BONIZONE di SUTRI. — Born perhaps in Cremona around 1045, he died, according to tradition, on 14 July 1089. From his youth he took part in the Pataria movement as a supporter of the reform movement, and in 1075 or 1076 he was appointed bishop of Sutri by the Pope, and in 1078 legate in Lombardy. Having fallen into the hands of the emperor in 1082 and been handed over by him to the antipope Clement III, he nevertheless managed to escape, taking refuge with Matilde di Canossa, who protected him. Elected bishop of Piacenza in 1086 by the reform party, he was unable to establish himself permanently in the new diocese until 1088. The victim of a savage attack by certain Piacenza nobles in 1089, he was forced to leave the city mutilated and blind, and died perhaps in Cremona between 1089 and 1095.
The following works by him are extant: Liber ad amicum (edited by Dümmler in MGH, Libelli de lite, I, pp. 571–620), the most noteworthy of his writings; De sacramentis (in Muratori, Antiq. II. M. Aevi, III, Milan 1740, cols. 599–604); Liber ad Hugonem schismaticum, which has been lost. Belonging to the final period of his life is the Liber de vita christiana or Decretum (published by E. Perels, Berlin 1930), a systematic collection of passages from authors and decretals in ten books (P. Fournier, Les sources canoniques du Liber de vita christiana de B. [Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes, 78] Paris 1917, pp. 117–34). He is also credited with the De ordinibus iudiciorum (edited by Blühme in MGH, Leges, IV).
Niccolò Del Re