Chapter 28 of 46 · 3885 words · ~19 min read

Part 28

VIII. CHARLES LUCIEN JULES LAURENT (1803-1857), prince of Canino, son of Lucien Bonaparte, was a scientist rather than a politician. He married his cousin, Zenaide Bonaparte, daughter of Joseph, in 1822. At the age of twenty-two he began the publication of an _American Ornithology_ (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1825-1833), which established his scientific reputation. A series of other works in zoology followed: _Iconographia della fauna Italica_ (3 vols., Rome, 1832-1841), _Catalogo metodico degli uccelli europei_ (1 vol., Bologna, 1842), _Catalogo metodico dei pesci europei_ (1 vol., Naples, 1845, 4to), _Catalogo metodico dei mammiferi europei_ (1 vol., Milan, 1845), _Telachorum tabula analytica_ (Neufchatel, 1838). He was elected honorary member of the academy of Upsala in 1833, of that of Berlin in 1843, and correspondent of the Institute of France in 1844. Towards 1847 he took part in the political agitation in Italy, and presided over scientific congresses, notably at Venice, where he declared himself in favour of the independence of Italy and the expulsion of the Austrians. He entered the Junto of Rome in 1848 and was elected deputy by Viterbo to the national assembly. The failure of the revolution forced him to leave Italy in July 1849. He gained Holland, then France, where he turned again to science. His principal works were, _Conspectus systematis ornithologiae, mastozologiae, erpetologiae et amphibologiae, Ichthyologiae_ (Leiden, 1850), _Tableau des oiseaux-mouches_ (Paris, 1854), _Ornithologie fossile_ (Paris, 1858). Eight children survived him: Joseph Lucien Charles Napoleon, prince of Canino (1824-1865), who died without heirs; Lucien Louis Joseph Napoleon, born in 1828, who took holy orders in 1853 and became a cardinal in 1868; Julie Charlotte Zenaide Pauline Laetitia Desiree Bartholomee, who married the marquis of Roccagiovine; Charlotte Honorine Josephine, who married Count Primoli; Marie Desiree Eugenie Josephine Philomene, who married the count Campello; Auguste Amelie Maximilienne Jacqueline, who married Count Gabrielli; Napoleon Charles Gregoire Jacques Philippe, born in 1839, who married the princess Ruspoli, by whom he had two daughters; and Bathilde Aloyse Leonie, who married the comte de Cambaceres. The branch is now extinct.

9. Louis Lucien.

IX. LOUIS LUCIEN (1813-1891), son of Lucien Bonaparte, was born at Thorngrove, Worcestershire, England, on the 4th of January 1813. He passed his youth in England, not going to France until 1848, when, after the revolution, he was elected deputy for Corsica on the 28th of November 1848; his election having been invalidated, he was returned as deputy for the Seine in June 1849. He sat in the right of the Legislative Assembly, but had no direct part in the _coup d'etat_ of his cousin on the 2nd of December 1851. Napoleon III. named him senator and prince, but he took hardly any part in politics during the Second Empire, and after the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1870 he withdrew to England. There he busied himself with philology, and published notably some works on the Basque language: _Grammaire basque, Remarques sur plusieurs assertions concernant la langue basque_ (1876), _Observations sur le basque Fontarabie_ (1878). He died on the 3rd of November 1891, leaving no children.

10. Pierre.

X. PIERRE NAPOLEON (1815-1881), son of Lucien Bonaparte, was born at Rome on the 12th of September 1815. He began his life of adventure at the age of fifteen, joining the insurrectionary bands in the Romagna (1830-1831); was then in the United States, where he went to join his uncle Joseph, and in Colombia with General Santander (1832). Returning to Rome he was taken prisoner by order of the pope (1835-1836). He finally took refuge in England. At the revolution of 1848 he returned to France and was elected deputy for Corsica to the Constituent Assembly. He declared himself an out-and-out republican and voted even with the socialists. He pronounced himself in favour of the national workshops and against the _loi Falloux_. His attitude contributed greatly to give popular confidence to his cousin Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III.), of whose _coup d'etat_ on the 2nd of December 1851 he disapproved; but he was soon reconciled to the emperor, and accepted the title of prince. The republicans at once abandoned him. From that time on he led a debauched life, and lost all political importance. He turned to literature and published some mediocre poems. In January 1870 a violent incident brought him again into prominence. As the result of a controversy with Paschal Grousset, the latter sent him two journalists to provoke him to a duel. Pierre Bonaparte took them personally to account, and during a violent discussion he drew his revolver and killed one of them, Victor Noir. This crime greatly excited the republican press, which demanded his trial. The High Court acquitted him, and criticism then fell upon the government. Pierre Bonaparte died in obscurity at Versailles on the 7th of April 1881. He had married the daughter of a Paris working-man, Justine Eleanore Ruffin, by whom he had, before his marriage, two children: (1) Roland Napoleon, born on the 19th of May 1858, who entered the army, was excluded from it in 1886, and then devoted himself to geography and scientific explorations; (2) Jeanne, wife of the marquis de Vence.

Descendants of Jerome: 11. Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon).

XI. NAPOLEON JOSEPH CHARLES PAUL, commonly known as Prince Napoleon, or by the sobriquet of "Plon-Plon,"[1] (1822-1891), was the second son of Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, by his wife Catherine, princess of Wurttemberg, and was born at Trieste on the 9th of September 1822. He soon rendered himself popular by his advanced democratic ideas, which he expressed on all possible occasions. After the French revolution of 1848 he was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of Corsica, and (his elder brother, Jerome Napoleon Charles, dying in 1847) assumed the name of Jerome. Notwithstanding his ostensible opposition to the _coup d'etat_ of 1851, he was designated, upon the establishment of the Empire, as successor to the throne if Napoleon III. should die childless, and received a liberal dotation, but was allowed no share in public affairs. Privately he professed himself the representative of the Napoleonic tradition in its democratic aspect, and associated mainly with men of advanced political opinions. At court he represented the Liberal party against the empress Eugenie. In 1854 he took part in the Crimean campaign as general of division. His conduct at the battle of the Alma occasioned imputations upon his personal courage, but they seem to have been entirely groundless. Returning to France he undertook the chief direction of the National Exhibition of 1855, in which he manifested great capacity. In 1858 he was appointed minister for the Colonies and Algeria, and his administration aroused great hopes, but his activity was diverted into a different channel by his sudden marriage in January 1859 with the princess Marie Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, a prelude to the war for the liberation of Italy. In this war Prince Napoleon commanded the French corps that occupied Tuscany, and it was expected that he would become ruler of the principality, but he refused to exert any pressure upon the inhabitants, who preferred union with the Italian kingdom. The next few years were chiefly distinguished by remarkable speeches which displayed the prince in the unexpected character of a great orator. Unfortunately his indiscretion equalled his eloquence: one speech (1861) sent him to America to avoid a duel with the duke d'Aumale; another (1865), in which he justly but intemperately protested against the Mexican expedition, cost him all his official dignities. Nevertheless he was influential in effecting the reform by which in 1869 it was sought to reconcile the Empire with Liberal principles. The fatal war of 1870 was resolved upon during his absence in Norway, and was strongly condemned by him. After the first disasters he undertook an ineffectual mission to Italy to implore the aid of his father-in-law; and after the fall of the Empire lived in comparative retirement until in 1879 the death of Napoleon III.'s son, the Prince Imperial (see XIII. below), made him direct heir to the Napoleonic succession. His part as imperial pretender was unfortunate and inglorious: his democratic opinions were unacceptable to the imperial party, and before his death he was virtually deposed in favour of his son Prince Napoleon Victor, who, supported by Paul de Cassagnac and others, openly declared himself a candidate for the throne in 1884. He died at Rome on the 17th of March 1891. In the character of his intellect, as in personal appearance, he bore an extraordinary resemblance to the first Napoleon, possessing the same marvellous lucidity of insight, and the same gift of infallibly distinguishing the essential from the non-essential. He was a warm friend of literature and art, and in a private station would have achieved high distinction as a man of letters.

His eldest son, Prince Napoleon Victor Jerome Frederic (b. 1862), became at his death the recognized head of the French Bonapartist party. The second son, Prince Louis Napoleon, an officer in the Russian army, showed a steadier disposition, and was more favoured in some monarchist quarters; in 1906 he was made governor of the Caucasus.

12. Mathilde.

XII. MATHILDE LETITIA WILHELMINE (1820-1904), daughter of Jerome, and sister of Prince Napoleon (XI.), was born at Trieste on the 20th of May 1820; after being almost betrothed to her cousin Louis Napoleon, in 1840 she was married to Prince Anatole Demidov. His conduct, however, led to a separation within five years, and the tsar Nicholas compelled him to make Princess Mathilde a handsome allowance. After the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency of the republic she took up her residence in Paris, and did the honours of the Elysee till his marriage. She continued to live in Paris, having great influence as a friend and patron of men of art and letters, till her death on the 2nd of January 1904.

13. Prince Imperial: son of Napoleon III.

XIII. NAPOLEON EUGENE LOUIS JEAN JOSEPH (1856-1879), Prince Imperial, only son of the emperor Napoleon III. and the empress Eugenie, was born at Paris on the 16th of March 1856. He was a delicate boy, but when the war of 1870 broke out his mother sent him to the army, to win popularity for him, and the government journals vaunted his bravery. After the first defeats he had to flee from France with the empress, and settled in England at Chislehurst, completing his military education at Woolwich. On the death of his father on the 9th of January 1873 the Imperialists proclaimed him Napoleon IV., and he became the official Pretender. He was naturally inactive, but he was influenced by his mother on the one hand, and by the Bonapartist leaders in France on the other. They thought that he should win his crown by military prestige, and he was persuaded to attach himself as a volunteer to the English expedition to Zululand in February 1879. It was a blunder to have allowed him to go, and the blunder ended in a tragedy, for while out on a reconnaissance with a few troopers they were surprised by Zulus, and the Prince Imperial was killed (June 1, 1879). His body was brought back to England, and buried at Chislehurst.

XIV. THE BONAPARTES OF BALTIMORE are a branch of the family settled in America, descended from Jerome Bonaparte (VII.) by his union with Elizabeth (b. 1785), daughter of William Patterson, a Baltimore merchant, probably descended from the Robert Paterson who was the original of Sir Walter Scott's "Old Mortality." The marriage took place at Baltimore on the 24th of December 1803, but it was greatly disliked by Napoleon, who refused to recognize its legality. However, it was valid according to American law, and Pope Pius VII. refused to declare it void. Nevertheless Jerome was forced by his brother to separate himself from his wife, whom he had brought to Europe, and after a stay in England Madame Patterson, or Madame Bonaparte, as she was usually called, returned to Baltimore. She died in 1879. Jerome's only child by this marriage was Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (1805-1870), who was born in England, but resided chiefly in Baltimore, and is said to have shown a marked resemblance to his uncle, the great emperor. He was on good terms with Jerome, who for some time made him a large allowance, and father and son occasionally met. His elder son, also called Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (1832-1893), entered the French army, with which he served in the Crimea and in Italy.

Charles Joseph Bonaparte (b. 1851), younger son of the first Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, and a grandson of Jerome, king of Westphalia, attained a distinguished place in American politics. Born at Baltimore on the 9th of June 1851 and educated at Harvard University, he became a lawyer in 1874 and has been president of the National Municipal League and has filled other public positions. He was secretary of the navy in President Roosevelt's cabinet from July 1905 to December 1906, and then attorney-general of the United States until March 1909.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Derived, it is supposed, from the nickname "Plomb-plomb," or "Craint-plomb" (fear-lead), given him by his soldiers in the Crimea.

BONAR, HORATIUS (1808-1889), Scottish Presbyterian divine, was born in Edinburgh on the 19th of December 1808, and educated at the high school and university of his native city. After a term of mission work at Leith, he was appointed parish minister of Kelso in 1837, and at the Disruption of 1843 became minister of the newly formed Free Church, where he remained till 1866, when he went to the Chalmers memorial church, Edinburgh. He had in 1853 received the D.D. degree from Aberdeen University, and in 1883 he was moderator of the general assembly of his church. He died on the 31st of July 1889. Bonar was a prolific writer of religious literature, and edited several journals, including the _Christian Treasury_, the _Presbyterian Review_ and the _Quarterly Journal of Prophecy_; but his best work was done in hymnology, and he published three series of _Hymns of Faith and Hope_ between 1857 and 1866 (new ed., 1886). Nearly every modern hymnal contains perhaps a score of his hymns, including "Go, labour on," "I heard the voice of Jesus say," "Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face," "When the weary, seeking rest."

See _Horatius Bonar, D.D., a Memorial_ (1889).

BONAVENTURA, SAINT (JOHN OF FIDANZA), Franciscan theologian, was born in 1221 at Bagnarea in Tuscany. He was destined by his mother for the church, and is said to have received his cognomen of Bonaventura from St Francis of Assisi, who performed on him a miraculous cure. He entered the Franciscan order in 1243, and studied at Paris possibly under Alexander of Hales, and certainly under Alexander's successor, John of Rochelle, to whose chair he succeeded in 1253. Three years earlier his fame had gained for him permission to read upon the _Sentences_, and in 1255 he received the degree of doctor. So high was his reputation that in the following year he was elected general of his order. It was by his orders that Roger Bacon was interdicted from lecturing at Oxford, and compelled to put himself under the surveillance of the order at Paris. He was instrumental in procuring the election of Gregory X., who rewarded him with the titles of cardinal and bishop of Albano, and insisted on his presence at the great council of Lyons in the year 1274. At this meeting he died.

Bonaventura's character seems not unworthy of the eulogistic title, "Doctor Seraphicus," bestowed on him by his contemporaries, and of the place assigned to him by Dante in his _Paradiso_. He was formally canonized in 1482 by Sixtus IV., and ranked as sixth among the great doctors of the church by Sixtus V. in 1587. His works, as arranged in the Lyons edition (7 vols., folio), consist of expositions and sermons, filling the first three volumes; of a commentary on the _Sentences_ of Lombardus, in two volumes, celebrated among medieval theologians as incomparably the best exposition of the third part; and of minor treatises filling the remaining two volumes, and including a life of St Francis. The smaller works are the most important, and of them the best are the famous _Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum, Breviloquium, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, Soliloquium_, and _De septem itineribus aeternitatis_, in which most of what is individual in his teaching is contained.

In philosophy Bonaventura presents a marked contrast to his great contemporaries, Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon. While these may be taken as representing respectively physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he brings before us the mystical and Platonizing mode of speculation which had already to some extent found expression in Hugo and Richard of St Victor, and in Bernard of Clairvaux. To him the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart. He rejects the authority of Aristotle, to whose influence he ascribes much of the heretical tendency of the age, and some of whose cardinal doctrines--such as the eternity of the world--he combats vigorously. But the Platonism he received was Plato as understood by St Augustine, and as he had been handed down by the Alexandrian school and the author of the mystical works passing under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Bonaventura accepts as Platonic the theory that ideas do not exist _in rerum natura_, but as thoughts of the divine mind, according to which actual things were formed; and this conception has no slight influence upon his philosophy. Like all the great scholastic doctors he starts with the discussion of the relations between reason and faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of theology; reason can discover some of the moral truths which form the groundwork of the Christian system, but others it can only receive and apprehend through divine illumination. In order to obtain this illumination the soul must employ the proper means, which are prayer, the exercise of the virtues, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the divine light, and meditation which may rise even to ecstatic union with God. The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing love; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a hope for futurity. The mind in contemplating God has three distinct aspects, stages or grades--the senses, giving empirical knowledge of what is without and discerning the traces (_vestigia_) of the divine in the world; the reason, which examines the soul itself, the image of the divine Being; and lastly, pure intellect (_intelligentia_), which, in a transcendent act, grasps the Being of the divine cause. To these three correspond the three kinds of theology--_theologia symbolica, theologia propria_ and _theologia mystica_. Each stage is subdivided, for in contemplating the outer world we may use the senses or the imagination; we may rise to a knowledge of God _per vestigia_ or _in vestigiis_. In the first case the three great properties of physical bodies--weight, number, measure,--in the second the division of created things into the classes of those that have merely physical existence, those that have life, and those that have thought, irresistibly lead us to conclude the power, wisdom and goodness of the Triune God. So in the second stage we may ascend to the knowledge of God, _per imaginem_, by reason, or _in imagine_, by the pure understanding (_intellectus_); in the one case the triple division--memory, understanding and will,--in the other the Christian virtues--faith, hope and charity,--leading again to the conception of a Trinity of divine qualities--eternity, truth and goodness. In the last stage we have first _intelligentia_, pure intellect, contemplating the essential being of God, and finding itself compelled by necessity of thought to hold absolute being as the first notion, for non-being cannot be conceived apart from being, of which it is but the privation. To this notion of absolute being, which is perfect and the greatest of all, objective existence must be ascribed. In its last and highest form of activity the mind rests in the contemplation of the infinite goodness of God, which is apprehended by means of the highest faculty, the _apex mentis_ or _synderesis_. This spark of the divine illumination is common to all forms of mysticism, but Bonaventura adds to it peculiarly Christian elements. The complete yielding up of mind and heart to God is unattainable without divine grace, and nothing renders us so fit to receive this gift as the meditative and ascetic life of the cloister. The monastic life is the best means of grace.

Bonaventura, however, is not merely a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a dogmatic theologian of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, the principle of individualism, or the _intellectus agens_, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with Albertus Magnus in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality which receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the _intellectus agens_ has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the Seraphic Doctor exhibits a combination of subtilty and moderation which makes his works peculiarly valuable.

EDITIONS.--7 vols., Rome, 1588-1596; 7 vols., Lyons, 1668; 13 vols., Venice, 1751 ff.; by A.C. Peltier, 15 vols., Paris, 1863 ff.; 10 vols., Rome, 1882-1892. K.J. Hefele edited the _Breviloquium_ and the _Itin. Mentis_ (3rd ed., Tubingen, 1862); two volumes of selections were issued by Alix in 1853-1856.

LITERATURE.--W.A. Hollenberg, _Studien zu Bonaventura_ (1862); F. Nitzsch, art. in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyk. fur prot. Theol._, where a list of monographs is given, to which add one by De Chevance (1899). (R. Ad.; X.)

BONCHAMPS, CHARLES MELCHIOR ARTUS, MARQUIS DE (c. 1760-1793), Vendean leader, was born at Jouverteil, Anjou. He gained his first military experience in the American War of Independence, and on his return to France was made a captain of grenadiers in the French army. He was a staunch upholder of the monarchy, and at the outbreak of the French Revolution resigned his command and retired to his chateau at St Florent. In the spring of 1793 he was chosen leader by the insurgents of the Vendee, and to his counsels may be attributed in great measure the success of the peasants' arms. He was present at the taking of Bressuire, Thouars and Fontenay, at which last place he was wounded; but dissensions among their leaders weakened the insurgents, and at the bloody battle of Cholet (October 1793) the Vendeans sustained a severe defeat and Bonchamps was mortally wounded. He died the next day. It is said that his last act was the pardoning of five thousand republican prisoners, whom his troops had sworn to kill in revenge for his death. A statue of him by David d'Angers stands in the church of St Florent.