Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/556

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BANYUMAS.
482
BAPTISM.

BANYUMAS, ban'yoo-niiis'. or BANJUMAS (•golden water'). A residency and a town of Java, situated on the southern coast of the island (Map: East Indies, C G). Area of resi- dency. 2100 square miles. Its population was 1,216,719 in 1894, including about 1000 Euro- peans and about 5000 Chinese. The town and seat of the Resident is situated on the river Serajo, about 22 miles inland. It has a consider- able trade, and contains a population of about 9000.


BANZ, biints (Goth, iansts. inclosure). A castle, belonging to one of the Bavarian princes, originally a Benedictine abbey, in Upper Fran- conia. Bavaria, near Lichtenfels, on the ilain: sittiated on a mountain slope over 1400 feet high. The abbey Aas founded in the Eleventh Century, and celebrated for the superior culture of its monks. During the Peasants' War in the Sixteenth Centura , the abbey w^as destroyed but immediately restored; again destroyed in the Thirty Years' War, and again restored. In 1802 it was broken up, the books and collections were scattered among German institutions, and the building turned to its present use. The castle contains a number of beautiful rooms, and also a very rare and valuable collection of petrified objects.


BAOBAB (ba'6-bab) TREE. See Adan- SONI.V.


BAOUR-LORMIAN, ba'oor'16r'myaN', Pierre Marie Francois Louis (1770-1854). A French poet and dramatic author, born at Toulouse. His plays were much praised at the time of their perfomiance, and his translations of Taiso (1795) and Ossian (1801) attracted the favor of Napoleon. In 1815 he was made a member of the Academy: but the reign of the classic style was over, and protesting to the end with feeble dialogues, le chifsiqiie et le romantique, encore till mot, the poet found himself the butt of epi- grams. Upon his death, the Academy paid him extraordinary honors.


BAPAUME, ba'-pom'. The chief town of a canton, in the Department of Pas-de-Calais, France (Map: France, J 1). Population, in 189G. 3144. In August, 1793, a detachment of the Allied troops advanced to this place, after compelling the French to abandon their forti- fied position, and to retreat behind the Scarpe. The town was also the scene of one of the severest and most closely contested battles of the Franco-German War.' It was fought Janu- ary 3, 1871, both sides claiming the victory. The Germans, however, fell back behind the Somiue.


BAPH'OMET. The name of a mysterious symliol, which was alleged to be in u.se among tiie Templars. According to the oldest and most prol)able interpretation, the word is a corruption of Mahomet, to whose faith the members of the order were accused of having a leaning. Indeed, the Old Spanish form is itafomat. The s consisted of a small human figure cut out of stone, having two heads, male and female, with the rest of the body purely feminine. It was environed with serpents and astronomical attri- butes, and furnished with inscriptions for the most part in Arabic. Specimens are to be found in the arcbipological collections of Vienna and Weimar, and elsewhere. Joseph von Hammer- Purgstall, however, in the Fundgruben des Orients (Vienna. 1818), derives Baphomet from Gk. /3a0ij, baphe, baptism; and ^u^ns, metis, council or wisdom. He charges the knights with depraved Gnosticism, and makes the word sig- nify the baptism of wisdom — the baptism of fire ; in short, the Gnostic baptism — a species of spir- itual illumination, which, however, was inter- preted sensually by later Gnostics, such as the Ophites (an Egyptian sect of the Sixth Cen- tury), to whose licentious practices he declares them to have been addicted. But this explana- tion is generally discredited. Another exjdana- tion is that quoted by Littre from Louis Al- phonse Constant (under the pseudonym Eliphas L§vi), Dogme et rituel de la haute magic (2d ed., Paris 1861), that Baphomet is tem[pli] o[mnium] h[omininn] p[acis] ab[bas], i.e. tern, o. h. p. ab; written backward = 'abbot of the temple of peace of all men.' This seems even more strained than the other.


BAPTAN'ODON (Gk. (SavTeip. baptein, to dip, here referring to amphibian habits, + av, an priv. + Moi's, odoiis. tooth). The only American representative of the aquatic ichthy- opterygian reptiles, and a late development of the Ichthyosaurus race. The animal was fish- like in general appearance, like all the Ichthy- osaurians, and was provided with paddles that were shorter and broader than those of the other members of the group. The jaws were witliout teeth, and this leads to the supposition that the animal fed upon the succulent plants that grew in the vicinity of its dwelling-place. It was about 10 feet "long, and it lived during Middle Jurassic times in the shallow marine waters of the Colorado-Wyoming Basin. The name 'Bap- tanodon beds,' given by Professor Marsh to the series of rocks containing this fossil, has re- cently been replaced by 'Shirley Formation.' See Ichthyosaurus.


BAP'TISM (OF. baptesme, Gk. pdirTuriM, baplisnia, from paTrrL^eiv, baptizein, to dip I . One of the two sacraments of the Christian Church, performed by applying water to the person of the candidate in various modes, in the name of the Trinity. Its institution is referred by the Gospels to Christ himself (Jlatt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 10). Modern criticism has sometimes questioned the correctness of this reference, upon the ground that Christ did not concern himself with outward institutions: but there is no ob- jective warrant for. this rejection of the texts, and the inunediate observance of baptism upon the beginning of the Church at Pentecost imiilies previous and well-understood establishment of the rite. The name and the rite were not, how- ever, altogether new when the ordinance was in- stituted by Christ. The Jewish law introduced- the custom of washing or baptizing proselytes upon their admission into the .lewish Church. John the Baptist baptized, not proselytes upon their renouncing heathenism, but those who by birth and descent were already members of the .Jewish Church, to indicate the necessity of a purification of the soul from sin — a spiritual and not a mere outward change. There has long been much controversy as to the proper subjects of baptism, whether adults only are to be bap- tized upon confession of their faith in Christ, or whether their infants are also to receive the ordinance. (See Baptists: and Baptism, In-