place for the possession of great natural talents, improved by all the advantages of education, cultivated with commendable industry, and heightened by large experience. He was learned in all the literary lore of the philosophers, and the study of the holy scriptures; his style of writing is admirable, perspicuous, and powerful, flowing with unaffected grace and natural sweetness. Photius gives him the preference over all the Greek fathers in respect of style, which, from the elegance of his language, rendered his writings very difficult to be translated into Latin. Yet though his affections were set on things above, we cannot but lament the influence of his degrading example in encouraging the puerile observances of superstition. His attention to the sons of want, is a striking proof of his practical piety; but what shall we say of his will-worship in kissing the most loathsome wounds? In his younger days he was of a fresh and florid complexion, of a healthy constitution and vigorous habit; but by excessive fasting and abstinence, combined with the effects of study and constant turmoil, he became the subject of habitual weakness, the victim of premature decay. Such, however, was the veneration in which he was held, and such the temper of the age, that many affected his bodily infirmities, and sought to share the honour paid to the saint by a servile imitation of his taciturn habits, neglected beard, sordid apparel, and s paring diet. His works are very voluminous; the best edition is that of the learned Benedictine, Julian Garnier, Paris, 1721, 1730, which was reprinted in 1839.—W. W.
BASILE de Soissons, a French capuchin, missionary of his order in England in the first half of the seventeenth century. He wrote several controversial treatises, the principal of which is entitled "Defense Invincible de la Presence réelle de J. C. en l'Euchariste," &c., Paris, 1676.
BASILETTI, Luigi, an Italian painter of modern times, a native of Brescia, where he died about 1845. He studied at Rome, and treated history, portrait and landscape painting, with equal success; nor was he unacquainted with architectural doctrines. Landscape, however, is the branch in which he deserved most praise. Basiletti, an ardent lover of art generally, fostered with unremitting perseverance the excavations going on in his native town, until the efforts were crowned by the discovery of the famed temple, and bronze statue of Victory.—R. M.
BASILIDES, a famous gnostic, who lived and taught in Egypt during the first half of the second century. Nothing is certainly known of his early life, or of the place of his birth. His writings are also lost, fragments only being preserved in the books of his opponents, such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Irenæus, and Epiphanius. He held the dualist notion of two primitive principles, one of good or of light, and another of evil or of darkness, who ruled especially over the world of matter. The good principle, or being, with his seven æons or emanations, formed the Ogdoad. From each of these sprang other emanations, making the number of 365, and forming the worlds or heavens symbolized in the Greek term αβραξας. The tenth æon of the last or lowest heaven made this world according to God's design, but owing to his stupidity, not according to God's eternal laws. To help men placed so unfortunately, the first-born æon was commissioned, and he was united to the man Jesus at his baptism. Man is purified from the defiling contact of matter through a long process of spiritual ascension, till he arrive at highest union with the kingdom of light. Basilides is supposed to have died about the year 130.—Matter. Hist. Critique du Gnosticisme—Herzog. Ritter. &c.—J. E.
BASILIANUS, Roman governor of the province of Egypt about the year 213. At the time of the murder of Caracalla, and the accession of Macrinus, the latter intrusted Basilianus with the command of the prætorians.
BASILISCUS, emperor of the East, brother of Verina, wife of Leo I.; died in 477. In 468, during the reign of Leo I., Basiliscus was intrusted with the conduct of the war against Genseric, who had rendered himself master of Africa; but having been corrupted by the Arians with a promise of the empire, he betrayed his trust, and allowed time to the Vandal king to collect troops, and to organize a fleet, by which the ships of the Romans were burned or dispersed. Basiliscus was obliged to conceal himself until his sister had propitiated her husband, the Emperor Leo; but after his death in 474, Basiliscus usurped the empire. It was, however, claimed two years afterwards by Zeno the Isaurian, the legitimate emperor, who came to Constantinople with a large army, and gave battle to the usurper. Basiliscus was defeated, and, with his wife and children, shut up by order of Zeno in a tower in the castle of Cappadocia, where they were left to die of cold and hunger.—G. M.
BASILIUS, a Bulgarian monk and physician, who lived in the twelfth century, and founded the sect of the Bogomiles, a name signifying "God be merciful unto us." His doctrine was a combination of the old Gnostic and Manichean tenets. He was arraigned before a council called by the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, and sentenced to the flames in 1118.
BASILUS, the name of one branch of an ancient Roman family, the Minucius, the most noteworthy of whom were the following:—
Basilus Minucius, a military tribune, lived about the year 86 b.c. He took part under Sylla in the war against Archelaus, general of Mithridates.
Basilus Minucius, of whom little is known, except that he became infamous by his depredations, and that his tomb has been discovered in the Appian way.
Basilus Minucius, L., called also Satrius, lived about 54-44 b.c. He is mentioned by Cæsar as having assisted in the war against Ambiorix. He took part in the assassination of Cæsar; and the following year, was put to death by his own slaves, one of whom he had inhumanly scourged.—G. M.
BASIN, Thomas, bishop of Lisieur, born 1402. When this city was besieged by the French troops in order to rescue it from the English, then masters of Normandy, Bishop Basin, with remarkable ability, prepared the terms of a capitulation, which met with the approbation of both parties, and the treaty itself became the model adopted by the different episcopal sees of the province placed in the like straits. The bishop's conduct raised him greatly in the favour of the French monarch, Charles VII. As soon as the latter became master of Normandy, he employed Basin to draw up a memoir in vindication of the memory of Joan of Arc, and it is on this work that his reputation as a contributor to French history chiefly rests. The dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., when intriguing against his father, endeavoured to win over the bishop to his designs; failing in which, this vindictive prince marked him out for vengeance. Obliged to fly and wander from place to place, he at length yielded to the prayers of his relatives to resign his bishopric, and trust to the promised favour of Louis, which the latter, with his usual duplicity, failed to observe. David, bishop of Utrecht, opened an asylum to the persecuted prelate, whom he appointed coadjutor of his diocese till his death on the 30th December, 1491. Besides his memoirs in justification of the Maid of Orleans, he left histories of Charles VII. and Louis XI., under the name of Amelgard, priest of Liege, of much interest.—J. F. C.
BASINE or BAZINE, wife of Childeric I., and mother of Clovis, lived about the middle of the fifth century. She had been the wife of the king of the Thuringians; but, deserting her husband, had fled to Childeric, who married her.
BASING or BASINGSTOKE, John, an English divine and philologist, archdeacon of Leicester in the first half of the thirteenth century. He studied at Oxford, and afterwards at Paris, whence he journeyed to Athens, in order to increase his acquaintance with the Greek language. He translated a Greek grammar into Latin, and wrote several theological treatises, one of which is entitled "De Concordia Evangeliorum." Died 1252.—J. S., G.
BASIRE, Claude, a member of the French convention, born at Dijon in 1764; died 3d April, 1794. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was at first named member of the directory for the district of Cordeliers, and afterwards deputy from the Côte-d'Or to the legislative assembly He ranged himself among the Montagnards, demanded the punishment of death upon every one who should propose to create a hereditary and individual authority, and voted for the death of Louis XVI. He took an active part in public affairs up to the 16th January, 1794, when he was arrested on a charge of corruption in the office of secretary to the convention, to which he had the year before been appointed. On the 3rd April he was brought before the revolutionary tribunal, by whom he was condemned to death. The sentence was executed the same day.—G. M.
BASIRE, James, an English engraver of the eighteenth century, the son and pupil of Isaac Basire, also an engraver, but of less note. He earned considerable fame, especially by the reproduction of subjects from the English masters. The dates of this artist are differently given. Some biographers mark his life as between 1740 and 1780, others between 1730 and 1802.
