Bosone - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 1116

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BOSONE. – First bishop of Merseburg (968–70), one of the apostles of the Wends. He was a Benedictine monk at S. Emmeram in Regensburg when Emperor Otto I took him as his chaplain and sent him among the German colonists settled in the lands of the Wends between the Saale and the Elbe. He then preached the Gospel and had the first stone church built in the environs of Zeitz. He was elevated to the episcopal see of Merseburg, recently established by Emperor Otto, despite various opposition, and approved by the Council of Ravenna in September 968. After two years B. died, on 1 November 970.

BIBL.: Chronicon episcoporum Merseburgensium, in MGH, Scriptores, I, p. 192 ff.; Anon., Chronicon, in MGH, Scriptores, III, p. 750; P. Kehr, Urhandenbuch des Hochstiftes Merseburg, I, Halle 1890; H. Grossler, Die Begründung der christlichen Kirche zwischen Saale u. Elbe, Eisleben 1907; M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, III, Munich 1931, pp. 90, 445, 583. Lucchesio Spalding
BOSONE. – English cardinal, d. in Rome c. 1178. In the compilation of the papal biographies, as a continuation of the original nucleus of the Liber Pontificalis, B. succeeded the Anacletian cardinal Pandolfo. A Benedictine monk of S. Albano, when his uncle, Niccolò Breakspear, was made a cardinal, he joined the Curia in France under Eugene III as an apostolic writer. He accompanied his uncle on the Scandinavian legation; when the latter became pope under the name of Adrian IV, he appointed him chamberlain, and then, in 1155, cardinal deacon of SS. Cosma e Damiano and legatus a latere in England. After Adrian’s death, he was an active and fervent supporter of the election of Alexander III, whom he also supported with arms, securing possession of Castel S. Angelo. The new Pope transferred him to the presbyteral title of S. Pudentiana. He took part in the struggle between Alexander and Barbarossa and was among the negotiators of the peace of Anagni and among those present at the Conference of Venice in 1177. He then returned with the Pope to Rome, where he shortly thereafter brought his industrious life to a close. Of his activity as a historian, which is above all what has preserved his memory, two distinct periods must be distinguished: the first shows him as a flat, meagre, and uniform compiler of biographies, modelled on the ancient ones, from Stephen VI to Inno-

Article illustration — (Int. Enc. Catt.) BOSIO, ANTONIO — Autograph letter to the abbot Crescensi (28 February 1629) — Rome, Vallicelliana Library, MS G. 20, fol. 231.

cenzo II; the other displays considerably greater interest, since it undertakes to elucidate pontificates of which he had been a witness and in which he himself had often acted as a protagonist (and this applies especially to the lives of Eugenio III, Adriano IV, and Alessandro III). The latter, which has reached us unfinished because of the author’s death, is of particular interest for the breadth and completeness of its information; the style, too, becomes more lively and elevated in II. He also composed several metrical lives of saints.

BIBL.: On the cardinal: L. Cardella, Memorie storiche de' cardinali di S. R. C., I, II, Rome 1792, pp. 85–86; J. M. Brixius, Die Mitglieder d. Kardinalkallegium von 1730-81, Berlin 1912; F. Geisthard, Der Kämmerer Boss, there 1936. On the biographer: Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, II, Paris 1892, pp. XXXIX–XLIII; G. Wattenbach, Deutschlandes Geschichtsquellen, 6th ed., Leipzig 1894, p. 331; U. Balzani, Le Cronache italiane nel Medio Evo, 3rd ed., Milan 1909, pp. 198–201.

Pier Fausto Palumbo