Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bent, James" to "Bibirine" by Various

sauvages_, but his chief claim to distinction lies in the system invented by him for the identification of criminals, which is described by him in his _Photographie judiciaire_, Paris, 1890 (see ANTHROPOMETRY). He was officially appointed in 1894 to report on the handwriting of the _bordereau_ in the Dreyfus case, and was a witness for the prosecution before the cour de cassation on the 18th of January 1899. BERTIN, a family of distinction in the history of French journalism. The most important member of the family, generally regarded as the father of modern French journalism, LOUIS FRANCOIS BERTIN (1766-1841), known as Bertin _aine_, was born in Paris on the 14th of December 1766. He began his journalistic career by writing for the _Journal Francais_ and other papers during the French Revolution. After the 18th Brumaire he founded the paper, with which the name of his family has chiefly been connected, the _Journal des Debats_. He was suspected of royalist tendencies by the consulate and was exiled in 1801. He returned to Paris in 1804 and resumed the management of the paper, the title of which had been changed by order of Napoleon to that of _Journal de l'Empire_. Bertin had to submit to a rigorous censorship, and in 1811 the conduct, together with the profits, was taken over entirely by the government. In 1814 he regained possession and restored the old title and continued his support of the royalist cause--during the Hundred Days; he directed the _Moniteur de Gand_--till 1823, when the _Journal des Debats_ became the recognized organ of the constitutional opposition. Bertin's support was, however, given to the July monarchy after 1830. He died on the 13th of September 1841. LOUIS FRANCOIS BERTIN DE VAUX (1771-1842), the younger brother of Bertin _aine_, took a leading part in the conduct of the _Journal des Debats_, to the success of which his powers of writing greatly contributed. He entered the chamber of deputies in 1815, was made councillor of state in 1827, and a peer of France in 1830. The two sons of Bertin _aine_, EDOUARD FRANCOIS (1797-1871) and LOUIS MARIE FRANCOIS (1801-1854), were directors in succession of the _Journal des Debats_. Edouard Bertin was also a painter of some distinction. BERTINORO, OBADIAH, Jewish commentator of the Mishnah, died in Jerusalem about 1500. Bertinoro much improved the status of the Jews in the Holy Land; before his migration thither the Jews of Palestine were in a miserable condition of poverty and persecution. His commentary on the Mishnah is the most useful of all helps to the understanding of that work. It is printed in most Hebrew editions of the Mishnah. Surenhusius, in his Latin edition of the last-named code (Amsterdam 1698-1703), translated Bertinoro's commentary. BERTINORO, a town and episcopal see of Emilia, Italy, in the province of Forli, 8 m. S.E. direct of Forli and 5-1/2 m. N. of the station of Forlimpopoli, and 800 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town, 3753; commune, 7786. The town commands a fine view to the north over the plain of Emilia and the lower course of the Po, itself lying on the foothills of the Apennines. It appears to have been first fortified by Frederick Barbarossa, and its castle stood frequent sieges in the middle ages. Polenta, 2-1/2 m. to the south of it, was the birthplace of Francesca da Rimini. The castle is almost entirely ruined, but the church of S. Donato, of the Lombard period, with Byzantine capitals, is interesting; Giosue Carducci has written a fine ode on the subject (_La Chiesa di Polenta_, Bologna, 1897). See C. Ricci, "Della Chiesa e castello di Polenta" in _Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di Storia patria per le prooniae di Romagna_, ser. iii. vol. ix. (Bologna, 1891), 1 seq. (T. As.) BERTOLD (1442-1504), elector and archbishop of Mainz, son of George, count of Henneberg, entered the ecclesiastical profession, and after passing through its lower stages, was made archbishop of Mainz in 1484. He appears to have been a firm supporter of law and order, an enemy of clerical abuses and a careful administrator of his diocese. Immediately after his election as archbishop he began to take a leading part in the business of the Empire, and in 1486 was very active in securing the election of Maximilian as Roman king. His chief work, however, was done as an advocate of administrative reform in Germany. During the reign of the emperor Frederick III. he had brought this question before the diet, and after Frederick's death, when he had become imperial chancellor, he was the leader of the party which pressed the necessity for reform upon Maximilian at the diet of Worms in 1495. His proposals came to nothing, but he continued the struggle at a series of diets, and urged the Germans to emulate the courage and union of the Swiss cantons. He gained a temporary victory when the diet of Augsburg in 1500 established a council of regency (_Reichsregiment_), and in 1502 persuaded the electors to form a union to uphold the reforms of 1495 and 1500. The elector died on the 21st of December 1504. Bertold was a man of great ability and resourcefulness, and as a statesman who strove for an ordered and united Germany was far in advance of his age. See J. Weiss, _Berthold von Henneberg, Erzbischof von Mainz_ (Freiburg, 1889). BERTOLD VON REGENSBURG (c. 1220-1272), the greatest German preacher of the later middle ages, was a native of Regensburg, and entered the Franciscan monastery there. From about 1250 onwards his fame as a preacher spread over all the German-speaking parts of the continent of Europe. He wandered from village to village and town to town, preaching to enormous audiences, always in the open air; the earnestness and straightforward eloquence with which he insisted that true repentance came from the heart, that pious pilgrimages and the absolution of the Church were mere outward symbols, appealed to all classes. He died in Regensburg on the 13th of December 1272. His German sermons, of which seventy-one have been preserved, are among the most powerful in the language, and form the chief monuments of Middle High German prose. His style is clear, direct and remarkably free from cumbrous Latin constructions; he employed, whenever he could, the pithy and homely sayings of the peasants, and is not reluctant to point his moral with a rough humour. As a thinker, he shows little sympathy with that strain of medieval mysticism which is to be observed in all the poetry of his contemporaries. The best edition of Bertold's German sermons is that by F. Pfeiffer and J. Strobl (2 vols., 1862-1880; reprinted, 1906); there is also a modern German version by F. Gobel (4th ed., 1906). The Latin sermons were edited by G. Jakob (1880). See C.W. Stromberger, _Bertold von Regensburg, der grosste Volksredner des deutschen Mittelalters_ (1877), K. Unkel, _Bertold von Regensburg_ (1882), and E. Bernhardt, _Bruder Bertold von Regensburg_ (1905); A.E. Schonbach, _Studien zur Geschichte der altdeutschen Predigt_ (_Publications of the Vienna Academy_, 1906). BERTRAM, CHARLES (1723-1765), English literary impostor, was born in London, the son of a silk dyer. In 1747, being then teacher of English at the school for Danish naval cadets at Copenhagen, he wrote to Dr William Stukeley, the English antiquarian, that he had discovered a manuscript written by a monk named Richard of Westminster, which corrected and supplemented the _Itinerary_ of Antoninus in Britain. He subsequently sent to Stukeley a copy of various parts of the work and a facsimile of a few lines of the manuscript. These were so cleverly executed that they quite deceived the English palaeographers of the period. Stukeley, finding that a chronicler of the fourteenth century, Richard of Cirencester, had also been an inmate of Westminster Abbey, identified him with Bertram's Richard of Westminster, and, in 1756, read an analysis of the "discovery" before the Society of Antiquaries, which was published with a copy of Richard's map. In 1757 Bertram published at Copenhagen a volume entitled _Britannicarum Gentium Historiae Antiquae Scriptores Tres_. This contained the works of Gildas and Nennius and the full text of Bertram's forgery, and though Bertram's map did not correspond with that of Richard, Stukeley discarded the latter and adopted Bertram's concoction in his _Itinerarium Curiosum_ published in