BONIZONE of SUTRI. — Born perhaps at Cremona around 1045, died according to tradition on 14 July 1089. From his youth he took part in the Patarine movement as a supporter of the reforming cause, and in 1075 or 76 was created bishop of Sutri by the Pope and in 1078 legate in Lombardy. In 1082 he fell into the hands of the emperor and was handed over by him to the antipope Clement III, yet managed to escape and took refuge with Matilda of Canossa, who protected him. In 1086 he was elected bishop of Piacenza by the reforming party.
However, as a result of opposition, he was unable to take stable possession of his new see until 1088. In 1089 he was the victim of a fierce attack by some Piacenza nobles, had to leave the city maimed and blind, and died perhaps at Cremona between 1089 and 1095.
His surviving works include: Liber ad amicum (edited by Dümmler in MGH, Libelli de lite, I, pp. 571-620), which is his most notable writing; De sacramentis (in Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi, III, Milan 1740, cols. 599-604); Liber ad Hugonem schismaticum, now lost. To the last years of his life belongs the Liber de vita christiana or Decretum (published by E. Perels, Berlin 1930), a systematic collection of patristic passages 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).