Chapter 60

BUCCARI (Serbo-Croatian _Bakar_), a royal free town of Croatia-Slavonia, Hungary; situated in the county of Modru[vs]-Fiume, 7 m. S.E. of Fiume, on a small bay of the Adriatic Sea. Pop. (1900) 1870. The Hungarian state railway from Zákány and Agram terminates 2½ m. from Buccari. The harbour, though sometimes dangerous to approach, affords good anchorage to small vessels. Owing to competition from Fiume, Buccari lost the greater part of its trade during the 19th century. The staple industry is boatbuilding, and there is an active coasting trade in fish, wine, wood and coal. The tunny-fishery is of some importance. In the neighbourhood of the town is the old castle of Buccarica, and farther south the flourishing little port of Porto Ré or Kraljevica.

BUCCINA (more correctly _B[=u]c[)i]na_, Gr. [Greek: Bukanê], connected with _bucca_, cheek, and Gr. [Greek: Buzô], a brass wind instrument extensively used in the ancient Roman army. The Roman instrument consisted of a brass tube measuring some 11 to 12 ft. in length, of narrow cylindrical bore, and played by means of a cup-shaped mouthpiece. The tube is bent round upon itself from the mouthpiece to the bell in the shape of a broad C and is strengthened by means of a bar across the curve, which the performer grasps while playing, in order to steady the instrument; the bell curves over his head or shoulder as in the modern helicon. Three Roman buccinas were found among the ruins of Pompeii and are now deposited in the museum at Naples. V. C. Mahillon, of Brussels[1] has made a facsimile of one of these instruments; it is in G and has almost the same harmonic series as the French horn and the trumpet. The buccina, the cornu (see HORN), and the tuba were used as signal instruments in the Roman army and camp to sound the four night watches (hence known as _buccina prima, secunda, &c._), to summon them by means of the special signal known as _classicum_, and to give orders.[2] Frontinus relates[3] that a Roman general, who had been surrounded by the enemy, escaped during the night by means of the stratagem of leaving behind him a _buccinator_ (trumpeter), who sounded [v.04 p.0657] the watches throughout the night.[4] Vegetius gives brief descriptions of the three instruments, which suffice to establish their identity; the tuba, he says, is straight; the buccina is of bronze bent in the form of a circle.[5]

The buccina, in respect of its technical construction and acoustic properties, was the ancestor of both trumpet and trombone; the connexion is further established by the derivation of the words Sackbut and _Posaune_ (the German for trombone) from buccina. The relation was fully recognized in Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries, as two translations of Vegetius, published at Ulm in 1470, and at Augsburg in 1534, clearly demonstrate: "Bucina das ist die trumet oder pusan"[6] ("the bucina is the trumpet or trombone") and ("Bucina ist die trummet die wirt ausz und eingezogen"[7] ("the bucina is the trumpet which is drawn out and in"). A French translation by Jean de Meung (Paris, 1488),[8] renders the passage (chap. iii. 5) thus: "Trompe est longue et droite; buisine est courte et reflechist en li meisme si comme partie de cercle." On Trajan's column[9] the tuba, the cornu and the buccina are distinguishable. Other illustrations of the buccina may be seen in François Mazois' _Les Ruines de Pompéi_ (Paris, 1824-1838), pt. iv, pl. xlviii. fig. 1, and in J.N. von Wilmowsky's _Eine römische Villa zu Nennig_ (Bonn, 1865), pl. xii. (mosaics), where the buccinator is accompanied on the hydraulus. The military buccina described is a much more advanced instrument than its prototype the _buccina marina_, a primitive trumpet in the shape of a conical shell, often having a spiral twist, which in poetry is often called _concha_. The buccina marina is frequently depicted in the hands of Tritons (Macrobius i. 8), or of sailors, as for instance on terra-cotta lamp shown by G.P. Bellori (_Lucernae veterum sepulcrales iconicae_, 1702, iii. 12). The highly imaginative writer of the apocryphal letter of St Jerome to Dardanus also has a word to say concerning the buccina among the Semitic races: "Bucca vocatur tuba apud Hebreos: deinde per diminutionem buccina dicitur." After the fall of the Roman empire the art of bending metal tubes was gradually lost, and although the buccina survived in Europe both in name and in principle of construction during the middle ages, it lost for ever the characteristic curve like a "C" which it possessed in common with the cornu, an instrument having a conical bore of wider calibre. Although we regard the buccina as essentially Roman, an instrument of the same type, but probably straight and of kindred name, was widely known and used in the East, in Persia, Arabia and among the Semitic races. After a lapse of years during which records are almost wanting, the buccina reappeared all over Europe as the busine, buisine, pusin, busaun, pusun, posaun, busna (Slav), &c.; whether it was a Roman survival or a re-introduction through the Moors of Spain in the West and the Byzantine empire in the East, we have no records to show. An 11th-century mural painting representing the Last Judgment in the cathedral of S. Angelo in Formis (near Capua), shows the angels blowing the last trump on busines.[10]

There are two distinct forms of the busine which may be traced during the middle ages:--(i) a long straight tube (fig. 2) consisting of 3 to 5 joints of narrow cylindrical bore, the last joint alone being conical and ending in a pommel-shaped bell, precisely as in the curved buccina (fig. 1); (2) a long straight cylindrical tube of somewhat wider bore than the busine, ending in a wide bell curving out abruptly from the cylindrical tube (fig. 3).

The history of the development of the trumpet, the sackbut and the trombone from the buccina will be found more fully treated under those headings; for the part played by the buccina in the evolution of the French horn see HORN.

(K. S.)

[1] See _Catalogue descriptif_ (Ghent, 1880), p. 330, and illustration, vol. ii. (1896), p. 30.

[2] Livy vii. 35, xxvi. 15; Prop. v. 4, 63; Tac. _Ann._ xv. 30; Vegetius, _De re militari_, ii. 22, iii. 5; Polyb. vi. 365, xiv. 3, 7.

[3] _Stratagematicon_, i. 5, § 17.

[4] For another instance see Caesar, _Comm. Bell. Civ._ ii. 35.

[5] Vegetius, op. cit. iii. 5.

[6] Idem, ii. 7.

[7] Idem, iii. 5.

[8] A reprint edited by Ulysse Robert has been published by the Soc. des Anciens Textes Français (Paris, 1897).

[9] See Conrad Cichorius, _Die Reliefs der Traiansaule_, 3 vols. of text and 2 portfolios of heliogravures (Berlin, 1896, &c.), Bd. i. pl. x. buccina and tubae; pl. viii. buccina; pl. lxxvi. buccina and two cornua; pl. xx. cornu, &c.; or W. Froehner, _La Colonne de Trajan_ (Paris, 1872), vol. i. pl. xxxii., xxxvi., li., tome ii. pl. lxvi., tome iii. pl. cxxxiv., &c.

[10] See F.X. Kraus, "Die Wandgemälde von San Angelo in Formis," in _Jahrbuch der kgl. preuss. Kunstsamml._ (1893), pl. i.

BUCCLEUCH, DUKES OF. The substantial origin of the ducal house of the Scotts of Buccleuch dates back to the large grants of lands in Scotland to Sir Walter Scott of Kirkurd and Buccleuch, a border chief, by James II., in consequence of the fall of the 8th earl of Douglas (1452); but the family traced their descent back to a Sir Richard le Scott (1240-1285). The estate of Buccleuch is in Selkirkshire. Sir Walter Scott of Branxholm and Buccleuch (d. 1552) distinguished himself at the battle of Pinkie (1547), and furnished material for his later namesake's famous poem, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_; and his great-grandson Sir Walter (1565-1611) was created Lord Scott of Buccleuch in 1606. An earldom followed in 1619. The second earl's daughter Anne (1651-1732), who succeeded him as a countess in her own right, married in 1663 the famous duke of Monmouth (_q.v._), who was then created 1st duke of Buccleuch; and her grandson Francis became 2nd duke. The latter's son Henry (1746-1812) became 3rd duke, and in 1810 succeeded also, on the death of William Douglas, 4th duke of Queensberry, to that dukedom as well as its estates and other honours, according to the entail executed by his own great-grandfather, the 2nd duke of Queensberry, in 1706; he married the duke of Montagu's daughter, and was famous for his generosity and benefactions. His son Charles William Henry (d. 1819), grandson Walter Francis Scott (1806-1884), and great-grandson William Henry Walter Montagu Douglas Scott (b. 1831), succeeded in turn as 4th, 5th and 6th dukes of Buccleuch and 6th, 7th, and 8th dukes of Queensberry. The 5th duke was lord privy seal 1842-1846, and president of the council 1846. It was he who at a cost of over £500,000 made the harbour at Granton, near Edinburgh. He was president of the Highland and Agricultural Society, the Society of Antiquaries and of the British Association. The 6th duke sat in the House of Commons as Conservative M.P. for Midlothian, 1853-1868 and 1874-1880; his wife, a daughter of the 1st duke of Abercorn, held the office of mistress of the robes.

See Sir W. Fraser, _The Scotts of Buccleuch_ (1878).

BUCENTAUR (Ital. _bucintoro_), the state gallery of the doges of Venice, on which, every year on Ascension day up to 1789, they put into the Adriatic in order to perform the ceremony of "wedding the sea." The name _bucintoro_ is derived from the Ital. _buzino d' oro_, "golden bark," latinized in the middle ages as _bucentaurus_ on the analogy of a supposed Gr. [Greek: boukentauros], ox-centaur (from [Greek: bous] and [Greek: Kentauros]). This led to the explanation of the name as derived from the head of an ox having served as the galley's figurehead. This derivation is, however, fanciful; the name _bucentaurus_ is unknown in ancient mythology, and the figurehead of the bucentaurs, of which representations have come down to us, is the lion of St Mark. [v.04 p.0658] The name bucentaur seems, indeed, to have been given to any great and sumptuous Venetian galley. Du Cange (_Gloss._, _s.v._ "Bucentaurus") quotes from the chronicle of the doge Andrea Dandolo (d. 1354): _cum uno artificioso et solemni Bucentauro, super quo venit usque ad S. Clementem, quo jam pervenerat principalior et solemnior Bucentaurus cum consiliariis_, &c. The last and most magnificent of the bucentaurs, built in 1729, was destroyed by the French in 1798 for the sake of its golden decorations. Remains of it are preserved at Venice in the Museo Civico Correr and in the Arsenal; in the latter there is also a fine model of it.

The "Marriage of the Adriatic," or more correctly "of the sea" (_Sposalizio del Mar_) was a ceremony symbolizing the maritime dominion of Venice. The ceremony, established about A.D. 1000 to commemorate the doge Orseolo II.'s conquest of Dalmatia, was originally one of supplication and placation, Ascension day being chosen as that on which the doge had set out on his expedition. The form it took was a solemn procession of boats, headed by the doge's _maesta nave_, afterwards the Bucentaur (from 1311) out to sea by the Lido port. A prayer was offered that "for us and all who sail thereon the sea may be calm and quiet," whereupon the doge and the others were solemnly aspersed with holy water, the rest of which was thrown into the sea while the priests chanted "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean." To this ancient ceremony a sacramental character was given by Pope Alexander III in 1177, in return for the services rendered by Venice in the struggle against the emperor Frederick I. The pope drew a ring from his finger and, giving it to the doge, bade him cast such a one into the sea each year on Ascension day, and so wed the sea. Henceforth the ceremonial, instead of placatory and expiatory, became nuptial. Every year the doge dropped a consecrated ring into the sea, and with the words _Desponsamus te, mare_ (We wed thee, sea) declared Venice and the sea to be indissolubly one (see H. F. Brown, _Venice_, London, 1893, pp. 69, 110).

BUCEPHALUS (Gr. [Greek: boukephalos]), the favourite Thracian horse of Alexander the Great, which died in 326 B.C., either of wounds received in the battle on the Hydaspes, or of old age. In commemoration Alexander built the city of Bucephala (Boukephala), the site of which is almost certainly to be identified with a mound on the bank of the river opposite the modern Jhelum.

See especially Arrian v. 20; other stories in Plutarch, _Alex._ 6; Curtius vi. 8. For the identification of Bucephala, Vincent A. Smith, _Early Hist. of India_ (2nd ed., 1908), pp. 65, 66 note.

BUCER (or BUTZER), MARTIN (1491-1551), German Protestant reformer, was born in 1491 at Schlettstadt in Alsace. In 1506 he entered the Dominican order, and was sent to study at Heidelberg. There he became acquainted with the works of Erasmus and Luther, and was present at a disputation of the latter with some of the Romanist doctors. He became a convert to the reformed opinions, abandoned his order by papal dispensation in 1521, and soon afterwards married a nun. In 1522 he was pastor at Landstuhl in the palatinate, and travelled hither and thither propagating the reformed doctrine. After his excommunication in 1523 he made his headquarters at Strassburg, where he succeeded Matthew Zell. Henry VIII of England asked his advice in connexion with the divorce from Catherine of Aragon. On the question of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Bucer's opinions were decidedly Zwinglian, but he was anxious to maintain church unity with the Lutheran party, and constantly endeavoured, especially after Zwingli's death, to formulate a statement of belief that would unite Lutheran, south German and Swiss reformers. Hence the charge of ambiguity and obscurity which has been laid against him. In 1548 he was sent for to Augsburg to sign the agreement, called the _Interim_, between the Catholics and Protestants. His stout opposition to this project exposed him to many difficulties, and he was glad to accept Cranmer's invitation to make his home in England. On his arrival in 1549 he was appointed regius professor of divinity at Cambridge. Edward VI. and the protector Somerset showed him much favour and he was consulted as to the revision of the Book of Common Prayer. But on the 27th of February 1551 he died, and was buried in the university church, with great state. In 1557, by Mary's commissioners, his body was dug up and burnt, and his tomb demolished; it was subsequently reconstructed by order of Elizabeth. Bucer is said to have written ninety-six treatises, among them a translation and exposition of the Psalms and a work _Deregno Christi_. His name is familiar in English literature from the use made of his doctrines by Milton in his divorce treatises.

A collected edition of his writings has never been published. A volume known as the _Tomus Anglicanus_ (Basel, 1577) contains those written in England. See J.W. Baum, _Capito and Butzer_ (Strassburg, 1860); A. Erichson, _Martin Butzer_ (1891); and the articles in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ (by A.W. Ward), and in Herzog-Hauck's _Realencyklopädie_ (by Paul Grünberg).

BUCH, CHRISTIAN LEOPOLD VON, BARON (1774-1853), German geologist and geographer, a member of an ancient and noble Prussian family, was born at Stolpe in Pomerania on the 26th of April 1774. In 1790-1793 he studied at the mining school of Freiberg under Werner, one of his fellow-students there being Alexander von Humboldt. He afterwards completed his education at the universities of Halle and Göttingen. His _Versuch einer mineralogischen Beschreibung von Landeck_ (Breslau, 1797) was translated into French (Paris, 1805), and into English as _Attempt at a Mineralogical Description of Landeck_ (Edinburgh, 1810); he also published in 1802 _Entwurf einer geognostischen Beschreibung von Schlesien (Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen durch Deutschland und Italien_, Band i.). He was at this time a zealous upholder of the Neptunian theory of his illustrious master. In 1797 he met Humboldt at Salzburg, and with him explored the geological formations of Styria, and the adjoining Alps. In the spring of the following year, von Buch extended his excursions into Italy, where his faith in the Neptunian theory was shaken. In his previous works he had advocated the aqueous origin of basaltic and other formations. In 1799 he paid his first visit to Vesuvius, and again in 1805 he returned to study the volcano, accompanied by Humboldt and Gay Lussac. They had the good fortune to witness a remarkable eruption, which supplied von Buch with data for refuting many erroneous ideas then entertained regarding volcanoes. In 1802 he had explored the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne. The aspect of the Puy de Dôme, with its cone of trachyte and its strata of basaltic lava, induced him to abandon as untenable the doctrines of Werner on the formation of these rocks. The scientific results of his investigations he embodied in his _Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen durch Deutschland und Italien_ (Berlin, 1802-1809). From the south of Europe von Buch repaired to the north, and spent two years among the Scandinavian islands, making many important observations on the geography of plants, on climatology and on geology. He showed that many of the erratic blocks on the North German plains must have come from Scandinavia. He also established the fact that the whole of Sweden is slowly but continuously rising above the level of the sea from Frederikshald to Abo. The details of these discoveries are given in his _Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland_ (Berlin, 1810). In 1815 he visited the Canary Islands in company with Christian Smith, the Norwegian botanist. His observations here convinced him that these and other islands of the Atlantic owed their existence to volcanic action of the most intense kind, and that the groups of islands in the South Sea are the remains of a pre-existing continent. The physical description of the Canary Islands was published at Berlin in 1825, and this work alone is regarded as an enduring monument of his labours. After leaving the Canaries von Buch proceeded to the Hebrides and the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Palaeontology also claimed his attention, and he described in 1831 and later years a number of Cephalopods, Brachiopods and Cystidea, and pointed out their stratigraphical importance. In addition to the works already mentioned von Buch published in 1832 the magnificent _Geological Map of Germany_ (42 sheets, Berlin). His geological excursions were continued without interruption till his 78th year. Eight months before his death he visited [v.04 p.0659] the mountains of Auvergne; and on returning home he read a paper on the Jurassic formation before the Academy of Berlin. He died at Berlin on the 4th of March 1853. Von Buch had inherited from his father a fortune more than sufficient for his wants. He was never married, and was unembarrassed by family ties. His excursions were always taken on foot, with a staff in his hand, and the large pockets of his overcoat filled with papers and geological instruments. Under this guise, the passer-by would not easily have recognized the man whom Humboldt pronounced the greatest geologist of his time.

A complete edition of his works was published at Berlin (1867-1885).

BUCHAN, EARLS OF. The earldom of Mar and Buchan was one of the seven original Scottish earldoms; later, Buchan was separated from Mar, and among the early earls of Buchan were Alexander Comyn (d. 1289), John Comyn (d. c. 1313), both constables of Scotland, and Henry Beaumont (d. 1340), who had married a Comyn. John Comyn's wife, Isabel, was the countess of Buchan who crowned Robert the Bruce king at Scone in 1306, and was afterwards imprisoned at Berwick; not, however, in a cage hung on the wall of the castle. About 1382 Sir Alexander Stewart (d. c. 1404), the "wolf of Badenoch," a son of King Robert II., became earl of Buchan, and the Stewarts appear to have held the earldom for about a century and a half, although not in a direct line from Sir Alexander.[1] Among the most celebrated of the Stewart earls were the Scottish regent, Robert, duke of Albany, and his son John, who was made constable of France and was killed at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. In 1617 the earldom came to James Erskine (d. 1640), a son of John Erskine, 2nd (or 7th) earl of Mar, whose wife Mary had inherited it from her father, James Douglas (d. 1601), and from that time it has been retained by the Erskines.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the later earls of Buchan was the eccentric David Steuart Erskine, 11th earl (1742-1829), a son of Henry David, 10th earl (d. 1767), and brother of Henry Erskine (_q.v._), and of Thomas, Lord Erskine (_q.v._). His pertinacity was instrumental in effecting a change in the method of electing Scottish representative peers, and in 1780 he succeeded in founding the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Among his correspondents was Horace Walpole, and he wrote an _Essay on the Lives of Fletcher of Saltoun and the Poet Thomson_ (1792), and other writings. He died at his residence at Dryburgh in April 1829, leaving no legitimate children, and was followed as 12th earl by his nephew Henry David (1783-1857), the ancestor of the present peer. The 11th earl's natural son, Sir David Erskine (1772-1837), who inherited his father's unentailed estates, was an antiquary and a dramatist.

[1] In August 1908, during some excavations at Dunkeld, remains were found which are supposed to be those of Alexander Stewart, the "wolf of Badenoch."

BUCHAN, ELSPETH (1738-1791), founder of a Scottish religious sect known as the Buchanites, was the daughter of John Simpson, proprietor of an inn near Banff. Having quarrelled with her husband, Robert Buchan, a potter of Greenock, she settled with her children in Glasgow, where she was deeply impressed by a sermon preached by Hugh White, minister of the Relief church at Irvine. She persuaded White and others that she was a saint with a special mission, that in fact she was the woman, and White the man-child, described in Revelation xii. White was condemned by the presbytery, and the sect, which ultimately numbered forty-six adherents, was expelled by the magistrates in 1784 and settled in a farm, consisting of one room and a loft, known as New Cample in Dumfriesshire. Mrs Buchan claimed prophetic inspiration and pretended to confer the Holy Ghost upon her followers by breathing upon them; they believed that the millennium was near, and that they would not die, but be translated. It appears that they had community of wives and lived on funds provided by the richer members. Robert Burns, the poet, in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral. In 1785 White and Mrs Buchan published a _Divine Dictionary_, but the sect broke up on the death of its founder in spite of White's attempts to prove that she was only in a trance. Even White was eventually undeceived. Andrew Innes, the last survivor, died in 1848. See J. Train, _The Buchanites from First to Last_ (Edinburgh, 1846).