VOLUME III SLICE VI Bent, James to Bibirine (continued 5)

Twice during the Seven Years’ War Berlin was attacked by the enemy: in 1757 by the Austrians, who penetrated into the suburbs and levied a heavy contribution, and in 1760 by the Russians, who bombarded the city, penetrated into it, and only retired on payment of a ransom of 1,500,000 thalers (£225,000). After the disastrous campaign of Jena, Berlin suffered much during the French occupation (24th October 1806 to 1st December 1808). In spite of these misfortunes, however, the progress of the city was steady. In 1809 the present municipal government was instituted. In 1810 the university was founded. After the alliance of Prussia and Russia in 1812 Berlin was again occupied by the French, but in March 1813 they were finally driven out. The period following the close of the war saw great activity in building, especially in the erection of many noble monuments and public buildings, e.g. those by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The most notable event in the history of Berlin during the 19th century, prior to the Franco-German War, was the March revolution of 1848 (see Germany: History, and Frederick William IV., king of Prussia). The effect of the war of 1870-71 on the growth of Berlin has been sufficiently indicated already.

Authorities.—For the history of Berlin see the publications of the “Verein für die Geschichte Berlins”; the Berlinische Chronik nebst Urkundenbuch, and the periodicals Der Bar (1875, &c.) and Mitteilungen (1884, &c.). Of histories may be mentioned A. Streckfuss, 500 Jahre Berliner Geschichte (new ed. by Fernbach, 1900); Berlin im 19ten Jahrhundert (4 vols., 1867-1869), and Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Berlin (1904-1905); Fidiein, Historisch-diplomatische Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Berlin (5 vols., 1837-1842); Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexikon (1904); Meyer, Konversations-Lexikon (1904); Baedeker, Fuhrer durch Berlin; Woeri, Fuhrer durch Berlin; J. Pollard, The Corporation of Berlin (Edinburgh, 1893); A. Shaclwell, Industrial Efficiency (London, 1906); Berliner Jahrbuch für Handel und Industrie (1905); and O. Schwebel, Geschichte der Stadt Berlin (Berlin, 1888).

(P. A. A.)

Berlin, Congress and Treaty of. The events that led up to the assembling of the congress of Berlin, the outcome of which was the treaty of the 13th of July 1878, are described elsewhere (see Europe: History; Turkey: History; Russo-Turkish War). Here it must suffice to say that the terms of the treaty of San Stefano (3rd March 1878), by which the Russo-Turkish War had been brought to a conclusion, seemed to those of the other powers who were most interested scarcely less fatal to the Ottoman dominion than that Russian occupation of Constantinople which Great Britain had risked a war to prevent. By this instrument Bulgaria was to become a practically independent state, under the nominal suzerainty of the sultan, bounded by the Danube, the Black Sea, the Aegean and Albania, and cutting off the latter from the remnant of Rumelia which, with Constantinople, was to be left to the Turks. At the same time the other Christian principalities, Servia and Montenegro, were largely increased in size and their independence definitively recognized; and the proposals of the powers with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina, communicated to the Ottoman plenipotentiaries at the first sitting of the conference of Constantinople (23rd December 1876), were to be immediately executed. These provisions seemed to make Russia permanently arbiter of the fate of the Balkan peninsula, the more so since the vast war indemnity of 1,400,000,000 roubles exacted in the treaty promised to cripple the resources of the Ottoman government for years to come.

The two powers whose interests were most immediately threatened by the terms of the peace were Austria and Great Britain. The former especially, refusing to be bribed by the Russian offer of Bosnia and Herzegovina, saw herself cut off from all chance of expansion in the Balkan peninsula and threatened with the establishment there of the paramount power of Russia, a peril it had been her traditional policy to avert. On the 5th of February, accordingly, Count Andrássy issued a circular note, addressed to the signatory powers of the treaty of Paris of 1856 and the London protocol of 1871, suggesting a congress for the purpose of establishing “the agreement of Europe on the modifications which it may become necessary to introduce into the above-mentioned treaties” in view of the preliminaries of peace signed by Russia and Turkey. This appeal to the sanctity of international engagements, traditional in the diplomatic armoury of Austria, and strengthened by so recent a precedent as that of 1871, met with an immediate response. On the 1st of April Lord Salisbury had already addressed a circular note to the British embassies refusing on behalf of the British government to recognize any arrangements made in the peace preliminaries, calculated to modify European treaties, “unless they were made the subject of a formal agreement among the parties to the treaty of Paris,” and quoting the “essential principle of the law of nations” promulgated in the London protocol. By Great Britain therefore the Austrian proposal was at once accepted. Germany was very willing to fall in with the views of her Austrian ally and share in a council in which, having no immediate interests of her own, Bismarck could win new laurels in his rôle of “honest broker.” In these circumstances Russia could not but accept the principle of a congress. She tried, however, to limit the scope of its powers by suggesting the exclusion of certain clauses of the treaty from its reference, and pointed out (circular of Prince Gorchakov, April 9th) that Russia had not been the first nor the only Power to violate the treaties in question. The answer of Lord Beaconsfield was to mobilize the militia and bring Indian troops to the Mediterranean; and finally Russia, finding that the diplomatic support which she had expected from Bismarck failed her, consented to submit the whole treaty without reserve to the congress.

On the 3rd of June Count Münster, in the name of the German government, issued the formal invitation to the congress. The congress met, under the presidency of Prince Bismarck, at Berlin on the 13th of June. Great Britain was represented by Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Salisbury and Lord Odo Russell, ambassador at Berlin; Germany by Prince Bismarck, Baron Ernst von Bülow and Prince Chlodwig von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, ambassador at Paris; Austria by Count Andrássy, Count Louis Károlyi and Baron Heinrich Karl von Haymerle, ambassador at Rome; France by William H. Waddington, the Comte de Saint-Vallier, ambassador at Berlin, and Félix Hippolyte Desprez, director of political affairs in the department for foreign affairs; Russia by the chancellor, Prince Gorchakov, Count Peter Shuvalov, ambassador to the court of St James’s, and Paul d’Oubril, ambassador at Berlin; Turkey by Alexander Catheodory Pasha, minister of public works, All Pasha, mushir of the Ottoman armies, and Sadullah Bey, ambassador at Berlin. The bases of the conferences had, of course, been settled beforehand, and the final act of the congress was signed by the plenipotentiaries mentioned above exactly a month after the opening of the congress, on the 13th of July.

The treaty of Berlin consists in all of sixty-four articles, of which it will be sufficient to note those which have had a special bearing on subsequent international developments. So far as they affect the territorial boundaries fixed by the treaties of Paris and San Stefano it will be sufficient to refer to the sketch map in the article Europe: History. By Art. I. Bulgaria was “constituted an autonomous and tributary principality under the suzerainty of H.I.M. the Sultan”; it was to have “a Christian government and a national militia,” Art. II. fixed the boundaries of the new state and provided for their delimitation by a European commission, which was “to take into consideration the necessity for H.I.M. the Sultan to be able to defend the Balkan frontiers of Eastern Rumelia.” Arts. III. to XII. provide for the election of a prince for Bulgaria, the machinery for settling the new constitution, the adjustment of the relations of the new Bulgarian government to the Ottoman empire and its subjects (including the question of tribute, the amount of which was, according to Art. XII., to be settled by agreement of the signatory powers “at the close of the first year of the working of the new organization”). By Art. X. Bulgaria, so far as it was concerned, was to take the place of the Sublime Porte in the engagements which the latter had contracted, as well towards Austria-Hungary as towards the Rustchuck-Varna Railway Company, for working the railway of European Turkey in respect to the completion and connexion, as well as the working of the railways situated in its territory.

By Art. XIII. a province was formed south of the Balkans which was to take the name of “Eastern Rumelia,” and was to remain “under the direct military and political control of H.I.M. the Sultan, under conditions of administrative autonomy.” It was to have a Christian governor-general. Arts. XIV. to XXIII. define the frontiers and organization of the new province, questions arising out of the Russian occupation, and the rights of the sultan. Of the latter it is to be noted that the sultan retained the right of fortifying and occupying the Balkan passes (Art. XV.) and all his rights and obligations over the railways (Art. XXI.).

Art. XXV., which the events of 1908 afterwards brought into special prominence, runs as follows: “The provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary. The government of Austria-Hungary, not desiring to undertake the administration of the sanjak of Novi-Bazar, ... the Ottoman administration will continue to exercise its functions there. Nevertheless, in order to assure the maintenance of the new political state of affairs, as well as freedom and security of communications, Austria-Hungary reserves the right of keeping garrisons and having military and commercial roads in the whole of this part of the ancient vilayet of Bosnia.”

By Art. XXVI. the independence of Montenegro was definitively recognized, and by Art. XVIII. she received certain accessions of territory, including a strip of coast on the Adriatic, but under conditions which tended to place her under the tutelage of Austria-Hungary. Thus, by Art. XXIX. she was to have neither ships of war nor a war flag, the port of Antivari and all Montenegrin waters were to be closed to the war-ships of all nations; the fortifications between the lake and the coast were to be razed; the administration of the maritime and sanitary police at Antivari and along the Montenegrin littoral was to be carried on by Austria-Hungary “by means of light coast-guard boats”; Montenegro was to adopt the maritime code in force in Dalmatia, while the Montenegrin merchant flag was to be under Austro-Hungarian consular protection. Finally, Montenegro was to “come to an understanding with Austria-Hungary on the right to construct and keep up across the new Montenegrin territory a road and a railway.”

By Art. XXXIV. the independence of Servia was recognized, subject to conditions (as to religious liberty, &c.) set forth in Art. XXXV. Art. XXXVI. defined the new boundaries.

By Art. XLIII. the independence of Rumania, already proclaimed by the prince (May 22/June 3 1877), was recognized. Subsequent articles define the conditions and the boundaries.

Arts. LII. to LVII. deal with the question of the free navigation of the Danube. All fortifications between the mouths and the Iron Gates were to be razed, and no vessels of war, save those of light tonnage in the service of the river police and the customs, were to navigate the river below the Iron Gates (Art. LII.). The Danube commission, on which Rumania was to be represented, was maintained in its functions (Art. LIII.) and provision made for the further prolongation of its powers (Art. LIV.).

Art. LVIII. cedes to Russia the territories of Ardahan, Kars and Batoum, in Asiatic Turkey. By Art. LIX. “H.M. the emperor of Russia declares that it is his intention to constitute Batoum a free port, essentially commercial.”

By Art. LXI. “the Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds.” It was to keep the powers informed periodically of “the steps taken to this effect.”

Art. LXII. made provision for the securing religious liberty in the Ottoman dominions.

Finally, Art. LXIII. declares that “the treaty of Paris of 30th March 1856, as well as the treaty of London of 13th March 1871, are maintained in all such of their provisions as are not abrogated or modified by the preceding stipulations.”

For the full text of the treaty in the English translation see E. Hertslet, Map of Europe by Treaty, vol. iv. p. 2759 (No. 530); for the French original see State Papers, vol. lxix. p. 749.

(W. A. P.)

BERLIN, a city of Coos county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on the Androscoggin river, in the N. part of the state, about 98 m. N.W. of Portland, Maine. Pop. (1890) 3729; (1900) 8886, of whom 4643 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 11,780. The area of the city in 1906 was 57.81 sq. m. Berlin is served by the Grand Trunk and Boston & Maine railways. It is situated in the heart of the White Mountains and 16 m. from the base of Mt. Washington. Berlin Falls, on the picturesque Androscoggin river, furnishes an immense water-power, the development of which for manufacturing purposes accounts for the rapid growth of the city. The forests of northern New England and of the province of Quebec supply the raw material for the extensive saw-mills and planing-mills, the pulp- and paper-mills, and the sulphite fibre mills, said to be the largest in existence. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $5,989,119, of which 78.5% was the value of the paper and wood pulp manufactured. Berlin was first settled in 1821, was incorporated as a township in 1829, and was chartered as a city in 1897.

BERLIN, a city and port of entry, Ontario, Canada, and capital of Waterloo county, 58 m. W. of Toronto, on the Grand Trunk railway. It is the centre of a prosperous farming and manufacturing district, inhabited chiefly by German immigrants and their descendants. An electric railway connects it with the town of Waterloo (pop. 4100) 2 m. to the north, which has important flour and woollen mills and distilleries. Berlin is a flourishing manufacturing town, and contains a beet sugar refinery, automobile, leather, furniture, shirt and collar, felt, glove, button and rubber factories. Pop. (1881) 4054; (1901) 9747.

BERLIN, a four-wheeled carriage with a separate hooded seat behind, detached from the body of the vehicle; so called from having been first used in Berlin. It was designed about 1670, by a Piedmontese architect in the service of the elector of Brandenburg. It was used as a travelling carriage, and Swift refers to it in his advice to authors “who scribble in a berlin.” As an adjective, the word is used to indicate a special kind of goods, originally made in Berlin, of which the best known is Berlin wool. A Berlin warehouse is a shop for the sale of wools and fancy goods (cf. Italian warehouse). The spelling “berlin” is also used by Sir Walter Scott for the “birlinn,” a large Gaelic rowing-boat.

BERLIOZ, HECTOR (1803-1869), French musical composer, was born on the 11th of December 1803 at Côte-Saint-André, a small town near Grenoble, in the department of Isère. His father, Louis Berlioz, was a physician of repute, and by his desire Hector for some time devoted himself to the study of medicine. At the same time he had music lessons, and, in secret, perused numerous theoretical works on counterpoint and harmony, with little profit it seems, till the hearing and subsequent careful analysis of one of Haydn’s quartets opened a new vista to his unguided aspirations. A similar work written by Berlioz in imitation of Haydn’s masterpiece was favorably received by his friends. From Paris, where he had been sent to complete his medical studies, he at last made known to his father the unalterable decision of devoting himself entirely to art, the answer to which confession was the withdrawal of all further pecuniary assistance. In order to support life Berlioz had to accept the humble engagement of a singer in the chorus of the Gymnase theatre. Soon, however, he became reconciled to his father and entered the Conservatoire, where he studied composition under Reicha and Lesueur. His first important composition was an opera called Les Francs-Juges, of which, however, only the overture remains extant. In 1825 he left the Conservatoire, and began a course of self-education, founded chiefly on the works of Beethoven, Gluck, Weber and other German masters. About this period Berlioz saw for the first time the talented Irish actress Henrietta Smithson, who was then charming Paris by her impersonations of Ophelia, Juliet and other Shakespearean characters. The enthusiastic young composer became deeply enamoured of her at first sight, and tried, for a long time in vain, to gain the love or even the attention of his idol. To an incident of this wild and persevering courtship Berlioz’s first symphonic work, Épisode de la vie d’un artiste, owes its origin. By the advice of his friends Berlioz once more entered the Conservatoire, where, after several unsuccessful attempts, his cantata Sardanapalus gained him the first prize for foreign travel (1830), in spite of the strong personal antagonism of one of the umpires. During a stay in Italy Berlioz composed an overture to King Lear, and Le Retour à la vie—a sort of symphony, with intervening poetical declamation between the single movements, called by the composer a melologue, and written in continuation of the Épisode de la vie d’un artiste, along with which work it was performed at the Paris Conservatoire in 1832. Paganini on that occasion spoke to Berlioz the memorable words: “Vous commencez par où les autres ont fini.” Miss Smithson, who also was present on the occasion, consented to become the wife of her ardent lover in 1833. The marriage was a tempestuous mistake. In 1840 he separated from his wife, who died in 1854. Six months later Berlioz married Mademoiselle Récio. His second wife did not live very long, nor was there much that was edifying in this marriage. Between the date of his first marriage and 1840 came out his dramatic symphonies Harold en Italie, Funèbre et triomphale, and Roméo et Juliette; his opera Benvenuto Cellini (1837); his Requiem, and other works. In the course of time Berlioz won his due share of the distinctions generally awarded to artistic merit, such as the ribbon of the Legion of Honour and the membership of the Institute. But these distinctions he owed, perhaps, less to a genuine admiration of his compositions than to his successes abroad and his influential position as the musical critic of the Journal des Débats (a position which he held from 1838 to 1864, and which he never used or abused to push his own works). In 1842 Berlioz went for the first time to Germany, where he was hailed with welcome by the leading musicians of the younger generation, Robert Schumann foremost amongst them. The latter paved the way for the French composer’s success by a comprehensive analysis of the Épisode in his musical journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. In 1846 he produced his magnificent cantata La Damnation de Faust. Berlioz gave successful concerts at Leipzig and other German cities, and repeated his visit on various later occasions—in 1852 by invitation of Liszt, to conduct his opera, Benvenuto Cellini (hissed off the stage in Paris), at Weimar; and in 1855 to produce his oratorio-trilogy, L’Enfance du Christ, in the same city. This latter work had been previously performed at Paris, where Berlioz mystified the critics by pretending to have found the last chorus amongst the manuscript scores of a composer of the 17th century, Pierre Ducré by name. In 1855 his Te Deum was written for the opening of the Paris exhibition. Berlioz also made journeys to Vienna (1866) and St Petersburg (1867), where his works were received with great enthusiasm. In 1861 he produced his work Béatrice et Bénédict, and in 1863 Les Troyens. He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1869.

It is not only as a composer that the life of Berlioz is full of interest, although in this respect his achievement is singularly significant for the comprehension of the modern spirit in music. But it is as the symbol of French romanticism in the whole domain of aesthetic perception that his pre-eminence has come to be recognized. His Mémoires (begun in London in 1848 and finished in 1865) illustrate this romantic spirit at its highest elevation as well as at its lowest depths. Victor Hugo was a romantic, Musset was a romantic, but Berlioz was romanticism itself. As a boy he is in despair over the despair of Dido, and his breath is taken away at Virgil’s “Quaesivit coelo lucem ingemuitque reperta.” At the age of twelve he is in love with “Estelle,” whom he meets fifty years afterwards. The scene is described by himself (1865) with minute fidelity—a scene which Flaubert must have known by heart when he wrote its parallel in the novel L’Éducation sentimentale. The romance of this meeting between the man—old, isolated, unspeakably sad, with the halo of public fame burning round him—and the woman—old also, a mother, a widow, whose beauty he had worshipped when she was eighteen—is striking. In a frame of chastened melancholy and joy at the sight of Estelle, Berlioz goes to dine with Patti and her family. Patti, on the threshold of her career, pets Berlioz with such uncontrollable affection, that as the composer wrote a description of his feelings he was overwhelmed at the bitterness of fate. What would he not have given for Estelle to show him such affection! Patti seemed to him like a marvellous bird with diamond wings flitting round his head, resting on his shoulder, plucking his hair and singing her most joyous songs to the accompaniment of beating wings. “I was enchanted but not moved. The fact is that the young, beautiful, dazzling, famous virtuoso who at the age of twenty-two has already seen musical Europe and America at her feet, does not win the power of love in me; and the aged woman, sad, obscure, ignorant of art, possesses my soul as she did in the days gone by, as she will do until my last day.” If this episode touches the sublime, it may be urged with almost equal truth that his description of the exhumation of his two wives and their reburial in a single tomb touches the ridiculous. And yet the scene is described with a perception of all the detail which would call for the highest praise in a novelist. Perhaps some parallel between the splendid and the ridiculous in this singular figure may be seen in the comparison of Nadar’s caricature with Charpentier’s portrait of the composer.

The profound admiration of Berlioz for Shakespeare, which rose at moments to such a pitch of folly that he set Shakespeare in the place of God and worshipped him, cannot be explained simply on the ground that Henrietta Smithson was a great Shakespearean actress. Unquestionably the great figures in English literature had a profound attraction for him, and while the romantic spirit is obvious in his selections from Byron and Scott, it can also be traced in the quality of his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. It is in his music more than in his literary attitude, however, that is disclosed something in addition to the pure romance of Schumann—something that places him nearer in kind to Wagner, who recognized in him a composer from whose works he might learn something useful for the cultivation of his own ideals. As a youth the power of Beethoven’s symphonies made a deep impression on Berlioz, and what has been described as the “poetical idea” in Beethoven’s creations ran riot in the young medical student’s mind. He thus became one of the most ardent and enlightened originators of what is now known as “programme music.” Technically he was a brilliant musical colourist, often extravagant, but with the extravagant emotionalism of genius. He was a master of the orchestra; indeed, his treatment of the orchestra and his invention of unprecedented effects of timbre give him a solitary position in musical history; he had an extraordinary gift for the use of the various instruments, and himself propounded a new ideal for the force to be employed, on an enormous scale.

His literary works include the Traité d’instrumentation (1844); Voyage musical en Allemagne et en Italie (1845); Les Soirées d’orchestre (1853); Les Grotesques de la musique (1859); À travers chant (1862); Mémoires (1870); Lettres intimes (1882). For a full list of his musical works, Grove’s Dictionary should be consulted.

The new critical edition of the complete musical works (published by Breitkopf and Hartel) is in ten series. I. Symphonies: Fantastique, Op. 14; Funébre et triomphale, Op. 15, for military band and chorus; Harold en Italie, Op. 16, with viola solo; Roméo et Juliette, with chorus and soli. II. Overtures (ten, including the five belonging to larger works). III. Smaller instrumental works, of which only the Funeral March for Hamlet is important. IV. Sacred music: the Grande Messe des morts, Op. 5; the Te Deum, Op. 22; L’Enfance du Christ, Op. 25, and four smaller pieces, V. Secular cantatas, including Hunt scênes de Faust, Op. I; Lélio, ou le retour à la vie, Op. 146 (sequel to Symphonie fantastique), and La Damnation de Faust, Op. 24. VI. Songs and lyric choruses with orchestra, two vols. VII. Songs and lyric choruses with pianoforte, 2 vols. including arrangements of the orchestral songs. VIII. Operas: Benvenuto Cellini; Les Troyens (five acts in two parts, La Prise de Troie and Les Troyens à Carthage); Recitatives for the dialogue in Weber’s Freischutz. IX. Arrangements, including the well-known orchestral version of Weber’s Invitation à la danse. X. Fragments and new discoveries.

Adolphe Julien’s biography of Berlioz (1888) first gave a careful account of the details of his life. See also the books by R. Pohl (1884), P. Galibert (1890), E. Hippeau (1890), G. Noufflard (1885), L. Mesnard (1888), Louise Pohl (1900), and D. Bernard (trans. by H.M. Dunstan, 1882). An illuminating essay on Berlioz is in Filson Young’s Mastersingers (1902). See also the essay in W.H. Hadow’s Studies in Modern Music (1st series, 1908). Berlioz’s Traité d’instrumentation has been translated into German and brought up to date by Richard Strauss (Peters’ edition [1906]).

BERM (probably a variant of “brim”), a narrow ledge of ground, generally the level banks of a river. In parts of Egypt the whole area reached by the Nile is included in the berm. Thus of the lands near Berber, Mr C. Dupuis writes (in Sir William Garstin’s Report on the Upper Nile, 1904), “In most places there is a well-defined alluvial berm of recent formation and varying width, up to perhaps a couple of kilometres.” In military phraseology the berm is the space of ground between the base of a rampart and the ditch.

BERMONDSEY, a south-eastern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N. and E. by the Thames, S.E. by Deptford, S.W. by Camberwell, and W. by Southwark. Pop. (1901) 130,760. It is a district of poor streets, inhabited by a labouring population employed in leather and other factories, and in the Surrey Commercial Docks and the wharves bordering the river. The parish of Rotherhithe or Redriff has long been associated with a seafaring population. A tunnel connecting it with the opposite shore of the river was opened in June 1908. The neighbouring Thames Tunnel was opened in 1843, but, as the tolls were insufficient to maintain it, was sold to the East London Railway Company in 1865. The Herold Institute, a branch of the Borough Polytechnic, Southwark, is devoted to instruction in connexion with the leather trade. Southwark Park in the centre of the borough is 63 acres in extent. Bermondsey is in the parliamentary borough of Southwark, including the whole of Rotherhithe and part of the Bermondsey division. The borough council consists of a mayor, 9 aldermen, and 54 councillors. Area 1499.6 acres.

The name appears in Domesday, the suffix designating the former insular, marshy character of the district; while the prefix is generally taken to indicate the name of a Saxon overlord, Beormund. Bermondsey was in favour with the Norman kings as a place of residence, and there was a palace here, perhaps from pre-Norman times. A Cluniac monastery was founded in 1082, and Bermondsey Cross became a favoured place of pilgrimage. The foundation was erected into an abbey in 1399, and Abbey Road recalls its site. Similarly, Spa Road points to the existence of a popular spring and pleasure grounds, maintained for some years at the close of the 18th century. Jacob Street marks Jacob’s Island, the scene of the death of Bill Sikes in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Tooley Street, leading east from Southwark by London Bridge railway station, is well known in connexion with the story of three tailors of Tooley Street, who addressed a petition to parliament opening with the comprehensive expression “We, the people of England.” The name is a corruption of St Olave, or Olaf, the Christian king of Norway, who in 994 attacked London by way of the river, and broke down London Bridge.

See E.T. Clarke, Bermondsey, its Historic Memories (1901).

BERMUDAS, a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, forming a British colony, in 32° 15′ N. and 64° 50′ W., about 580 m. E. by S. from Cape Hatteras on the American coast. The group, consisting of small islands and reefs (which mark the extreme northern range of the coral-building polyps), is of oval form, measuring 22 m. from N.E. to S.W., the area being 20 sq. m. The largest of the islands is Great Bermuda, or the Main Island, 14 m. long and about a mile in average width, enclosing on the east Harrington or Little Sound, and on the west the Great Sound, which is thickly studded with islets, and protected on the north by the islands of Watford, Boaz, Ireland and Somerset. The remaining members of the group, St George, Paget, Smith, St David, Cooper, Nonsuch, &c., lie N.E. of the Main Island, and form a semicircle round Castle Harbour. The fringing islands which encircle the islands, especially on the north and west, leave a few deep passages wide enough to admit the largest vessels.

Geology.—The Bermudas consist of aeolian limestones (cf. Bahamas) which in some of the larger islands form irregular hills attaining a height of some 200-250 ft. These limestones are composed chiefly of comminuted shells drifted and deposited by the wind, and they are very irregularly stratified, as is usually the case with wind-blown deposits. Where fresh the rock is soft, but where it has been exposed to the action of the sea it is covered by a hard crust and often loses all trace of stratification. The surface is frequently irregularly honeycombed. Even the reefs are not wholly formed of coral. They are ridges of aeolian limestone plastered over by a thin layer of corals and other calcareous organisms. The very remarkable “serpuline atolls” are covered by a solid crust made of the convoluted tubes of serpulae and Vermetus, together with barnacles, mussels, nullipores, corallines and some true incrusting corals. They probably rest upon a foundation of aeolian rock. The Bermudas were formerly much more extensive than at present, and they may possibly stand upon the summit of a hidden volcano. There are evidences of small oscillations of levels, but no proofs of great elevation or depression.

Soil, Climate, &c.—The surface soil is a curious kind of red earth, which is also found in ochre-like strata throughout the limestone. It is generally mixed with vegetable matter and coral sand. There is a total want of streams and wells of fresh water, and the inhabitants are dependent on the rain, which they collect and preserve in tanks. The climate is mild and healthy, although serious epidemics of yellow fever and typhus have occurred. The maximum reading of the thermometer is about 87° F. and its minimum 49°, the mean annual temperature being 70°. The islands attract a large number of visitors annually from America. Vegetation is very rapid, and the soil is clad in a mantle of almost perpetual green. The principal kind of tree is the so-called “Bermudas cedar,” really a species of juniper, which furnishes timber for small vessels. The shores are fringed with the mangrove; the prickly pear grows luxuriantly in the most barren districts; and wherever the ground is left to itself the sage bush springs up profusely. The citron, sour orange, lemon and lime grow wild; but the apple and peach do not come to perfection. The loquat, an introduction from China, thrives admirably. The mild climate assists the growth of esculent plants and roots; and a considerable trade is carried on with New York, principally in onions, early potatoes, tomatoes, and beetroot, together with lily bulbs, cut flowers and some arrowroot. Medicinal plants, as the castor-oil plant and aloe, come to perfection without culture; and coffee, indigo, cotton and tobacco are also of spontaneous growth. Few oxen or sheep are reared in the colony, meat, as well as bread and most vegetables, being imported from America. The indigenous mammals are very few, and the only reptiles are a small lizard and the green turtle. Birds, however, especially aquatic species, are very numerous. Insects are comparatively few, but ants swarm destructively in the heat of the year. Fish are plentiful round the coasts, and the whale-fishery was once an important industry, but the fisheries as a whole have not been developed.

Towns, and Administration.—There are two towns in the Bermudas: St George, on the island of that name, founded in 1794 and incorporated in 1797; and Hamilton, on the Main Island, founded in 1790 and incorporated in 1793. St George was the capital till the senate and courts of justice were removed by Sir James Cockburn to Hamilton, which being centrally situated, is more convenient. Hamilton, which is situated on the inner part of the Great Sound, had a population in 1901 of 2246, that of St George being 985. In Ireland Island is situated the royal dockyard and naval establishment. The harbour of St George’s has space enough to accommodate a vast fleet; yet, till deepened by blasting, the entrance was so narrow as to render it almost useless. The Bermudas became an important naval and coaling station in 1869, when a large iron dry dock was towed across the Atlantic and placed in a secure position in St George, while, owing to their important strategic position in mid-Atlantic, the British government maintains a strong garrison. The Bermudas are a British crown colony, with a governor resident at Hamilton, who is assisted by an executive council of 6 members appointed by the crown, a legislative council of 9 similarly appointed, and a representative assembly of 36 members, of whom four are returned by each of nine parishes. The currency of the colony, which had formerly twelve shillings to the pound sterling, was assimilated to that of England in 1842. The English language is universal. The colony is ecclesiastically attached to the bishopric of Newfoundland. In 1847 an educational board was established, and there are numerous schools; attendance is compulsory, but none of the schools is free. Government scholarships enable youths to be educated for competition in the Rhodes scholarships to Oxford University. The revenue of the islands shows a fairly regular increase during the last years of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, as from £37,830 in 1895 to £63,457 in 1904; expenditure is normally rather less than revenue. In the year last named imports were valued at £589,979 and exports at £130,305, the annual averages since 1895 being about £426,300 and £112,500 respectively. The population shows a steady increase, as from 13,948 in 1881 to 17,535 in 1901; 6383 were whites and 11,152 coloured in the latter year.

History.—The discovery of the Bermudas resulted from the shipwreck of Juan Bermudez, a Spaniard (whose name they now bear), when on a voyage from Spain to Cuba with a cargo of hogs, early in the 16th century. Henry May, an Englishman, suffered the same fate in 1593; and lastly, Sir George Somers shared the destiny of the two preceding navigators in 1609. Sir George, from whom the islands took the alternative name of Somers, was the first who established a settlement upon them, but he died before he had fully accomplished his design. In 1612 the Bermudas were granted to an offshoot of the Virginia Company, which consisted of 120 persons, 60 of whom, under the command of Henry More, proceeded to the islands. The first source of colonial wealth was the growing of tobacco, but the curing industry ceased early in the 18th century. In 1726 Bishop George Berkeley chose the Bermudas as the seat of his projected missionary establishment. The first newspaper, the Bermuda Gazette, was published in 1784.

See Godet, Bermuda, its History, Geology, Climate, &c. (London, 1860); Lefroy, Discovery and Settlement of the Bermudas (London, 1877-1879); A. Heilprin, Bermuda Islands (Philadelphia, 1889); Stark, Bermuda Guide (London, 1898); Cole, Bermuda ... Bibliography (Boston, 1907); and for geology see also A. Agassíz, “Visit to the Bermudas in March 1894,” Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard, vol. xxvi. No. 2, 1895; A.E. Verrill, “Notes on the Geology of the Bermudas,” Amer. Journ. Sci. ser. 4, vol. ix. (1900), pp. 313-340; “The Bermuda Islands; Their Scenery, &c.,” Trans. Conn. Acad. Arts and Sci. vol. xi. pt. 2 (1901-1902).

BERMUDEZ, a N.E. state of Venezuela, between the Caribbean Sea and the Orinoco river, bounded E. by the gulf of Paria and the Delta-Amacuro territory, and W. by the states of Guarico and Miranda. Pop. (est. 1905) 364,158. It was created in 1881 by the union of the states of Barcelona, Cumaná and Maturín, dissolved in 1901 into its three original states, and reorganized in 1904 with a slight modification of territory. The state includes the oldest settlements in Venezuela, and was once very prosperous, producing cattle and exporting hides, but wars and political disorders have partly destroyed its industries and impeded their development. Its principal productions are coffee, sugar, and cacáo, and—less important—cotton, tobacco, cocoanuts, timber, indigo and dyewoods. Its more important towns are the capital, Barcelona, Maturín (pop. 14,473), capital of a district of the same name, and Cumaná (10,000), on the gulf of Cariaco, founded in 1520 and one of the oldest towns of the continent.

BERN (Fr. Berne), after the Grisons, the largest of the Swiss cantons, but by far the most populous, though politically Bern ranks after that of Zürich. It extends right across Switzerland from beyond the Jura to the snow-clad ranges that separate Bern from the Valais. Its total area is 2641.9 sq. m., of which 2081 sq. m. are classed as “productive” (including 591 sq. m. of forests, and 2.1 m. of vineyards), while of the remainder 111.3 sq. m. are occupied by glaciers (the Valais and the Grisons alone surpass it in this respect). It is mainly watered by the river Aar (q.v.), with its affluents, the Kander (left), the Saane or Sarine (left) and the Emme (right); the Aar forms the two lakes of Brienz and Thun (q.v.). The great extent of this canton accounts for the different character of the regions therein comprised. Three are usually distinguished:—(1) The Oberland or Highlands, which is that best known to travellers, for it includes the snowy Alps of the Bernese Oberland (culminating in the Finsteraarhorn, 14,026 ft., and the Jungfrau, 13,669 ft.), as well as the famous summer resorts of Grindelwald, Mürren, Lauterbrunnen, Interlaken, Meiringen, Kandersteg, Adelboden, Thun and the fine pastoral valley of the Simme. (2) The Mittelland or Midlands, comprising the valley of the Aar below Thun, and that of the Emme, thus taking in the outliers of the high Alps and the open country on every side of the town of Bern. (3) The Seeland (Lakeland) and the Jura, extending from Bienne and its lake across the Jura to Porrentruy in the plains and to the upper course of the Birs. The Oberland and Mittelland form the “old” canton, the Jura having only been acquired in 1815, and differing from the rest of the canton by reason of its French-speaking and Romanist inhabitants.

In 1900 the total population of the canton was 589,433, of whom 483,388 were German-speaking, 97,789 French-speaking, and 7167 Italian-speaking; while there were 506,699 Protestants, 80,489 Romanists (including the Old Catholics), and 1543 Jews. The capital is Bern (q.v.), while the other important towns are Bienne (q.v.), Burgdorf (q.v.), Delémont or Delsberg (5053 inhabitants), Porrentruy or Pruntrut (6959 inhabitants), Thun (q.v.), and Langenthal (4799 inhabitants). There is a university (founded in 1834) in the town of Bern, as well as institutions for higher education in the principal towns. The canton is divided into 30 administrative districts, and contains 507 communes (the highest number in Switzerland). From 1803 to 1814 the canton was one of the six “Directorial” cantons of the Confederation. The existing cantonal constitution dates from 1893, but in 1906 the direct popular election of the executive of 9 members (hitherto named by the legislature) was introduced. The legislature or Grossrath is elected for four years (like the executive), in the proportion of 1 member to every 2500 (or fraction over 1250) of the resident population. The obligatory Referendum obtains in the case of all laws, and of decrees relating to an expenditure of over half a million francs, while 12,000 citizens have the right of initiative in the case of legislative projects, and 15,000 may demand the revision of the cantonal constitution. The 2 members sent by the canton to the federal Ständerath are elected by the Grossrath, while the 29 members sent to the federal Nationalrath are chosen by a popular vote. In the Alpine portions of the canton the breeding of cattle (those of the Simme valley are particularly famous) is the chief industry; next come the elaborate arrangements for summer travellers (the Fremdenindustrie). It is reckoned that there are 2430 “Alps” or mountain pastures in the canton, of which 1474 are in the Oberland, 627 in the Jura, and 280 in the Emme valley; they can maintain 95,478 cows and are of the estimated value of 46½ million francs. The cheese of the Emme valley is locally much esteemed. Other industries in the Alpine region are wood-carving (at Brienz) and wine manufacture (on the shores of the lakes of Bienne and of Thun). The Mittelland is the agricultural portion of the canton. Watchmaking is the principal industry of the Jura, Bienne and St Imier being the chief centres of this industry. Iron mines are also worked in the Jura, while the Heimberg potteries, near Thun, produce a locally famous ware, and there are both quarries of building stone and tile factories. The canton is well supplied with railway lines, the broad gauge lines being 228 m. in length, and the narrow gauge lines 157½ m.—in all 385½ m. Among these are many funicular cog-wheel lines, climbing up to considerable heights, so up to Mürren (5368 ft.), over the Wengern Alp (6772 ft.), up to the Schynige Platte (6463 ft.), and many others still in the state of projects. All these are in the Oberland where, too, is the so-called Jungfrau railway, which in 1906 attained a point (the Eismeer station) in the south wall of the Eiger (13,042 ft.) that was 10,371 ft. in height, the loftiest railway station in Switzerland.

The canton of Bern is composed of the various districts which the town of Bern acquired by conquest or by purchase in the course of time. The more important, with dates of acquisition, are the following:—Laupen (1324), Hasli and Meiringen (1334), Thun and Burgdorf (1384), Unterseen and the Upper Simme valley (1386), Frutigen, &c. (1400), Lower Simme valley (1439-1449), Interlaken, with Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen and Brienz (1528, on the suppression of the Austin Canons of Interlaken), Saanen or Gessenay (1555), Köniz (1729), and the Bernese Jura with Bienne (1815, from the bishopric of Basel). But certain regions previously won were lost in 1798—Aargau (1415), Aigle and Grandson (1475), Vaud (1536), and the Pays d’En-Haut or Château d’Oex (1555). From 1798 to 1802 the Oberland formed a separate canton (capital, Thun) of the Helvetic Republic.

(W. A. B. C.)

BERN (Fr. Berne), the capital of the Swiss canton of the same name, and, by a Federal law of 1848, the political capital of the Swiss confederation. It is most picturesquely situated on a high bluff or peninsula, round the base of which flows the river Aar, thus completely cutting off the old town, save to the west. Five lofty bridges have been thrown over the Aar, the two most modern being the Kirchfeld and Kornhaus bridges which have greatly contributed to create new residential quarters near the old town. Within the town the arcades (or Lauben) on either side of the main street, and the numerous elaborately ornamented fountains attract the eye, as well as the two remaining towers that formerly stood on the old walls but are now in the centre of the town; the Zeilglockenthurm (famous for its singular 16th-century clock, with its mechanical contrivances, set in motion when the hour strikes) and the Käficthurm. The principal medieval building in Bern is the (now Protestant) Münster, begun in 1421 though not completed till 1573. The tower, rising conspicuously above the town, has recently been well restored, but the church was never a cathedral church (as is often stated), for there has never yet been a bishop of Bern. The federal Houses of Parliament (Bundeshaus) were much enlarged in 1888-1892, the older portions dating from 1852-1857, and also contain the offices of the federal executive and administration. The town-hall dates from 1406, while some of the houses belonging to the old gilds contain much of interest. The town library (with which that of the university was incorporated in 1905) contains a vast store of MSS. and rare printed books, but should be carefully distinguished from the national Swiss library, which, with the building for the federal archives, is built in the new Kirchfeld quarter. There are a number of museums; the historical (archaeological and medieval), the natural history (in which the skin of Barry, the famous St Bernard dog, is preserved), the art (mainly modern Swiss pictures), and the Alpine (in which are collections of all kinds relating to the Swiss Alps). Bern possesses a university (founded in 1834) and two admirably organized hospitals. The old fortifications (Schanzen) have been converted into promenades, which command wonderful views of the snowy Alps of the Bernese Oberland. Just across the Nydeck bridge is the famous bear pit in which live bears are kept, as they are supposed to have given the name to the town; certainly a bear is shown on the earliest known town seal (1224), while live bears have been maintained at the charges of the town since 1513. There is comparatively little industrial activity in the town, the importance of which is mainly political, though of late years it has been selected as the seat of various international associations (postal, telegraph, railway, copyright, &c.). The climate is severe, as the town is much exposed to cold winds blowing from the snowy Alps. In point of population it is exceeded in Switzerland by Zürich, Basel and Geneva, though the number of inhabitants has risen from 27,558 in 1850 and 43,197 in 1880 to 64,227 in 1900. In 1900, 59,698 inhabitants were German-speaking; while 57,144 were Protestants, 6087 Romanists (including Old Catholics) and 655 Jews. The height of the town above the sea-level is 1788 ft.

The ancient castle of Nydeck, at the eastern end of the peninsula, guarded the passage over the Aar, and it was probably its existence that induced Berchtold V., duke of Zäringen, to found Bern in 1191 as a military post on the frontier between the Alamannians (German-speaking) and the Burgundians (French-speaking). Thrice the walls which protected the town were moved westwards, about 1250, in 1346 and in 1622, though even at the last-named date the town only stretched a little way to the west of (or beyond) the present railway station. After the extinction of the Zäringen dynasty (1218) Bern became a free imperial city, but it had to fight hard for its independence, which was finally secured by the victories of Dornbühl (1298) over Fribourg and the Habsburgs, and of Laupen (1339) over the neighbouring Burgundian nobles. In the second battle Bern received help from the three forest cantons with which it had become allied in 1323, while in 1353 it entered the Swiss confederation as its eighth member. It soon took the lead in the confederation, though always aiming at enlarging its own borders, even at great risks (see the article on the canton). In 1528 Bern accepted the religious reformation, and henceforth became one of its chief champions in Switzerland. In the 17th century the number of families by which high offices of state could be held was diminished, so that in 1605 there were 152 thus qualified, but in 1691 only 104, while towards the end of the 18th century there were only 69 such families. Meanwhile the rule of the town was extending over more and more territory, so that finally it governed 52 bailiwicks (acquired between 1324 and 1729), the Bernese patricians being thus extremely powerful and forming an oligarchy that administered affairs like a benevolent and well-ordered despotism. In 1723 Major Davel, at Lausanne, and in 1749 Henzi, in Bern itself, tried to break down this monopoly, but in each case paid the penalty of failure on the scaffold. The whole system was swept away by the French in 1798, and though partially revived in 1815, came to an end in 1831, since which time Bern has been in the van of political progress. From 1815 to 1848 it shared with Zürich and Lucerne the supreme rule (which shifted from one to the other every two years) in the Swiss confederation, while in 1848 a federal law made Bern the sole political capital, where the federal government is permanently fixed and where the ministers of foreign powers reside.

Authorities.—Die Alp- und Weidewirthschaft im Kant. Bern (Bern, 1903); Archiv d. hist. Vereins d. Kant. Bern, from 1848, and Blätter für bernische Geschichte, from 1905; Bernische Biographien (Bern, 1898-1906); E. Friedli, Bärndutsch als Spiegel bernischen Volkstums. vol. i. (Lützelflüh, Bern, 1905), and vol. ii. (Grindelwald, Bern, 1908); Festschrift zur 7ten Säkularfeier d. Gründung Berns, 1191 (Bern, 1891); Fontes Rerum Bernensium (to 1378), (9 vols., Bern, 1883-1908); K. Geiser, Geschichte d. bernischen Verfassung, 1191-1471 (Bern, 1888); B. Haller, Bern in seinen Rathsmanualen, 1465-1565 (3 vols., Bern, 1900-1902); E.F. and W.F. von Mülinen, Beiträge zur Heimathskunde d. Kantons Bern, deulschen Theils (3 vols., Bern, 1879-1894); W.F. von Mülinen, Berns Geschichte, 1191-1891 (Bern, 1891); E. von Rodt, Bernische Stadtgeschichte (Bern, 1888), and 6 finely illustrated vols. on Bern in the 13th to 19th centuries (Bern, 1898-1907); L.S. von Tscharner, Rechtsgeschichte des Obersimmenthales bis zum Jahre 1798 (Bern, 1908); E. von Wattenwyl, Geschichte d. Stadt u. Landschaft Bern (to 1400), (2 vols.); Schaffhausen and Bern (1867-1872); F.E. Welti, Die Rechtsquellen d. Kant. Bern, vol. i. (Aarau, 1902); Gertrud Züricher, Kinderspiel u. Kinderlied im Kant. Bern (Zürich, 1902).

(W. A. B. C.)

BERNARD, SAINT (1090-1153), abbot of Clairvaux one of the most illustrious preachers and monks of the middle ages, was born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in France. His father, a knight named Tecelin, perished on crusade; and his mother Aleth, a daughter of the noble house of Mon-Bar, and a woman distinguished for her piety, died while Bernard was yet a boy. The lad was constitutionally unfitted for the career of arms, and his own disposition, as well as his mother’s early influence, directed him to the church. His desire to enter a monastery was opposed by his relations, who sent him to study at Châlons in order to qualify for high ecclesiastical preferment. Bernard’s resolution to become a monk was not, however, shaken, and when he at last definitely decided to join the community which Robert of Molesmes had founded at Citeaux in 1198, he carried with him his brothers and many of his relations and friends. The little community of reformed Benedictines, which was to produce so profound an influence on Western monachism (see Cistercians and Monasticism) and had seemed on the point of extinction for lack of novices, gained a sudden new life through this accession of some thirty young men of the best families of the neighbourhood. Others followed their example; and the community grew so rapidly that it was soon able to send off offshoots. One of these daughter monasteries, Clairvaux, was founded in 1115, in a wild valley branching from that of the Aube, on land given by Count Hugh of Troyes, and of this Bernard was appointed abbot.

By the new constitution of the Cistercians Clairvaux became the chief monastery of the five branches into which the order was divided under the supreme direction of the abbot of Citeaux. Though nominally subject to Citeaux, however, Clairvaux soon became the most important Cistercian house, owing to the fame and influence of Bernard.1 His saintly character, his self-mortification—of so severe a character that his friend, William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons, thought it right to remonstrate with him—and above all, his marvellous power as a preacher, soon made him famous, and drew crowds of pilgrims to Clairvaux. His miracles were noised abroad, and sick folk were brought from near and far to be healed by his touch. Before long the abbot, who had intended to devote his life to the work of his monastery, was drawn into the affairs of the great world. When in 1124 Pope Honorius II. mounted the chair of St Peter, Bernard was already reckoned among the greatest of French churchmen; he now shared in the most important ecclesiastical discussions, and papal legates sought his counsel. Thus in 1128 he was invited by Cardinal Matthew of Albano to the synod of Troyes, where he was instrumental in obtaining the recognition of the new order of Knights Templars, the rules of which he is said to have drawn up; and in the following year, at the synod of Châlons-sur-Marne, he ended the crisis arising out of certain charges brought against Henry, bishop of Verdun, by persuading the bishop to resign. The European importance of Bernard, however, began with the death of Pope Honorius II. (1130) and the disputed election that followed. In the synod convoked by Louis the Fat at Etampes in April 1130 Bernard successfully asserted the claims of Innocent II. against those of Anacletus II., and from this moment became the most influential supporter of his cause. He threw himself into the contest with characteristic ardour. While Rome itself was held by Anacletus, France, England, Spain and Germany declared for Innocent, who, though banished from Rome, was—in Bernard’s phrase—“accepted by the world.” The pope travelled from place to place, with the powerful abbot of Clairvaux at his side; he stayed at Clairvaux itself, humble still, so far as its buildings were concerned; and he went with Bernard to parley with the emperor Lothair III. at Liége.

In 1133, the year of the emperor’s first expedition to Rome, Bernard was in Italy persuading the Genoese to make peace with the men of Pisa, since the pope had need of both. He accompanied Innocent to Rome, successfully resisting the proposal to reopen negotiations with Anacletus, who held the castle of Sant’ Angelo and, with the support of Roger of Sicily, was too strong to be subdued by force. Lothair, though crowned by Innocent in St Peter’s, could do nothing to establish him in the Holy See so long as his own power was sapped by his quarrel with the house of Hohenstaufen. Again Bernard came to the rescue; in the spring of 1135 he was at Bamberg successfully persuading Frederick of Hohenstaufen to submit to the emperor. In June he was back in Italy, taking a leading part in the council of Pisa, by which Anacletus was excommunicated. In northern Italy the effect of his personality and of his preaching was immense; Milan itself, of all the Lombard cities most jealous of the imperial claims, surrendered to his eloquence, submitted to Lothair and to Innocent, and tried to force Bernard against his will into the vacant see of St Ambrose. In 1137, the year of Lothair’s last journey to Rome, Bernard was back in Italy again; at Monte Cassino, setting the affairs of the monastery in order, at Salerno, trying in vain to induce Roger of Sicily to declare against Anacletus, in Rome itself, agitating with success against the antipope. Anacletus died on the 25th of January 1138; on the 13th of March the cardinal Gregory was elected his successor, assuming the name of Victor. Bernard’s crowning triumph in the long contest was the abdication of the new antipope, the result of his personal influence. The schism of the church was healed, and the abbot of Clairvaux was free to return to the peace of his monastery.

Clairvaux itself had meanwhile (1135-1136) been transformed outwardly—in spite of the reluctance of Bernard, who preferred the rough simplicity of the original buildings—into a more suitable seat for an influence that overshadowed that of Rome itself. How great this influence was is shown by the outcome of Bernard’s contest with Abelard (q.v.). In intellectual and dialectical power the abbot was no match for the great schoolman; yet at Sens in 1141 Abelard feared to face him, and when he appealed to Rome Bernard’s word was enough to secure his condemnation.

One result of Bernard’s fame was the marvellous growth of the Cistercian order. Between 1130 and 1145 no less than ninety-three monasteries in connexion with Clairvaux were either founded or affiliated from other rules, three being established in England and one in Ireland. In 1145 a Cistercian monk, once a member of the community of Clairvaux—another Bernard, abbot of Aquae Silviae near Rome, was elected pope as Eugenius III. This was a triumph for the order; to the world it was a triumph for Bernard, who complained that all who had suits to press at Rome applied to him, as though he himself had mounted the chair of St Peter (Ep. 239).

Having healed the schism within the church, Bernard was next called upon to attack the enemy without. Languedoc especially had become a hotbed of heresy, and at this time the preaching of Henry of Lausanne (q.v.) was drawing thousands from the orthodox faith. In June 1145, at the invitation of Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, Bernard travelled in the south, and by his preaching did something to stem the flood of heresy for a while. Far more important, however, was his activity in the following year, when, in obedience to the pope’s command, he preached a crusade. The effect of his eloquence was extraordinary. At the great meeting at Vezelay, on the 21st of March, as the result of his sermon, King Louis VII. of France and his queen, Eleanor of Guienne, took the cross, together with a host of all classes, so numerous that the stock of crosses was soon exhausted; Bernard next travelled through northern France, Flanders and the Rhine provinces, everywhere rousing the wildest enthusiasm; and at Spires on Christmas day he succeeded in persuading Conrad, king of the Romans, to join the crusade.

The lamentable outcome of the movement (see Crusades) was a hard blow to Bernard, who found it difficult to understand this manifestation of the hidden counsels of God, but ascribed it to the sins of the crusaders (Ep. 288; de Consid. ii. 1). The news of the disasters to the crusading host first reached Bernard at Clairvaux, where Pope Eugenius, driven from Rome by the revolution associated with the name of Arnold of Brescia, was his guest. Bernard had in March and April 1148 accompanied the pope to the council of Reims, where he led the attack on certain propositions of the scholastic theologian Gilbert de la Porrée (q.v.). From whatever cause—whether the growing jealousy of the cardinals, or the loss of prestige owing to the rumoured failure of the crusade, the success of which he had so confidently predicted—Bernard’s influence, hitherto so ruinous to those suspected of heterodoxy, on this occasion failed of its full effect. On the news of the full extent of the disaster that had overtaken the crusaders, an effort was made to retrieve it by organizing another expedition. At the invitation of Suger, abbot of St Denis, now the virtual ruler of France, Bernard attended the meeting of Chartres convened for this purpose, where he himself was elected to conduct the new crusade, the choice being confirmed by the pope. He was saved from this task, for which he was physically and constitutionally unfit, by the intervention of the Cistercian abbots, who forbade him to undertake it.

Bernard was now ageing, broken by his austerities and by ceaseless work, and saddened by the loss of several of his early friends. But his intellectual energy remained undimmed. He continued to take an active interest in ecclesiastical affairs, and his last work, the De Consideratione, shows no sign of failing power. He died on the 20th of August 1153.

The greatness of St Bernard lay not in the qualities of his intellect, but of his character. Intellectually he was the child of his age, inferior to those subtle minds whom the world, fired by his contagious zeal, conspired to crush. Morally he was their superior; and in this moral superiority lay the secret of his power. The age recognized in him the embodiment of its ideal: that of medieval monasticism at its highest development. The world had no meaning for him save as a place of banishment and trial, in which men are but “strangers and pilgrims” (Serm. i., Epiph. n. 1; Serm. vii., Lent. n. 1); the way of grace, back to the lost inheritance, had been marked out once for all, and the function of theology was but to maintain the landmarks inherited from the past. With the subtleties of the schools he had no sympathy, and the dialectics of the schoolmen quavered into silence before his terrible invective. Yet, within the limits of his mental horizon, Bernard’s vision was clear enough. His very life proves with what merciless logic he followed out the principles of the Christian faith as he conceived it; and it is impossible to say that he conceived it amiss. For all his overmastering zeal he was by nature neither a bigot nor a persecutor. Even when he was preaching the crusade he interfered at Mainz to stop the persecution of the Jews, stirred up by the monk Radulf. As for heretics, “the little foxes that spoil the vines,” these “should be taken, not by force of arms, but by force of argument,” though, if any heretic refused to be thus taken, he considered “that he should be driven away, or even a restraint put upon his liberty, rather than that he should be allowed to spoil the vines” (Serm. lxiv.). He was evidently troubled by the mob violence which made the heretics “martyrs to their unbelief.” He approved the zeal of the people, but could not advise the imitation of their action, “because faith is to be produced by persuasion, not imposed by force”; adding, however, in the true spirit of his age and of his church, “it would without doubt be better that they should be coerced by the sword than that they should be allowed to draw away many other persons into their error.” Finally, oblivious of the precedent of the Pharisees, he ascribes the steadfastness of these “dogs” in facing death to the power of the devil (Serm. lxvi. on Canticles ii. 15).

This is Bernard at his worst. At his best—and, fortunately, this is what is mainly characteristic of the man and his writings—he displays a nobility of nature, a wise charity and tenderness in his dealings with others, and a genuine humility, with no touch of servility, that make him one of the most complete exponents of the Christian life. His broadly Christian character is, indeed, witnessed to by the enduring quality of his influence. The author of the Imitatio drew inspiration from his writings; the reformers saw in him a medieval champion of their favourite doctrine of the supremacy of the divine grace; his works, down to the present day, have been reprinted in countless editions. This is perhaps due to the fact that the chief fountain of his own inspiration was the Bible. He was saturated in its language and in its spirit; and though he read it, as might be expected, uncritically, and interpreted its plain meanings allegorically—as the fashion of the day was—it saved him from the grosser aberrations of medieval Catholicism. He accepted the teaching of the church as to the reverence due to our Lady and the saints, and on feast-days and festivals these receive their due meed in his sermons; but in his letters and sermons their names are at other times seldom invoked. They were overshadowed completely in his mind by his idea of the grace of God and the moral splendour of Christ; “from Him do the Saints derive the odour of sanctity; from Him also do they shine as lights” (Ep. 464).

The cause of Bernard’s extraordinary popular success as a preacher can only imperfectly be judged by the sermons that survive. These were all delivered in Latin, evidently to congregations more or less on his own intellectual level. Like his letters, they are full of quotations from and reference to the Bible, and they have all the qualities likely to appeal to men of culture at all times. “Bernard,” wrote Erasmus in his Art of Preaching, “is an eloquent preacher, much more by nature than by art; he is full of charm and vivacity and knows how to reach and move the affections.” The same is true of the letters and to an even more striking degree. They are written on a large variety of subjects, great and small, to people of the most diverse stations and types; and they help us to understand the adaptable nature of the man, which enabled him to appeal as successfully to the unlearned as to the learned.

Bernard’s works fall into three categories:—(1) Letters, of which over five hundred have been preserved, of great interest and value for the history of the period. (2) Treatises: (a) dogmatic and polemical, De gratia el libero arbitrio, written about 1127, and following closely the lines laid down by St Augustine; De baptismo aliisque quaestionibus ad mag. Hugonem de S. Victore; Contra quaedam capitala errorum Abaelardi ad Innocentem II. (in justification of the action of the synod of Sens); (b) ascetic and mystical, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, his first work, written perhaps about 1121; De diligendo Deo (about 1126); De conversione ad clericos, an address to candidates for the priesthood; De Consideratione, Bernard’s last work, written about 1148 at the pope’s request for the edification and guidance of Eugenius III.; (c) about monasticism, Apologia ad Guilelmum, written about 1127 to William, abbot of St Thierry; De laude novae militiae ad milites templi (c. 1132-1136); De precepto et dispensatione, an answer to various questions on monastic conduct and discipline addressed to him by the monks of St Peter at Chartres (some time before 1143); (d) on ecclesiastical government, De moribus et officio episcoporum, written about 1126 for Henry, bishop of Sens; the De Consideratione mentioned above; (e) a biography, De vita et rebus gestis S. Malachiae, Hiberniae episcopi, written at the request of the Irish abbot Congan and with the aid of materials supplied by him; it is of importance for the ecclesiastical history of Ireland in the 12th century; (f) sermons—divided into Sermones de tempore; de sanctis; de diversis; and eighty-six sermons, in Cantica Canticorum, an allegorical and mystical exposition of the Song of Solomon; (g) hymns. Many hymns ascribed to Bernard survive, e.g. Jesu dulcis memoria, Jesus rex admirabilis. Jesu decus angelicum, Salve caput cruentatum. Of these the three first are included in the Roman breviary. Many have been translated and are used in Protestant churches.

St Bernard’s works were first published in anything like a complete edition at Paris in 1508, under the title Seraphica melliflui devotique doctoris S. Bernardi scripta, edited by André Bocard; the first really critical and complete edition is that of Dom J. Mabillon Sancti Bernardi opp. &c. (Paris, 1667, improved and enlarged in 1690, and again, by Massuet and Texier, in 1719), reprinted by J.P. Migne, Patrolog. lat. (Paris, 1859). There is an English translation of Mabillon’s edition, including, however, only the letters and the sermons on the Song of Songs, with the biographical and other prefaces, by Samuel J. Eales (4 vols., London, 1889-1895). See further Leopold Janauschek, Bibliographia Bernardina (Vienna, 1891), which includes 2761 entries, including 120 works wrongly ascribed to Bernard.

Authorities.—The principal source for the life of St Bernard is the Vita Prima, compiled, in six books, by various contemporary writers: book i. by William, abbot of St Thierry near Reims; book ii. by Ernald, or Arnald, abbot of Bonnevalle; books iii., iv. and v. by Geoffrey (Gaufrid), monk of Clairvaux and Bernard’s secretary; book vi., on Bernard’s miracles, by Geoffrey and Philip, another monk of Clairvaux, &c. A MS. is preserved, int. al., in the library of Lambeth Palace (§ xiv. No. 163). The Vita was first published in Bernardi op. omn. by Mabillon (Paris, 1690), ii. pp. 1061 ff.; it was included in Migne, Patrolog. lat. clxxxv. pp. 225-416, which also contains the abridgments or amplifications, by later hands, of the Vita Prima, known as the Vita Secunda, Tertia and Quarta. For a critical study of these sources see G. Hüffer, Der heilige Bernhard von Clairvaux (2 vols., Münster, 1886), and E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Bernard (2 vols., Paris, 1895).

Among the numerous modern works on St Bernard may be mentioned, besides the above, J.C. Morison, The Life and Times of St Bernard (London, 1863); G. Chevallier, Histoire de Saint Bernard (2 vols., Lille, 1888); S.J. Eales, St Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux (London, 1890, “Fathers for English Readers” series); ib. Life and Works of St Bernard (London, 1889); R.S. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux: the Times, the Man and His Work (New York, 1893); Comte d’Haussonville, Saint Bernard (Paris, 1906). See also the article by Vacandart in A. Vacant’s Dictionnaire de théologie (with full bibliography), and that by S.M. Deutsch in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.), vol. ii. (bibliography). Further works, monographs, &c., are given s. “Vita S. Bernardi” in Potthast. Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi (Berlin, 1896).

(W. A. P.)

1 The Cistercians of this branch of the order were commonly known as Bernardines.

BERNARD OF CHARTRES (1080?-1167), surnamed Sylvestris, scholastic philosopher, described by John of Salisbury as perfectissimus inter Platonicos nostri saeculi. He and his brother Theodore were among the chief members of the school of Chartres (France), founded in the early part of the 11th century by Fulbert, the great disciple of Gerbert. This school flourished at a time when medieval thought was directed to the ancient philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and had perversely come to regard Aristotle as merely the founder of abstract logic and formal intellectualism, as opposed to Plato whose doctrine of Ideas seemed to tend in a naturalistic direction. Thus Bernard is a Platonist and yet the representative of a “return to Nature” which curiously anticipates the humanism of the early Renaissance. John of Salisbury (Metalogicus, iv. 35) attributes to him two treatises, of which one contrasts the eternity of ideas with the finite nature of things, and the other is an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. The only extant fragments of Bernard’s writings are from a treatise Megacosmus and Microcosmus (edited by C.S. Barach at Innsbruck, 1876). The source of Bernard’s inspiration was Plato’s Timaeus. He maintained that ideas are really existent and are laid up for ever in the mind of God. He further attempted to build up a symbolism of numbers with the view of elaborating the doctrine of the Trinity, and explaining the meaning of unity, plurality and likeness.

See Scholasticism; also V. Cousin, Œuvres inédites of Abelard (Paris, 1836); Hauréau, Philosophie scolastique, i. 396 foll.

BERNARD, CHARLES DE, whose full name was Pierre Marie Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette (1804-1850), French writer, was born at Besançon on the 25th of February 1804. After studying for the law, and then taking to journalism, he was encouraged by Balzac (whose Peau de chagrin he had reviewed) to settle in Paris and devote himself to authorship; and the result was a series of volumes of fiction, remarkable for their picture of provincial society and the Parisian bourgeoisie. The best of these are Le Nœud gordien (1838), containing among other short stories Une Aventure de magistrat, from which Sardou drew his comedy of the Pommes du voisin; Gerfaut (1838), considered his masterpiece; Les Ailes d’Icare (1840), La Peau du lion (1841) and Le Gentilhomme campagnard (1847).

His Œuvres complètes (12 vols.), which appeared after his death on the 6th of March 1850, include also his poetry and two comedies written in collaboration with “Léonce” (C.H.L. Laurençot, 1805-1862). A flattering appreciation by Armand de Pontmartin is prefixed to Un Beau-père in this collection. In W.M. Thackeray’s Paris Sketch-book (“On some fashionable French novels”) there is an admirable criticism of Bernard. See also an essay by Henry James in French Poets and Novelists (1884).

BERNARD, CLAUDE (1813-1878), French physiologist, was born on the 12th of July 1813 in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyons, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a druggist’s shop. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, La Rose du Rhône, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, Arthur de Bretagne. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris, armed with this play and an introduction to Saint-Marc Girardin, but the critic dissuaded him from adopting literature as a profession, and urged him rather to take up the study of medicine. This advice he followed, and in due course became interne at the Hôtel Dieu. In this way he was brought into contact with the great physiologist, F. Magendie, who was physician to the hospital, and whose official préparateur at the Collège de France he became in 1841. Six years afterwards he was appointed his deputy-professor at the collège, and in 1855 he succeeded him as full professor. Some time previously he had been chosen the first occupant of the newly-instituted chair of physiology at the Sorbonne. There no laboratory was provided for his use, but Louis Napoleon, after an interview with him in 1864, supplied the deficiency, at the same time building a laboratory at the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes, and establishing a professorship, which Bernard left the Sorbonne to accept in 1868—the year in which he was admitted a member of the Institute. He died in Paris on the 10th of February 1878 and was accorded a public funeral—an honour which had never before been bestowed by France on a man of science.

Claude Bernard’s first important work was on the functions of the pancreas gland, the juice of which he proved to be of great significance in the process of digestion; this achievement won him the prize for experimental physiology from the Academy of Sciences. A second investigation—perhaps his most famous—was on the glycogenic function of the liver; in the course of this he was led to the conclusion, which throws light on the causation of diabetes, that the liver, in addition to secreting bile, is the seat of an “internal secretion,” by which it prepares sugar at the expense of the elements of the blood passing through it. A third research resulted in the discovery of the vaso-motor system. While engaged, about 1851, in examining the effects produced in the temperature of various parts of the body by section of the nerve or nerves belonging to them, he noticed that division of the cervical sympathetic gave rise to more active circulation and more forcible pulsation of the arteries in certain parts of the head, and a few months afterwards he observed that electrical excitation of the upper portion of the divided nerve had the contrary effect. In this way he established the existence of vaso-motor nerves—both vaso-dilatator and vaso-constrictor. The study of the physiological action of poisons was also a favourite one with him, his attention being devoted in particular to curare and carbon monoxide gas. The earliest announcements of his results, the most striking of which were obtained in the ten years from about 1850 to 1860, were generally made in the recognized scientific publications; but the full exposition of his views, and even the statement of some of the original facts, can only be found in his published lectures. The various series of these Leçons fill seventeen octavo volumes. He also published Introduction à la médecine expérimentale (1865), and Physiologie générale (1872).

An English Life of Bernard, by Sir Michael Foster, was published in London in 1899.

BERNARD, JACQUES (1658-1718), French theologian and publicist, was born at Nions in Dauphiné on the 1st of September 1658. Having studied at Geneva, he returned to France in 1679, and was chosen minister of Venterol in Dauphiné, whence he afterwards removed to the church of Vinsobres. As he continued to preach the reformed doctrines in opposition to the royal ordinance, he was obliged to leave the country and retired to Holland, where he was well received and appointed one of the pensionary ministers of Gouda. In July 1686 he commenced his Histoire abrégée de l’Europe, which he continued monthly till December 1688. In 1692 he began his Lettres historiques, containing an account of the most important transactions in Europe; he carried on this work till the end of 1698, after which it was continued by others. When Le Clerc discontinued his Bibliothèque universelle in 1691. Bernard wrote the greater part of the twentieth volume and the five following volumes. In 1698 he collected and published Actes et négotiations de la paix de Ryswic, in four volumes 12mo. In 1699 he began a continuation of Bayle’s Nouvelles de la république des lettres, which continued till December 1710. In 1705 he was unanimously elected one of the ministers of the Walloon church at Leiden; and about the same time he succeeded M. de Valder in the chair of philosophy and mathematics at Leiden. In 1716 he published a supplement to Moreri’s dictionary, in two volumes folio. The same year he resumed his Nouvelles de la république des lettres, and continued it till his death, on the 27th of April 1718. Besides the works above mentioned, he was the author of two practical treatises, one on late repentance (1712), the other on the excellence of religion (1714).

BERNARD, MOUNTAGUE (1820-1882), English international lawyer, the third son of Charles Bernard of Jamaica, the descendant of a Huguenot family, was born at Tibberton Court, Gloucestershire, on the 28th of January 1820. He was educated at Sherborne school, and Trinity College, Oxford. Graduating B.A. in 1842, he took his B.C.L., was elected Vinerian scholar and fellow, and having read in chambers with Roundell Palmer (afterwards Lord Selborne), was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1846. He was specially interested in legal history and in church questions, and was one of the founders of the Guardian. In 1852 he was elected to the new professorship of international law and diplomacy at Oxford, attached to All Souls’ College, of which he afterwards was made a fellow. But besides his duties at Oxford he undertook a good deal of non-collegiate work; he was a member of several royal commissions; in 1871 he went as one of the high commissioners to the United States, and signed the treaty of Washington, and in 1872 he assisted Sir Roundell Palmer before the tribunal of arbitration at Geneva. In 1874 he resigned his professorship at Oxford, but as member of the university of Oxford commission of 1876 he was mainly responsible for bringing about the compromise ultimately adopted between the university and the colleges. Bernard’s reputation as an international lawyer was widespread, and he was an original member of the Institut de Droit International (1873). His published works include An Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War (London, 1870), and many lectures on international law and diplomacy.

BERNARD, SIMON (1779-1839), French general of engineers, was born at Dôle, educated at the École Polytechnique, and entered the army in the corps of engineers. He rose rapidly, and served (1805-1812) as aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He was wounded in the retreat after Leipzig, and distinguished himself the same year (1813) in the gallant defence of Torgau against the allies. After the emperor’s fall he emigrated to the United States, where, being made a brigadier-general of engineers, he executed a number of extensive military works for the government, notably at Fortress Monroe, Va., and around New York, and did a large amount of the civil engineering connected with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Delaware Breakwater. He returned to France after the revolution of 1830, was made a lieu tenant-general by Louis Philippe, and in 1836 served as minister of war.

BERNARD, SIR THOMAS, Bart. (1750-1818), English social reformer, was born at Lincoln on the 27th of April 1750, the younger son of Sir Francis Bernard, 1st bart. (1711-1779), who as governor of Massachusetts Bay (1760-1770) played a responsible part in directing the British policy which led to the revolt of the American colonies. On the death of his elder brother in 1810, Bernard succeeded to the baronetcy conferred on his father in 1769. His early education was obtained in America, partly at Harvard, in which college his father took a great interest. He then acted as confidential secretary to his father during the troubles which led (1769) to the governor’s recall, and accompanied Sir Francis to England, where he was called to the bar, and practised as a conveyancer. He married a rich wife, and acquired a considerable fortune, and then devoted most of his time to social work for the benefit of the poor. He was treasurer of the Foundling Hospital, in the concerns of which he took an important part. He helped to establish in 1796 the “Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor,” in 1800 a school for indigent blind, and in 1801 a fever institution. He was active in promoting vaccination, improving the conditions of child labour, advocating rural allotments, and agitating against the salt duties. He took great interest in education, and with Count Rumford he was an originator of the Royal Institution in London. He died without issue on the 1st of July 1818.

BERNARDIN OF SIENA, ST (1380-1444), Franciscan friar and preacher, was born of a noble family in 1380. His parents died in his childhood, and on the completion of his education he spent some years in the service of the sick in the hospitals, and thus caught the plague, of which he nearly died. In 1402 he entered the Franciscan order in the strict branch called Observant, of which he became one of the chief promoters (see Franciscans). Shortly after his profession the work of preaching was laid upon him, and for more than thirty years he preached with wonderful effect all over Italy, and played a great part in the religious revival of the beginning of the 15th century. In 1437 he became vicar-general of the Observant branch of the Franciscans. He refused three bishoprics. He died in 1444 at Aquila in the Abruzzi, and was canonized in 1450.

The first edition of his works, for the most part elaborate sermons, was printed at Lyons in 1501; later ones in 1636, 1650 and 1745. His Life will be found in the Bollandists and in Lives of the Saints on the 20th of May: a good modern biography has been written by Paul Thureau-Dangin (1896), and translated into English by Gertrude von Hügel (1906).

(E. C. B.)

BERNAUER, AGNES (d. 1435), daughter of an Augsburg baker, was secretly married about 1432 to Albert (1401-1460), son of Ernest, duke of Bavaria-Munich. Ignorant of the fact that this union was a lawful one, Ernest urged his son to marry, and reproached him with his connexion with Agnes. Albert then declared she was his lawful wife; and subsequently, during his absence, she was seized by order of Duke Ernest and condemned to death for witchcraft. On the 12th of October 1435 she was drowned in the Danube near Straubing, in which town her remains were afterwards buried by Albert. This story lived long in the memory of the people, and its chief interest lies in its literary associations. It has afforded material for several dramas, and Adolf Böttger, Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig have each written one entitled Agnes Bernauer.

BERNAY, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Eure, on the left bank of the Charentonne, 31 m. W.N.W. of Evreux, on the Western railway between that town and Lisieux. Pop. (1906) 5973. It is beautifully situated in the midst of green wooded hills, and still justifies Madame de Stael’s description of it as “a basket of flowers.” Of great antiquity, it possesses numerous quaint wooden houses and ancient ecclesiastical buildings of considerable interest. The abbey church is now used as a market, and the abbey, which was founded by Judith of Brittany early in the 11th century, and underwent a restoration in the 17th century, serves for municipal and legal purposes. The church of Ste Croix, which has a remarkable marble figure of the infant Jesus, dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, that of Notre-Dame de la Couture, which preserves some good stained glass, from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, Bernay has a sub-prefecture, a communal college, tribunals of commerce and of first instance, and a board of trade-arbitrators. Among the industrial establishments of the place are manufactories of cotton and woollen goods, bleacheries and dye-works. Large numbers of Norman horses are sold in Lent, at the fair known as the Foire fleurie, and there is also a trade in grain. Bernay grew up round the Benedictine abbey mentioned above, and early in the 13th century was the seat of a viscount. The town, formerly fortified was besieged by Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, in 1378; it was taken several times by the English during the first half of the 15th century, and by Admiral de Coligny in 1563. The fortress was razed in 1589.

BERNAYS, JAKOB (1824-1881), German philologist and philosophical writer, was born at Hamburg of Jewish parents on the 11th of September 1824. His father, Isaac Bernays (1792-1849), a man of wide culture, was the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular. Jakob studied from 1844 to 1848 at the university of Bonn, the philological school of which, under Welcker and Ritschl (whose favourite pupil Bernays became), was the best in Germany. In 1853 he accepted the chair of classical philology at the newly founded Jewish theological college (the Fränkel seminary) at Breslau, where he formed a close friendship with Mommsen. In 1866, when Ritschl left Bonn for Leipzig, Bernays returned to his old university as extraordinary professor and chief librarian. He remained at Bonn until his death on the 28th of May 1881. His chief works, which deal mainly with the Greek philosophers, are:—Die Lebensbeschreibung des J.J. Scaliger (1855); Über das Phokylidische Gedicht (1856); Die Chronik des Sulpicius Severus (1861); Die Dialoge des Aristoteles im Verhältniss zu seinen übrigen Werken (1863); Theophrastos’ Schrift über Frömmigkeit (1866); Die Heraklitischen Briefe (1869); Lucian und die Cyniker (1879); Zwei Abhandlungen über die Aristolelische Theorie des Dramas (1880). The last of these was a republication of his Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlungen des Aristoteles über die Wirkung der Tragödie (1857), which aroused considerable controversy.

See notices in Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde (1881), and Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlvi. (1902); art. in Jewish Encyclopaedia; also Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. 176 (1908).

His brother, Michael Bernays (1834-1897), was born in Hamburg on the 27th of November 1834. He studied first law and then literature at Bonn and Heidelberg, and obtained a considerable reputation by his lectures on Shakespeare at Leipzig and an explanatory text to Beethoven’s music to Egmont. Having refused an invitation to take part in the editorship of the Preussiche Jahrbücher, in the same year (1866) he published his celebrated Zur Kritik und Geschichte des Goetheschen-Textes. He confirmed his reputation by his lectures at the university of Leipzig, and in 1873 accepted the post of extraordinary professor of German literature at Munich specially created for him by Louis II. of Bavaria. In 1874 he became an ordinary professor, a position which he only resigned in 1889 when he settled at Carlsruhe. He died at Carlsruhe on the 25th of February 1897. At an early age he had embraced Christianity, whereas his brother Jakob remained a Jew. Among his other publications were: Briefe Goethes an F.A. Wolf (1868); Zur Enstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare (1872); an introduction to Hirzel’s collection entitled Der junge Goethe (1875); and he edited a revised edition of Voss’s translation of the Odyssey. From his literary remains were published Schriften zur Kritik und Litteraturgeschichte (1895-1899).

BERNBURG, a town in the duchy of Anhalt, Germany, on the Saale, 29 m. N. by W. from Halle by rail, formerly the capital of the new incorporated duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg. Pop. (1900) 34,427; (1905) 34,929. It consists of four parts, the Altstadt or old town, the Bergstadt or hill town, the Neustadt or new town, and the suburb of Waldau—the Bergstadt on the right and the other three on the left of the river Saale, which is crossed by a massive stone bridge. It is a well-built city, the principal public buildings being the government house, the church of St Mary, the gymnasium and the house of correction. The castle, formerly the ducal residence, is in the Bergstadt, defended by moats, and surrounded by beautiful gardens. Bernburg is the seat of considerable industry, manufacturing machinery and boilers, sugar, pottery and chemicals, and has lead and zinc smelting. Market-gardening is also extensively carried on, and there is a large river traffic in grain and agricultural produce.

Bernburg is of great antiquity. The Bergstadt was fortified by Otto III. in the 10th century, and the new town was founded in the 13th. For a long period the different parts were under separate municipalities, the new town uniting with the old in 1560, and the Bergstadt with both in 1824. Prince Frederick removed the ducal residence to Ballenstedt in 1765.

BERNERS, JOHN BOURCHIER, 2nd Baron (1469-1533), English translator, was born probably at Tharfield, Hertfordshire, about 1469. His father was killed at Barnet in 1471, and he inherited his title in 1474 from his grandfather, John Bourchier, who was a descendant of Edward III. It is supposed that he was educated at Oxford, perhaps at Balliol. His political life began early, for in 1484 he was implicated in a premature attempt to place Henry, duke of Richmond (afterwards Henry VII.), on the throne, and fled in consequence to Brittany. In 1497 he helped to put down an insurrection in Cornwall and Devonshire, raised by Michael Joseph, a blacksmith, and from this time was in high favour at court. He accompanied Henry VIII. to Calais in 1513, and was a captain of pioneers at the siege of Therouanne. In the next year he was again sent to France as chamberlain to the king’s sister Mary on her marriage with Louis XII., but he soon returned to England. He had been given the reversion of the office of lord chancellor, and in 1516 he received the actual appointment. In 1518 he was sent to Madrid to negotiate an alliance with Charles of Spain. He sent letters to Henry chronicling the bull-fights and other doings of the Spanish court, and to Wolsey complaining of the expense to which he was put in his position as ambassador. In the next year he returned to England, and with his wife Catherine Howard, daughter of the duke of Norfolk, was present in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. But his affairs were greatly embarrassed. He was harassed by lawsuits about his Hertfordshire property and owed the king sums he was unable to repay. Perhaps in the hope of repairing his fortune, he accepted the office of deputy of Calais, where he spent the rest of his life in comparative leisure, though still harassed by his debts, and died on the 16th of March 1533.

His translation of Syr Johan Froyssart of the Cronycles of England, France, Spayne, Portyngale, Scotland, Bretayne, Flaunders: and other places adjoynynge, was undertaken at the request of Henry VIII., and was printed by Richard Pynson in two volumes dated 1523 and 1525. It was the most considerable historical work that had yet appeared in English, and exercised great influence on 16th-century chroniclers. Berners tells us in his prefaces of his own love of histories of all kinds, and in the introduction to his story of Arthur of Little Britain he excuses its “fayned mater” and “many unpossybylytees” on the ground that other well reputed histories are equally incredible. He goes on to excuse his deficiencies by saying that he knew himself to be unskilled in the “facundyous arte of retoryke,” and that he was but a “lerner of the language of Frensshe.” The want of rhetoric is not to be deplored. The style of his translation is clear and simple, and he rarely introduces French words or idioms. Two romances from the French followed: The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux (printed 1534? by Wynkyn de Worde), and The Hystory of the Moost noble and valyaunt knight Arthur of lytell brytayne. His other two translations, The Castell of Love (printed 1540), from the Carcel de Amor of Diego de San Pedro, and The Golden Boke of Marcus Aurelius (completed six days before his death, printed 1534), from a French version of Antonio Guevara’s book, are in a different manner. The Golden Boke gives Berners a claim to be a pioneer of Euphuism, although Lyly was probably acquainted with Guevara not through his version, but through Sir Thomas North’s Dial of Princes. Berners is also credited with a book on the duties of the inhabitants of Calais, which Mr Sidney Lee thinks may be identical with the ordinance for watch and ward of Calais preserved in the Cotton MSS. and with a lost comedy, Ite in vineam meam, which used to be acted at Calais after vespers.

A biographical account of Berners is to be found in Mr Sidney Lee’s introduction to Huon of Bourdeaux (Early English Text Society 1882-1883). Among the many editions of his translation of Froissart may be mentioned that in the “Tudor Translations” (1901), with an introductory critical note by Professor W.P. Ker.

BERNERS, Barnes or Bernes, JULIANA (b. 1388?), English writer on hawking and hunting, is said to have been prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St Albans, and daughter of Sir James Berners, who was beheaded in 1388. She was probably brought up at court, and when she adopted the religious life, she still retained her love of hawking, hunting and fishing, and her passion for field sports. The only documentary evidence regarding her, however, is the statement at the end of her treatise on hunting in the Boke of St Albans, “Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng” (edition of 1486), and the name is changed by Wynkyn de Worde to “dame Julyans Bernes.” There is no such person to be found in the pedigree of the Berners family, and there is a gap in the records of the priory of Sopwell between 1430 and 1480. Juliana Berners is the supposed author of the work generally known as the Boke of St Albans. The first and rarest edition was printed in 1486 by an unknown schoolmaster at St Albans. It has no title-page. Wynkyn de Worde’s edition (fol. 1496), also without a title-page, begins:—“This present boke shewyth the manere of hawkynge and huntynge: and also of diuysynge of Cote armours. It shewyth also a good matere belongynge to horses: wyth other comendable treatyses. And ferdermore of the blasynge of armys: as hereafter it maye appere.” This edition was adorned by three woodcuts, and included a “Treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle,” not contained in the St Albans edition. J. Haslewood, who published a facsimile of that of Wynkyn de Worde (London, 1811, folio), with a biographical and bibliographical notice, examined with the greatest care the author’s claims to figure as the earliest woman author in the English language. He assigned to her little else in the Boke except part of the treatise on hawking and the section on hunting. It is expressly stated at the end of the “Blasynge of Armys” that the section was “translatyd and compylyt,” and it is likely that the other treatises are translations, probably from the French. An older form of the treatise on fishing was edited in 1883 by Mr T. Satchell from a MS. in possession of Mr A. Denison. This treatise probably dates from about 1450, and formed the foundation of that section in the book of 1496. Only three perfect copies of the first edition are known to exist. A facsimile, entitled The Book of St Albans, with an introduction by William Blades, appeared in 1881. During the 16th century the work was very popular, and was many times reprinted. It was edited by Gervase Markham in 1595 as The Gentleman’s Academie.