Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/487

 BELMONT

425

BEMBO

Outside the city, on the slopes of Mount Misnea is the church of SS. Vittore e Corona, erected by the Crusaders of Feltre after the First Crusade.

The Diocese of Belluno contains 72 parishes, 280 churches, chapels, and oratories, 137 secular priests, 22 regulars, 22 seminarists, 5 lay brothers, 29 sisters, and a population of 127,500. Feltre has 17 parishes, 100 churches, chapels, and oratories, 48 secular priests, 2.5 regulars, 56 seminarists, 2 schools for boys and 2 for girls, and a population of 48,000.

Cappelletti, Le chiese dltalia (.Venice, 1844); Annuario

^•^^ (i9oe)- U. Bexigni.

Belmont, FR.\^Nfois Vachon de, fifth superior of the Sulpicians at Montreal, b. at Grenoble, France, 1645; d. 1732. He went to Canada in 1680 and was appointed a missionary among the Indians of La Montague; he filled this position until 1700, when he succeeded Dollier de Casson as supenor of the order. He erected at his own expense Fort de La Montague on the site of the present Grand S^minaire. built the old seminary which still exists in the street of Notre Dame, and began the construction of the Lachine canal. Among his wTitings are: "Histoire du Can- ada", printed in the "Collection de m^moires et de relations sur Thistoire ancienne du Canada", pub- lished by the Historical Society of Quebec; "Histoire de I'eau-de-vie en Canada", printed in the above- mentioned "Collection"; " Oraison funebre de la Mere Bourgeoys", quoted by Faillon in "Vie de la Soeur Bourgeoys", 11,88-98; " Eloges de quelques personnes mortes en odeur de saintet^ a Montreal ' ', and a num- ber of memoirs still in manuscript. Mention should also be made of the funeral oration of Bishop Mont- morency-Laval, first Bishop of Quebec, delivered at Montreal, June, 1708.

Bertrand, Bibliotheqiie SiUpicienne ou hist. liU. de la c. de Saint-Sulpice (Paris, 1900). j^ FOURNET.

Belson, Thom-\s, Venerable, martyr, b. at Brill in Oxfordshire, England, date uncertain; d. 5 July, 1589. He was at the college at Reims in 1584, and in 1589 was arrested at the Catherine Wheel Inn, near Balliol College, Oxford, with his confessor George Nicols, Richard Ya.xley, a priest, and Prichard, a servant. They were sent to London, whence, after examination before Walsingham and repeated tor- tures in Bridewell and the Tower, they were sent back to Oxford to be tried. Belson was found guilty of felony for assisting the priests, and was executed with his companions at Oxford, He suffered after the priests and, kissing the dead bodies of his pastors, begged the intercession of their happy souls that he might have the grace to imitate their courage and constancy.

Yepes, Hieloria Particular de la persecwMn de Inglaterra (Madrid. 1599); Challoner. Memoirs; Knox, Douay Diaries; Stapleton. Post-Reformation Catholic Missions in Oxford- shire (London, 1906). ^ ^

Bede Camm.

Belsunce de Castelmoron, Henri FRANfois Xavier de, Bishop of Marseilles, b. 1671 at the Chateau de la Force, in P^rigord; d. 1755 at Mar- seilles. His father was Armand de Belsunce, Mar- quis de Castelmoron and his mother Anne de Caumont de Lausun. He studied classics in Paris at the Col- lege de Clermont or Louis-le-grand and then entered the Society of Jesus. In 1699 he left the Society to become Vicar-General of Agen. The " Vie de Suzanne de Foix", his aunt, was written by him and published while at Agen, 1709. That same year he was made Bishop of Marseilles. The heroic charity he dis- played during the plague of 1720 and 1721 has made his name a household word and won for him the title of "Good Bishop". When the plague broke out a large fleet was taking the Princess of Orieans to Italy where she was to marry the Duke of Mo<lena. The suite of the princess took to flight, and with them all the notables of the city, but Bishop Bel-

sunce remained with a few heroic friends, and to- gether they battled against the plague with heroic self-sacrifice and devotion, till they conquered it. In his address to the Assembly of the Clergy in 1725, Belsunce stated that more than 250 priests and religious perished in their mission of Chris- tian charity. But he was the soul of the res- cuers and the praises bestowed on liim by Pope and Millevoye ("Essay on Man" and "Belsunce ou la peste de Marseille") are not above his real merits. The King of France offered him, by way of recogni- tion, the See of Laon to which was attached the first ecclesiastical peerage of the realm and afterwards the metropolitan See of Bordeaux. Belsunce re- fused both and contented himself with accepting the palhum sent him by Clement XII. During his incumbency Belsunce fought against another plague called Jansenism. He attended, 1727, the Synod of Embrun w'here Soanen was condemned. He opposed with all his power Colbert of Pamiers. In spite of the protest of the Parliament of Provence, he in- structed his priests to refuse absolution to the appellants against the Bull "Unigenitus". Nearly all Ills pastoral instructions are against Jansenism. Belsunce was a writer of no mean power. Besides the "Vie de Suzanne de Foix" (Agen, 1709), and his pastoral instructions, we have from liis pen " Le combat chr^tien" translated from St. Augustin's "De .\gone Christiano" and "L'art de bien mourir" translated from Bellarmine's "De Arte Bene Mori- endi", also "Antiquitfe de I'Eglise de Marseille" (Marseilles, 1747-51). All these writings have been published by Jauffret under the title of "ffiuvres de Belsunce" (Metz, 1822).

Barbet, Eloge de Belsunce (Paris, 1821); Rohrbacher, Histoire unirerselle (Paris, 1885), XI; Berengier, Vie de Mgr. de Belsunce {Paris, 1887).

J. F. SOLLIER.

Belz. See Chelm.

Belzoni, Giamb.\ttista, an Egyptian explorer, b. at Padua, Italy, in 1778; d. at Gato, Africa, 3 Dec, 1823. His father was a barber, and intended his son to follow that trade, but the boy, who was a born traveller, left home at the age of fifteen, and after some wanderings settled down at Rome, where he began the study of hydraulics. Whether or not he became a monk is uncertain, but, at any rate, he quitted Rome in 1798 and travelled as far as Holland. Having returned to Italy, he again departed in 1803 and travelled through the Briti.sh Isles, being finally obliged, by reduced circumstances, to secure an engagement in pantomime. Lea\'ing England, he went to Egypt, where, at the request of the pasha, he undertook a scheme for raising the waters of the Nile at Zubra, but the work was later abandoned by the authorities, and he turned his attention to un- eartliing the colossal bust of Memnon now in the British Museum. Having accomplished this difficult task, he ascended the Nile, and besides many other important Egyptological investigations, made his famous discover^' of the mummy of Psammethis. Again setting out from Cairo, he explored the pjTa- mid of Chephren, travelled through Fayum, visited Lake Moeris and the ruins of Arsinoe, penetrated into Libya, and reached the oasis of El-Cassar. In 1819 he went to England, whence, after a stay of a few years, he set out for further travels in Africa, intending to explore Timbuktu and the sources of the Niger, and to visit Benin and Abyssinia; but having landed, he was attacked by a fever, and died. He printed a narrative of his journeys at London, in 1821, and his original drawings of "The Tombs of the Kings" were published by his widow, at London, in 1829. Edwin Ryan.

Bema. See Ambo.

Bembo, Pietho, a famous Italian scholar and Cardinal, b. of a noble family at Venice, 20 May,