Bonizo of Sutri, Liber de vita christiana

Title	Bonizo of Sutri, Liber de vita christiana
Key	BO
Wikidata Item no.	Q116752852
Size	Medium (500 to 1000 canons)
Terminus post quem	1088
Terminus ante quem	1092
Century	saec. XI
European region of origin	Northern Italy
General region of origin	Southern Europe and Mediterranean
Main author	Linda Fowler-Magerl

Bonizo, a native of Cremona, was bishop of Sutri (in the Patrimonium Petri to the north of Rome) between 1075–1076. He was forced to abandon his see by sympathizers of the emperor and he sought refuge with Matilda of Tuscany. He was present at the funeral of Anselm of Lucca at Mantua in 1086 and compiled a canon law collection in the late 1080’s or early 1090’s after having been bishop of Piacenza, where he was mutilated and again driven out by his opponents. Little else is known of his life.

Content, Sources, and Structure

In the epilogue Bonizo calls his work a brevis ac compendiosa dictatiuncula ex sanctorum patrum autenticis canonibus (canon 10. 79). The title Liber de vita christiana is used in the Ms Florence. The collection is systematically organized and divided into ten books; blocks of texts taken from other collections are left intact. There are no book titles or capitulationes, but each canon has a rubric in textu. Bonizo inserted texts of his own among the canons of the collection, making the Liber de vita christiana part canon law collection and part treatise.

Bonizo made extensive use of the Liber decretorum of Burchard and the collection of Anselm. He was more interested in ecclesiastical discipline than Anselm, however, and paid more attention to marriage. Striking is the extent to which he used older material: monastic rules, the Hibernensis, capitularies, Ansegis and Benedictus Levita and the Collectio Bonaevallensis. Canon 10. 46 may have been taken from the 10th century Beneventan Collectio IX librorum in the Ms Vat. lat. 1349. Bonizo used older collections particularly for penitential texts. He also used penitentials themselves. For Roman law Bonizo used the Codex and Epitome Iuliani. [175]

He made use of a series of forged texts attributed to popes Symmachus and Celestine (canons 10. 44–47) which is also appended to the collection of Saint-Hilaire in a manuscript now at Reims: Omnes enim quos, Sive quis autem sacerdos cum filia spirituali and Non debet episcopus, presbiter aut diaconus commisceri. This series also appears in the early core of the Collectio Ambrosiana I which had not yet been augmented with canons from the Tripartita. It is also found in the appendix to the Sinemuriensis in the Ms Orléans, BM 306 (canons 604–608), which made use of Italian sources.

The collection of Bonizo was used in turn for the collection Polycarpus. Bonizo’s version of the arbor consanguinitatis, which was based on that of Burchard, was adopted by a number of canonists who made no other use of the collection. The papal chronicle in the 4th book of the Liber de vita christiana was also widely received.

Manuscripts

See Category:Manuscript of BO. There are six medieval copies of the Liber (two of them incomplete), one medieval copy of excerpts, and two modern copies:

Medieval manuscripts:

1. Brescia, Archivio e Biblioteca Capitolare, Codici miniati ms. 3, fol. 1-131 (saec. XII)
2. Firenze, BML, Plut. XXIII 5, fol. 91-182 (saec. XII med); fragmentary
3. Mantova, Biblioteca Comunale Teresiana, D.III.13 (439) (saec. XII; from Polirone)
4. Mantova, Biblioteca Comunale Teresiana, D.IV.6 (452) (saec. XV)
5. New Haven, Yale University Beinecke 1154 (olim Toronto, Bergendal Collection, 79; also cited as "Bib. Mai. Heythrop. Z.105 BON"); only books 1-5 and beginning of book six.
6. Città del Vaticano, BAV, Ross. lat. 226, fol. 1-83 (saec. XII)

Excerpts:

1. Troyes, Trésor de la cathédrale, 4 (excerpts according to Berschin, Nachwort p. 408*)

Modern copies:

1. München, BSB, Clm 11504 (saec XVIII), a modern copy of the Brescia manuscript
2. Paris, BnF, lat. 12391 (saec XVII), a modern copy of the Florence manuscript

Editions

Excerpts are edited by Angelo Mai, Nova bibliotheca Patrum 7. 3, Rome 1854, pp. 1–76. For a modern edition see Ernst Perels, Bonizonis Liber de vita christiana (Texte zur Geschichte des römischen und kanonischen Rechts im Mittelalter 1; Berlin 1930); online. The present analysis (BO) is based on the latter edition.

Literature

For the life of Bonizo see Walter Berschin, Bonizo von Sutri. Leben und Werke (Beiträge zu Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 2, Berlin 1972). – For the manuscript in Toronto (now Yale), see Ian Stuart Robinson, A Manuscript of the „Liber de vita christiana“ of Bonizo of Sutri, BMCL 3 (1973), pp. 135–139. – For the Mantua manuscripts see Gioanni Miccoli, Un nuovo manoscritto del „Liber de vita christiana“ di Bonizone di Sutri, Studi Medievali 7 (1966), pp. 371–398. Also Walter Berschin, Zwei neue Bonizo-Handschriften, Scriptorium 41 (1987), pp. 87–90. Idem, Bonizone da Sutri e lo stato di vita laicale: Il codice Mantova 439, in: Sant’Anselmo, Mantova e la lotta per le investiture, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Mantova, 23–25 maggio 1986, ed. by Paolo Golinelli, Bologna 1987, pp. 281–290. – For the use of dicta see Ursula Lewald, An der Schwelle der Scholastik. Bonizo von Sutri und das Kirchenrecht seiner Tage (Weimar 1938), pp. 18–39. For the arbor consanguinitatis see Hermann Schadt, Die Darstellung der Arbores Consanguinitatis und der Arbores Affinitatis, Tübingen 1982, pp. 124–127. Idem, Eine neue Handschrift von Bonizo von Sutris Konsanguinitätstraktat und ihre Darstellungen, BMCL 6 (1976), pp. 72–75. – For the possible source of the sixty extracts from letters of Gregory I see Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, pp. 78–79. – For the series of forgeries common to the collection of Saint- Hilaire see the description of that collection above p. 128. Also Landau, Gefälsches Recht, pp. 36–38. Also Jasper, The Beginning of the Decretal Tradition, pp. 40 f. – For the use of the Collectio IX librorum and the Collectio V librorum see Paul Fournier, Les sources canoniques du „Liber de vita christiana“ de Bonizo de Sutri, BECh 78 (1917), pp. 117 –134; repr. in his Mélanges de droit canonique 2, ed. by Theo Kölzer (Aalen 1983), pp. 667–684. – For the possible [176] use of the first collection of the Ms Bonneval see Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, p. 61 n. 100. – Kéry, Collections p. 234–237.