Edmund Bonner

Edmund Bonner after a portrait from the 16th century

Edmund Bonner (* around 1500 in Hanley ( Worcestershire ); † September 5, 1569 in The Marshalsea) was Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549 and from 1553 to 1559 .

Life

Edmund Bonner studied at Pembroke College of Oxford University , was in 1526 Doctor of Canon Law, and soon afterwards a favorite of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey , who gave him rich sinecures. As a loyal follower of Henry VIII , he advocated his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and vigorously represented his king before the Pope as an envoy in Rome . Vienna and Copenhagen , but especially in 1533 in Marseille . In 1538 he was made Bishop of Hereford and in 1539 Bishop of London. Since Heinrich's later years, however, he was one of the most ardent opponents of the Reformation and emerged as an advocate of the Catholic Church . Therefore he was under Edward VI. imprisoned from 1549 to 1553, after the accession to the throne of Mary I, the Catholic ("Bloody Mary") in 1553, but freed. He avenged himself by assiduously persecuting Protestants as heretics , of whom he put over 200 at the stake in three years . Therefore he was notorious as "Bloody Bonner". Under the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I , he was imprisoned because he refused to take the supremacy in 1559 and died in prison on September 5, 1569.

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Bonner, Edmund. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 694-695.
• Entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia , Robert Appleton Company, New York 1913.

predecessor	Office	successor
Edward Fox	Bishop of Hereford 1538–1539	John Skip
John Stokesley	Bishop of London 1539–1549	Nicholas Ridley
Nicholas Ridley	Bishop of London 1553–1559	Edmund Grindal