a “Pietà,” “Ulysses and Calypso,” “Prometheus,” and the “Sacred Grove.” From 1886 to 1892 he settled at Zürich. Of this period are the “Naiads at Play,” “A Sea Idyll,” and “War.” After 1892 Böcklin resided at San Domenico, near Florence. An exhibition of his collected works was held at Basel from the 20th of September to the 24th of October 1897. He died on the 16th of January 1901.
His life has been written by Henri Mendelssohn. See also F. Hermann, Gazette des Beaux Arts (Paris, 1893); Max Lehrs, Arnold Böcklin, Ein Leitfaden zum Verständniss seiner Kunst (Munich, 1897); W. Ritter, Arnold Böcklin (Gand, 1895); Katalog der Böcklin Jubiläums Ausstellung (Basel, 1897). (H. Fr.)
BOCLAND, Bockland or Bookland (from A.S. boc, book), an original mode of tenure of land, also called charter-land or deed-land. Bocland was folk-land granted to individuals in private ownership by a document (charter or book) in writing, with the signatures of the king and witenagemot; at first it was rarely, if ever, held by laymen, except for religious purposes. Bocland to a certain extent resembled full ownership in the modern sense, in that the owner could grant it in his lifetime, in the same manner as he had received it, by boc or book, and also dispose of it by will. (See also Folkland.)
BOCSKAY, STEPHEN [István] (1557–1606), prince of Transylvania, the most eminent member of the ancient Bocskay family, son of György Bocskay and Krisztina Sulyok, was born at Kolozsvár, Hungary. As the chief councillor of Prince Zsigmond Báthory, he advised his sovereign to contract an alliance with the emperor instead of holding to the Turk, and rendered important diplomatic services on frequent missions to Prague and Vienna. The enmity towards him of the later Báthory princes of Transylvania, who confiscated his estates, drove him to seek protection at the imperial court (1599); but the attempts of the emperor Rudolph II. to deprive Hungary of her constitution and the Protestants of their religious liberties speedily alienated Bocskay, especially after the terrible outrages inflicted on the Transylvanians by the imperial generals Basta and Belgiojoso from 1602 to 1604. Bocskay, to save the independence of Transylvania, assisted the Turks; and in 1605, as a reward for his part in driving Basta out of Transylvania, the Hungarian diet, assembled at Modgyes, elected him prince (1605), on which occasion the Ottoman sultan sent a special embassy to congratulate him and a splendid jewelled crown made in Persia. Bocskay refused the royal dignity, but made skilful use of the Turkish alliance. To save the Austrian provinces of Hungary, the archduke Matthias, setting aside his semi-lunatic imperial brother Rudolph, thereupon entered into negotiations with Bocskay, and ultimately the peace of Vienna was concluded (June 23, 1606), which guaranteed all the constitutional and religious rights and privileges of the Hungarians both in Transylvania and imperial Hungary. Bocskay, at the same time, was acknowledged as prince of Transylvania by the Austrian court, and the right of the Transylvanians to elect their own independent princes in future was officially recognized. The fortress of Tokaj and the counties of Bereg, Szatmár and Ugocsa were at the same time ceded to Bocskay, with reversion to Austria if he should die childless. Simultaneously, at Zsitvatorok, a peace, confirmatory of the peace of Vienna, was concluded with the Turks. Bocskay survived this signal and unprecedented triumph only a few months. He is said to have been poisoned (December 29, 1606) by his chancellor, Mihály Kátay, who was hacked to bits by Bocskay’s adherents in the market-place of Kassa.
See Political Correspondence of Stephen Bocskay (Hung.), edited by Károly Szábo (Budapest, 1882); Jenö Thury, Stephen Bocskay’s Rebellion (Hung.), Budapest, 1899. (R. N. B.)
BODE, JOHANN ELERT (1747–1826), German astronomer,
was born at Hamburg on the 19th of January 1747. Devoted
to astronomy from his earliest years, he eagerly observed the
heavens at a garret window with a telescope made by himself,
and at nineteen began his career with the publication of a short
work on the solar eclipse of the 5th of August 1766. This was
followed by an elementary treatise on astronomy entitled
Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels (1768, 10th ed.
1844), the success of which led to his being summoned to Berlin
in 1772 for the purpose of computing ephemerides on an
improved plan. There resulted the foundation by him, in 1774,
of the well-known Astronomisches Jahrbuch, 51 yearly volumes
of which he compiled and issued. He became director of the
Berlin observatory in 1786, withdrew from official life in 1825,
and died at Berlin on the 23rd of November 1826. His works
were highly effective in diffusing throughout Germany a taste
for astronomy. Besides those already mentioned he wrote:—Sammlung
astronomischer Tafeln (3 vols., 1776);
Erläuterung der Sternkunde (1776, 3rd ed. 1808); Uranographia (1801), a
collection of 20 star-maps accompanied by a catalogue of 17,240
stars and nebulae. In one of his numerous incidental essays he
propounded, in 1776, a theory of the solar constitution similar
to that developed in 1795 by Sir William Herschel. He gave
currency, moreover, to the empirical rule known as “Bode’s
Law,” which was actually announced by Johann Daniel Titius
of Wittenberg in 1772. It is expressed by the statement that
the proportionate distances of the several planets from the sun
may be represented by adding 4 to each term of the series;
0, 3, 6, 12, 24, &c. The irregularity will be noticed of the first
term, which should be 112 instead of 0. (See Solar System.)
See J. F. Encke, Berlin Abhandlungen (1827), p. xi.; H. C. Schumacher, Astr. Nach. v. 255, 367 (1827); Poggendorff, Biog. literarisches Handwörterbuch; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, iii. 1.
BODEL, JEHAN (died c. 1210), French trouvère, was born at Arras in the second half of the 12th century. Very little is known of his life, but in 1205 he was about to start for the crusade when he was attacked by leprosy. In a touching poem called Le Congé (pr. by Méon in Recueil de fabliaux et contes, vol. i.), he bade farewell to his friends and patrons, and begged for a nomination to a leper hospital. He wrote Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, one of the earliest miracle plays preserved in French (printed in Monmerqué and Michel’s Théâtre français du moyen âge, 1839, and for the Soc. des bibliophiles français, 1831); the Chanson des Saisnes (ed. F. Michel 1839), four pastourelles (printed in K. Bartsch’s Altfranz. Romanzen und Pastourellen, Leipzig, 1870); and probably, the eight fabliaux attributed to an unknown Jean Bedel. The legend of Saint Nicholas had already formed the subject of the Latin Ludus Sancti Nicholai of Hilarius. Bodel placed the scene partly on a field of battle in Africa, where the crusaders perish in a hopeless struggle, and partly in a tavern. The piece, loosely connected by the miracle of Saint Nicholas narrated in the prologue, ends with a wholesale conversion of the African king and his subjects. The dialogue in the tavern scenes is written in thieves’ slang, and is very obscure. The Chanson des Saisnes, Bodel’s authorship of which has been called in question, is a chanson de geste belonging to the period of decadence, and is really a roman d’aventures based on earlier legends belonging to the Charlemagne cycle. It relates the wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons under Guiteclin de Sassoigne (Witikind or Widukind), with the second revolt of the Saxons and their final submission and conversion. Jehan Bodel makes no allusion to Ogier the Dane and many other personages of the Charlemagne cycle, but he mentions the defeat of Roland at Roncevaux. The romance is based on historical fact, but is overlaid with romantic detail. It really embraces three distinct legends—those of the wars against the Saxons, of Charlemagne’s rebellious barons, and of Baudouim and Sebille. The earlier French poems on the subject are lost, but the substance of them is preserved in the Scandinavian versions of the Charlemagne cycle (supposed to have been derived from English sources) known as the Karlamagnussaga (ed. Unger, Christiania, 1860) and Keiser Karl Magnus Krönike (Romantisk Digtnung, ed. C. J. Brandt, Copenhagen, 1877).
See also the article on Jehan Bodel by Paulin Paris in Hist. litt. de la France, xx. pp. 605–638; Gaston Paris, Histoire poétique de Charlemagne (1865); Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises (revised edition, vol. iii. pp. 650–684), where there is a full analysis of the Chanson des Saisnes and a bibliography; H. Meyer, in Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus . . . der romanischen Philologie (Marburg, 1883), pp. 1-76, where its relation to the rest of the Charlemagne cycle is discussed.
