GEBZONE (EBZONE) of COLOGNE. - Benedetto, born in Cologne, went on pilgrimage to the tomb of St Benedict at his confessor’s advice; he was received as a monk by Abbot Desiderius in 1060.
A man of great abstinence and mortification, he lived in silence and solitude, devoted to continual prayer. He died on 21 October in one of the years between 1078 and 1087.
This G. has formerly been confused by some scholars with the homonymous abbot of St Alexis in Rome, who later became bishop of Cesena and was sent by Gregory VII to Croatia for the coronation of King Zvonimir.
Bibl.: Vita, G., in MGH, Scriptores, XI, pp. 17-19, 23-24; 403; another recension is found in Peter the Deacon, De ortu et obitu patrum, 51; p. 173, lines 107-108. Perhaps the first recension is also by this writer, who instead attributes it to the monk Paulus grammaticus; E. Caspar, Petrus Diaconus, Berlin 1909, pp. 73-77.