Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/706

BOM Physical Education into French; of this two editions appeared in Paris in 1818 and 1830.—W. S. D.  BOMPIANO,, an Italian litterateur, a jesuit, born in 1612; died in 1675. Author of "A History of Gregory XIII.," Rome, 1655; a work on Latin style; a "History of Christianity," &c.—J. G.  BOMTEMPO or BONTEMPO, J. D., a pianist and composer, was born at Lisbon in 1781; the date of his death is uncertain. In 1806 he went to Paris, where he was well esteemed as a player and as a teacher. He spent some years in England, revisited Paris in 1818, and finally returned to his native city in 1820, where he organized a philharmonic society. He wrote a requiem which is much praised, and some concertos, sonatas, and lighter pieces for his instrument.—G. A. M.  BON DE SAINT HILAIRE,, a learned Frenchman, born at Montpellier, 1678; died in 1761. He was member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and of the Royal Society of London. He ranged through almost every branch of human knowledge, jurisprudence, the fine arts, physics, natural history, &c. His memoirs on different subjects are to be found in the collections of various societies. His work on the spider, with reference to the manufacture of silk, has been translated into all the European languages, but is of very little practical value.—J. G.  BONACOSSI, the name of four sovereigns of Mantua:—

, successively prefect, captain, and sovereign of Mantua, and by turns a leader of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; died in 1293. While prefect he assassinated his colleague, Ottonello Zanicalli; and after the murder, conducted himself so artfully that the people intrusted him with the duty of avenging it. During his reign of eighteen years, he was generally successful in his encounters with the captains of Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza.

, son and successor of the preceding, a cruel and avaricious prince, who wrested the sovereignty from his brother, Taino, persecuted the Ghibelline party that his father had left in power, and was expelled from the city in 1299 by his nephew and successor, Bottesella. He survived three years at Padua in extreme poverty.

, nephew and successor of the preceding. Until the arrival of Henry VII. in Italy he was at the head of the Ghibelline party. He died in 1310.

, brother of the preceding, obtained from Henry VII. the title of imperial vicar, and being one of the most skilful politicians, as well as one of the greatest captains of his age, under that title contrived to conduct himself as an absolute sovereign. He perished in defending his palace against the retainers of Phillipino de Gonzaga, a prince whom his worthless son, Francesco, had outraged in the grossest manner. Francesco was killed in the tower of Castellero in 1319.—J. S., G.  BONAFOUS,, a celebrated Piedmontese agriculturist, director of the Agricultural Institution of Turin, was born at Turin in 1794, and died in 1852. He was descended from a French family that took refuge in Piedmont during the religious wars of the continent. In 1814 he introduced the Bell and Lancasterian systems of teaching into Piedmont. He did much to encourage agriculture, by giving prizes, and by aiding institutions which had for their object the advancement of that art. His works are—"On the Cultivation of the Mulberry, and the Care of Silk-Worms;" "Monographs on Cuscuta, Maize, Polygonum Tinctorium, and Chloride of Calcium;" "Account of Swiss Agriculture;" besides various articles in the Revue Encyclopédique, and in the Annales de l'Agriculture Française.—J. H. B.  BONALD,, vicomte de; born in the department of Aveyron in 1753; died, after a life of some trouble (for he was an emigré), at the place of his birth on 23d November, 1840. Bonald belonged to that reactionary school which, under his guidance and that of d'Eckstein and Count Joseph de Maistre, attempted, after the Restoration of the Bourbons, to establish absolutism in government, and unity or intolerance in religion, on what they considered the sure basis of speculative first principles. One of the leading intellectual characteristics of French writers, and of the French people in general, is an excessive fondness for logic, and a tendency to blind trust in the results of any formal process, no matter how absurd these results may be or how inconsistent with every sound human intuition. In this country we have had, in the course of its history, many practical advocates of absolutism, but exceedingly few Sir Robert Filmers; nor did these few ever make much impression on our philosophy. Bonald is a good specimen of a large and popular class of writers in France. Acute, distinct, and highly accomplished, the merits and apparent precision of his style, as well as his undoubted genius and good faith, gave him repute and an influential following,—notwithstanding that his first principles were untenable, and his conclusions impracticable and bizarre. To ordinary minds, social and religious doctrines might seem sufficiently remote from an abstract theory of language; such, nevertheless, is the point in which Bonald's long series of deductions find their origin. His doctrine as to language is what we would term in this country, the lowest possible; it is, that words contain all conceivable thought, or, rather, that they are the masters of thought. The consequences of this postulate are evident enough, and assuredly they sufficiently subserve his main social dogmas; for if man has nothing in his thought or intellect beyond what his speech reveals to him, it is very clear that he is shut up within the conditions or the power of the language he uses; and that neither religious, political, nor social maxims or forms, except such as are transmitted to him and in action around him, can be rightly conceived by any one. Bonald avoids the unmitigated materialism consequent on this doctrine—(with materialism in any form he could have no sympathy)—by asserting that language is of miraculous origin, or the immediate as contradistinguished from the mediate, gift of God. Hence, all speculation and practice in this world—everything must be governed by a pure and absolute theocracy; man has no spontaneity, his reason no sphere of freedom; he has simply to act and think as controlled. To this first principle as to language, the author adds another, which he asserts to be the necessary form of every logical result:—everything, whether fact or thought, belongs to one of the three essential categories—cause, means, effect. In religion we therefore must have the three terms, God, Mediator, and Man, and we can have no other; in physical science we have correspondingly, prime mover, movement, effect or matter; in social or political science, these terms become, power or government, ministers or the executive, the people as subjects. It is not difficult to discern whither this new refinement inevitably leads.—We cannot follow De Bonald farther; but we may be permitted to repeat our surprise that, at this period of the world, abstractions so artificial and farfetched as these, could have obtained credit as a rational basis of action. But France is altogether a puzzle. She now bends the knee before theories not so defensible as even Bonald's. She claims a high place in civilization, and yet her practical life and European action are shaped by transparent sophisms like these! Few are now sanguine enough to think of the future of that country with cheerfulness or exceeding hope.—De Bonald's chief treatise, the "Theorie du Pouvoir Social," occupies three volumes; his entire works fill up a much larger space.—J. P. N.  * BONALD,, cardinal, archbishop of Lyons, born at Milhau, in the department of Aveyron in 1787. After completing his studies at the seminary of Saint Sulpice, he became secretary to the archbishop of Besançon, whom he accompanied on a secret embassy to Rome, and on his return was appointed grand-vicar and archdeacon of the cathedral of Chartres. In 1823 he was raised to the see of Puy, which he occupied till 1839, when he was promoted to the archbishopric of Lyons. Two years afterwards he was created cardinal. As a zealous churchman, he has frequently been embroiled in the politico-ecclesiastical troubles of the last thirty years of French history, but always in a manner honourable to his uprightness and consistency.—J. S., G. <section end="706H" /> <section begin="706I" />BONAMY,, a French historian, born in 1694; died at Paris in 1770. Author of a great number of curious memoirs relative to the antiquities of Paris, published in the collections of the Academy of Inscriptions.—J. G. <section end="706I" /> <section begin="706Jnop" />BONANNI,, a jesuit born at Rome, January 16, 1638; died March 30, 1725. He was the author of several antiquarian works, the most important of which is the "Gabinetto Armonico," a singular collection of 136 engravings of musical instruments, with letterpress descriptions, published at Rome in 1722, 4to. The Biog. Univ. mentions an edition in 1716, but it is evidently an error. The Abbé Cerutti edited a second edition of the "Gabinetto Armonico" in 1776. Bonanni also wrote "Numismata pontificum Romanorum," from Martin X. to Innocent XII., folio, 1699.—E. F. R. <section end="706Jnop" />