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 Ségur
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
