Giovanni Francesco Bonomi

Giovanni Francesco Bonomi

Giovanni Francesco Bonomi (also Bonhomini or Bonomigni ) (born December 6, 1536 in Cremona , † February 26, 1587 in Liège ) was a Roman Catholic clergyman, Bishop of Vercelli and Apostolic Nuncio .

Origin and education

Bonomi came from a Cremonese patrician family , studied law at the Universities of Bologna and Pavia and was awarded a Dr. iur. utr. PhD . In 1560 he became an auditor , in 1565 a trainee lawyer and finally prefect of the signature, a predecessor of the Apostolic Signature established in 1608 ; In 1566 he was also abbot of Nonantola .

Acting as bishop and nuncio

On October 17, 1572, Pope Gregory XIII appointed him . to the Bishop of Vercelli. He received the episcopal ordination on February 1, 1573 through his friend, the later canonized Charles Borromeo , who had been Archbishop of Milan since 1565 .

Bonomi maintained contacts with the Catholic Stanser Landammann Melchior Lussi in Switzerland. Bonomi traveled to Ticino with Karl Borromeo in 1567 and the rest of Switzerland in 1570 ; this visitation is considered to be the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in the Confederation.

1578 Bonomi was at the request of Charles Borromeo by Pope Gregory XIII. Sent to the Diocese of Como as a visitor , he also visited the Valtellina and Ticino. From 1579 to 1581 he worked as an apostolic nuncio with special rights in Switzerland, where he visited parishes and monasteries in the dioceses of Constance , Basel , Chur , Lausanne and Sitten and established the Jesuit college Saint Michael in Freiburg by Petrus Canisius . Bonomi was a staunch advocate of the Counter Reformation and the decisions of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and a supporter of the Jesuits . His work in Switzerland met with resistance from parts of the clergy and from individual monasteries and from secular powers, and even the Curia repeatedly admonished him to be more lenient.

From 1581 to 1584 Bonomi was nuncio at the imperial court in Vienna, 1582/83 special papal envoy to the Reichstag in Augsburg and when Ernst von Bayern was elected Archbishop of Cologne , and finally from 1584 to 1587 the first permanent nuncio in Cologne ; however, one cannot yet speak of a permanent place of residence for him. Bonomi's tenure was characterized by great mobility; In this phase he enforced the reform decisions of the Council of Trent in the Rhineland and the Spanish Netherlands , where he himself held synods in Liège and Mons .

After his death in Liège, his body was transferred to Vercelli and buried in the Cathedral of Sant'Eusebio . The permanent establishment of the nunciature in Cologne was to be reserved for his successor, Ottavio Mirto Frangipani .

literature

• Gerhard Rill :  BONOMI (Buonhomo, Bonhomi, Bonhomini, Bonhomius), Giovanni Francesco. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 12:  Bonfadini – Borrello. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1970.
• Stephan Ehses , Alois Meister (ed.): The Cologne Nunciature (1583–1648). Volume I: Bonomi in Cologne. Santonio in Switzerland. The Strasbourg turmoil. (Nunciature reports from Germany). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1969.
• Michael F. Feldkamp : Studies and texts on the history of the Cologne nunciature. 4 volumes, Città del Vaticano, 1993, 1995 and 2008, ISBN 88-85042-22-8 , ISBN 88-85042-21-X , ISBN 88-85042-27-9 , ISBN 978-88-85042-51-3 , there in particular vol. 1, p. 42f.
• Michael F. Feldkamp: Bonomi, Giovanni Francesco. In: Lexicon for Theology and Church . Freiburg 1994, ISBN 3-451-22002-4 , Vol. 2, Sp. 588.

Web links

• Urban Fink: Bonomi [-Bonhomini], Giovanni Francesco. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Entry on Giovanni Francesco Bonomi on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on November 12, 2016.

predecessor	Office	successor
Guido Ferrerius	Bishop of Vercelli 1572–1587	Costantinus a Sarnano
Johannes Antonius Volpi	Apostolic Nuncio in Switzerland 1579–1581	Octavius ​​Paravicini
Ottavio Santa Croce	Apostolic nuncio at the imperial court 1581–1584	Germanico Malaspina
-	Permanent nuncio in Cologne 1584–1587	Ottavio Mirto Frangipani