Blanqui (Louis Auguste), French politician, b. near Nice, 7 Feb. 1805, a younger brother of Jerome Adolphe Blanqui, the economist. Becoming a Communist, his life was spent in conspiracy and imprisonment under successive governments. In ’39 he was condemned to death, but his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life, and was subject to brutal treatment till the revolution of ’48 set him at liberty. He was soon again imprisoned. In ’65 he wrote some remarkable articles on Monotheism in Le Candide. After the revolution of 4 Sept. ’70, Blanqui demanded the suppression of worship. He was again imprisoned, but was liberated and elected member of the Commune, and arrested by Thiers. In his last imprisonment he wrote a curious book, Eternity and the Stars, in which he argues from the eternity and infinity of matter. Died Paris, 31 Dec. 1880. Blanqui took as his motto “Ni Dieu ni maître”—Neither God nor master.
Blasche (Bernhard Heinrich), German Pantheist, b. Jena 9 April, 1776. His father was a professor of theology and philosophy. He wrote Kritik des Modernen Geisterglaubens (Criticism of Modern Ghost Belief), Philosophische Unsterblichkeitslehre (Teaching of Philosophical Immortality), and other works. Died near Gotha 26 Nov. 1832.
Blignieres (Célestin de), French Positivist, of the Polytechnic school. Has written a popular exposition of Positive philosophy and religion, Paris 1857; The Positive Doctrine, 1867; Studies of Positive Morality, 1868; and other works.
Blind (Karl), German Republican, b. Mannheim, 4 Sept. 1826. Studied at Heidelberg and Bonn. In 1848 he became a revolutionary leader among the students and populace, was wounded at Frankfort, and proscribed. In Sept. ’48 he led the second republican revolution in the Black Forest. He was made prisoner and sentenced to eight year’s imprisonment. In the spring of ’49 he was liberated by the people breaking open his prison. Being sent on a mission to Louis Napoleon, then president of the French Republic at Paris, he was arrested and banished from France. He went to Brussels, but since ’52 has lived in in England, where he has written largely on politics, history, and mythology. His daughter Mathilde, b. at Mannheim, opened her literary career by publishing a volume of poems in 1867 under the name of Claude Lake. She has since translated Straus’s Old Faith and the New, and written the volumes on George Eliot and Madame Roland in the Eminent Women series.
Blount (Charles), English Deist of noble family, b. at Holloway 27 April, 1654. His father, Sir Henry Blount, probably shared in his opinions, and helped him in his anti-religious work, Anima Mundi, 1678. This work Bishop Compton desired to see suppressed. In 1680 he published Great is Diana of the Ephesians, or the Origin of Idolatry, and the two first books of Apollonius Tyanius, with notes, in which he attacks priestcraft and superstition. This work was condemned and suppressed. Blount also published The Oracles of Reason, a number of Freethought Essays. By his Vindication of Learning and Liberty of the Press, and still more by his hoax on Bohun entitled William and Mary Conquerors, he was largely instrumental in doing away with the censorship of the press. He shot himself, it is said, because he could not marry his deceased wife’s sister (August, 1693). His miscellaneous works were printed in one volume, 1695.
Blumenfeld (J. C.), wrote The New Ecce Homo or the Self Redemption of Man, 1839. He is also credited with the authorship of The Existence of Christ Disproved in a series of Letters by “A German Jew,” London, 1841.
Boerne (Ludwig), German man of letters and politician, b. Frankfort 22 May, 1786. In 1818 he gave up the Jewish religion, in which he had been bred, nominally for Protestantism, but really he had, like his friend Heine, become a Freethinker. He wrote many works in favor of political liberty and translated Lammenais’ Paroles d’un Croyant. Died 12 Feb. 1837.
Bodin (Jean), French political writer, b. Angers 1530. He studied at Toulouse and is said to have been a monk but turned to the law, and became secretary to the Duc d’Alençon. His book De la Republique is highly praised by Hallam, and is said to have contained the germ of Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws.” He wrote a work on demonomania, in which he seems to have believed, but in his Colloquium Heptaplomeron coloquies of seven persons: a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Pagan, a Muhammadan, a Jew, and a Deist, which he left in manuscript, he put some severe attacks on Christianity. Died of the plague at Laon in 1596.
Boggis (John) is mentioned by Edwards in his Gangrena, 1645, as an Atheist and disbeliever in the Bible.
Boichot (Jean Baptiste), b. Villier sur Suize 20 Aug. 1820, entered the army. In ’49 he was chosen representative of the people. After the coup d’état he came to England, returned to France in ’54, was arrested and imprisoned at Belle Isle. Since then he has lived at Brussels, where he has written several works and is one of the council of International Freethinkers.
Boindin (Nicolas) French litterateur, wit, playwright and academician, b. Paris 29 May, 1676. He publicly professed Atheism, and resorted with other Freethinkers to the famous café Procope. There, in order to speak freely, they called the soul Margot, religion Javotte, liberty Jeanneton, and God M. de l’Etre. One day a spy asked Boindin, “Who is this M. de l’Etre with whom you seem so displeased?” “Monsieur,” replied Boindin, “he is a police spy.” Died 30 Nov. 1751. His corpse was refused “Christian burial.”
Boissiere (Jean Baptiste Prudence), French writer, b. Valognes Dec. 1806, was for a time teacher in England. He compiled an analogical dictionary of the French language. Under the name of Sièrebois he has published the Autopsy of the Soul and a work on the foundations of morality, which he traces to interest. He has also written a book entitled The Mechanism of Thought, ’84.
Boissonade (J. A.), author of The Bible Unveiled, Paris, 1871.
Boito (Arrigo), Italian poet and musician, b. at Padua, whose opera “Mefistofele,” has created considerable sensation by its boldness.
Bolingbroke (Henry Saint John) Lord, English statesman and philosopher, b. at Battersea, 1 Oct. 1672. His political life was a stormy one. He was the friend of Swift and of Pope, who in his Essay on Man avowedly puts forward the views of Saint John. He died at Battersea 12 Dec. 1751, leaving by will his MSS. to David Mallet, who in 1754 published his works, which included Essays Written to A. Pope, Esq., on Religion and Philosophy, in which he attacks Christianity with both wit and eloquence. Bolingbroke was a Deist, believing in God but scornfully rejecting revelation. He much influenced Voltaire, who regarded him with esteem.
Bonavino (Francesco Cristoforo) see Franchi (Ausonio).
Boni (Filippo de), Italian man of letters, b. Feltre, 1820. Editor of a standard Biography of Artists, published at Venice, 1840. He also wrote on the Roman Church and Italy and on Reason and Dogma, Siena, ’66, and contributed to Stefanoni’s Libero Pensiero. De Boni was elected deputy to the Italian Parliament. He has written on “Italian Unbelief in the Middle Ages” in the Annuario Filosofico del Libero Pensiero, ’68.
Boniface VIII., Pope (Benedetto Gaetano), elected head of Christendom, 24 Dec. 1294. During his quarrel with Philip the Fair of France charges were sworn on oath against Pope Boniface that he neither believed in the Trinity nor in the life to come, that he said the Virgin Mary “was no more a virgin than my mother”; that he did not observe the fasts of the Church, and that he spoke of the cardinals, monks, and friars as hypocrites. It was in evidence that the Pope had said “God may do the worst with me that he pleases in the future life; I believe as every educated man does, the vulgar believe otherwise. We have to speak as they do, but we must believe and think with the few.” Died 11 Oct. 1303.
Bonnycastle (John), mathematician, b. Whitchurch, Bucks, about 1750. He wrote several works on elementary mathematics and became Professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he died 15 May, 1821. He was a friend of Fuseli, and private information assures me he was a Freethinker.
Booms