RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bonifatius-Verein Bonnet
After the Minims (q.v.) had come into possession of the house of the Grammontensians at Vincennes they, too, came to be called bons hommes. Even at an earlier date it seems that the Minims in Paris had been contemptuously called bons hommes. The same name was also appropriated by certain heretical sects, for instance, by the Cathari (see New Manicheans) and by the Brethren of the Free Spirit. In Florence, in the thirteenth century, the twelve men elected to restore order after the withdrawal of the Ghibellines were called buoni uomini, likewise the overseers of the thirteen city districts in Rome in the fourteenth century.
BONIZO (BONITHO): Bishop of Sutri; b. at Cremona c. 1045; d. at Piacenza July 14, probably 1090. As a young cleric he joined the Patarene movement (see Pataebnes) in Cremona and Piacenza. He came to Rome in 1074, possibly in consequence of his conflict with Bishop Dionysius of Piacenza, and was himself made bishop of Sutri in 1075 or 1076. In the spring of 1078 he was in Lombardy as legate, and back in Rome by November, when he took part in the synod that discussed Berengar's teachings. A zealous partizan of Gregory VII, he was imprisoned by Henry IV in 1082 and entrusted for safe-keeping to the antipope Guibert of Ravenna (Clement III). He contrived to escape, but never returned to his see. In 1085 he found shelter with Countess Matilda, and in the summer of 1086 was chosen bishop of Piacenza by the Patarene party. His election being uncanonical , Anselm of Milan, the metropolitan, refused to install him; but he succeeded in gaining the approval of Pope Urban II in 1088 or 1089. He did not long enjoy his triumph, meeting a violent death in a rising of the imperialist party. The most important of his writings, the Liber ad amicum (ed. E. Diimmler, MGH, Libelli de Hie, i, 1891), composed between the death of Gregory VII and the accession of Victor III (1085-86), besides discussing the question whether a Christian may bear arms in the defense of the Church (which he answers in the affirmative), shows by an extended historical sketch that the Church grows under persecution. The chief value of the work is due to its presentation of the ideas of Gregory and his adherents; it informs us how the papal camp judged of the numerous theological and ecclesiastico-political controversies of the time, and as a whole is one of the most noteworthy productions of the Gregorian party. Often as it has been appealed to as a contemporary source, it has to be used with caution, owing not only to carelessness and errors of detail, but to demonstrable perversions of history, as in the account of the Canossa episode. In fact, it is colored throughout by the author's subjective standpoint. The Liber in Hugonem schismaticum (presumably Cardinal Hugo Candidus) has unfortunately been lost. As a canonist Bonizo left a large Decretum in ten books, from which Mai published extracts in 1854. Carl Mirbt.
Bibliography: H. Saur, Studien iiber Bonizo, in Forschunoen zur deutschen Geschichte, viii, 397-464, Gottingen, 1868; E. Steindorff, Jahrbilcher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III., i, 457-462, ii, 473-482, Leipsic, !874, 1887; W. Martens, Ueber die Geschichtschreibung
Bonizos, in Tubinger theologische Quartalschrift, 1883, pp. 457-483; idem, Gregor VII., 2 vols., Leipsic, 1894; H. Lehmgrtibner, Ueber desLebendes Bonizo . . , in Benzo von Alba, pp. 129-151, Berlin, 1887; G. Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbilcher des deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich TV., vols, i, ii, Leipsic, 1890-94; C. Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII., ib. 1894; idem, Die Wahi Gregors VII., Marburg, 1892.
BONNER, EDMUND: Bishop of London; b., probably at Hanley, Worcestershire, about 1500; d. in the Marshalsea prison, at Southwark, near London, Sept. 5, 1569. He studied at Pembroke College (then called Broadgate Hall), Oxford (B.C.L., 1519; D.C.L., 1525), and was ordained about 1519. He received his first preferment from Cardinal Wolsey; after the death of Wolsey (1530) he served the king, received a number of benefices, and was employed at different times as ambassador to the pope, to the king of France, and to the emperor; he was made bishop of London in 1539. He fell out with the privy council, which undertook to govern under Edward VI (1547), and in 1549 was reprimanded for not enforcing the use of the new prayer-book, deprived of his bishopric, and imprisoned. The accession of Mary (1553) brought his release and reinstated him in his see. He is remembered chiefly by his connection with the religious persecutions of the reign of Mary and it is said that in three years he condemned more than two hundred persons to the stake. In 1559, after the accession of Elizabeth, he refused to take the oath of supremacy and was imprisoned and kept in confinement till his death. It has been usual to represent Bishop Bonner as unprincipled and cruel; yet his firmness in following the unpopular course and the suffering undergone in consequence do not indicate a lack of principle; to judge and condemn heretics was one of the duties of his position, and it is not clear that he took delight in undue severity; there is documentary evidence that he acted under pressure from the queen and her husband (Philip II of Spain). He was unpopular in London apart from the persecutions. He wrote a preface for the second edition of Gardiner's De vera obedientia (Hamburg, 1536) and published a collection of Homilies for his diocese (London, 1555, and many later editions).
Bibliography: The sources for a life are in the State Papers of Henry VIII, in the Rolls Series, 15 vols., ed. by various hands, London, 189-. Consult also: S. R. Maitland, Subjects Connected with the Reformation in England, London, 1849; DNB, vi, 356-360.
BONNET, boii"ne', ALFRED MAXIMILIEN: French classical scholar; b. at Frankfort Nov. 3, 1841. He was educated at Bonn University, and, after being a professor at the academy of Lausanne in 1866-74 and at the Ecole Monge and the Ecole Alsacienne at Paris in 1874-81, was successively lecturer and instructor in the faculty of letters at Montpellier. Since 1890 he has been professor of Latin in the same institution. In 1898 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and has written, among other works, Narratio de miraculo a Michaele archangelo Chonis patrato, adjecto Symeonis Metaphrastce de eadem re libello (Paris, 1890) and Le Latin de Gregoire de Tours (1890); and has prepared editions
Bonnet Bonosus