Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/850

BENEDICT. ative. He unfortunately yielded himself to the guidance of Cardinal Coscia, a greedy, unscrupulous personage, who greatly abused the confidence reposed in him. Benedict always exhibited great moderation in politics, and an honorable love of peace, and was instrumental in bringing about the Seville Treaty of 1729. During this pontificate, a remarkably large number of saints, chiefly from the monastic orders, including Pope Gregory VII. and John of Nepomuk, were added to the calendar. The name Benedict XIII. was also claimed by the Antipope Pedro de Luna (q.v.) from 1394 to 1409. — (Prospero Lambertini), Pope 1740-58 — the most worthy to he remembered of all the pontiffs so named. He was born in Bologna in 1675. Before his elevation, he had distinguished himself by extensive learning, and by ability in the several offices of promotor fidei Bishop of Ancona (1727), cardinal (1728), and Archbishop of Bologna (1731). Succeeding Clement XII., he began his pontificate in 1740, with several wise and conciliatory measures; founded chairs of physic, chemistry, and mathematics in Rome; revised the Academy of Bologna, and instituted others; dug out the obelisk in the Campus Martius, constructed fountains, rebuilt churches; caused the best English and French books to be translated into Italian; and in many other ways encouraged literature and science. His piety was sincere, enlightened, and tolerant, and his doctrines were well exemplified in his practice. He was extremely anxious that the morals of the clergy should be untainted: and, to that effect, established a board of examiners for all candidates to vacant sees. In proof of his toleration, he showed the frankest kindness to all strangers visiting his capital, whatever the nature of their religious opinions. The only accusation brought against him by his Roman subjects was "that he wrote and studied too much, but ruled too little," or left affairs of business too much in the hands of Cardinal Valentine. After a painful illness, Benedict XIV. died May 3, 1758. His most important works are that On the Diocesan Synod: On the Sacrifice of the Mass; and On the Beatification, and Canonization of Saints, a standard work, of which a part was translated under the title Heroic Virtue (London, 1850, 3 vols.). An edition of his writings was published under the care of the Jesuit Azevedo (12 vols., 1747-51), but more completely at Venice (1767, 15 vols.); and at Prato (1839-46, 17 vols.). His letters, written in Italian, to Carnu Peggi, between 1729 and 1758, were published by F. N. Kraus (Freiburg, 1884, 2d ed. as a biography by F. Scarselli, with a bibliography, 1888). Some more of his letters, edited by B. Manzone, appeared at Bra in 1890.

BENEDICT ACCOLTI, ak-kol'te. See.

BENEDICT, (1779-1874). An American Baptist historian. He was born at Norwalk, Conn., October 10, 1779. He graduated from Brown University, 1806, and was pastor at Pawtucket, R, I., from 1806 till 1831, and then carried on an active ministry at large till his death there, December 5, 1874. He is remembered for his researches in Baptist history embodied in his General History of the Baptist Denomination in America and Other Parts of the World (New York, 1848), and Fifty Years Among the Baptists (1860).

BENEDICT, (1834—). An American novelist. Of his numerous stories, the more noteworthy are John Worthington's Name; Miss Tan Kortland (1870); Her Friend Laurence (1879); and The Price She Paid (1883). His verses are collected in The Shadow Worshipper and Other Poems (1857).

BENEDICT, (1804-85). A German-English musician and composer, born of Jewish parents in Stuttgart. He studied under Abeille, Hummel, and finally Weber, who procured for him (1824) the post of music director of the Kärntnertortheater, Vienna; In 1825 he obtained a similar position in San Carlo, Naples. Here he produced an opera buffa, Giacinta ed Ernesto, and in Stuttgart (1831) a serious opera, I Portoghesi a Goa. Both were failures. He appeared, however, with great success as a pianist in Paris in 1835, and later in London, where he settled, directing opera buffa at the Lyceum, in 1836. He as conductor of English opera at Drury Lane (1838), where his works, The Gypsy's Warning (1838), The Birds of Venice (1843), and The Crusaders (1846), were produced. After conducting opera in Covent Garden and at festivals, he went to America (1850) with Jenny Lind, and returning in 1852, resumed his work as teacher of the piano, composer and conductor of the opera at Covent Garden, where his operatic masterpiece, The Lily of Killarney, created a furore in 1862. He wrote two symphonies and several cantatas (Undine, Richard Cœur de Lion, Saint Cecilia). His oratorio, Saint Peter, written for the Birmingham Musical Festival, 1870, met with extraordinary success. His operas have much dramatic and melodic beauty, and in style and feeling are singularly English for compositions by a foreigner. He was knighted in 1871 and received many foreign decorations. Weber's biography, in Hueffer's Great Musicians, was written by Benedict.

BENEDICT,. The founder of monachism in the West. He was born of a rich and respected family at Nursia (now Norcia), 70 miles northeast of Rome, in A.D. 480. At an early age Benedict was sent to the schools of literature and jurisprudence in Rome, but soon grew dissatisfied with the sterile character of the instruction dispensed. The world was full of distractions, impurities, and ignorance; and it was difficult to resist, by the ordinary safeguards of virtue, the colossal evils by which men were environed. Only, therefore, in the devotions of religion, in the holy silence of solitary meditation, did Benedict see a safe refuge from the sins of the time, and the possibility of realizing a spiritual strength which would enable him to stem the tide of corruption that was setting in. He resolved to leave the city, and betake himself to some deep solitude in which the murmur of the world would be inaudible, and alone in the rocky wilderness wrestle with his own nature until he had conquered it and laid it a sacrifice on the altar of God. In pursuance of this resolution, when he had only reached, according to some, the age of 14, he departed from Rome, accompanied for the first 24 miles by the nurse whom his parents had sent with him as an attendant to the city. Benedict then