Bona

“ Bona cried, 'Come down, thou wickedness!' but indulgently, as if she half-dreaded attracting to herself the flicker of the little forked tongue.
'O!' cried Catherine, 'I grant you that, with an angel, the manner spices the lesson. I will tell you, girls, how he rebuked me yesterday on this same legend of reciprocity. "How could you take sport," says he, "of witnessing that poor Montano's punishment?" "Why, very well," says I, "seeing he was a man, and therefore my natural enemy." "How is man so?" ”

“ What then is to become of you if you do not betimes think of some new acquisition?"
"He who follows much at once," replied Bona, "attains nothing. I follow one object only, but that one I follow so stedfastly, with such inflexible purpose, that I must gain it, and when I have gained it, I need nothing more in this world."
"And this one?" asked the gardener with sly importunity.
"I pay you as my servant, not as my confessor," replied Bona with angry pride, and pointed to the door.
"Good troth, a princess has been spoiled in you," muttered the old man ”

“ Bona sobbed and fretted, nursing her grievance.
'Why did this angel come to vex us with his heaven? The world, I think, would be very well but for its schooling by saints and prophets. Children grow naughty under inquisition. There, have it as you will, brother; use or abuse me—it is all one. It is my fate to be persecuted through my best intentions.'
Ludovico put force on himself to linger a little and soothe her. His soul leapt with anxiety to be gone. To instruct Jacopo; to commission Tassino—to loose his long-straining bolt in fact—here was the moment sprung inevitable upon him. ”

“ His name, for graciousness and refinement, already shone like a star in the gross bog of Milan, revealing to it its foulness. Men, in the shame of their fulsome bondage to tyranny, looked up to him for hope and sympathy. He was even persona grata with the people.
But he abhorred, and disbelieved in, violence. He would rule, if at all, in the popular recognition of great qualities: he would prevail through bounty and tolerance. Bona was his crux—Bona, and the secretary Simonetta, a fellow incorruptibly devoted to the reigning family. ”

“ Bernardo put his hand on her lowered head.
'Dost know who this is?' he asked of Carlo.
'Why, I can guess.'
'Canst thou, and still talk of Bona's penitence? Here's proof of it—in this foul deed unexpiated. Was it ever meant it should be?'
He raised his arm denunciatory.
'They have used me to justify their abominations; they have made mine innocence a pander to their lusts. Beware! God's patience nears exhaustion. We wait for Tassino. Will he come? Not while lewd arms imprison and protect him. Talk to me of Bona! ”

“ These were Bona, and her little son Gian-Galeazzo. As the other was spring, so was she summer, ripe in figure and mellowed in the passion of motherhood. Her eyes burned with the caress and entreaty of it—appealed in loveliness to the fathers of her desires. Her beauty, her stateliness, the very milk of her were all sweet lures to increase. She loved babies, not men—saw them most lusty, perhaps, in the glossy eyes of fools, the breeding-grounds of Cupids. She was always a mother before a wife.
The Duke led Bernardo to her side. ”

“ When this favourable disposition was at its height, the duke, adopting gradually a more serious tone of conversation, said—
"Has it never occurred to you, charming Bona, that the most exalted of your sex share with the humblest this one privilege—love alone must be the motive which brings a suitor to their feet. That passion must be genuine, must be fever-high, which makes a subject quite forget his Queen in the lovely woman before him, and [Pg 562] tempts him to dare the vengeance of a Monarch, as well as of a husband." ”

“ There appears no bishop of Hippo after Augustin. In the seventh century the old city was utterly destroyed by the Arabians, but two miles from it Bona was built of its ruins. Comp. Tillemont, xiii. 945, and Gibbon, ch. xxxiii. Gibbon says, that Bona, “in the sixteenth century, contained about three hundred families of industrious, but turbulent manufacturers. The adjacent territory is renowned for a pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits.” Since the French conquest of Algiers, Bona was rebuilt in 1832, and is gradually assuming a French aspect. ”

“ It is better than Bona Parte, as you sometimes call yourself. If you settle on Bona Parte, you'd have really three names; and as you don't write society verse for the comic papers, what's the use? Newspaper reporters will refer to you as Napoleon B. Parte or N. Bona Parte, and the public hates a man who parts his name in the middle. Parte is a good name in its way, but it's too short and abrupt. Few men with short, sharp, decisive names like that ever make their mark. ”

“ They had been, the Fool and himself, somewhat savagely making merry on the subject of Bona's conversion—in the singleness of which, to be candid, they had not much faith—when his honest brain conceived the sudden necessity of bluntly warning the little Bernardino of the danger he was courting in playing with such fire. His charge, no sooner realised than acted upon, took the boy, so to speak, in the wind. Bembo gasped; and then counter-buffed with angelic fury:—
'Who sleeps with a taper in his bed invites his own destruction? Then wert thou sevenfold consumed, my Carlo. O, shame! ”

“ He dwells on his bride with infinite affection."
"That proves nothing; you men may love warmly, and yet be false withal. Will you do me a favour, Herr von Rasselwitz?"
"Command me; I fly."
"Always supposing it is not for life and death," interposed Bona with light mockery. "But I have a desire to become personally acquainted with this Tausdorf, who is so much talked of. Besides I want to inquire of him after a relation, who lives at Prague. Bring him hither with the first opportunity." ”

“ He, Tassino, the fungus of a night, had ventured to do this! What a fool he had been; yet how worse than his own folly is the dissimulation which can ignore for present profit so unforgettable an insult! It is not forgotten; it cannot be; yet, to all appearances, Ludovico now visits him, on the rare occasions when he does so, with the sole object of informing him, sympathetically, of the progress of Bona's new infatuation. Why? He has not the wit to fathom. Only he has not so much faith in this disinterestedness as in the probability of its being a blind to some deadly policy. ”

“ The devotional treatise De Sacrificio Missae is the classical work in its field (new edition by Ildephonsus Cummins, 1903) .
The chief source for the life of Bona is the biography by the Cistercian abbot Bertolotti (Asti, 1677) ; the best modern study is by A. Ighina (Mondovi, 1874) .
BONA (Bône) , a seaport of Algeria, in 36° 53′ N., 7° 46′ E., on a bay of the Mediterranean, chief town of an arrondissement in the department of Constantine, 220 m. ”

“ Bona: He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But dont all the dorm girls say so? And dont you, when you are sane, say so? Thats why I love—Oh, nonsense. You have never loved a man who didnt first love you. Besides—
Columns thud away from her. Come to a halt in line formation. Rigid. The period bell rings, and the teacher dismisses them.
A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basket-ball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asks to be chosen. The girls fuss. ”

“ The performance of religious rites by women alone, when men are required under heavy penalties to absent themselves, is, indeed, not very uncommon in savage life. Nor is it confined to savage life. When Rome was at the height of her civilization and her triumphs, the festival of the Bona Dea was rendered notorious by the divorce of Cæsar's wife and by legal proceedings against an aristocratic scoundrel, who, for the purposes of an intrigue with her, had violated the sacred ceremonies. The Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, was a woodland deity, the daughter and wife of Faunus. ”

“ Bona Dea was a goddess of women, and the most characteristic feature of her worship was the exclusion of men from taking part in it. Now there was a Greek goddess, called Damia, also a goddess of women, from whose cult also men were excluded, and her cult spread from [Pg 112] Greece to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, especially Tarentum, and so eventually to Rome. But by the time she arrived in Rome the connexion of Fauna and Bona Dea had been entirely forgotten. ”

“ She must at one time have been, whatever she afterwards became, a protective deity of the female sex, the Earth-mother [406] , a kindly and helpful, but shy and unknowable deity of fertility. The name Bona Dea is probably to be regarded as one indigitation of the Earth-spirit known by a variety of other names and appearing in a number of different phases. There is indeed a remarkable indefiniteness about the Italian female deities of this class; they never gained what we may call complete specific distinctness, but are rather half-formed species developed from a common type. ”

“ The most merciful of these tales represented Bembo as having run back to San Zeno, there to hide in terror and trembling his diminished head. It was the solution of things most comforting to Bona—one on which her conscience found repose. She wished the boy no evil ”

“ Bona Dea (bon ́a de ́a) , or Fauna, or Fatua.—A Roman goddess, sister, wife or daughter of Faunus. She was the goddess of chastity and prophecy, and revealed her oracles to females only. During her annual festival on the first of May, in the house of the consul or prætor, no male person was allowed to be present.
Boreas (bor ́e-as) .—The north wind; was the son of Astræus and Aurora, and brother of the other three winds, Notus, Zephyrus and Hesperus. He was worshiped at Athens, where a festival was celebrated in his honor. ”

“ His works are:
An English translation of Cardinal Bona's ‘Guide to Heaven, containing the Marrow of the Holy Fathers and Ancient Philosophers,’ 1672, 12mo. ‘Children's Catechism,’ 1678, 8vo. ‘The Devout Christian,’ 4th edit., 1685, 12mo, pp. 502. He was also the joint author with Anselm Crowder [q. v.] of ‘Jesus, Maria, Joseph, or the Devout Pilgrim of the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary,’ Amsterdam, 1657, 12mo. ”

“ Unhappily he tells us nothing about the rite itself, nor the deity in whose honour it was performed. But it would not involve a great stretch of fancy to suppose that in the black lady of Southam we have a survival of the performance. It is not too much to say that this explanation would have the merit of being intelligible and adequate. [56] [Pg 87]
In all countries ceremonies of a special character are usually dramatic. They represent, or are believed to represent, actions of the divinities in whose honour they are performed. The rites of the Bona Dea, we know, were of this kind ”

“ Bonaventura does not hesitate to treat as an accepted fact that the souls of the just will see God, and he asserts that some of them are already in heaven, while others wait confidently in their graves for the appointed time. ”

“ I will now briefly call your attention to the devotional works of the celebrated Bonaventura. He is no ordinary man; and the circumstances under which his works were commended to the world are indeed remarkable. I know not how a Church can give the impress of its own name and approval in a more full or unequivocal manner to the works of any human being, than the Church of Rome has stamped her authority on the works of this her saint. ”

“ Mme. Bonacieux knew that in talking of money to her husband, she took him on his weak side. But a man, were he even a mercer, when he had talked for ten minutes with Cardinal Richelieu, is no longer the same man. ”

“ I warn you that I will never again work in the dark, and that I will know not only to what I expose myself, but for whom I expose myself."
"An illustrious person sends you; an illustrious person awaits you. The recompense will exceed your expectations; that is all I promise you."
"More intrigues! Nothing but intrigues! Thank you, madame, I am aware of them now; Monsieur Cardinal has enlightened me on that head."
"The cardinal?" cried Mme. Bonacieux. "Have you seen the cardinal?"
"He sent for me," answered the mercer, proudly. ”

“ Bonaventura’s position is the same; but his heart never tarries with the handmaid; for with him heart and mind are ever constant to the queen, Theology. Yet he recognizes the queen’s need of the handmaid. Holy Writ is not for babes; the fulness of knowledge is needed for its understanding: “Non potest intelligi sacra Scriptura sine aliarum scientiarum peritia.” [547] And without philosophy many matters of the Faith cannot be intelligently discussed. There is no knowledge which may not be sanctified to the purpose of understanding Scripture ”

“ Bonaventura’s reasoning in the above treatise is for us abstruse and fanciful; yet many will agree with the conclusion, that all kinds of knowledge may minister to our thought of God, and of man’s relationship to Him. And with Bonaventura, all his knowledge, his study of secular philosophy, his logic and powers of presentation, had theology unfailingly in view, and ministered to the satisfaction, the [Pg 408] actualization (to use our old word) of his religious nature. He belongs among those intellectually gifted men—Augustine, Anselm, Hugo of St. ”