Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bent, James" to "Bibirine" by Various
1863. The chief articles of export are cereals, flour, wool, hemp, skins
2680 words | Chapter 12
and fish; and the imports include hardwares, fruits, oil and petroleum.
In the immediate neighbourhood are salt-lagoons. Pop. (1867) 12,223;
(1900) 29,168.
BEREA, a town of Madison county, Kentucky, U.S.A., 131 m. by rail S. of
Cincinnati. Pop. (1900) 762. Berea is served by the Louisville &
Nashville railway. It is pleasantly situated on the border between the
Blue Grass and the Mountain regions. The town is widely known as the
seat of Berea College, which has done an important work among the
mountaineers of Kentucky and of Tennessee. The college has about 70
acres of ground (and about 4000 acres of mountain land for forestry
study), with a large recitation hall, a library, a chapel (seating 1400
persons), a science hall, an industrial hall, a brick-making plant, a
woodwork building, a printing building, a tabernacle for commencement
exercises and other buildings. In 1908 Berea had 65 instructors and 1150
students; and it paid the tuition of 141 negro students in Fisk
University (Nashville, Tennessee) and in other institutions. The school
out of which Berea College has developed was founded in the anti-slavery
interests in 1855. An attempt was made to procure for it a college
charter in 1859, but the slavery interests caused it to be closed before
the end of that year and it was not reopened until 1865, the charter
having then been obtained, as Berea College. Negroes as well as whites
were admitted until 1904, when education of the two races at the same
institution was prohibited by an act of the state legislature (upheld by
the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908). This act did not, however, prohibit an
institution from maintaining separate schools for the two races,
provided these schools were at least 25 m. apart, and a separate school
for the negroes was at once projected by Berea.
BEREKHIAH NAQDAN, Jewish fabulist, author of a collection of _Fox
Fables_, written in Hebrew. As his title implies (Naqdan=punctuator of
the Biblical text), Berekhiah was also a grammarian. He further wrote an
ethical treatise and was the author of various translations. His date is
disputed. Most authorities place him in the 13th century, but J. Jacobs
has identified him with Benedictus le Puncteur, an English Jew of the
12th century.
BERENGARIUS [BERENGAR] (d. 1088), medieval theologian, was born at Tours
early in the 11th century; he was educated in the famous school of
Fulbert of Chartres, but even in early life seems to have exhibited
great independence of judgment. Appointed superintendent of the
cathedral school of his native city, he taught with such success as to
attract pupils from all parts of France, and powerfully contributed to
diffuse an interest in the study of logic and metaphysics, and to
introduce that dialectic development of theology which is designated the
scholastic. The earliest of his writings of which we have any record is
an _Exhortatory Discourse_ to the hermits of his district, written at
their own request and for their spiritual edification. It shows a clear
discernment of the dangers of the ascetic life, and a deep insight into
the significance of the Augustinian doctrine of grace. Sometime before
1040 Berengar was made archdeacon of Angers. It was shortly after this
that rumours began to spread of his holding heretical views regarding
the sacrament of the eucharist. He had submitted the doctrine of
transubstantiation (already generally received both by priests and
people, although in the west it had been first unequivocally taught and
reduced to a regular theory by Paschasius Radbert in 831) to an
independent examination, and had come to the conclusion that it was
contrary to reason, unwarranted by Scripture, and inconsistent with the
teaching of men like Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. He did not conceal
this conviction from his scholars and friends, and through them the
report spread widely that he denied the common doctrine respecting the
eucharist. His early friend and school companion, Adelmann, archdeacon
of Liege, wrote to him letters of expostulation on the subject of this
report in 1046 and 1048; and a bishop, Hugo of Langres, wrote (about
1049) a refutation of the views which he had himself heard Berengar
express in conversation. Berengar's belief was not shaken by their
arguments and exhortations, and hearing that Lanfranc, the most
celebrated theologian of that age, strongly approved the doctrine of
Paschasius and condemned that of "Scotus" (really Ratramnus), he wrote
to him a letter expressing his surprise and urging him to reconsider the
question. The letter, arriving at Bec when Lanfranc was absent at Rome
(1050), was sent after him, but was opened before it reached him, and
Lanfranc, fearing the scandal, brought it under the notice of Pope Leo
IX. Because of it Berengar was condemned as a heretic without being
heard, by a synod at Rome and another at Vercelli, both held in 1050.
His enemies in France cast him into prison; but the bishop of Angers and
other powerful friends, of whom he had a considerable number, had
sufficient influence to procure his release. At the council of Tours
(1054) he found a protector in the papal legate, the famous Hildebrand,
who, satisfied himself with the fact that Berengar did not deny the real
presence of Christ in the sacramental elements, succeeded in persuading
the assembly to be content with a general confession from him that the
bread and wine, after consecration, were the body and blood of the Lord,
without requiring him to define how. Trusting in Hildebrand's support,
and in the justice of his own cause, he presented himself at the synod
of Rome in 1059, but found himself surrounded by zealots, who forced him
by the fear of death to signify his acceptance of the doctrine "that the
bread and wine, after consecration, are not merely a sacrament, but the
true body and the true blood of Christ, and that this body is touched
and broken by the hands of the priests, and ground by the teeth of the
faithful, not merely in a sacramental but in a real manner." He had no
sooner done so than he bitterly repented his weakness; and acting, as he
himself says, on the principle that "to take an oath which never ought
to have been taken is to estrange one's self from God, but to retract
what one has wrongfully sworn to, is to return back to God," when he got
safe again into France he attacked the transubstantiation theory more
vehemently than ever. He continued for about sixteen years to
disseminate his views by writing and teaching, without being directly
interfered with by either his civil or ecclesiastical superiors, greatly
to the scandal of the multitude and of the zealots, in whose eyes
Berengar was "ille apostolus Satanae," and the academy of Tours the
"Babylon nostri temporis." An attempt was made at the council of
Poitiers in 1076 to allay the agitation caused by the controversy, but
it failed, and Berengar narrowly escaped death in a tumult. Hildebrand,
now pope as Gregory VII., next summoned him to Rome, and, in a synod
held there in 1078, tried once more to obtain a declaration of his
orthodoxy by means of a confession of faith drawn up in general terms;
but even this strong-minded and strong-willed pontiff was at length
forced to yield to the demands of the multitude and its leaders; and in
another synod at Rome (1079), finding that he was only endangering his
own position and reputation, he turned unexpectedly upon Berengar and
commanded him to confess that he had erred in not teaching a change _as
to substantial reality_ of the sacramental bread and wine into the body
and blood of Christ. "Then," says Berengar, "confounded by the sudden
madness of the pope, and because God in punishment for my sins did not
give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground, and confessed
with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly
pronounce against me the sentence of condemnation, and, as a necessary
consequence, that the populace would hurry me to the worst of deaths."
He was kindly dismissed by the pope not long after, with a letter
recommending him to the protection of the bishops of Tours and Angers,
and another pronouncing anathema on all who should do him any injury or
call him a heretic. He returned home overwhelmed with shame and bowed
down with sorrow for having a second time been guilty of a great
impiety. He immediately recalled his forced confession, and besought all
Christian men "to pray for him, so that his tears might secure the pity
of the Almighty." He now saw, however, that the spirit of the age was
against him, and hopelessly given over to the belief of what he had
combated as a delusion. He withdrew, therefore, into solitude, and
passed the rest of his life in retirement and prayer on the island of St
Come near Tours. He died there in 1088.
Berengar left behind him a considerable number of followers. All those
who in the middle ages denied the substantial presence of the body and
blood of Christ in the eucharist were commonly designated Berengarians.
They differed, of course, in many respects, even in regard to the nature
of the supper. Berengar's own views on the subject may be thus summed
up:--1. That bread and wine should become flesh and blood and yet not
lose the properties of bread and wine was, he held, contradictory to
reason, and therefore irreconcilable with the truthfulness of God. 2. He
admitted a change (_conversio_) of the bread and wine into the body of
Christ, in the sense that to those who receive them they are transformed
by grace into higher powers and influences--into the true, the
intellectual or spiritual body of Christ. The unbelieving receive the
external sign or _sacramentum_; but the believing receive in addition,
although invisibly, the reality represented by the sign, the _res
sacramenti_. 3. He rejected the notion that the sacrament of the altar
was a constantly renewed sacrifice, and held it to be merely a
commemoration of the one sacrifice of Christ. 4. He dwelt strongly on
the importance of men looking away from the externals of the sacrament
to the spirit of love and piety. The transubstantiation doctrine seemed
to him full of evil, from its tendency to lead men to overvalue what was
sensuous and transitory. 5. He rejected with indignation the miraculous
stories told to confirm the doctrine of transubstantiation. 6. Reason
and Scripture seemed to him the only grounds on which a true doctrine of
the Lord's supper could be rested. He attached little importance to mere
ecclesiastical tradition or authority, and none to the voice of
majorities, even when sanctioned by the decree of a pope. In this, as in
other respects, he was a precursor of Protestantism.
The opinions of Berengar are to be ascertained from the works written
in refutation of them by Adelmann, Lanfranc, Guitmund, &c.; from the
fragments of the _De sacr. coena adv. Lanfr. liber_, edited by
Staudlin (1820-1829); and from the _Liber posterior_, edited by A.F.
and F.T. Vischer (1834). See the collection of texts by Sudendorf
(1850); the _Church Histories_ of Gieseler, ii. 396-411 (Eng. trans.),
and Neander, vi. 221-260 (Eng. trans.); A. Harnack's _History of
Dogma_, Haureau's _Histoire de la philosophie scolastique_, i.
225-238; Hermann Reuter, _Geschichte der religiosen Aufklarung des
Mittelalters_, vol. i. (Berlin, 1875); L. Schwabe, _Studien zur
Geschichte des Zweilen Abendmahlstreits_ (1887); and W. Broecking,
"Bruno von Angers und Berengar von Tours," in _Deutsche Zeitichrift
fur Geschichtewissenschaft_ (vol. xii., 1895).
BERENGER, ALPHONSE MARIE MARCELLIN THOMAS (1785-1866), known as Berenger
de la Drome, French lawyer and politician, son of a deputy of the third
estate of Dauphine to the Constituent Assembly, was born at Valence on
the 31st of May 1785. He entered the magistracy and became _procureur
general_ at Grenoble, but resigned this office on the restoration of the
Bourbons. He now devoted himself mainly to the study of criminal law,
and in 1818 published _La Justice criminelle en France_, in which with
great courage he attacked the special tribunals, provosts' courts or
military commissions which were the main instruments of the Reaction,
and advocated a return to the old common law and trial by jury. The book
had a considerable effect in discrediting the reactionary policy of the
government; but it was not until 1828, when Berenger was elected to the
chamber, that he had an opportunity of exercising a personal influence
on affairs as a member of the group known as that of constitutional
opposition. His courage, as well as his moderation, was again displayed
during the revolution of 1830, when, as president of the parliamentary
commission for the trial of the ministers of Charles X., he braved the
fury of the mob and secured a sentence of imprisonment in place of the
death penalty for which they clamoured.
His position in the chamber was now one of much influence, and he had a
large share in the modelling of the new constitution, though his effort
to secure a hereditary peerage failed. Above all he was instrumental in
framing the new criminal code, based on more humanitarian principles,
which was issued in 1835. It was due to him that, in 1832, the right, so
important in actual French practice, was given to juries to find
"extenuating circumstances" in cases when guilt involved the death
penalty. In 1831 he had been made a member of the court of appeal (_cour
de cassation_), and the same year was nominated a member of the academy
of moral and political sciences. He was raised to the peerage in 1839.
This dignity he lost owing to the revolution of 1848; and as a
politician his career now ended. As a judge, however, his activity
continued. He was president of the high courts of Bourges and Versailles
in 1840. Having been appointed president of one of the chambers of the
court of cassation, he devoted himself entirely to judicial work until
his retirement, under the age limit, on the 31st of May 1860. He now
withdrew to his native town, and occupied himself with his favourite
work of reform of criminal law. In 1833 he had shared in the foundation
of a society for the reclamation of young criminals, in which he
continued to be actively interested to the end. In 1851 and 1852, on the
commission of the academy of moral sciences, he had travelled in France
and England for the purpose of examining and comparing the penal systems
in the two countries. The result was published in 1855 under the title
_La Repression penale, comparaison du systeme penitentiaire en France et
en Angleterre._ He died on the 15th of May 1866.
His son, RENE BERENGER (1830- ), continued the work of his father, and
at the outbreak of the revolution of 1870 was _avocat general_ of Lyons.
He served as a volunteer in the Franco-German War, being wounded at
Nuits on the 28th of December. Returned to the National Assembly by the
department of Drome, he was for a few days in 1873 minister of public
works under Thiers. He then entered the senate, of which he was
vice-president from 1894 to 1897. He founded in 1871 a society for the
reclamation of discharged prisoners, and presided over various bodies
formed to secure improvement of the public morals. He succeeded Charles
Lucas in 1890 at the Academy of Moral and Political Science.
BERENICE, or BERNICE, the Macedonian forms of the Greek Pherenice, the
name of (A) five Egyptian and (B) two Jewish princesses.
(A) 1. BERENICE, daughter of Lagus, wife of an obscure Macedonian
soldier and subsequently of Ptolemy Soter, with whose bride Eurydice she
came to Egypt as a lady-in-waiting. Her son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, was
recognized as heir over the heads of Eurydice's children. So great was
her ability and her influence that Pyrrhus of Epirus gave the name
Berenicis to a new city. Her son Philadelphus decreed divine honours to
her on her death. (See Theocritus, _Idylls_ xv. and xvii.)
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