Bonomi was born on 16 December 1536 to a
Cremonese patrician family, studied law at the Universities of
Bologna and
Pavia and received his degree in
utroque iure. In 1560 he became auditor, in 1565 clerk and finally prefect of the Signatura, a predecessor authority of the
Apostolic Signatura established in 1608; In 1566 he was also abbot of
Nonantola. On 17 October 1572,
Pope Gregory XIII appointed him to the Bishop of Vercelli. He received the episcopal consecration on 25 January 1573 in
Milan by the hands of his friend, later canonized, Cardinal
Charles Borromeo,
Archbishop of Milan. Bonomi was in touch with the Catholic Major of
Stans in Switzerland,
Melchior Lussy. Bonomi traveled with Charles Borromeo in 1567 to
Ticino and in 1570 to the rest of
Switzerland; this
visitation is considered to be the beginning of the
Catholic Reformation in the
Swiss Confederation. In 1578, at the request of Charles Borromeo, by Pope Gregory XIII Bonomi was sent as a visitor to the
Diocese of Como, and he also visited
Valtellina and Ticino. From 27 May 1579 to 16 September 1581 he worked as
Apostolic Nuncio with special rights in Switzerland, where he visited parishes and monasteries in the dioceses of
Constance,
Basel,
Chur,
Lausanne and
Sion and founded the
Jesuit College of Saint Michael in
Freiburg by
Peter Canisius. Bonomi was a staunch advocate of the Decrees of the
Council of Trent (1545 – 1563) and a patron of the
Jesuits. His work in Switzerland met with resistance from parts of the clergy and from individual monasteries and from secular authorities, and even the curia repeatedly admonished him to be more lenient. From 16 September 1581 to 20 October 1584 Bonomi was nuncio at the
imperial court in
Vienna, in 1582 and 1583 he was papal special envoy to the
Diet of Augsburg and at the election of
Ernest of Bavaria to the
Archbishop of Cologne, and finally from 20 October 1584 to his death he was the first permanent
nuncio in Cologne. However, Bonomi had not a fixed place of residence. During this phase he pushed for the reforming decisions of the Council of Trent in the
Rhineland and the
Spanish Netherlands, holding himself synods in Liège and
Mons. After his death in
Liège on 26 February 1587, 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. == References ==