{{short description|Legendary creature}} {{Infobox mythical creature |name = Bonnacon |image = Bonnacon.jpg |image_size = 300px |caption = A depiction of a bonnacon are like a skunk's spray in a medieval bestiary. }} [[File:RochesterBestiary detail Bonnacon.jpg|thumb|Bonnacon in the Rochester Bestiary ]] The '''bonnacon''' (also called '''bonasus''' or '''bonacho''') ({{langx|grc|βόνασος or βόνασσος}})<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=bo/nasos Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, bonasos]</ref><ref name="Strabo">[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0099,001:15:1:69&lang=original Strabo, Geography, 15.1.69]</ref> is a legendary creature described as a bull with inward-curving horns and a horse-like mane. Medieval bestiaries usually depict its fur as reddish-brown or black.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery80.htm|title=The Medieval Bestiary - Bonnacon Image Gallery}}</ref> Because its horns were useless for self-defense, the bonnacon was said to expel large amounts of caustic feces from its anus at its pursuers, burning them and thereby ensuring its escape.

==Term== The term is derived from Greek βόνᾱσος (''bonasos''), meaning "bison".

Strabo when describing the Zebu at the festivals in India, used the term bonasus.<ref name="Strabo"/>

==Textual history== The first known description of the bonnacon comes from Pliny the Elder's ''Naturalis Historia'':

{{quote| There are reports of a wild animal in Paeonia called the bonasus, which has the mane of a horse, but in all other respects resembles a bull; its horns are curved back in such a manner as to be of no use for fighting, and it is said that because of this it saves itself by running away, meanwhile emitting a trail of dung that sometimes covers a distance of as much as three furlongs (604 meters or 1,980 feet), contact with which scorches pursuers like a sort of fire."<ref>Pliny the Elder. ''Naturalis Historia'', Book 8, 16</ref> }}

The popularity of the ''Naturalis Historia'' in the Middle Ages led to the bonnacon's inclusion in medieval bestiaries. In the tradition of the ''Physiologus'', bestiaries often ascribed moral and scriptural lessons to the descriptions of animals, but the bonnacon gained no such symbolic meaning. Manuscript illustrations of the creature may have served as a source of humor, deriving as much from the reaction of the hunters as from the act of defecation.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hassig |first=Debra |date=1991 |title=Beauty in the Beasts: A Study of Medieval Aesthetics |jstor=20166830 |journal=RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics |volume=19/20 |issue=19/20 |pages=159 }}</ref> The Aberdeen Bestiary describes the creature using similar language to Pliny, though the beast's location is moved from Paeonia to Asia:

{{quote| In Asia an animal is found which men call bonnacon. It has the head of a bull, and thereafter its whole body is of the size of a bull's with the maned neck of a horse. Its horns are convoluted, curling back on themselves in such a way that if anyone comes up against it, he is not harmed. But the protection which its forehead denies this monster is furnished by its bowels. For when it turns to flee, it discharges fumes from the excrement of its belly over a distance of three acres, the heat of which sets fire to anything it touches. In this way, it drives off its pursuers with its harmful excrement.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/ms24/f12r|title=The Aberdeen Bestiary}}</ref> }}

The bonnacon is also mentioned in the life of Saint Martha in the ''Golden Legend'', a 13th-century hagiographical work by Jacobus de Voragine. In the story, Saint Martha encounters and tames the Tarasque, a dragon-like legendary creature said to be the offspring of the biblical Leviathan and the bonnacon. In this account, the bonnacon (here: bonacho or onacho) is said to originate in Galatia.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume4.asp#Martha |title=Life of S. Martha |publisher=Fordham University |access-date=January 23, 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://abbaye-saint-benoit.ch/voragine/tome02/106.htm |title=Sainte Marthe |publisher=L'Abbaye Sainte Benoit |access-date=January 23, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101224030015/http://www.abbaye-saint-benoit.ch/voragine/tome02/106.htm |archive-date=December 24, 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==References== <references/>

==External links== {{Commons category|Medieval miniatures of bonnacon}} * [http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast80.htm Bonnacon at The Medieval Bestiary] * [http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/221/eng/10+recto/?var=1 Image of the Bonnacon in the fifteenth-century English bestiary Copenhagen, GKS 1633 4º, f. 10r]

Category:Greek legendary creatures Category:Legendary bovines Category:Medieval European legendary creatures Category:Defecation