nder 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
Hi