RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Balaam Ball
professor of rhetoric in the University of Ingolstadt; and from 1638 to 1640, after the death of Jeremias Drexel, court preacher to Maximilian I in Munich. Here he remained as historiographer of the duchy for ten years longer, but won more renown by the poetical compositions of the years 1637-46. His work in this period was lyrical (Lyrica, Munich, 1638-42; Sylvm, 1641-45), but after 1649 he turned rather to satire and elegy. His health forced him to leave Munich in 1650, and after three years at Landshut and one at Amberg, he settled at Neuburg on the Danube, where he spent his last years in the peaceful dignity of the office of chaplain to the count palatine Philip William. His memory, which had to a great extent died out, was revived at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Herder, Orelli, and others, and his name has since been increasingly honored, especially by the efforts of the Munich society, founded in 1868, which bears it. He well deserves this renown from more than one point of view. He was a great classical scholar, a positive reincarnation of Roman antiquity. As a Latin poet (his small body of vernacular work is far inferior) he displays a wonderful array of excellent qualities — vivid imagination, depth of thought and feeling, brilliant invention and composition, and mastery of the most difficult forms. The characteristic universal scholarship of his age is best shown in his Urania Victrix (1663), which touches every branch of knowledge. Besides the works already mentioned, and some epics belonging to his first period, his Philomela (1645), full of devotion to the Crucified, his Elegim varioz (1663), and his amusing satires on quack doctors and other impostors in Medicince gloria (1649) may be named.
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Bibliography: His collected works were first published in complete form at Munich, 1729, the earlier editions at Cologne, 1660 and 1718, being defective; his Carmina lyrica appeared, ed. B. Miiller, Regensburg, 1884. Consult L. Brunner, J. Balde, le grand poete de V Alsace. Notice historique et litteraire, Guebwiller, 1865; J. Bach, Jacob Balde, der neulateinische Dichter des Elsasses, Strasburg, 1885; F. Tauchert, Herder's griechische und morgenlandische Anfhologie und seine Uebersetzungen von J. Balde, p. 176, Munich, 1886.
BALDENSPERGER, WILHELM: German Protestant; b. at Miilhausen (63 m. s.s.w. of Strasburg), Alsace, Dec. 12, 1856. He was educated at the universities of Strasburg, Gottingen, and Paris, and in 1880 was appointed supply at Strasburg. Two years later he was chosen assistant pastor and secretary of the editorial board of the Journal du Protestantisme frangais at Paris, where he remained until 1884. From 1886 to 1890 he was vicar at Mundolsheim (a suburb of Strasburg) and Strasburg, but in the latter year was appointed associate professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Giessen, becoming full professor two years later. He was created a knight of the first class of the Order of Philip the Magnanimous in 1904. In addition to many briefer studies and his contributions to the Brunswick edition of the works of Calvin, he has written Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnung seiner Zeit (Strasburg, 1888); L' Influence du
dilettantisme artistique sur la morale et la religion (1890); Karl August Credner, sein Leben und seine Theologie (Leipsic, 1897); Der Prolog der vier Evangelien (Giessen, 1898); and Das spdtere Judenthum als Vorstufe des Christenthums (Giessen, 1900).
BALDWIN: Archbishop of Canterbury; d. at Acre Nov. 19, 1190. He was born at Exeter in humble circumstances, but received a good education; became archdeacon of Exeter, but resigned to enter the Cistercian monastery of Ford, Devonshire, and within a year was made abbot; became bishop of Worcester, 1180, archbishop of Canterbury, 1184. He engaged in a quarrel with the monks of Canterbury, and successfully asserted his preeminence among the bishops of England; with King Henry II he had much influence; he crowned Richard I in 1189, and attended him to the Holy Land the next year. His works (edited by B. Tissier) are in the Biblioiheca patrum Cisterciensium, v (Paris, 1662), from which they are reprinted in MPL, cciv.
BALE, JOHN: English polemical writer of the Reformation period; b. at Cove, near Dunwich, Suffolk (25 m. n.e. of Ipswich), Nov. 21, 1495; d. at Canterbury Nov. 1563. He was educated in the Carmelite monastery at Norwich, and at Jesus College, Cambridge; embraced the Reformation, married, and had to seek refuge in Germany in 1540; returned under Edward VI, was made Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland, 1552, and tried to introduce reformed doctrines and practise with an intemperate zeal; fled to the Continent after the accession of Mary, and lived for some years at Basel; returned under Elizabeth, and was made prebendary of Canterbury in 1560. He wrote much and with a coarseness and bitterness in controversy which gained him the name of " Bilious Bale." His principal work is Illustrium majoris Britannim scriptorum summarium (Ipswich, 1548; enlarged editions, Basel, 1557 and 1559); he also became noted as a writer of miracle plays in which he violently attacked the Roman Church. His play Kynge Johan has been published by the Camden Society (1838); and the Parker Society has published a selection of his works (1849), with biographical notice by H. Christmas.
Bibliography: The fullest account of his life is in C. H. Cooper, Athence Cantabrigienses, London, 1858.
BALL, JOHN: Puritan and Presbyterian; b. at Cassington (5 m. n.w. of Oxford) Oct. 1585; d. at Whitmore (4 m. s.w. of Newcastle-under-Lyme), Staffordshire, Oct. 20, 1640. He was educated at Brasenose College and St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and in 1610 became minister at Whitmore. He was one of the fathers of Presbyterianism in England, and, as Richard Baxter says, " deserving as high esteem and honor as the best bishop in England." His Small Catechism containing the Principles of Religion (London) reached an eighteenth impression in 1637; and his larger catechism, entitled A Short Treatise, containing All the Principal Grounds of Christian Religion, a fourteenth impression in 1670. They were published anonymously. His Treatise of Faith (London, 1631; 3d edition, corrected and
Ballanche Balmes