Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/743

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BONI


673


BONN


also by the Benedictines). Towards the end of the twelfth century they possessed more than sixty houses, principally in Aquitaine, Anjou, and Nor- mandy. The kings of England (then rulers of Nor- mandy) were great benefactors of these friars, who were known as the Bonshommes of Grandmont from the earliest times. The oldest house of the order was at Vincennes (founded by Louis VII, in 1164); and this more than four centuries later came into the pos- session of the Minims, who were hence known after- wards as Bonsliommes. The observance of the order had become greatly relaxed when a general chapter was held at (Srandmont (after an interval of more than a century) in 1643, with the object of re-estab- lishing regular discipline. New statutes, modifymg the original rigour of the rule, were drawn up and approved. The habit of the order was black, with a hood and a broad scapular. At the time when Helyot wrote his great work on the religious orders (1714-21) there were in France also three houses of nuns of the Order of Grandmont ; but both monaster- ies and convents were suppressed at the Revolution sixty years later. A refomied branch of the order was established in 1642 by Pere Fremont, but the members of this institution do not seem to have been known by the old name of Bonshonmies.

II. — The Fratres Sacc.\ti, or Brothers of Penitence, were also known as Boni Homines, Bons- hommes, or, as Leland calls them. Bones-homes. Their origin, as well as the date of their fovmdation, is obscure, but they had a house at Saragossa in the time of Pope Innocent III (d. 1216) and one about the same time at Valenciennes. Their rule was founded on that of St. Augustine. They had one house in Paris, in a street called after them the rue dcs Sachcttes, and in 1257 they wore introduced into England. Matthew Paris records under this year that "a certain new and unknown order of friars ap- peared in London", duly furnished with credentials from the pope; and he mentions later that they were called from the style of their habit Fratres tiaccati. We learn from Polydore Vergil that Edmund (son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall) founded a little later (ac- cording to Tanner, in 1283) a monastery at Ashridge, Herts, for a rector and twenty canons of " a new order not before seen in England, and called the Boni homines". It was finished in 128.5. The first rector was Richard, and the last Thomas Waterhouse (1529), who surrendered the house to Henry VIII. The suppressed coUege was granted first to the king's sister Elizabeth, and afterwards to the Eger^ons, later created Earls and Dukes of Bridgewater. The church was destroyed under Elizabeth; but in 1800 the last duke was living in a portion of the old college. He sold the great hall piecemeal, and pulled dowTi the cloisters. The estate and (modern) mansion now belong to Earl Brownlow. The only other English house of the Boni Homines was at Edington in Wilts. The former college there (consisting of a dean and pre- bendaries) was granted to them by desire of Edward the Black Prince, who (says Leland) "had a great favour to the Bones-homes beyond the Se". The first rector (brought from Ashridge) was John de Aylesbury, the last John Ryve. Edward VI granted the property to Lord St. John; it now belongs to the Watson-Taylor family. The splendid church, one of the finest of its period, .still remains. (Little, The Friars of the Sack, in Eng. Hist. Review, 1894, 33, 121.)

III. The Portuguese Boni Homines. — The iden- tity of the Fratres Saccati mentioned by Matthew Paris as, in 1257, a "new order in England", with the "new order" (the Bon.shommes) established a little later at Ashridge and Edington, seems to be generally admitted. An entirely separate institute, however, was that of the Portuguese Boni Homines, or Secular Canons of St. John the Evangelist, founded


by John de Vicenza, afterwards Bishop of Lamego, in the fifteenth century. Living at first independ- ently in a monastery granted to them by the Arch- bishop of Braga at Villar de Frades, they afterwards embraced the institute of Secular Canons of St. George in Alga (in \'enice), and the Portuguese order was confirmed by Pope Martin V under the title of "Boni Homines of Villar de Frades". They had fourteen houses in Portugal, and King John III gave them charge of all the royal hospitals in the kingdom, while many of the canons went out as missionaries to- India and Ethiopia. Several members of the order have won a high reputation as scholars and theolo- gians.

LevEque, Annal. Orel. Grandmont (1663); Helyot, ed. MiGNE. Histoire des ordres monastiques religie-uses et niilitaiTes, II. 412-424, 563-566; III, 421-425; Polydore Vergil, Angl. Hislor.. lib. XVI (in ed. 1649. p. 402); Ddgdale. Manasl. An J., VI. 514, 535; Gasquet, English Monastic Life (1904). 249; Francisco de S. Makia, Hist, das sagradas Congregacoes dos conegos secutares de S. Joao Evang. em Portugal.

D. O. Hunter-Blair.

Bonizo of Sutri (or Bonitho), Bishop of Sutri in Central Italy, in the eleventh century, an adherent of Gregory \TI and advocate of the ideals of that pope; b. about 1045, probably in Cremona, Northern Italy; put to death 14 July, 1090. Early in his life he- joined the party known as the Pataria, and when a subdeacon in Piacenza he came into conflict with Dionysius, bishop of that city. In 1074 he went to Rome, and won the favour of Pope Gregory, by whom he was soon appointed to the episcopal See of Sutri. Bonizo took part in several councils held in Rome; in 1078 he went to Cremona as papal legate and con- secrated there the church of St. Thomas. In the struggle between Gregory VII and Henry IV he was- ever on the side of the pope. He was seized byHenry in 1082 and entrusted to the custody of the antipope Clement III. About a year afterwards Bonizo made his escape, and lived for several years under the pro- tection of Countess Mathilda of Tuscany. In 1086 he was present at the funeral of his friend, Anselm, Bishop of Lucca. He was, soon after, elected to the See of Piacenza by the Pataria, but owing to strong opposition was unable to take possession of it until the year 1088, when he was strongly supported by Pope Urban II. His enemies, however, contrived to bring about his death.

Bonizo wrote: (1) the "Paradisus", or extracts from the writings of St. Augustine (stiU unpublished); (2) a short treatise on the sacraments (Muratori, "AntiquitatesItalicseMed. jEvi", III, in Migne, P. L., CL); (3) the "Decretum" or"De vita Christiana", a work in ten books on ecclesiastical law and moral theology written at the request of a certain priest Gregorv [fragments of this work are in Mai's Nova Bibliotheca, VII, iii, 1-76 (Rome, 1854)]; (4) "In Hugonem schismaticum", now lost, probably against the schismatic Cardinal Hugo Candidus; (5) a de- scription of the various classes of judges in the Roman Empire and in the Roman Church (ed. Bliihme, in Mon. Ger. Hist. Leges, IV); (6) his most important work the ' ' Liber ad amicum ", a history of the Church, in which the author relates events of his own time.s.

Saur, Studien iiber Bonizo in Forsch. zur deutsch. Gesch. (Gottingen, 186S), VIII. 397-464; Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitaltcr Greqors VII (Leipzig. 1S94); Dcmmler in preface to his edition of Liber ad amicum in Mon. Germ. Hist., Libclli de lite Imp. el Pont.. I. 568 sqq.; Martens in Tubing. Theol. Quartalschrift (1883). 457 sqq.; Giesebrecht. Gesch. der deutsch. Kaiserzeit (Leipzig. 1885. 1890), II, III; Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen (6th ed., 1893). II, 223. 224; Daller in Kirchenlex., II, 1087 sqq.; Herzog. Realencyk. (Leipzig, 1897), III; Delarc, St. Grtgoire VII et la rfjorme de Vtglise (Pari.'i, 1889-90).

Francis J. Schaefer.

Bonn, University of (Rheinische FRiEnRicH- Wilhelms-Universitat). An academy was founded at Bonn in 1777 by Max Friedrich, Prince-Archbishop