r 1826. His works were highly
effective in diffusing throughout Germany a taste for astronomy. Besides
those already mentioned he wrote:--_Sammlung astronomischer Tafeln_ (3
vols., 1776); _Erlauterung der Sternkunde_ (1776, 3rd ed. 1808);
_Uranographia_ (1801), a collection of 20 star-maps accompanied by a
catalogue of 17,240 stars and nebulae. In one of his numerous incidental
essays he propounded, in 1776, a theory of the solar constitution
similar to that developed in 1795 by Sir William Herschel. He gave
currency, moreover, to the empirical rule known as "Bode's Law," which
was actually announced by Johann Daniel Titius of Wittenberg in 1772. It
is expressed by the statement that the proportionate distances of the
several planets from the sun may be represented by adding 4 to each term
of the series; 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, &c. The irregularity will be noticed of
the first term, which should be 1-1/2 instead of 0. (See SOLAR SYSTEM.)

See J.F. Encke, _Berlin Abhandlungen_ (1827), p. xi.; H.C. Schumacher.
_Astr. Nach._ v. 255, 367 (1827); Poggendorff, _Biog. literarisches
Handworterbuch; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, iii. 1.

BODEL, JEHAN (died _c._ 1210), French _trouvere_, was born at Arras in
the second half of the 12th century. Very little is known of his life,
but in 1205 he was about to start for the crusade when he was attacked
by leprosy. In a touching poem called _Le Conge_ (pr. by Meon in
_Recueil de fabliaux et contes_, vol. i.), he bade farewell to his
friends and patrons, and begged for a nomination to a leper hospital. He
wrote _Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas_, one of the earliest miracle plays
preserved in French (printed in Monmerque and Michel's _Theatre francais
du moyen age_, 1839, and for the _Soc. des bibliophiles francais_,
1831); the _Chanson des Saisnes_ (ed. F. Michel 1839), four
_pastourelles_ (printed in K. Bartsch's _Altfranz. Romanzen und
Pastourellen_, Leipzig, 1870); and probably, the eight _fabliaux_
attributed to an unknown Jean Bedel. The legend of Saint Nicholas had
already formed the subject of the Latin _Ludus Sancti Nicholai_ of
Hilarius. Bodel placed the scene partly on a field of battle in Africa,
where the crusaders perish in a hopeless struggle, and partly in a
tavern. The piece, loosely connected by the miracle of Saint Nicholas
narrated in the prologue, ends with a wholesale conversion of the
African king and his subjects. The dialogue in the tavern scenes is
written in t