BEUST, FRIEDRICH FERDINAND. – Protestant diplomat and politician, born in Dresden on 13 January 1809, died at Altenberg on 24 December 1886. After obtaining a law degree, he entered the diplomatic service in 1836 as secretary of the Saxon legation in Berlin; he then went to Paris, Munich, and London, returning to Berlin in 1848 as minister, though only briefly. He was responsible for the dynastic constitution of the empire (1867), various internal reforms and, among other things, the promulgation of the so-called Confessional Laws (25 May 1868), distinctly secularist and opposed to concordats, as well as the rapprochement with Napoleon III and the negotiations for the Austro-Franco-Italian Triple Alliance (1868–69), which failed because of the French refusal to evacuate Rome. Having kept Austria out of the Franco-Prussian War, he opposed the First Vatican Council by every means, did not even commit himself to defending the temporal power, and finally, after the collapse of France, oriented his policy in a direction more favorable to Berlin. Resigning for reasons of domestic politics, he became ambassador to London (1871) and subsequently to Paris (1878–82).
#### BEVAGNA. –
An ancient episcopal see of Umbria, in the province of Perugia, situated at the confluence of the Clitunno and the Topino. It is the ancient Mevania; conquered by the Romans around 308 B.C. and counted by them among the most flourishing municipia, it remained so until the Lombard devastations of the sixth century.
As regards the origin of Christianity in B., a Christian inscription is preserved in the city (CIL, XI, 2, 5162), but its date is uncertain. A Passion of Saints Vincenzo and Benigno (BHL, 8776) celebrates the deeds of Vincenzo, bishop of B., who is said to have lived at the time of the persecutions together with his deacon brother named Benigno, both martyrs for the Christian faith. No information about these two saints is known from before our Passio, which should not be earlier than the sixth century. The existence of a St. Brizio, bishop of B., martyred in the fourth century together with other Umbrian colleagues, all celebrated in the famous Passio Proculi, composed after the middle of the seventh and no earlier than the ninth century, rests on no firmer foundation.
The first bishop of B. whom we know from reliable documents is Innocenzo, who subscribed to the Roman Synods of 487, 499, and 501. In 591, following the Lombard devastations, St. Gregorio Magno entrusted the care of the vacant diocese to a priest; in 597 he commissioned Crisanto, bishop of Spoleto, to visit it, and in 599 Crisanto was charged with finding a suitable person to govern the bishopric. In 649 Marciano governed the church of B. and was present at the Lateran Council of that year. The last bishop of B. was Fabio, consecrated around 844 by Sergio II. Subsequently, once the city had been destroyed, the cathedral also disappeared, and the Spoleto (v.).