Jacques Bongars was born 1554. The family, who were of the protestant faith, originally came from Picardy and owned the estates of Boudry and Chesnaye near Orléans. From 1564 to 1571 Jacques Bongars attended the schools of Jena, Marburg and Strasbourg. From 1571 he was in Orléans and in 1576 in Bourges (near Cujas) engaged in philological and legal studies.
Around 1580 he undertook a journey to Rome. In the library of Fulvio Orsini and the Vaticana he researched the authors of the Historiae Augustae and Eusebius of Caesarea. In 1581 Bongars published an edition of the "Epitome Pompeii Trogi" by Justinus including the prologues and fragments of the Trogus (with regard to the latter, his edition is viewed as the editio princeps). His conscientiousness in producing the text, for which he used ten manuscripts, as well as four older editions with marginal annotations, found enthused recognition amongst the most distinguished philologists of the time. In 1584 Bongars visited the famous scholar Justus Lipsius in Leiden and gained his friendship. During 1585 he travelled through Hungary and Wallachia to Constantinople where he took the opportunity to study the Roman inscriptions of the ancient provinces of Pannonia and Dacia.
Immediately thereafter, Bongars entered the Diplomatic Service, at first as Secretary to the French Ambassador in Frankfurt. This was the decisive point in his life. He devoted himself to the state out of a sense of duty. 1593 saw him appointed as "Résident pour le Roi de France auprès des Princes allemands" with seats in Strasbourg and Frankfurt. For 25 years Bongars undertook the most difficult, and as the result of endless business trips, exhausting official duties. Illness debilitated, whilst financial need and unjust treatment embittered him. With a heavy heart his thoughts often turned to the tranquillity of a scholarly life to which he felt strongly drawn, both through inclination and ability.
At last, in 1610 he was able to leave. In July 1612, all too soon after his retirement, he died. He was laid to rest, re-united with his fellow-believers, on the Huguenot Cemetery of St. Germain by Paris.
It was denied Bongars to continue treading the path along which he had started with such hopes with the Justinus edition. However, two further collections of historical documents, of lasting value, appeared under his name. In 1600 the "Rerum hungaricum scriptores varii" (with an appendix: "Inscriptiones Romanae Hungariae et Transsylvaniae") appeared and in 1611 the "Dei Gesta per Francos" in two volumes containing 20 chronicle texts regarding the history of the crusades. The title was taken from the renowned Chronicle of Guibert de Nogent. Above all, Bongars was unusually generous in helping a wide circle of scholars with their work. He did this in various ways, for instance, by making his own manuscripts or those of friends' collections available, by donating preliminary studies, excerpts, collations and material collections, by assisting with annotations, registers or proof-reading or simply by providing suggestions, giving advice and encouragement. This fruitful scholarly exchange of ideas is reflected in hundreds of letters and in the extremely numerous works (mostly editions) which are dedicated to Bongars or in which his assistance is acknowledged with warm words of appreciation.
How then did Bongars build up his richly assorted library, in particular his manuscript collection? Basically, we know very little about this, in spite of the extensive research carried out by Hermann Hagen, who, by exhausting all the sources obtainable, created a very vivid portrait of Bongars, highlighting in particular his scholarly work. This lack of information is due, at least in part, to Bongars' own character. Primarily he was a philologist, that is he searched for and researched texts, but he was not a manuscript researcher ("codicologist") in the modern sense and he was certainly not a bibliophile. The book, as such, held no interest for him, that is as an intrinsic, so to speak archeological object. His interest was almost exclusively in its content. Collecting books was not his passion. It was primarily a preparation and basis for his philological-historical studies. We, therefore, find very few details in his letters and records about the age, origin or previous owners of his codices, and just as rarely does he comment on how or from whom he acquired his books. Apart from this, and it was something he often complained about, he lacked the time which would have been necessary to apply himself to his collection in peace and quiet.
However, we have a few ideas of the most important milestones in the history of how the Bongarsiana originated. The first milestone was the purchase of the famous manuscript collection of Pierre Daniel of Orléans, which Jacques Bongars and Paul Petau shared after the death of the collector (1604). Daniel had won acclaim amongst the philologists as editor of the late classical age comedy "Querolus" (1564) and the Virgil Commentary of Servius (1600).
Daniel laid the foundation for his library in 1562 when the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire ("Fleury") near Orléans was plundered by Huguenot soldiers - a fate which befell many french monasteries at this time. He was able to obtain a number of very valuable codices from the soldiers, who had very little use for old books. However, he never returned these books to the monastery. Obviously, he was also able to enrich himself, prior to and after this event, from the library of Fleury, which at the time was not at all well guarded. Incidentally, the Daniel collection which Petau bought, subsequently journeyed extensively, and can today be found scattered in Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Leiden and Geneva.
In the following year Bongars bought the remains of the library of the famous law professor at the University of Bourges, Jacques Cujas. The bulk of his library had, however, already gone to Pierre Pithou.
Furthermore, Bongars profited from the Strasbourg Bishops feud and the Carthusian quarrel. These disputes, during his time in office in Alsace and Southern Germany, accelerated the dissolution of the rich old libraries in these areas.
Many books will, no doubt, have originated from small opportunist purchases. At all events, the political/ecclesiastical upsets and upheavals of the time were of immense benefit to the formation of new collections, as can be demonstrated by numerous examples.
Bongars also very rarely missed visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair. Many of his printed books were probably purchased there. And last but not least, there are many dedication and presentation copies, from his academic friends, in his library. Some are officially dedicated to him, whilst others have manuscript annotations. A close examination of the imprints will, no doubt, bring much more to light.
Now a few more words with regard to the history of the Bongarsiana after the death of its creator (1612). Bongars left his library in a will to Jakob Graviseth, the son of the Strasbourg Banker René Graviseth (or Gravisset). The father was one of Bongars' closest friends, who had also helped him, making great personal sacrifices, when he was in financial difficulties. According to Hagen, and as can be read in the portrayals based on his work, the Bongarsiana was entrusted to the Heidelberg scholar Georg Michael Lingelsheim for safekeeping until the young Graviseth, who at the time was only fourteen, came of age.
However, this appears not to be the case because Lingelsheim wrote to the french historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou in 1616 "Regarding the Ordoricus Vitalis manuscript (this obviously concerns Cod. 555), I have written to Graviseth to whose son the excellent Bongars bequeathed his library. He, however, guards the library like a dragon his treasure and lets no-one near for fear that something may go missing and yet it was the wish of the deceased that he - (Graviseth) - should make this collected treasure available to a select readership."
In 1624 Jakob Graviseth, whose father had already bought the Liebegg estate in the bernese Aargau in 1615, married Salome von Erlach, the daughter of an eminent member of the Bernese council, Franz Ludwig von Erlach. Jakob Graviseth had the Bernese "Burgerrecht" bestowed on him and as a means of expressing his thanks, he donated the Bongars Library to Berne. However, it was only after eight years in 1632, having had to overcome various problems regarding other claimants, that the valuable collection finally arrived in Berne, where with its approximately 500 manuscripts and over 3000 printed volumes (with over 6000 titles) it more than doubled the stocks of the old "Burgerbibliothek". That this extremely significant addition was more than appreciated by Berne is shown in the directive to the chancellery in the Council records of 16 February 1632:
"Dem Herrn Graviset, Herrn zuo Liebegg,
wägen sys herrliches praesents, Herrn
Bongartii Bibliothec halber dancken!"
The voluminous, carefully written catalogue "Clavis Bibliothecae Bongarsiana" (Key to the Bongars Library) which the scholar, Pfarrer Samuel Hortin produced within two years reiterates even more emphatically the valuation put on the "wonderful present". For us the catalogue is a particularly useful tool as it records the original inventory of the Bongarsiana and enables the re-assembly of the printed volumes which had been distributed throughout the various sections of the library.
However, the Bongarsiana slipped somewhat into oblivion, for a longer period of time, until Johann Rudolf Sinner (1760-72) published the first printed catalogue of the codices. As a result, the attention of the academic world was once more directed towards its, in part, unique sources and these, as in Bongars lifetime, were again to be used for manifold studies, editions etc.
A century later, the learned and industrious Hermann Hagen gave a lasting impulse, in particular to the philological research of the Bongarsiana, not only because of the excellent "Catalogus Codicum Bernensium" of 1875, but also because of the many individual studies. It is he we have to thank for the biographies of Jacques Bongars, Pierre Daniels and Jakob Graviseth which today are still regarded as authoritative.
In 1951, as the result of the re-organisation of the bernese library system, the manuscripts went over to the Burgerbibliothek Bern, whilst the printed material remained in the Zentralbibliothek. The latter have today been re-assembled and are at the present time being completely re-catalogued. The Burgerbibliothek, for their part, has begun the art historical research and compilation of their codices with the catalogue "Die illustrierten Handschriften der Burgerbibliothek Bern (Die vorkarolingischen und karolingischen Handschriften)" by Otto Homburger (1962). A second volume "Romanik, Gotik und Renaissance" is in preparation.
Christoph v. Steiger in the Exhibition Catalogue "Ein herrliches Präsent", Die Bongars-Bibiliothek seit 350 Jahren in Bern. 1983