Part 31

Whatever the origin of the word, it has long had several meanings-(a) a fire of bones, (b) a fire for corpses, a funeral pile, (c) a fire for immolation, such as that in which heretics and proscribed books were burnt, (d) a large fire lit in the open air, on occasions of national rejoicing, or as a signal of alarm such as the bonfires which warned England of the approach of the Armada. Throughout Europe the peasants from time immemorial have lighted bonfires on certain days of the year, and danced around or leapt over them. This custom can be traced back to the middle ages, and certain usages in antiquity so nearly resemble it as to suggest that the bonfire has its origin in the early days of heathen Europe. Indeed the earliest proof of the observance of these bonfire ceremonies in Europe is afforded by the attempts made by Christian synods in the 7th and 8th centuries to suppress them as pagan. Thus the third council of Constantinople (A.D. 680), by its 65th canon, orders: "Those fires that are kindled by certaine people on new moones before their shops and houses, over which also they use ridiculously and foolishly to leape, by a certaine antient custome, we command them from henceforth to cease." And the Synodus Francica under Pope Zachary, A.D. 742, forbids "those sacrilegious fires which they call _Nedfri_ (or bonefires), and all other observations of the Pagans whatsoever." Leaping over the fires is mentioned among the superstitious rites used at the Palilia (the feast of Pales, the shepherds' goddess) in Ovid's _Fasti_, when the shepherds lit heaps of straw and jumped over them as they burned. The lighting of the bonfires in Christian festivals was significant of the compromise made with the heathen by the early Church. In Cornwall bonfires are lighted on the eve of St John the Baptist and St Peter's day, and midsummer is thence called in Cornish _Goluan_, which means both "light" and "festivity." Sometimes effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them, and there are grounds for believing that anciently human sacrifices were actually made in the bonfires. Spring and midsummer are the usual times at which these bonfires are lighted, but in some countries they are made at Hallowe'en (October 31) and at Christmas. In spring the 1st Sunday in Lent, Easter eve and the 1st of May are the commonest dates.

See J.G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_, vol. iii., for a very full account of the bonfire customs of Europe, &c.

BONGARS, JACQUES (1554-1612), French scholar and diplomatist, was born at Orleans, and was brought up in the reformed faith. He obtained his early education at Marburg and Jena, and returning to France continued his studies at Orleans and Bourges. After spending some time in Rome he visited eastern Europe, and subsequently made the acquaintance of Segur Pardaillan, a representative of Henry, king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France. He entered the service of Pardaillan, and in 1587 was sent on a mission to many of the princes of northern Europe, after which he visited England to obtain help from Queen Elizabeth for Henry of Navarre. He continued to serve Henry as a diplomatist, and in 1593 became the representative of the French king at the courts of the imperial princes. Vigorously seconding the efforts of Henry to curtail the power of the house of Habsburg, he spent health and money ungrudgingly in this service, and continued his labours until the king's murder in 1610. He then returned to France, and died at Paris on the 29th of July 1612. Bongars wrote an abridgment of Justin's abridgment of the history of Trogus Pompeius under the title _Justinus, Trogi Pompeii Historiarum Philippicarum epitoma de manuscriptis codicibus emendatior et prologis auctior_ (Paris, 1581). He collected the works of several French writers who as contemporaries described the crusades, and published them under the title _Gesta Dei per Francos_ (Hanover, 1611). Another collection made by Bongars is the _Rerum Hungaricarum scriptores varii_ (Frankfort, 1600). His _Epistolae_ were published at Leiden in 1647, and a French translation at Paris in 1668-1670. Many of his papers are preserved in the library at Bern, to which they were presented in 1632, and a list of them was made in 1634. Other papers and copies of instructions are now in several libraries in Paris; and copies of other instructions are in the British Museum.

See H. Hagen, _Jacobus Bongarsius_ (Bern, 1874); L. Anquez, _Henri IV et l'Allemagne_ (Paris, 1887).

BONGHI, RUGGERO (1828-1895), Italian scholar, writer and politician, was born at Naples on the 20th of March 1828. Exiled from Naples in consequence of the movement of 1848, he took refuge in Tuscany, whence he was compelled to flee to Turin on account of a pungent article against the Bourbons. At Turin he resumed his philosophic studies and his translation of Plato, but in 1858 refused a professorship of Greek at Pavia, under the Austrian government, only to accept it in 1859 from the Italian government after the liberation of Lombardy. In 1860, with the Cavour party, he opposed the work of Garibaldi, Crispi and Bertani at Naples, and became secretary of Luigi Carlo Farini during the latter's lieutenancy, but in 1865 assumed contemporaneously the editorship of the _Perseveranza_ of Milan and the chair of Latin literature at Florence. Elected deputy in 1860 he became celebrated by the biting wit of his speeches, while, as journalist, the acrimony of his polemical writings made him a redoubtable adversary. Though an ardent supporter of the historic Right, and, as such, entrusted by the Lanza cabinet with the defence of the law of guarantees in 1870, he was no respecter of persons, his caustic tongue sparing neither friend nor foe. Appointed minister for public instruction in 1873, he, with feverish activity, reformed the Italian educational system, suppressed the privileges of the university of Naples, founded the Vittorio Emanuele library in Rome, and prevented the establishment of a Catholic university in the capital. Upon the fall of the Right from power in 1876 he joined the opposition, and, with characteristic vivacity, protracted during two months the debate on Baccelli's University Reform Bill, securing, single-handed, its rejection. A bitter critic of King Humbert, both in the _Perseveranza_ and in the _Nuova Antologia_, he was, in 1893, excluded from court, only securing readmission shortly before his death on the 22nd of October 1895. In foreign policy a Francophil, he combated the Triple Alliance, and took considerable part in the organization of the inter-parliamentary peace conference. (H. W. S.)

BONGO (DOR or DERAN), a tribe of Nilotic negroes, probably related to the Zandeh tribes of the Welle district, inhabiting the south-west portion of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. G.A. Schweinfurth, who lived two years among them, declares that before the advent of the slave-raiders, c. 1850, they numbered at least 300,000. Slave-raiders, and later the dervishes, greatly reduced their numbers, and it was not until the establishment of effective control by the Sudan government (1904-1906) that recuperation was possible. The Bongo formerly lived in countless little independent and peaceful communities, and under the Sudan government they again manage their own affairs. Their huts are well built, and sometimes 24 ft. high. The Bongo are a race of medium height, inclined to be thick-set, with a red-brown complexion--"like the soil upon which they reside"--and black hair. Schweinfurth declares their heads to be nearly round, no other African race, to his knowledge, possessing a higher cephalic index. The women incline to steatopygia in later life, and this deposit of fat, together with the tail of bast which they wore, gave them, as they walked, Schweinfurth says, the appearance of "dancing baboons." The Bongo men formerly wore only a loin-cloth, and many dozen iron rings on the arms (arranged to form a sort of armour), while the women had simply a girdle, to which was attached a tuft of grass. Both sexes now largely use cotton cloths as dresses. The tribal ornaments consist of nails or plugs which are passed through the lower lip. The women often wear a disk several inches in diameter in this fashion, together with a ring or a bit of straw in the upper lip, straws in the _alae_ of the nostrils, and a ring in the _septum_. The Bongo, unlike other of the upper Nile Negroes, are not great cattle-breeders, but employ their time in agriculture. The crops mostly cultivated are sorghum, tobacco, sesame and durra. The Bongo eat the fruits, tubers and fungi in which the country is rich. They also eat almost every creature--bird, beast, insect and reptile, with the exception of the dog. They despise no flesh, fresh or putrid. They drive the vulture from carrion, and eat with relish the intestinal worms of the ox. Earth-eating, too, is common among them. They are particularly skilled in the smelting and working of iron. Iron forms the currency of the country, and is extensively employed for all kinds of useful and ornamental purposes. Bongo spears, knives, rings, and other articles are frequently fashioned with great artistic elaboration. They have a variety of musical instruments--drums, stringed instruments, and horns--in the practice of which they take great delight; and they indulge in a vocal recitative which seems intended to imitate a succession of natural sounds. Schweinfurth says that Bongo music is like the raging of the elements. Marriage is by purchase; and a man is allowed to acquire three wives, but not more. Tattooing is partially practised. As regards burial, the corpse is bound in a crouching position with the knees drawn up to the chin; men are placed in the grave with the face to the north, and women with the face to the south. The form of the grave is peculiar, consisting of a niche in a vertical shaft, recalling the mastaba graves of the ancient Egyptians. The tombs are frequently ornamented with rough wooden figures intended to represent the deceased. Of the immortality of the soul they have no defined notion; and their only approach to a knowledge of a beneficent deity consists in a vague idea of luck. They have, however, a most intense belief in a great variety of petty goblins and witches, which are essentially malignant. Arrows, spears and clubs form their weapons, the first two distinguished by a multiplicity of barbs. Euphorbia juice is used as a poison for the arrows. Shields are rare. Their language is musical, and abounds in the vowels o and a; its vocabulary of concrete terms is very rich, but the same word has often a great variety of meanings. The grammatical structure is simple. As a race the Bongo are gentle and industrious, and exhibit strong family affection.

See G.A. Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_ (London, 1873); W. Junker, _Travels in Africa_ (Eng. edit., London, 1890-1892).

BONGO (_Boocercus eurycerus_), a West African bushbuck, the largest of the group. The male is deep chestnut, marked on the body with narrow white stripes, on the chest with a white crescent, and on the face by two white spots below the eye. In the East African bongo (_B. e. Isaaei_) the body hue is stronger and richer. There is, as yet, no evidence as to whether the females of the true bongo bear horns, though it is probable they do; but as the horns are present in both sexes of the East African form, Mr Oldfield Thomas has made that the type of the genus.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist._ vol. x. (seventh series), p. 309.

BONHAM, a town and the county-seat of Fannin county, Texas, U.S.A., about 14 m. S. of the Red river, in the north-east part of the state, and 70 m. N. of Dallas. Pop. (1890) 3361; (1900) 5042 (1223 being negroes); (1910), 4844. It is served by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, and the Texas & Pacific railways. Bonham is the seat of Carlton College (Christian), a woman's college founded in 1867; and its high school is one of the best in the state. It is a trading and shipping centre of an extensive farming territory devoted to the raising of live-stock and to the growing of cotton, Indian corn, fruit, &c. It has large cotton gins and compresses, a large cotton mill, flour mills, canning and ice factories, railway repair shops, planing mills and carriage works. The town was named in honour of J.B. Bonham, a native of South Carolina, who was killed in the Alamo. The first settlement here was made in 1836. The town was incorporated in 1850, and was re-incorporated in 1886.

BONHEUR [MARIE ROSALIE], ROSA (1822-1899), French painter, was born at Bordeaux on the 22nd of March 1822. She was of Jewish origin. Jacques Wiener, the Belgian medallist, a native of Venloo, says that he and Raymond Bonheur, Rosa's father, used to attend synagogue in that town; while another authority asserts that Rosa used to be known in common parlance by the name of Rosa Mazeltov (a Hebrew term for "good luck," _Gallice_ Bonheur). She was the eldest of four children, all of whom were artists--Auguste (1824-1884) painted animals and landscape; Juliette (1830-1891) was "honourably mentioned" at the exhibition of 1855; Isidore, born in 1827, was a sculptor of animals. Rosa at an early age was taught to draw by her father (who died in 1849), and he, perceiving her very remarkable talent, permitted her to abandon the business of dressmaking, to which, much against her will, she had been put, in order to devote herself wholly to art. From 1840 to 1845 she exhibited at the salon, and five times received a prize; in 1848 a medal was awarded to her. Her fame dates more especially from the exhibition of 1855; from that time Rosa Bonheur's works were much sought after in England, where collectors and public galleries competed eagerly for them. What is chiefly remarkable and admirable in her work is that, like her contemporary, Jacques Raymond Brascassat (1804-1867), she represents animals as they really are, as she saw them in the country. Her gift of accurate observation was, however, allied to a certain dryness of style in painting; she often failed to give a perfect sense of atmosphere. On the other hand, the anatomy of her animals is always faultlessly true. There is nothing feminine in her handling; her treatment is always manly and firm. Of her many works we may note the following:--"Ploughing in the Nivernais" (1848), in the Luxembourg gallery; "The Horse Fair" (1853), one of the two replicas of which is in the National Gallery, London, the original being in the United States; and "Hay Harvest in Auvergne" (1835). She was decorated with the Legion of Honour by the empress Eugenie, and was subsequently promoted to the rank of "officer" of the order. After 1867 Rosa Bonheur exhibited but once in the salon, in 1899, a few weeks before her death. She lived quietly at her country house at By, near Fontainebleau, where for some years she had held gratuitous classes for drawing. She left at her death a considerable number of pictures, studies, drawings and etchings, which were sold by auction in Paris in the spring of 1900. (H. Fr.)

BONHEUR DU JOUR, the name for a lady's writing-desk, so called because, when it was introduced in France about 1760, it speedily became intensely fashionable. The bonheur du jour is always very light and graceful; its special characteristic is a raised back, which may form a little cabinet or a nest of drawers, or may simply be fitted with a mirror. The top, often surrounded with a chased and gilded bronze gallery, serves for placing small ornaments. Beneath the writing surface there is usually a single drawer. The details vary greatly, but the general characteristics are always traceable. The bonheur du jour has never been so delicate, so charming, so coquettish as in the quarter of a century which followed its introduction. The choicer examples of the time are inlaid with marqueterie, edged with exotic woods, set in gilded bronze, or enriched with panels of Oriental lacquer.

BONI (_Bone_), a vassal state of the government of Celebes, Dutch East Indies, in the south-west peninsula of Celebes, on the Gulf of Boni. Area, 2600 sq. m. It produces rice, tobacco, coffee, cotton and sugar-cane, none of them important as exports. The breeds of buffaloes and horses in this state are highly esteemed. The chief town, Boni, lies 80 m. N.E. of Macassar, and 2-1/2 m. from the east coast of the peninsula. The native race of Bugis (q.v.), whose number within this area is about 70,000, is one of the most interesting in the whole archipelago.

Boni was once the most powerful state of Celebes, all the other princes being regarded as vassals of its ruler, but its history is not known in detail. In 1666 the rajah Palakkah, whose father and grandfather had been murdered by the family of Hassan, the tyrant of Sumatra, made common cause with the Dutch against that despot. From that date till the beginning of the 19th century Dutch influence in the state remained undisputed. In 1814, however, Boni fell into the hands of the British, who retained it for two years; but by the European treaties concluded on the downfall of Napoleon it reverted to its original colonizers. Their influence, however, was resisted more than once by the natives. An expedition in 1825, under General van Geen, was not fully successful in enforcing it; and in 1858 and the following year two expeditions were necessary to oppose an attempt by the princess regent towards independence. In 1860 a new prince, owning allegiance to the Dutch, was set up. As in other native states in Celebes, succession to the throne in the female line has precedence over the male line.

For the wars in Boni, see Perelaer, _De Bonische expeditien, 1859-1860_ (Leiden, 1872); and Meyers, in the _Militaire Spectator_ (1880).

BONIFACE, SAINT (680-754), the apostle of Germany, whose real name was Wynfrith, was born of a good Saxon family at Crediton or Kirton in Devonshire. While still young he became a monk, and studied grammar and theology first at Exeter, then at Nutcell near Winchester, under the abbot Winberht. He soon distinguished himself both as scholar and preacher, and had every inducement to remain in his monastery, but in 716 he followed the example of other Saxon monks and set out as missionary to Frisia. He was soon obliged to return, however, probably owing to the hostility of Radbod, king of the Frisians, then at war with Charles Martel. At the end of 717 he went to Rome, where in 719 Pope Gregory II. commissioned him to evangelize Germany and to counteract the influence of the Irish monks there. Crossing the Alps, Boniface visited Bavaria and Thuringia, but upon hearing of the death of Radbod he hurried again to Frisia, where, under the direction of his countryman Willibrord (d. 738), the first bishop of Utrecht, he preached successfully for three years. About 722 he visited Hesse and Thuringia, won over some chieftains, and converted and baptized great numbers of the heathen. Having sent special word to Gregory of his success, he was summoned to Rome and consecrated bishop on the 30th of November 722, after taking an oath of obedience to the pope. Then his mission was enlarged. He returned with letters of recommendation to Charles Martel, charged not only to convert the heathen but to suppress heresy as well.

Charles's protection, as he himself confessed, made possible his great career. Armed with it he passed safely into heathen Germany and began a systematic crusade, baptizing, overturning idols, founding churches and monasteries, and calling from England a band of missionary helpers, monks and nuns, some of whom have become famous: St Lull, his successor in the see at Mainz; St Burchard, bishop of Wurzburg; St Gregory, abbot at Utrecht; Willibald, his biographer; St Lioba, St Walburge, St Thecla. In 732 Boniface was created archbishop. In 738 for the third time he went to Rome. On his return he organized the church in Bavaria into the four bishoprics of Regensburg, Freising, Salzburg and Passau. Then his power was extended still further. In 741 Pope Zacharias made him legate, and charged him with the reformation of the whole Frankish church. With the support of Carloman and Pippin, who had just succeeded Charles Martel as mayors of the palace, Boniface set to work. As he had done in Bavaria, he organized the east Frankish church into four bishoprics, Erfurt, Wurzburg, Buraburg and Eichstadt, and set over them his own monks. In 742 he presided at what is generally counted as the first German council. At the same period he founded the abbey of Fulda, as a centre for German monastic culture, placing it under the Bavarian Sturm, whose biography gives us so many picturesque glimpses of the time, and making its rule stricter than the Benedictine. Then came a theological and disciplinary controversy with Virgil, the Irish bishop of Salzburg, who held, among other heresies, that there were other worlds than ours. Virgil must have been a most remarkable man; in spite of his leanings toward science he held his own against Boniface, and was canonized after his death. Boniface was more successful in France. There a certain Adalbert or Aldebert, a Frankish bishop of Neustria, had caused great disturbance. He had been performing miracles, and claimed to have received his relics, not from Rome like those of Boniface, but directly from the angels. Planting crosses in the open fields he drew the people to desert the churches, and had won a great following throughout all Neustria. Opinions are divided as to whether he was a Culdee, a representative of a national Frankish movement, or simply the charlatan that Boniface paints him. At the instance of Pippin, Boniface secured Adalbert's condemnation at the synod of Soissons in 744; but he, and Clement, a Scottish missionary and a heretic on predestination, continued to find followers in spite of legate, council and pope, for three or four years more.

Between 746 and 748 Boniface was made bishop of Mainz, and became metropolitan over the Rhine bishoprics and Utrecht, as well as over those he had established in Germany--thus founding the pre-eminence of the see of Mainz. In 747 a synod of the Frankish bishops sent to Rome a formal statement of their submission to the papal authority. The significance of this act can only be realized when one recalls the tendencies toward the formation of national churches, which had been so powerful under the Merovingians. Boniface does not seem to have taken

## part in the anointing of Pippin as king of the Franks in 752. In 754 he

resigned his archbishopric in favour of Lull, and took up again his earliest plan of a mission to Frisia; but on the 5th of June 754 he and his companions were massacred by the heathen near Dockum. His remains were afterwards taken to Fulda.

St Boniface has well been called the proconsul of the papacy. His organizing genius, even more than his missionary zeal, left its mark upon the German church throughout all the middle ages. The missionary movement which until his day had been almost independent of control, largely carried on by schismatic Irish monks, was brought under the direction of Rome. But in so welding together the scattered centres and binding them to the papacy, Boniface seems to have been actuated by simple zeal for unity of the faith, and not by a conscious political motive.