The Catholic Historical Review

The book Bonizo of Sutri: Portrait in Landscape, by John A. Dempsey, is more than what the title said, “a portrait in landscape.” It is also a fine historical analysis of the religious, social, and political problems affecting the central centuries of the Middle Ages. The book revolves around the enigmatic and to some extent pragmatic figure of Bishop Bonizo of Sutri; by studying his life, deeds, literary production, and thoughts, Dempsey takes the reader to a detailed journey into the Italian (and European) religious and political history of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The book opens with one of the most important episodes in the life of Bonizo of Sutri, the assault he suffered in 1088 in the city of Piacenza, and it also investigates his birthplace, education, works (mainly Liber ad amicum 1085–1086 and Liber de vita christiana 1089–1094), and especially his militance within the Patarene movement. All information in the book is based on Dempsey’s personal research and on the main authors who wrote about Bishop Bonizo (such as Walter Berschin and Hugo Saur), although Dempsey warns the reader that some of the authors who wrote on this topic failed somehow to appreciate the full implication of his dual affiliation as both Lombard Patarene and papal loyalist. This affiliation with the Patarene movement is indeed the leitmotiv of Dempsey’s entire book.

The book features nine chapters, an appendix, an index, and a very rich bibliography. The manuscript is very well-written; it uses English as its main language, as well as Greek and Latin for quotations and primary sources. There are no grammatical errors of any type, in fact I personally found only one typo at page 251: “rerdination” instead of “re-ordination.” There is a great level of historical accuracy and precision in dating events or documents such as the distinction of one of the laws [End Page 142] which Bonizo attributed to Louis the Pious, which in fact Dempsey attributes to Lothair I (130).

The book is set against the cultural and political backdrop of the central centuries of the Middle Ages in the north of Italy, which were shaken by the medieval commercial revolution and by the religious reform movements. Although I do not agree with everything said (i.e, the rise in importance of Milan created troubles for Cremona, not only economic benefits as said at page 24); in chapter one Dempsey clearly shows that the environment in which Bonizo was born and operated was one in which “the great churches became powerful corporations that combined landed wealth, military resources and temporal jurisdiction” (19). Obviously, given the decisive influence of this on Bonizo’s personal and intellectual formation, the chapter also includes a detailed discussion (perhaps in some passages, even too detailed and/or too long) of the history, beliefs, and practices of the Pataria (28).

The documents and contemporary sources of chapter 2 help the reader to construct an adequate biographical outline for Bonizo and to understand the hypothesis Dempsey presents in chapter 3, where he suggests that in the text Ad amicum Bonizo invites his fellow Patarenes to revive their dying movement by helping Matilda of Tuscany and the papal reform party. He does this—against the scholarly consensus—by comparing Ad amicum with the text by Peter Crassus (whoever is behind that name) Defensio Henrici IV. Regis.

Dempsey’s intriguing hypothesis is that Bonizo composed his history also in response to the Defensio. His argument is mainly based on the fact that the Defensio “exercises much more influence in his time of what it is generally assumed by historians nowadays” (100). Indeed for Dempsey the truth is that one can only understand the meaning and purpose of Bonizo’s papal-imperial history if one reads it through the Patarene lens with which he composed it. Dempsey claims that Ad amicum was directed to a Patarene comrade, probably a knight of the city of Cre-mona’s...