Chapter XIX: Part 19
BODLEY, GEORGE FREDERICK (1827-1907), English architect, was the youngest son of a physician at Brighton, his elder brother, the Rev. W.H. Bodley, becoming a well-known Roman Catholic preacher and a professor at Oscott. He was articled to the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott, under whose influence he became imbued with the spirit of the Gothic revival, and he gradually became known as the chief exponent of 14th-century English Gothic, and the leading ecclesiastical architect in England. One of his first churches was St Michael and All Angels, Brighton (1855), and among his principal erections may be mentioned All Saints, Cambridge; Eton Mission church, Hackney Wick; Clumber church; Eccleston church; Hoar Cross church; St Augustine's, Pendlebury; Holy Trinity, Kensington; Chapel Allerton, Leeds; St Faith's, Brentford; Queen's College chapel, Cambridge; Marlborough College chapel; and Burton church. His domestic work included the London School Board offices, the new buildings at Magdalen, Oxford, and Hewell Grange (for Lord Windsor). From 1872 he had for twenty years the partnership of Mr T. Garner, who worked with him. He also designed (with his pupil James Vaughan) the cathedral at Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and cathedrals at San Francisco and in Tasmania; and when Mr Gilbert Scott's design for his new Liverpool cathedral was successful in the competition he collaborated with the young architect in preparing for its erection. Bodley began contributing to the Royal Academy in 1854, and in 1881 was elected A.R.A., becoming R.A. in 1902. In addition to being a most learned master of architecture, he was a beautiful draughtsman, and a connoisseur in art; he published a volume of poems in 1899; and he was a designer of wall-papers and chintzes for Watts & Co., of Baker Street, London; in early life he had been in close alliance with the Pre-Raphaelites, and he did a great deal, like William Morris, to improve public taste in domestic decoration and furniture. He died on the 21st of October 1907, at Water Eaton, Oxford.
BODLEY, SIR THOMAS (1545-1613), English diplomatist and scholar, founder of the Bodleian library, Oxford, was born at Exeter on the 2nd of March 1545. During the reign of Queen Mary, his father, John Bodley, being obliged to leave the kingdom on account of his Protestant principles, went to live at Geneva. In that university, in which Calvin and Beza were then teaching divinity, young Bodley studied for a short time. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he returned with his father to England, and soon after entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1563 he took his B.A. degree, and was admitted a fellow of Merton College. In 1565 he read a Greek lecture in hall, took his M.A. degree the year after, and read natural philosophy in the public schools. In 1569 he was proctor, and for some time after was deputy public orator. Quitting Oxford in 1576, he made the tour of Europe; shortly after his return he became gentleman-usher to Queen Elizabeth; and in 1587, apparently, he married Ann Ball, a widow lady of considerable fortune, the daughter of a Mr Carew of Bristol. In 1584 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth, and represented St German's in 1586. In 1585 Bodley was entrusted with a mission to form a league between Frederick II. of Denmark and certain German princes to assist Henry of Navarre. He was next despatched on a secret mission to France; and in 1588 he was sent to the Hague as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the Netherlands that the power of Spain had to be fought. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen's ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly begged that he might be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but finding his preferment obstructed by the jarring interests of Burleigh and Essex, he retired from public life. He was knighted on the 18th of April 1604. He is, however, remembered specially as the founder of the Bodleian at Oxford, practically the earliest public library in Europe (see LIBRARIES). He determined, he said, "to take his farewell of state employments and to set up his staff at the library door in Oxford." In 1598 his offer to restore the old library was accepted by the university. Bodley not only used his private fortune in his undertaking, but induced many of his friends to make valuable gifts of books. In 1611 he began its permanent endowment, and at his death in London on the 28th of January 1613, the greater part of his fortune was left to it. He was buried in the choir of Merton College chapel where a monument of black and white marble was erected to him.
Sir Thomas wrote his own life to the year 1609, which, with the first
draft of the statutes drawn up for the library, and his letters to the
librarian, Thomas James, was published by Thomas Hearne, under the
title of _Reliquiae Bodleianae, or Authentic Remains of Sir Thomas
Bodley_ (London, 1703, 8vo).
BODMER, JOHANN JAKOB (1698-1783), Swiss-German author, was born at Greifensee, near Zurich, on the 19th of July 1698. After first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters. In 1725 he was appointed professor of Helvetian history in Zurich, a chair which he held for half a century, and in 1735 became a member of the "Grosser Rat." He published (1721-1723), in conjunction with J.J. Breitinger (1701-1774) and several others, _Die Discourse der Mahlern_, a weekly journal after the model of the Spectator. Through his prose translation of Milton's Paradise Lost (1732) and his successful endeavours to make a knowledge of English literature accessible to Germany, he aroused the hostile criticism of Gottsched (_q.v_.) and his school, a struggle which ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter. His most important writings are the treatises _Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie_ (1740) and _Kritische Betrachtungen uber die poetischen Gemalde der Dichter_ (1741), in which he pleaded for the freedom of the imagination from the restriction imposed upon it by French pseudo-classicism. Bodmer's epics _Die Sundfluth_ (1751) and _Noah_ (1751) are weak imitations of Klopstock's _Messias_, and his plays are entirely deficient in dramatic qualities. He did valuable service to German literature by his editions of the Minnesingers and part of the _Nibelungenlied_. He died at Zurich on the 2nd of January 1783.
See T.W. Danzel, _Gottsched und seine Zeit_ (Leipzig, 1848); J.
Cruger, _J.C. Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger_ (Stuttgart, 1884); F.
Braitmaier, _Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den
Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing_ (Leipzig, 1888); _Denkschrift zu
Bodmers 200. Geburtstag_ (Zurich, 1900).
BODMIN, a market town and municipal borough in the Bodmin parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, the county town, 30-1/2 m. W.N.W. of Plymouth, on branches of the Great Western and London & South-Western railways. Pop. (1901) 5353. It lies between two hills in a short valley opening westward upon that of the Camel, at the southern extremity of the high open Bodmin Moor. The large church of St Petrock, mainly Perpendicular, has earlier portions, and a late Norman font. East of it there is a ruined Decorated chapel of St Thomas of Canterbury, with a crypt. A tower of Tudor date, in the cemetery, marks the site of a chapel of the gild of the Holy Rood. Part of the buildings of a Franciscan friary, founded _c._ 1240, are incorporated in the market-house, and the gateway remains in an altered form. At Bodmin are a prison, with civil and naval departments, the county gaol and asylum, the headquarters of the constabulary, and those of the duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Cattle, sheep and horse fairs are held, and there is a considerable agricultural trade. The borough is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors. Area, 2797 acres.
Traces of Roman occupation have been found in the western part of the parish, belonging to the first century A.D. Possibly tin-mining was carried on here at that period. The grant of a charter by King Edred to the prior and canons of Bodmin (Bomine, Bodman, Bodmyn) in respect of lands in Devonshire appears in an _inspeximus_ of 1252. To its ecclesiastical associations it owed its importance at the time of the Domesday survey, when St Petrock held the manor of Bodmin, wherein were sixty-eight houses and one market. To successive priors, as mesne lords, it also owed its earliest municipal privileges. King John's charter to the prior and convent, dated the 17th of July 1199, contained a clause (subsequently cancelled by Richard II.) by which burgesses were exempt from being impleaded, touching any tenements in their demesne, except before the king and his chief justice. Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, confirmed to the burgesses their gild merchant, Edward I. the pesage of tin, and Edward II. a market for tin and wool. Queen Elizabeth in 1563 constituted the town a free borough and the burgesses a body corporate, granting at the same time two fairs and a Saturday market. There are still held also three other fairs whose origin is uncertain. An amended charter granted in 1594 remained in force until 1789, when the corporation became extinct owing to the diminution of the burgesses. By virtue of a new charter of incorporation granted in 1798 and remodelled by the act of 1835, the corporation now consists of a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors. The first members for Bodmin were summoned in 1295. Retaining both its members in 1832, losing one in 1868 and the other in 1885, it has now become merged in the south-eastern division of the county. From 1715 to 1837 the assizes were generally held alternately at Launceston and Bodmin; since 1837 they have been held at Bodmin only. A court of probate has also been held at Bodmin since 1773. A festival known as "Bodmin Riding" was formerly celebrated here on the Sunday and Monday following St Thomas's day (July 7). It is thought by some to have been instituted in 1177 to celebrate the recovery of the bones of St Petrock.
See _Victoria County History, Cornwall_; John Maclean, _Parochial and
Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor, Cornwall_ (3 vols.,
1873-1879).
BODO, a seaport on the north-western coast of Norway, in Nordland _amt_ (county), lat. 67 deg. 17' N. Pop. (1900) 4827. The rock-bound harbour admits large vessels, and there is a brisk trade in fish and eider-down. The neighbouring country has many scenic attractions. Sixty miles inland (E.) rises the great massif of Sulitelma on the Swedish frontier, with its copper mines, broad snow-fields and glaciers. The fjords of the district include the imposing Beierenfjord, the Saltenfjord, and the Skjerstadfjord, at the narrow mouths of which, between islands, a remarkable cataract (Saltstrom) is formed at the turn of the tide. On this fjord is Skjerstad, a large scattered village.
BODONI, GIAMBATTISTA (1740-1813), Italian printer, was born in 1740 at Saluzzo in Piedmont, where his father owned a printing establishment. While yet a boy he began to engrave on wood. He at length went to Rome, and there became a compositor for the press of the Propaganda. He made himself acquainted with the Oriental languages, and thus was enabled to render essential service to the Propaganda press, by restoring and accurately distributing the types of several Oriental alphabets which had fallen into disorder. The infante Don Ferdinand, afterwards duke of Parma, having established, about 1760, a printing-house on the model of those in Paris, Madrid and Turin, Bodoni was placed at the head of this establishment, which he soon rendered the first of the kind in Europe. The beauty of his typography, &c., leaves nothing further to be desired; but the intrinsic value of his editions is seldom equal to their outward splendour. His Homer, however, is a truly magnificent work; and, indeed, his Greek letters are faultless imitations of the best Greek manuscript. His editions of the Greek, Latin, Italian and French classics are all highly prized for their typographical elegance, and some of them are not less remarkable for their accuracy. Bodoni died at Padua in 1813. In 1818 a magnificent work appeared in two volumes quarto, entitled _Manuale Tipografico_, containing specimens of the vast collection of types which had belonged to him.
See De Lama, _Vita del Cavaliere Giambattista Bodoni_ (1816).
BODY-SNATCHING, the secret disinterring of dead bodies in churchyards in order to sell them for the purpose of dissection. Those who practised body-snatching were frequently called resurrectionists or resurrection-men. Previous to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832 (see ANATOMY: _History_), no licence was required in Great Britain for opening an anatomical school, and there was no provision for supplying subjects to students for anatomical purposes. Therefore, though body-snatching was a misdemeanour at common law, punishable with fine and imprisonment, it was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection. Body-snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for the relatives and friends of a deceased person to watch the grave for some time after burial, lest it should be violated. Iron coffins, too, were frequently used for burial, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars called _mortsafes_, well-preserved examples of which may still be seen in Greyfriars' churchyard, Edinburgh.
For a detailed history of body-snatching, see _The Diary of a
Resurrectionist_, edited by J.B. Bailey (London, 1896), which also
contains a full bibliography and the regulations in force in foreign
countries for the supply of bodies for anatomical purposes.
BOECE (or BOYCE), HECTOR (c. 1465-c. 1536), Scottish historian, was born at Dundee about the year 1465, being descended of a family which for several generations had possessed the barony of Panbride in Forfarshire. He received his early education at Dundee, and completed his course of study in the university of Paris, where he took the degree of B.D. He was appointed regent, or professor, of philosophy in the college of Montaigu; and there he was a contemporary of Erasmus, who in two epistles has spoken of him in the highest terms. When William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, was laying his plans for the foundation of the university of Aberdeen (King's College) he made Boece his chief adviser; and the latter was persuaded, after receipt of the papal bull erecting the university (1494), to be the first principal. He was in Aberdeen about 1500 when lectures began in the new buildings, and he appears to have been well received by the canons of the cathedral, several of whom he has commemorated as men of learning. It was a part of his duty as principal to read lectures on divinity.
The emoluments of his office were poor, but he also enjoyed the income of a canonry at Aberdeen and of the vicarage of Tullynessle. Under the date of 14th July 1527, we find a "grant to Maister Hector" of an annual pension of L50, to be paid by the sheriff of Aberdeen out of the king's casualties; and on the 26th of July 1529 was issued a "precept for a lettre to Mr Hector Boys, professor of theology, of a pension of L50 Scots yearly, until the king promote him to a benefice of 100 marks Scots of yearly value; the said pension to be paid him by the custumars of Aberdeen." In 1533 and 1534, one-half of his pension was, however, paid by the king's treasurer, and the other half by the comptroller; and as no payment subsequent to that of Whitsuntide 1534 has been traced in the treasurer's accounts, he is supposed to have obtained the benefice soon after that period. This benefice was the rectorship of Tyrie.
In 1528, soon after the publication of his history, Boece received the degree of D.D. at Aberdeen; and on this occasion the magistrates voted him a present of a tun of wine when the new wines should arrive, or, according to his option, the sum of L20 to purchase bonnets. He appears to have survived till the year 1536; for on the 22nd of November in that year, the king presented John Garden to the rectory of Tyrie, vacant by the death of "Mr Hector Boiss." He died at Aberdeen, and was buried before the high altar at King's College, beside the tomb of his patron Bishop Elphinstone.
His earliest publication, _Episcoporum Murthlacensium et Aberdonensium per Hectorem Boetium Vitae_, was printed at the press of Jodocus Badius (Paris, 1522). The notices of the early prelates are of little value, but the portion of the book in which he speaks of Bishop Elphinstone is of enduring merit. Here we likewise find an account of the foundation and constitution of the college, together with some notices of its earliest members. His fame rests chiefly on his _History of Scotland_, published in 1527 under the title _Scotorum Historiae a prima gentis origine cum aliarum et rerum et gentium illustratione non vulgari_. This edition contains seventeen books. Another edition, containing the eighteenth book and a fragment of the nineteenth, was published by Ferrerius, who has added an appendix of thirty-five pages (Paris, 1574).
The composition of the history displays much ability; but Boece's imagination was, however, stronger than his judgment: of the extent of the historian's credulity, his narrative exhibits many unequivocal proofs; and of deliberate invention or distortion of facts not a few, though the latter are less flagrant and intentional than early 19th-century criticism has assumed. He professed to have obtained from the monastery of Icolmkill, through the good offices of the earl of Argyll, and his brother, John Campbell of Lundy, the treasurer, certain original historians of Scotland, and among the rest Veremundus, of whose writings not a single vestige is now to be found. In his dedication to the king he is pleased to state that Veremundus, a Spaniard by birth, was archdeacon of St Andrews, and that he wrote in Latin a history of Scotland from the origin of the nation to the reign of Malcolm III., to whom he inscribed his work. His propensity to the marvellous was at an early period exposed in the following verses by Leland:--
"Hectoris historici tot quot mendacia scripsit
Si vis ut numerem, lector amice, tibi,
Me jubeas etiam fluctus numerare marinos
Et liquidi Stellas connumerare poli."
Boece's _History of Scotland_ was translated into Scottish prose by
John Bellenden, and into verse by William Stewart. _The Lives of the
Bishops_ was reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, Edin., 1825, in a
limited edition of sixty copies. A commonplace verse-rendering of the
_Life of Bishop Elphinstone_, which was written by Alexander Gardyne
in 1619, remains in MS. There is no modern edition of the history,
though the versions of Bellenden and Stewart have been edited.
BOEHM, SIR JOSEPH EDGAR, Bart. (1834-1890), British sculptor, was born of Hungarian parentage on the 4th of July 1834 at Vienna, where his father was director of the imperial mint. After studying the plastic art in Italy and at Paris, he worked for a few years as a medallist in his native city. After a further period of study in England, he was so successful as an exhibitor at the Exhibition of 1862 that he determined to abandon the execution of coins and medals, and to give his mind to portrait busts and statuettes, chiefly equestrian. The colossal statue of Queen Victoria, executed in marble (1869) for Windsor Castle, and the monument of the duke of Kent in St George's chapel, were his earliest great works, and so entirely to the taste of his royal patrons that he rose rapidly in favour with the court. He was made A.R.A. in 1878, and produced soon afterwards the statue of Carlyle on the Thames embankment at Chelsea. In 1881 he was appointed sculptor in ordinary to the queen, and in the ensuing year became full Academician. On the death of Dean Stanley, Boehm was commissioned to execute his sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey, and his achievement, a recumbent statue, has been pronounced to be one of the best portraits in modern sculpture. Less successful was his monument to General Gordon in St Paul's cathedral. He executed the equestrian statue of the duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner, and designed the coinage for the Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. Among his ideal subjects should be noted the "Herdsman and Bull." He died suddenly in his studio at South Kensington on the 12th of December 1890.
BOEHM VON BAWERK, EUGEN (1851- ), Austrian economist and statesman, was born at Brunn on the 12th of February 1851. Entering the Austrian department of finance in 1872, he held various posts until 1880, when he became qualified as a teacher of political economy in the university of Vienna. The following year, however, he transferred his services to the university of Innsbruck, where he became professor in 1884. In 1889 he became councillor in the ministry of finance, and represented the government in the Lower House on all questions of taxation. In 1895 and again in 1897-1898 he was minister of finance. In 1899 he was made a member of the Upper House, and in 1900 again became minister of finance. One of the leaders of the Austrian school of economists, he has made notable criticisms on the theory of value in relation to cost as laid down by the "classical school." His more important works are _Kapital und Kapitalzins_ (Innsbruck, 1884-1889), in two parts, translated by W. Smart, viz. _Capital and Interest_ (part i., 1890), and _The Positive Theory of Capital_ (part ii., 1891); _Karl Marx and the Close of his System_ (trans. A.M. Macdonald, 1898); _Recent Literature on Interest_ (trans. W.A. Scott and S. Feilbogen, 1903).
BOEHME (or BEHMEN), JAKOB (1575-1624), German mystical writer, whose surname (of which Fechner gives eight German varieties) appears in English literature as Beem, Behmont, &c., and notably Behmen, was born at Altseidenberg, in Upper Lusatia, a straggling hamlet among the hills, some 10 m. S.E. of Gorlitz. His father was a well-to-do peasant, and his first employment was that of herd boy on the Landskrone, a hill in the neighbourhood of Gorlitz; the only education he received was at the town-school of Seidenberg, a mile from his home. Seidenberg, to this day, is filled with shoemakers, and to a shoemaker Jakob was apprenticed in his fourteenth year (1589), being judged not robust enough for husbandry. Ten years later (1599) we find him settled at Gorlitz as master-shoemaker, and married to Katharina, daughter of Hans Kuntzschmann, a thriving butcher in the town. After industriously pursuing his vocation for ten years, he bought (1610) the substantial house, which still preserves his name, close by the bridge, in the Neiss-Vorstadt. Two or three years later he gave up business, and did not resume it as a shoemaker; but for some years before his death he made and sold woollen gloves, regularly visiting Prague fair for this purpose.
Boehme's authorship began in his 37th year (1612) with a treatise, _Aurora, oder die Morgenrote im Aufgang_, which though unfinished was surreptitiously copied, and eagerly circulated in MS. by Karl von Ender. This raised him at once out of his homely sphere, and made him the centre of a local circle of liberal thinkers, considerably above him in station and culture. The charge of heresy was, however, soon directed against him by Gregorius Richter, then pastor primarius of Gorlitz. Feeling ran so high after Richter's pulpit denunciations, that, in July 1613, the municipal council, fearing a disturbance of the peace, made a show of examining Boehme, took possession of his fragmentary quarto, and dismissed the writer with an admonition to meddle no more with such matters. For five years he obeyed this injunction. But in 1618 began a second period of authorship; he poured forth, but did not publish, treatise after treatise, expository and polemical, in the next and the two following years. In 1622 he composed nothing but a few short pieces on true repentance, resignation, &c., which, however, devotionally speaking, are the most precious of all his writings. They were the only pieces offered to the public in his lifetime and with his permission, a fact which is evidence of the essentially religious and practical character of his mind. Their publication at Gorlitz, on New Year's day 1624, under the title of _Der Weg zu Christo_, was the signal for renewed clerical hostility. Boehme had by this time entered on the third and most prolific though the shortest period (1623-1624) of his speculation. His labours at the desk were interrupted in May 1624 by a summons to Dresden, where his famous "colloquy" with the Upper Consistorial court was made the occasion of a flattering but transient ovation on the part of a new circle of admirers. Richter died in August 1624, and Boehme did not long survive his pertinacious foe. Seized with a fever when away from home, he was with difficulty conveyed to Gorlitz. His wife was at Dresden on business; and during the first week of his malady he was nursed by a literary friend. He died, after receiving the rites of the church, grudgingly administered by the authorities, on Sunday, the 17th of November.
Boehme always professed that a direct inward opening or illumination was the only source of his speculative power. He pretended to no other revelation. Ecstatic raptures we should not expect, for he was essentially a Protestant mystic. No "thus saith the Lord" was claimed as his warrant, after the manner of Antoinette Bourignon, or Ludowick Muggleton; no spirits or angels held converse with him as with Swedenborg. It is needless to dwell, in the way either of acceptance or rejection, on the very few occasions in which his outward life seemed to him to come into contact with the invisible world. The apparition of the pail of gold to the herd boy on the Landskrone, the visit of the mysterious stranger to the young apprentice, the fascination of the luminous sheen, reflected from a common pewter dish, which first, in 1600, gave an intuitive turn to his meditations, the heavenly music which filled his ears as he lay dying--none of these matters is connected organically with the secret of his special power. The mysteries of which he discoursed were not reported to him: he "beheld" them. He saw the root of all mysteries, the _Ungrund_ or _Urgrund_, whence issue all contrasts and discordant principles, hardness and softness, severity and mildness, sweet and bitter, love and sorrow, heaven and hell. These he "saw" in their origin; these he attempted to describe in their issue, and to reconcile in their eternal result. He saw into the being of God; whence the birth or going forth of the divine manifestation. Nature lay unveiled to him, he was at home in the heart of things. "His own book, which he himself was," the microcosm of man, with his threefold life, was patent to his vision. Such was his own account of his qualification. If he failed it was in expression; he confessed himself a poor mouthpiece, though he saw with a sure spiritual eye.
It must not be supposed that the form in which Boehme's pneumatic realism worked itself out in detail was shaped entirely from within. In his writings we trace the influence of Theophr. Bombast von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), of Kaspar Schwenkfeld (1490-1561), the first Protestant mystic, and of Valentin Weigel (1533-1588). From the school of Paracelsus came much of his puzzling phraseology,--his _Turba_ and _Tinctur_ and so forth,--a phraseology embarrassing to himself as well as to his readers. His friends plied him with foreign terms, which he was delighted to receive, interpreting them by an instinct, and using them often in a corrupted form and always in a sense of his own. Thus the word _Idea_ called up before him the image of "a very fair, heavenly, and chaste virgin." The title _Aurora_, by which his earliest treatise is best known, was furnished by Dr Balthasar Walther. These, however, were false helps, which only serve to obscure a difficult study, like the _Flagrat_ and _Lubet_, with which his English translator veiled Boehme's own honest _Schreck_ and _Lust_. There is danger lest his crude science and his crude philosophical vocabulary conceal the fertility of Boehme's ideas and the transcendent greatness of his religious insight. Few will take the pains to follow him through the interminable account of his seven _Quellgeister_, which remind us of Gnosticism; or even of his three first properties of eternal nature, in which his disciples find Newton's formulae anticipated, and which certainly bear a marvellous resemblance to the three [Greek: archai] of Schelling's _Theogonische Natur_. Boehme is always greatest when he breaks away from his fancies and his trammels, and allows speech to the voice of his heart. Then he is artless, clear and strong; and no man can help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the conviction "ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben," or rise with the belief that "the being of all beings is a wrestling power," or soar with the persuasion that Love "in its height is as high as God." The mystical poet of Silesia, Angelus Silesius, discerned where Boehme's truest power lay when he sang--
"Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden,
Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn' am Firmament,
Der Salamander muss im Feu'r erhalten werden,
Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Bohme's Element."
The three periods of Boehme's authorship constitute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. He himself marks a threefold division of his subject-matter:--1. PHILOSOPHIA, i.e. the pursuit of the divine _Sophia_, a study of God in himself; this was attempted in the _Aurora_. 2. ASTROLOGIA, i.e., in the largest sense, cosmology, the manifestation of the divine in the structure of the world and of man; hereto belong, with others, _Die drei Principien gottlichen Wesens; Vom dreifachen Leben der Menschen; Von der Menschwerdung Christi;, Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung alter Wesen_ (known as _Signatura Rerum_). 3. THEOLOGIA, i.e., in Scougall's phrase, "the life of God in the soul of man." Of the speculative writings under this head the most important are _Von der Gnadenwahl; Mysterium Magnum_ (a spiritual commentary on Genesis); _Von Christi Testamenten_ (the Sacraments).
Although Boehme's philosophy is essentially theological, and his theology essentially philosophical, one would hardly describe him as a philosophical theologian; and, indeed, his position is not one in which either the philosopher or the theologian finds it easy to make himself completely at home. The philosopher finds no trace in Boehme of a conception of God which rests its own validity on an accord with the highest canons of reason or of morals; it is in the actual not in the ideal that Boehme seeks God, whom he discovers as the spring of natural powers and forces, rather than as the goal of advancing thought. The theologian is staggered by a language which breaks the fixed association of theological phrases, and strangely reversing the usual point of view, characteristically pictures God as underneath rather than above. Nature rises out of Him; we sink into Him. The _Ungrund_ of the unmanifested Godhead is boldly represented in the English translations of Boehme by the word _Abyss_, in a sense altogether unexplained by its Biblical use. In the _Theologia Germanica_ this tendency to regard God as the _substantia_, the underlying ground of all things, is accepted as a foundation for piety; the same view, when offered in the colder logic of Spinoza, is sometimes set aside as atheistical. The procession of spiritual forces and natural phenomena out of the _Ungrund_ is described by Boehme in terms of a threefold manifestation, commended no doubt by the constitution of the Christian Trinity, but exhibited in a form derived from the school of Paracelsus. From Weigel he learned a purely idealistic explanation of the universe, according to which it is not the resultant of material forces, but the expression of spiritual principles. These two explanations were fused in his mind till they issued forth as equivalent forms of one and the same thought. Further, Schwenkfeld supplied him with the germs of a transcendental exegesis, whereby the Christian Scriptures and the dogmata of Lutheran orthodoxy were opened up in harmony with his new-found views. Thus equipped, Boehme's own genius did the rest. A primary effort of Boehme's philosophy is to show how material powers are substantially one with moral forces. This is the object with which he draws out the dogmatic scheme which dictates the arrangement of his seven _Quellgeister_. Translating Boehme's thought out of the uncouth dialect of material symbols (as to which one doubts sometimes whether he means them as concrete instances, or as pictorial illustrations, or as a mere _memoria technica_), we find that Boehme conceives of the correlation of two triads of forces. Each triad consists of a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis; and the two are connected by an important link. In the hidden life of the Godhead, which is at once _Nichts_ and _Alles_, exists the original triad, viz. Attraction, Diffusion, and their resultant, the Agony of the unmanifested Godhead. The transition is made; by an act of will the divine Spirit comes to Light; and immediately the manifested life appears in the triad of Love, Expression, and their resultant, Visible Variety. As the action of contraries and their resultant are explained the relations of soul, body and spirit; of good, evil and free will; of the spheres of the angels, of Lucifer, and of this world. It is a more difficult problem to account on this philosophy for the introduction of evil. Boehme does not resort to dualism, nor has he the smallest sympathy with a pantheistic repudiation of the fact of sin. That the difficulty presses him is clear from the progressive changes in his attempted solution of the problem. In the _Aurora_ nothing save good proceeds from the _Ungrund_, though there is good that abides and good that fall;--Christ and Lucifer. In the second stage of his writing the antithesis is directly generated as such; good and its contrary are coincidently given from the one creative source, as factors of life and movement; while in the third period evil is a direct outcome of the primary principle of divine manifestation--it is the wrath side of God. Corresponding to this change we trace a significant variation in the moral end contemplated by Boehme as the object of this world's life and history. In the first stage the world is created in remedy of a decline; in the second, for the adjustment of a balance of forces; in the third, to exhibit the eternal victory of good over evil, of love over wrath.
Editions of Boehme's works were published by H. Betke (Amsterdam,
1675); by J.G. Gichtel (Amsterdam, 1682-1683, 10 vols.); by K.W.
Schiebler (Leipzig, 1831-1847, 7 vols.). Translations of sundry
treatises have been made into Latin (by J.A. Werdenhagen, 1632), Dutch
(complete, by W. v. Bayerland, 1634-1641), and French (by Jean Macle,
c. 1640, and L.C. de Saint-Martin, 1800-1809). Between 1644 and 1662
all Boehme's works were translated by John Ellistone (d. 1652) and
John Sparrow, assisted by Durand Hotham and Humphrey Blunden, who paid
for the undertaking. At that time regular societies of _Behmenists_,
embracing not only the cultivated but the vulgar, existed in England
and in Holland. They merged into the Quaker movement, holding already
in common with Friends that salvation is nothing short of the very
presence and life of Christ in the believer, and only kept apart by an
objective doctrine of the sacraments which exposed them to the polemic
of Quakers (e.g. J. Anderdon). Muggleton led an anthropomorphic
reaction against them, and between the two currents they were swept
away. The Philadelphian Society at the beginning of the 18th century
consisted of cultured mystics, Jane Lead, Pordage, Francis Lee,
Bromley, &c., who fed upon Boehme. William Law (1686-1761) somewhat
later recurred to the same spring, with the result, however, in those
dry times of bringing his own good sense into question rather than of
reviving the credit of his author. After Law's death the old English
translation was in great part re-edited (4 vols., 1762-1784) as a
tribute to his memory, by George Ward and Thomas Langcake, with plates
from the designs of D.A. Freher (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5767-5794). This
forms what is commonly called Law's translation; to complete it a 5th
vol. (12mo, Dublin, 1820) is needed.
See also J. Hambetger, _Die Lehre des deutschen Philosophen J.
Boehmes_ (1844); Alb. Peip, _J. Boehme der deutsche Philosoph_ (1860);
von Harless, _J. Boehme und die Alchimisten_ (1870, 2nd ed. 1882). For
Boehme's life see the _Memoirs_ by Abraham von Frankenberg (d. 1652)
and others, trans, by F. Okely (1870); La Motte Fouque, _J. Boehm, ein
biographischer Denkstein_ (1831); H.A. Fechner, _J. Boehme, sein Leben
und seine Schriften_ (1857); H.L. Martensen, _J. Boehme, Theosophiske
Studier_ (Copenhagen, 1881; English trans. 1885); J. Claassen, _J.
Boehme, sein Leben und seine theosophische Werke_ (Gutersloh, 1885);
P. Deussen, _J. Boehme, uber sein Leben und seine Philosophie_ (Kiel,
1897).
BOEOTIA, a district of central Greece, stretching from Phocis and Locris in the W. and N. to Attica and Megaris in the S. between the strait of Euboea and the Corinthian Gulf. This area, amounting in all to 1100 sq. m., naturally falls into two main divisions. In the north the basin of the Cephissus and Lake Copais lies between parallel mountain-walls continuing eastward the line of Parnassus in the extensive ridge of Helicon, the "Mountain of the Muses" (5470 ft.) and the east Locrian range in Mts. Ptoum, Messapium and other smaller peaks. These ranges, which mostly lie close to the seaboard, form by their projecting spurs a narrow defile on the Phocian frontier, near the famous battlefield of Chaeroneia, and shut in Copais closely on the south between Coronea and Haliartus. The north-east barrier was pierced by underground passages (_katavothra_) which carried off the overflow from Copais. The southern portion of the land forms a plateau which slopes to Mt. Cithaeron, the frontier range between Boeotia and Attica. Within this territory the low ridge of Teumessus separates the plain of Ismenus and Dirce, commanded by the citadel of Thebes, from the upland plain of the Asopus, the only Boeotian river that finds the eastern sea. Though the Boeotian climate suffered from the exhalations of Copais, which produced a heavy atmosphere with foggy winters and sultry summers, its rich soil was suited alike for crops, plantations and pasture; the Copais plain, though able to turn into marsh when the choking of the _katavothra_ caused the lake to encroach, being among the most fertile in Greece. The central position of Boeotia between two seas, the strategic strength of its frontiers and the ease of communication within its extensive area were calculated to enhance its political importance. On the other hand the lack of good harbours hindered its maritime development; and the Boeotian nation, although it produced great men like Pindar, Epaminondas, Pelopidas and Plutarch, was proverbially as dull as its native air. But credit should be given to the people for their splendid military qualities: both their cavalry and heavy infantry achieved a glorious record.
In the mythical days Boeotia played a prominent part. Of the two great centres of legends, Thebes with its Cadmean population figures as a military stronghold, and Orchomenus, the home of the Minyae, as an enterprising commercial city. The latter's prosperity is still attested by its archaeological remains (notably the "Treasury of Minyas") and the traces of artificial conduits by which its engineers supplemented the natural outlets. The "Boeotian" population seems to have entered the land from the north at a date probably anterior to the Dorian invasion. With the exception of the Minyae, the original peoples were soon absorbed by these immigrants, and the Boeotians henceforth appear as a homogeneous nation. In historical times the leading city of Boeotia was Thebes, whose central position and military strength made it a suitable capital. It was the constant ambition of the Thebans to absorb the other townships into a single state, just as Athens had annexed the Attic communities. But the outlying cities successfully resisted this policy, and only allowed the formation of a loose federation which in early times seems to have possessed a merely religious character. While the Boeotians, unlike the Arcadians, generally acted as a united whole against foreign enemies, the constant struggle between the forces of centralization and disruption perhaps went further than any other cause to check their development into a really powerful nation. Boeotia hardly figures in history before the late 6th century. Previous to this its people is chiefly known as the producer of a type of geometric pottery similar to the Dipylon ware of Athens. About 519 the resistance of Plataea to the federating policy of Thebes led to the interference of Athens on behalf of the former; on this occasion, and again in 507, the Athenians defeated the Boeotian levy. During the Persian invasion of 480, while some of the cities fought whole-heartedly in the ranks of the patriots, Thebes assisted the invaders. For a time the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken away from Thebes, but in 457 the Spartans reinstated that city as a bulwark against Athenian aggression. Athens retaliated by a sudden advance upon Boeotia, and after the victory of Oenophyta brought under its power the whole country excepting the capital. For ten years the land remained under Athenian control, which was exercised through the newly installed democracies; but in 447 the oligarchic majority raised an insurrection, and after a victory at Coronea regained their freedom and restored the old constitutions. In the Peloponnesian War the Boeotians, embittered by the early conflicts round Plataea, fought zealously against Athens. Though slightly estranged from Sparta after the peace of Nicias, they never abated their enmity against their neighbours. They rendered good service at Syracuse and Arginusae; but their greatest achievement was the decisive victory at Delium over the flower of the Athenian army (424), in which both their heavy infantry and their cavalry displayed unusual efficiency.
About this time the Boeotian League comprised eleven groups of sovereign cities and associated townships, each of which elected one Boeotarch or minister of war and foreign affairs, contributed sixty delegates to the federal council at Thebes, and supplied a contingent of about a thousand foot and a hundred horse to the federal army. A safeguard against undue encroachment on the part of the central government was provided in the councils of the individual cities, to which all important questions of policy had to be submitted for ratification. These local councils, to which the propertied classes alone were eligible, were subdivided into four sections, resembling the _prytaneis_ of the Athenian council, which took it in turns to take previous cognizance of all new measures.[1]
Boeotia took a prominent part in the war of the Corinthian League against Sparta, especially at Haliartus and Coronea (395-394). This change of policy seems due mainly to the national resentment against foreign interference. Yet disaffection against Thebes was now growing rife, and Sparta fostered this feeling by stipulating for the complete independence of all the cities in the peace of Antalcidas (387). In 374 Pelopidas restored the Theban dominion. Boeotian contingents fought in all the campaigns of Epaminondas, and in the later wars against Phocis (356-346); while in the dealings with Philip of Macedon the federal cities appear merely as the tools of Thebes. The federal constitution was also brought into accord with the democratic governments now prevalent throughout the land. The sovereign power was vested in the popular assembly, which elected the Boeotarchs (between seven and twelve in number), and sanctioned all laws. After the battle of Chaeroneia, in which the Boeotian heavy infantry once again distinguished itself, the land never rose again to prosperity. The destruction of Thebes by Alexander (335) seems to have paralysed the political energy of the Boeotians, though it led to an improvement in the federal constitution, by which each city received an equal vote. Henceforth they never pursued an independent policy, but followed the lead of protecting powers. Though the old military training and organization continued, the people proved unable to defend the frontiers, and the land became more than ever the "dancing-ground of Ares." Though enrolled for a short time in the Aetolian League (about 245 B.C.) Boeotia was generally loyal to Macedonia, and supported its later kings against Rome. In return for the excesses of the democracies Rome dissolved the league, which, however, was allowed to revive under Augustus, and merged with the other central Greek federations in the Achaean synod. The death-blow to the country's prosperity was given by the devastations during the first Mithradatic War.
Save for a short period of prosperity under the Frankish rulers of Athens (1205-1310), who repaired the _katavothra_ and fostered agriculture, Boeotia long continued in a state of decay, aggravated by occasional barbarian incursions. The first step towards the country's recovery was not until 1895, when the outlets of Copais were again put into working order. Since then the northern plain has been largely reclaimed for agriculture, and the natural riches of the whole land are likely to develop under the influence of the railway to Athens. Boeotia is at present a Nomos with Livadia (the old Turkish capital) for its centre; the other surviving townships are quite unimportant. The population (65,816 in 1907) is largely Albanian.
AUTHORITIES.--Thuc. iv. 76-101; Xenophon, _Hellenica_, iii.-vii.; Strabo, pp. 400-412; Pausanias ix.; Theopompus (or Cratippus) in the _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, vol. v. (London, 1908), No. 842, col. 12; W.M. Leake, _Travels in Northern Greece_, chs. xi.-xix. (London, 1835); H.F. Tozer, _Geography of Greece_ (London, 1873), pp. 233-238; W. Rhys Roberts, _The Ancient Boeotians_ (Cambridge, 1895); E.A. Freeman. _Federal Government_ (ed. 1893, London), ch. iv. S 2; B.V. Head, _Historia Numorum_, pp. 291 sqq. (Oxford, 1887); W. Larfeld, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Boeoticarum_ (Berlin, 1883). (See also THEBES.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Thucydides (v. 38), in speaking of the "four councils of the
Boeotians," is referring to the plenary bodies in the various states.
BOER, the Dutch form of the Eng. "boor," in its original signification of husbandman (Ger. _Bauer_), a name given to the Dutch farmers of South Africa, and especially to the Dutch population of the Transvaal and Orange River States. (See SOUTH AFRICA and TRANSVAAL.)
BOERHAAVE, HERMANN (1668-1738), Dutch physician and man of science, was born at Voorhout near Leiden on the 31st of December 1668. Entering the university of Leiden he took his degree in philosophy in 1689, with a dissertation _De distinctione mentis a corpore_, in which he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Hobbes and Spinoza. He then turned to the study of medicine, in which he graduated in 1693 at Harderwyck in Guelderland. In 1701 he was appointed lecturer on the institutes of medicine at Leiden; in his inaugural discourse, _De commendando Hippocratis studio_, he recommended to his pupils that great physician as their model. In 1709 he became professor of botany and medicine, and in that capacity he did good service, not only to his own university, but also to botanical science, by his improvements and additions to the botanic garden of Leiden, and by the publication of numerous works descriptive of new species of plants. In 1714, when he was appointed rector of the university, he succeeded Govert Bidloo (1649-1713) in the chair of practical medicine, and in this capacity he had the merit of introducing the modern system of clinical instruction. Four years later he was appointed also to the chair of chemistry. In 1728 he was elected into the French Academy of Sciences, and two years later into the Royal Society of London. In 1729 declining health obliged him to resign the chairs of chemistry and botany; and he died, after a lingering and painful illness, on the 23rd of September 1738 at Leiden. His genius so raised the fame of the university of Leiden, especially as a school of medicine, that it became a resort of strangers from every part of Europe. All the princes of Europe sent him disciples, who found in this skilful professor not only an indefatigable teacher, but an affectionate guardian. When Peter the Great went to Holland in 1715, to instruct himself in maritime affairs, he also took lessons from Boerhaave. His reputation was not confined to Europe; a Chinese mandarin wrote him a letter directed "To the illustrious Boerhaave, physician in Europe," and it reached him in due course.
His principal works are--_Institutiones medicae_ (Leiden, 1708); _Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis_ (Leiden, 1709), on which his pupil and assistant, Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772) published a commentary in 5 vols.; and _Elementa chemiae_ (Paris, 1724).
BOETHUS, a sculptor of the Hellenistic age, a native of Carthage (or possibly Chalcedon). His date cannot be accurately fixed, but was probably the 2nd century B.C. He was noted for his representations of children, in dealing with whom earlier Greek art had not been very successful; and especially for a group representing a boy struggling with a goose, of which several copies survive in museums.
BOETIUS (or BOETHIUS), ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS (c. A.D. 480-524), Roman philosopher and statesman, described by Gibbon as "the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman." The historians of the day give us but imperfect records or make unsatisfactory allusions. Later chroniclers indulged in the fictitious and the marvellous, and it is almost exclusively from his own books that trustworthy information can be obtained. There is considerable diversity among authorities as to his name. One editor of his _De Consolatione_, Bertius, thinks that he bore the praenomen of Flavius, but there is no authority for this supposition. His father was Flavius Manlius Boetius, and it is probable that the Flavius Boetius, the praetorian prefect who was put to death in A.D. 455 by order of Valentinian III., was his grandfather, but these facts do not prove that he also had the praenomen of Flavius. Many of the earlier editions inserted the name of Torquatus, but it is not found in any of the best manuscripts. The last name is commonly written Boethius, from the idea that it is connected with the Greek [Greek: Boaethos]; but the best manuscripts agree in reading Boetius.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bisharin" to "Bohea"Chapter XIX: Part 19
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