clock is meant to express the theological concept that each second of the day the Resurrection of Christ transforms the existence of man and of the world.

Bernardin's clock

The first astronomical clock installed in Besançon was made between about 1851 and 1857 by a clockmaker called Bernardin,^[1] who probably came from Fougerolles and lived in Saint-Loup-sur-Semouse.^[2]

Bernardin had exhibited an astronomical clock in 1849 while he was living at Fougerolles^[3] The clock he made for Besançon was exhibited in Paris in 1855, where Vérité was also exhibiting and could certainly have seen it. This clock was described in the 1958 article by René Baillaud.

Vérité's clock

By 1857 Bernardin's clock had stopped working, and Cardinal Mathieu, the Archbishop of Besançon, commissioned a replacement from Vérité, who built it in his workshop in Beauvais. The clock was installed in 1860 but work on it continued until 1863. Immediately after he finished the Besançon commission, Vérité built an even larger, and different, clock, for Beauvais Cathedral.

Bernardin's clock may well provided a point of departure for Vérité when designing his, but apart from general inspiration no specific element seems to have been copied from the earlier one.

In 1900 the clock stopped working and was completely renovated by Florian Goudey.

In 1966, the clock stopped again on the death of Paul Brandibas, who had been its keeper for over thirty years. The Ungerer company of Strasbourg renovated it and restored it to full working order.

Description

The clock stands 5.8 meters high and 2.5 meters wide, and has 30,000 mechanical parts. It sits in its own room in the clocktower.

• Seventy dials provide 122 indications. These include the seconds, hours, days and years. The clock is a perpetual one that can register up to 10,000 years, including adjustments for leap year cycles. The clock also indicates the times of sunrise and sunset.

• Twenty-one automated figures either ring the quarter hour and the hour, or perform the Resurrection of Christ at noon, and his burial at 3 pm.

• The clock also has animated pictures of eight different French harbours and indicates the hours and height of the tides there on dials.

• A planetarium is part of the clock and it shows the motions and orbits of the planets. The planetary motions are congruent with those of the actual planets so that the planetarium reproduces eclipses as they occur.

• Through a system of universal joints extending some 100 meters, the clock drives four dials that sit on the four sides of the cathedral's tower, thus providing the time of day to the city. A fifth dial is inside the cathedral. The outside dials also show, respectively, the season, the day of the week, and the month of the year. A repetitive movement sounds a bell in the clocktower to mark the hours.

• Eleven different descending weights drive the clock. Three of the weights need to be reset each day.

Notes

References and external links

• Bernardin's clock:
  • Rapport du jury central sur les produits de l'agriculture et de l'industrie exposés en 1849, 1850, page 502 (on the clock exhibited in 1849)
  • René Baillaud: "Histoire de l'horloge astronomique de la Cathédrale Saint-Jean de Besançon", Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Besançon, procès-verbaux et mémoires, volume 172, 1958, pages 350-367
  • Henri Edouard Tresca, Ch. Lahure: Visite à l'exposition universelle de Paris, en 1855, 1855 page 398
  • Le Canada et l'Exposition universelle de 1855, 1856, pages 271 and 326
  • Le Quérard: Archives d'histoire littéraire, de biographie et de bibliographie françaises, volume 1, 1855, page 401
  • L'Ami des sciences, 1855, volume 1, page 456

• Vérité's clock:
  • Notice descriptive de l'horloge astronomique de l'église cathédrale de Besançon, Besançon, 1861, 36 pages
  • Cosmos, 1862, pages 457, 486, 525
  • R. Goudey: Horloge astronomique de Saint-Jean de Besançon, 1909, 30 pages
  • Alfred Ungerer: Les horloges astronomiques et monumentales les plus remarquables de l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours, Strasbourg, 1931, pages 62–64 (doesn't mention Bernardin's clock)
  • P. Brandibas-Goudey: L'Horloge astronomique de Saint-Jean Besançon, 1937, 31 pages
  • M. Hanke: Astronomical Clock of Besancon, thePuristS

• • Monuments nationaux: Horloge de Besançon (French)

Coordinates: 47°14′01″N 6°01′51″E / 47.2336°N 6.0308°E / 47.2336; 6.0308