1905–1907. Bona is in direct steamship communication with Marseilles, and is the centre of a large commerce, ranking after Algiers and Oran alone in Algeria. It imports general merchandise and manufactures, and exports phosphates, iron, zinc, barley, sheep, wool, cork, esparto, &c. There are manufactories of native garments, tapestry and leather. The marshes at the mouths of the Seybuse and Bujema rivers, which enter the sea to the south of Bona, have been drained by a system of canals, to the improvement of the sanitary condition of the town, which has the further advantage of an abundant water supply obtained from the Edugh hills. There are cork woods and marble quarries in the vicinity, and the valley of the Seybuse and the neighbouring plains are rich in agricultural produce. The population of the town of Bona in 1906 was 36,004, of the commune 42,934, of the arrondissement, which includes La Calle (q.v.) and 11 other communes, 77,803.
Bona is identified with the ancient Aphrodisium, the seaport of Hippo Regius or Ubbo, but it derives its name from the latter city, the ruins of which, consisting of large cisterns, now restored, and fragments of walls, are about a mile to the south of the town. In the first three centuries of the Christian era Hippo was one of the richest cities in Roman Africa; but its chief title to fame is derived from its connexion with St Augustine, who lived here as priest and bishop for thirty-five years. Hippo was captured by the Vandals under Genseric in 431, after a siege of fourteen months, during which Augustine died. Only the cathedral, together with Augustine’s library and MSS., escaped the general destruction. The town Avas partially restored by Belisarius, and again sacked by the Arabs in the 7th century. On the top of the hill on which Hippo stood, a large basilica, with chancel towards the west, dedicated to St Augustine, was opened in 1900. An altar surmounted by a bronze statue of the saint has also been erected among the ruins. The place was named Hippo Regius (Royal) by the Romans because it was a favourite residence of the Numidian kings. Bona (Arabic annaba, “the city of jujube trees”), which has passed through many vicissitudes, was built by the Arabs, and was for centuries a possession of the rulers of Tunis, who built the Kasbah in 1300. From the beginning of the 14th to the middle of the 15th century it was frequented by Italians and Spaniards, and in the 16th it was held for some time by Charles V., who strengthened its citadel. Thereafter it was held in turn by Genoese, Tunisians and Algerines. From the time of Louis XIV. to the Revolution, the French Compagnie d’Afrique maintained a very active trade with the port. The town was occupied by the French for a few months in 1830 and reoccupied in 1832, when Captains Armandy and Yusuf with a small force of marines seized the Kasbah and held it for some months until help arrived. From that time the history of Bona is one of industrial development, greatly stimulated since 1883 by the discovery of the phosphate beds at Tebessa.
BONA DEA, the “good goddess,” an old Roman deity of
fruitfulness, both in the earth and in women. She was identified
with Fauna, and by later syncretism also with Ops and Maia—the
latter no doubt because the dedication-day of her temple
on the Aventine was 1st May (Ovid, Fasti, v. 149 foll.). This
temple was cared for, and the cult attended, by women only,
and the same was the case at a second celebration at the beginning
of December in the house of a magistrate with imperium,
which became famous owing to the profanation of these mysteries
by P. Clodius in 62 B.C., and the political consequences of his
act. Wine and myrtle were tabooed in the cult of this deity,
and myths grew up to explain these features of the cult, of which
an account may be read in W. W. Fowler’s Roman Festivals,
pp. 103 foll. Herbs with healing properties were kept in her
temple, and also snakes, the usual symbol of the medicinal art.
Her victim was a porca, as in the cults of other deities of fertility,
and was called damium, and we are told that the goddess herself
was known as Damia and her priestess as damiatrix. These
names are almost certainly Greek; Damia is found worshipped
at several places in Greece, and also at Tarentum, where there
was a festival called Dameia. It is thus highly probable that on
the cult of the original Roman goddess was engrafted the Greek
one of Damia, perhaps after the conquest of Tarentum (272 B.C.).
It is no longer possible to distinguish clearly the Greek and
Roman elements in this curious cult, though it is itself quite
intelligible as that of an Earth-goddess with mysteries attached.
See also Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie. (W. W. F.*)
BONA FIDE (Lat. “in good faith”), in law, a term implying
the absence of all fraud or unfair dealing or acting. It is usually
employed in conjunction with a noun, e.g. “bona fide purchaser,”
one who has purchased property from its legal owner, to whom
he has paid the consideration, and from whom he has taken a
legal conveyance, without having any notice of any trust affecting
the property; “bona fide holder” of a bill of exchange,
one who has taken a bill complete and regular on the face of
it, before it was overdue, and in good faith and for value, and
without notice of any defect in the title of the person who
negotiated it to him; “bona fide traveller” under the licensing
acts, one whose lodging-place during the preceding night is at
least 3 m. distant from the place where he demands to be
supplied with liquor, such distance being calculated by the
nearest public thoroughfare.
BONALD, LOUIS GABRIEL AMBROISE, Vicomte de (1754–1840),
French philosopher and politician, was born at Le Monna,
near Millau in Aveyron, on the 2nd of October 1754. Disliking
the principles of the Revolution, he emigrated in 1791, joined
the army of the prince of Condé, and soon afterwards settled
at Heidelberg. There he wrote his first important work, the
highly conservative Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux
(3 vols., 1796; new ed., Paris, 1854, 2 vols.), which was condemned
by the Directory. Returning to France he found himself
an object of suspicion, and was obliged to live in retirement.
In 1806 he was associated with Chateaubriand and Fiévée in
the conduct of the Mercure de France, and two years later was
appointed councillor of the Imperial University which he had
often attacked. After the restoration he was a member of the
council of public instruction, and from 1815 to 1822 sat in the
chamber as deputy. His speeches were on the extreme conservative
side; he even advocated a literary censorship. In
1822 he was made minister of state, and presided over the censorship
commission. In the following year he was made a peer,
a dignity which he lost through refusing to take the oath
in 1830. From 1816 he had been a member of the Academy.
He took no part in public affairs after 1830, but retired to his
seat at Le Monna, where he died on the 23rd of November 1840.
Bonald was one of the leading writers of the theocratic or traditionalist school, which included de Maistre, Lamennais, Ballanche and d’Eckstein. His writings are mainly on social and political philosophy, and are based ultimately on one great principle, the divine origin of language. In his own words, “L’homme pense sa parole avant de parler sa pensée”; the first language contained the essence of all truth. From this he deduces the existence of God, the divine origin and consequent supreme authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the infallibility of the church. While this thought lies at the root of all his speculations there is a formula of constant application. All relations may be stated as the triad of cause, means and effect, which he sees repeated throughout nature. Thus, in the universe, he finds the first cause as mover, movement as the means, and bodies as the result; in the state, power as the cause, ministers as the means, and subjects as the effects; in the family, the same relation is exemplified by father, mother and children. These three terms bear specific relations to one another; the first is to the second as the second to the third. Thus, in the great triad of the religious world—God, the Mediator, and Man-God is to the God-Man as the God-Man is to Man. On this basis he constructed a system of political absolutism which lacks two things only:—well-grounded premisses instead of baseless hypotheses, and the acquiescence of those who were to be subjected to it.
Bonald’s style is remarkably fine; ornate, but pure and vigorous. Many fruitful thoughts are scattered among his works, but his system scarcely deserves the name of a philosophy. In abstract thought he was a mere dilettante, and his strength
