Commentary, which is the earliest extant work of its kind emanating from the school of the Gloss-writers, is, according to Savigny, a model specimen of the excellence of the method introduced by Irnerius, and a striking example of the brilliant results which had been obtained in a short space of time by a constant and exclusive study of the sources of law.
BULL, GEORGE (1634–1710), English divine, was born at Wells on the 25th of March 1634, and educated at Tiverton school, Devonshire. He entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1647, but had to leave in 1649 in consequence of his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth. He was ordained privately by Bishop Skinner in 1655. His first benefice held was that of St George’s near Bristol, from which he rose successively to be rector of Suddington in Gloucestershire (1658), prebendary of Gloucester (1678), archdeacon of Llandaff (1686), and in 1705 bishop of St David’s. He died on the 17th of February 1710. During the time of the Commonwealth he adhered to the forms of the Church of England, and under James II. preached strenuously against Roman Catholicism. His works display great erudition and powerful thinking. The Harmonia Apostolica (1670) is an attempt to show the fundamental agreement between the doctrines of Paul and James with regard to justification. The Defensio Fidei Nicenae (1685), his greatest work, tries to show that the doctrine of the Trinity was held by the ante-Nicene fathers of the church, and retains its value as a thorough-going examination of all the pertinent passages in early church literature. The Judicium Ecclesiae Catholicae (1694) and Primitiva et Apostolica Traditio (1710) won high praise from Bossuet and other French divines. Following on Bossuet’s criticisms of the Judicium, Bull wrote a treatise on The Corruptions of the Church of Rome, which became very popular.
The best edition of Bull’s works is that in 7 vols., published at Oxford by the Clarendon Press, under the superintendence of E. Burton, in 1827. This edition contains the Life by Robert Nelson. The Harmonia, Defensio and Judicium are translated in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (Oxford, 1842–1855).
BULL, JOHN (c. 1562–1628), English composer and organist, was born in Somersetshire about 1562. After being organist in Hereford cathedral, he joined the Chapel Royal in 1585, and in the next year became a Mus. Bac. of Oxford. In 1591 he was appointed organist in Queen Elizabeth’s chapel in succession to Blitheman, from whom he had received his musical education. In 1592 he received the degree of doctor of music at Cambridge University; and in 1596 he was made music professor at Gresham College, London. As he was unable to lecture in Latin according to the foundation-rules of that college, the executors of Sir Thomas Gresham made a dispensation in his favour by permitting him to lecture in English. He gave his first lecture on the 6th of October 1597. In 1601 Bull went abroad. He visited France and Germany, and was everywhere received with the respect due to his talents. Anthony Wood tells an impossible story of how at St Omer Dr Bull performed the feat of adding, within a few hours, forty parts to a composition already written in forty parts. Honourable employments were offered to him by various continental princes; but he declined them, and returned to England, where he was given the freedom of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1606. He played upon a small pair of organs before King James I. on the 16th of July 1607, in the hall of the Company, and he seems to have been appointed one of the king’s organists in that year. In the same year he resigned his Gresham professorship and married Elizabeth Walter. In 1613 he again went to the continent on account of his health, obtaining a post as one of the organists in the arch-duke’s chapel at Brussels. In 1617 he was appointed organist to the cathedral of Notre Dame at Antwerp, and he died in that city on the 12th or 13th of March 1628. Little of his music has been published, and the opinions of critics differ much as to its merits (see Dr Willibald Nagel’s Geschichte der Musik in England, ii. (1897), p. 155, &c.; and Dr Seiffert’s Geschichte der Klaviermusik (1899), p. 54, &c.). Contemporary writers speak in the highest terms of Bull’s skill as a performer on the organ and the virginals, and there is no doubt that he contributed much to the development of harpsichord music. Jan Swielinck (1562–1621), the great organist of Amsterdam, did not regard his work on composition as complete without placing in it a canon by John Bull, and the latter wrote a fantasia upon a fugue of Swielinck. For the ascription to Bull of the composition of the British national anthem, see National Anthems. Good modern reprints, e.g. of the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book, “The King’s Hunting Jig,” and one or two other pieces, are in the repertories of modern pianists from Rubinstein onwards.
BULL, OLE BORNEMANN (1810–1880), Norwegian violinist, was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 5th of February 1810. At first a pupil of the violinist Paulsen, and subsequently self-taught, he was intended for the church, but failed in his examinations in 1828 and became a musician, directing the philharmonic and dramatic societies at Bergen. In 1829 he went to Cassel, on a visit to Spohr, who gave him no encouragement. He now began to study law, but on going to Paris he came under the influence of Paganini, and definitely adopted the career of a violin virtuoso. He made his first appearance in company with Ernst and Chopin at a concert of his own in Paris in 1832. Successful tours in Italy and England followed soon afterwards, and he was not long in obtaining European celebrity by his brilliant playing of his own pieces and arrangements. His first visit to the United States lasted from 1843 to 1845, and on his return to Norway he formed a scheme for the establishment of a Norse theatre in Bergen; this became an accomplished fact in 1850; but in consequence of harassing business complications he went again to America. During this visit (1852–1857) he bought 125,000 acres in Potter county, Pennsylvania, for a Norwegian colony, which was to have been called Oleana after his name; but his title turned out to be fraudulent, and the troubles he went through in connexion with the undertaking were enough to affect his health very seriously, though not to hinder him for long from the exercise of his profession. Another attempt to found an academy of music in Christiania had no permanent result. In 1836 he had married Alexandrine Félicie Villeminot, the grand-daughter of a lady to whom he owed much at the beginning of his musical career in Paris; she died in 1862. In 1870 he married Sara C. Thorpe of Wisconsin; henceforth he confined himself to the career of a violinist. He died at Lysö, near Bergen, on the 17th of August 1880. Ole Bull’s “polacca guerriera” and many of his other violin pieces, among them two concertos, are interesting to the virtuoso, and his fame rests upon his prodigious technique. The memoir published by his widow in 1886 contains many illustrations of a career that was exceptionally brilliant; it gives a picture of a strong individuality, which often found expression in a somewhat boisterous form of practical humour.
There is a fountain and portrait statue to his memory in the Ole Bulls Plads in Bergen.
BULL. (1) The male of animals belonging to the section Bovina of the family Bovidae (q.v.), particularly the uncastrated male of the domestic ox (Bos taurus). (See Cattle.) The word, which is found in M.E. as bole, bolle (cf. Ger. Bulle, and Dutch bul or bol), is also used of the males of other animals of large size, e.g. the elephant, whale, &c. The O.E. diminutive form bulluc, meaning originally a young bull, or bull calf, survives in bullock, now confined to a young castrated male ox kept for slaughter for beef.
On the London and New York stock exchanges “bull” and “bear” are correlative technical slang terms. A “bull” is one who “buys for a rise,” i.e. he buys stocks or securities, grain or other commodities (which, however, he never intends to take up), in the hope that before the date on which he must take delivery he will be able to sell the stocks, &c., at a higher price, taking as a profit the difference between the buying and selling price. A “bear” is the reverse of a “bull.” He is one who “sells for a fall,” i.e. he sells stock, &c., which he does not actually possess, in the hope of buying it at a lower price before the time at which he has contracted to deliver (see Account; Stock Exchange). The word “bull,” according to the New English Dictionary, was used in this sense as early as the beginning of the 18th century. The origin of the use is not known, though it is tempting to connect it with the fable of the frog and the bull.
