Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/789

BRE it is worth looking at. When Bremond got out of prison, he made his way to the Levant, and no more is heard of him.

The publication of memoires under the name of remarkable persons, has been at all times the disgrace of French literature, and we find our poor bookmaker in the way of his trade thus employed. Some Guzman d'Alfarache of the press had published what he called the Memoires of Madame Mancini, an impudent forgery, but which sold, or seemed likely to sell; and straightway Gabriel de Bremond is in the field with the "Veritables Memoires de Madame Mancini, connétable de Colonna, écrits par elle-meme." Our hero's was the more popular book, probably because it was the more skilful forgery. The scandal of Charles II.'s court supplied him with the subject of a novel which told—under feigned names, to which, however, a key was soon supplied—the loves of the English king and Lady Castlemain. He published several other novels, but there seems no object in recording the names, though some of them are still in request with the collectors of rare books.—J. A. D.  BREMSER,, a distinguished German physician and naturalist, born at Wertheim-on-the-Maine in 1767. In 1801 he exerted himself greatly to promote the introduction of vaccination into Austria, and published an essay on the subject, followed in 1806 by a memoir entitled "Vaccination considered in its relation to the interests of the State." From 1806 Bremser devoted himself principally to the study of the entozoa or intestinal worms, and his reputation rests principally upon the works published by him on this curious and interesting branch of zoology. Of these the most important is his "Zoological and Physiological Treatise on the Intestinal Worms of Man," Vienna, 1819. This work is still of considerable value, both to the physician and naturalist; but it will probably soon become only historically important, as great advances have lately been made in our knowledge of the natural history of the entozoa. In 1824 Bremser also published "Icones hilminthum, systema Rudolphi entozoologicum illustrantes." Died in 1827.—W. S. D.  BRENDAN,, of Clonfert, patron of Kerry. There are few names connected with the ancient ecclesiastical history of Ireland more celebrated throughout Europe than that of Saint Brendan—the legend of whose marvellous seven years' voyage in the Atlantic, for a long period superseded the more classical wanderings of Ulysses, and was the wonder and delight of many generations of men. If another, perhaps still more celebrated Irish legend—that of St. Patrick's purgatory—has been made memorable by the magnificent and immortal transformation it underwent in the first and greatest of christian epics—the Purgatorio of Dante, as well as the more direct use made of it by Calderon in his El Purgatorio de San Patricio—the Legend of St. Brendan may boast of a more enduring interest, and a more unfailing belief; since we read in Spanish history of an expedition being fitted out so late as the year 1721, and despatched from the Canaries in search of the island supposed to have been discovered by the Irish saint in the first half of the sixth century. Indeed, so strong was the belief in the actual existence of this shadowy region entertained alike by Spaniards and Portuguese, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, that the treaty by which the crown of Portugal ceded to that of Castile its right to the conquest of the Canaries, included among the number, the island of St. Brendan, to which it gives the very appropriate name of the Unreached. Each country, in its adoption of the legend, added, as might be expected, something of its own peculiar traditions to the story; the Spaniards believing for a long period that the island of San Borondon, as they called it, was the place whither Don Roderic retired after the fatal battle of the Guadalete; the Portuguese assigning it as the asylum of their king, Don Sebastian, and on their first discovery of the Indies, believing that region to be the island of St. Brendan they had so long sought for in vain.

The wide diffusion of this legend, and the important influence it has had in keeping alive the spirit of adventure and inquiry in the maritime countries of Western Europe, entitle it to mention in a work like this. A farther investigation of its details would be out of place, as possessing an interest peculiarly antiquarian and ecclesiastical. The main facts of the legend are considered by many cautious writers to have some historical foundation. It is supposed that, whether from the tradition preserved from the earliest period thoughout Europe of the existence of a great western region—an Atlantis, as Plato calls it—or from some other and more mysterious cause, St. Brendan provided for a longer voyage than was usual at that remote period with sea-faring people of the west and south of Ireland—that he journeyed thus several days, perhaps weeks, until falling in with the gulf-stream, his little bark was wafted to the coast of the New England states, thus anticipating by about five centuries the supposed discovery of America by the Welsh prince, Madoc, in 1169. St. Brendan, after his return from his wonderful voyage, founded various monastic and educational establishments, particularly his great monastery of Clonfert. He also founded the nunnery of Annadown, over which he placed his sister Briga. It was in this establishment he died, in the ninety-fourth year of his age, on the 16th of May, 577—the day on which his festival is still observed by the dioceses of Kerry and of Clonfert.

In Ireland, at least in modern times, the island of St. Brendan is better known under its poetical name of Hy-Brasail, than under the venerable name of its supposed discoverer. It is under this latter aspect it is alluded to in the poems of Moore, Griffin, and others. A living writer has endeavoured to revive an interest in the more ancient and authentic legend, by his poem entitled the Voyage of St. Brendan, which is based upon this story. MS. copies of the original Latin legend are to be found in the principal British and continental libraries—the Imperial library of Paris alone possessing eleven or twelve of them, each differing in some slight degree from the other. One of these with a prose, as well as a metrical translation in the Romance language, has been published in Paris, as mentioned below. A picturesque version, in old English, is given in Caxton's Golden Legende, London, 1483. There are also versions in Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and most of the continental languages. To those who take an interest in the subject, the following list of books, &c., may be useful—"La Legende Latine de S. Brandaines, avec une traduction en prose, et en poesie Romanes," publiée par Achille Jubinal, Paris, 1836; "The Lyfe of Saynt Brandon," in Caxton's Golden Legende, London, 1483, a copy of which is in the British museum. A transcript of this life of Saint Brendan was made by Mr. M'Carthy (the author of the poem above mentioned), and published by him in the Dublin University Magazine for May, 1852. The Codex Kilkeniensis (so called) in Marsh's library, Dublin, contains a curious but imperfect version of the Latin legend. The Voyage of St. Brendan, in M'Carthy's poems, Dublin, 1850; London, 1857; Dublin, 1858. Some interesting remarks on the legend will be found in the late Rev. Cæsar Otway's Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley, published in Dublin.—D. F. M.  BRENNAN,, M.D., was born at Ballahide in the county of Carlow, of a respectable family, but impaired fortune. He was educated to the medical profession, in which he acquired a reputation not only in England but abroad, as the first person who brought into practice the use of turpentine in puerperal disorders. Previously to 1812 he was a contributor to the Irish Magazine, conducted by the notorious Walter Cox, with whom he then quarrelled, and set up a rival periodical under the title of the Milesian Magazine, which lived under the auspices of the government till 1825. He struck out for himself a new line in satire and censoriousness—a warfare of ridicule on the Roman catholic leaders of the day, and a ludicrous scurrility on the members of his own profession. Dr. Brennan was an excellent classical scholar, a man of considerable talents and much caustic humour, and his bon-mots were long current in society. It is to be regretted that he turned these powers, natural and acquired, to very unworthy uses. He died in Dublin on the 29th July, 1830, in the sixty-second year of his age.—J. F. W.  BRENNER,, a Swedish antiquary, born in 1647; died in 1717; author of "Thes. numm. Sueco-Gothicorum."  BRENNER,, a Swedish historian, who formed part of the embassy which Charles XI. sent into Persia; author of an "Account of the Persian Expedition of Peter the Great."  BRENNER,, born at Weber in 1659, the earliest Swedish authoress, and a greatly-admired poetess of her time. She married Assessor Elias Brenner, and was the mother of fifteen children. Her works were published in 2 vols., 1713-32. She died in 1730.—M. H.  BRENNUS, a celebrated chief of the Senonian Gauls, settled in the north of Italy, who is said to have flourished about 389 . On the invitation of Aruns, a citizen of Clusium, who had some private feud to avenge, he wasted the country around Clusium, and laid siege to the city itself. The inhabitants <section end="789Zcontin" />