Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/518

BEL his early attempts in verse attracted attention, and some wealthy citizens removed him from the bakery, and took charge of his education. Bellamy repaid their liberality by his proficiency, and soon became one of the most popular poets of his country. Unfortunately his life was but too soon terminated for his fame, as he died before he attained the age of twenty-eight, on 11th March, 1786. He had a fine imagination, a rich vein of feeling, and a spirit full of patriotic fervour.—J. F. W.  BELLAMY,, an American theologian, author of a work entitled "True Religion Delineated," was born at New Cheshire in 1719; died in 1790  BELLANGE,, born at Chalons, 1610, was a disciple of Henriet and Vonet, but, after all, an indifferent engraver.  BELLANGER,, a noted French architect, born in Paris in 1744, became chief architect to Count d'Artois, afterwards Charles X. He had just erected for that prince a beautiful manor-house in the Bois de Boulogne, and was on the high road to fortune when the Revolution broke out, and spoiled his prospects by sending him to prison. During the time of the Empire, his neat and tasteful style of design procured him considerable employment, his most celebrated effort being the cupola in cast-iron of the corn-market at Paris. Died in 1818.—J. S., G.  BELLARDI,, an Italian botanist and physician, born at Cigliano in 1741, studied medicine at Turin, and assisted Allioni in the publication of his work, the Flora Pedemontana. He was appointed to the charge of the botanical garden at Turin, and from his admirable management of that institution, and the use he made of his position in other respects, contributed greatly to the diffusion of a taste for natural history, and especially botany. His published works in Italian and Latin consist of "Botanical Observations, with an Appendix to the Flora Pedemontana," 1788; "Appendix ad Floram Pedemontanam," 1791; with other botanical writings, including a "Discourse on the different species of Rhubarb cultivated in Piedmont," 1806, and a description of a "Means of Feeding Silk-worms when mulberry leaves cannot be had," 1787; "Observations on a Solitary Worm (Tænia) with which one of his patients was troubled," 1792; and "Experiments on the Substitution of Walnut Oil for Olive Oil in Woollen Manufactures," 1812. He died at Turin in 1828.—W. S. D.  BELLARINI,, an Italian theologian, professor of theology at Pavia and afterwards at Rome; born at Castelnuovo; died at Milan in 1630. He published "Praxis ad omnes veritates evangelicas cum certitudine comprobandas;" and "Speculum humanæ atque divinæ sapientiæ," &c.  BELLARMINO or BELLARMINE, , one of the greatest men of the catholic church, and the greatest of her polemical divines, was born at Montepulciano in Tuscany, 4th October, 1542. In early boyhood he gave proof of decided talent, and his father destined him to a political career, that he might retrieve the fallen fortunes of his house. But his religious convictions carried him towards the church; and after entering the university of Padua in his seventeenth year, he was the next year admitted into the order of the jesuits, then under Lainez in its youthful vigour and renown. In 1569 he was sent by the general of the order to teach theology at Louvain, and at Ghent in 1570 he was ordained a priest by Bishop Cornelius Jansen. In Louvain his popularity as a preacher and professor soon became so great as to attract protestants from Holland and England to listen to his eloquence. Specimens of his sermons are found in his "Conciones Habitæ Lovanii," and his "Hebrew Grammar," Romæ, 1578, shows his mastery of that ancient tongue, and his desire to present it simply and invitingly to his pupils. His command over the Latin tongue was so uncommon, that few erasures appear in his MSS.; the epithets he selected were rarely exchanged or recalled in his oral addresses; and the sinuosities of syntax never bewildered him so as to produce confusion, embarassment, or repetition in the delivery of his thoughts. It was at Louvain that he prosecuted those studies, the ripe fruits of which appeared in his "De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis," &c., Romæ, 1613. On his return to Italy after seven years' residence in the Low Countries, Gregory XIII. appointed him to lecture on polemics in the newly-founded Collegium Romanum. The result of these labours appeared some years afterwards in the far-famed "Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adversus hujus temporis haereticos," the first two volumes of which immense work was published at Rome in 1581-82, and it was reprinted at Ingolstadt, Lyons, Venice, and Prague. These volumes exhaust the controversy on all points as it was known in those days, and they are distinguished by their fulness, candour, and lucid arrangement,—the absence of disguise and evasion, and the broad and unfaltering statement of theological dogmas. They present catholic doctrine in such an unmodified type or form, that some later popish controversialists are said to have surmised that their cause was damaged by Bellarmine's advocacy. For many years afterwards he was uniformly taken by protestant advocates as the champion of the papacy, and a vindication of protestantism regularly took the shape of an answer to Bellarmine. No doubt he presents a truer picture of catholic opinion in the main, and as against protestants, than either Bossuet, Mohler, or Wiseman, in whose treatises the personal peculiarities and mental characteristics of the authors may be distinctly traced. In 1589 he was sent into France by Sixtus V.—as one of an embassy to treat with the League—as a polemic in the train of the legate. Clement VIII. elevated him to the purple in 1599, and three years afterwards the archbishopric of Capua was conferred upon him. His efforts to reform his clergy, high and low, were unceasing; and his ideal of a bishop may be read in his address to his nephew, who had been raised to the episcopate—"Admonitio ad Episcopum Theanensem, nepotem suum." Time to his convictions, when Paul V. wished to have the cardinal constantly in Rome as a counsellor, he resigned his bishopric. He stood by the church in its conflicts with the civil powers in Venice, France, and England, and sharply handled King James I. When health failed him in his old age, he retired for some time to his native place, and then returned to the jesuit college of St. Andrew at Rome, where he died on the 27th September, 1621. His being a jesuit, and his well-known probity, stood in the way of his election to the chair of St. Peter at the elevation of Leo XI. and Paul V., and his canonization for similar reasons was obstructed. He trode sometimes on delicate ground, as may be seen in the offence which his views on the temporal powers of the pontiff (De Romano Pontifice) gave to Pope Sixtus V. on the one hand, as he was not supposed to go far enough in the assertion of direct papal claim, and to Bossuet, by going, as was imagined, too far on the other hand in defence of ultramontanism in his reply to William Barclay of Aberdeen. Bellarmine was small in stature, but carried a look of independence. His character was unstained by any of those vices which have so often disgraced the priesthood. Bellarmine left an autobiography which is rarely to be met with, and his life has been written by Fuligati, Rome, 1624; Bartoli, Rome, 1677; and by Frizon, Nancy, 1708. Bellarmine wrote some devotional treatises—"De Ascensione Mentis ad Deum," "De Arte Boni Moriendi," "De Aeterna Felicitate Sanctorum," "De Gemitu Columbæ"—all of them indicating deep seriousness of thought, and showing his attachment to several points of the theology of St. Augustine. The best edition of his works is that of Cologne, in seven volumes folio.—J. E.  BELLART,, a celebrated French barrister, born at Paris in 1761; died in 1826. In the revolutionary period he conducted the defence of several famous personages, and acquired a first-rate reputation as an impassioned and impressive speaker. In 1814 he signalized himself among the enemies of Napoleon, characterizing the emperor, whom he had formerly treated to the most fulsome adulations, as the most frightful tyrant that had ever oppressed the human species. The Bourbons rewarded him with various honours, and the office of procurator-general.—J. S., G. <section end="518H" /> <section begin="518I" />BELLAVIA, M. A., born about 1690, a small imitator of Pietro da Cortona. <section end="518I" /> <section begin="518J" />BELLAY, flourished about 1817 His subjects were chiefly stables and horse-markets. It is singular that our English horse painters have not tried a horse fair, which might become a parliament of equine portraits.—W. T. <section end="518J" /> <section begin="518Zcontin" />BELLAY,, a French physician, was born on the 26th August, 1762, at Lent, near Bourg-en-Bresse. Before the first French revolution he established himself in Lyons, and in 1791 published a small pamphlet on the cure of ruptures; but on the capture of that city by the army of the convention, he was forced to quit his home, and taking refuge in the military service, was employed in the army of the Alps, and in that of Italy. Subsequently returning to Lyons, Bellay resumed the practice of medicine there, and in 1810 was appointed first physician to the hospitals of Lyons. He continued to occupy this position until 1822, when, yielding to the <section end="518Zcontin" />