JOHN OF THESSALONICA: Archbishop of Thessalonica. He was delegate of the pope at the sixth ecumenical council (Constantinople, 680). In the proceedings of the second synod held at Nicæa (Mansi, xiii. 164) occurs a fragment of his dialogue between a Christian and a pagan, in which image-worship is justified. Image-worship, he says, relates to the saints and not to the pictures, to God as he used to walk among men; even the angels have a certain corporeality. There has also been handed down a speech of John entitled "On the death of the most holy . . . Mother of God and ever virgin Mary." It is complete only in an old Slavonic translation (in Popov, Bibliograficeskija materialy, pp. 40-65, Moscow, 1879); fragments of the original are in Tischendorf, Apocalypses apocryphae (Leipsic, 1866). The speech follows closely the De dormitione Mariae of Pseudo-John and has been ascribed to him. There is also extant a writing entitled "On the glorious, victorious Demetrius" (ASB., Oct., iv. 104-160) which bears the name of John of Thessalonica.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Leo Allatius De Symeonum scriptis, pp. 105. 110. Paris, 1664· M. Le Quien Oriens Christianus, ii. 42, 3 vols., Paris, 1740; W. Cave Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria, i. 597, Oxford, 1740; Fabricius-Harles, Bibliotheca Graeca, x. 219, 250, 285, Hamburg, 1807; Krumbacher, Geschichte, p. 192; DCB, iii. 396.
JOHN-BONITES: An order of hermits, founded by Giovanni Buono (b. at Mantua 1168; d. Oct. 23, 1249), who, after long years as a strolling jongleur, was converted in 1208. Retiring to a lonely spot near the church of Santa Maria di Budriolo, not far from Cesena, be is said to have lived first as an absolute hermit, but about 1217 began to gather companions around him. Although he never took orders and could neither read nor write, the fame of his extraordinary mortifications wrought marvellous conversions, both among his immediate followers and among the heretical Lombard Patarenes, many of whom he restored to the Church. Without formulating a written rule, or even a definite mode of life, for his spiritual children, communities of hermits are said to have originated in his own lifetime, located at Bertinoro (near Forli), Mantua, Venice, Bologna, Parma, Ferrara, Poggiolo, Faenza, Poncelia, and Rimini. A few years before Buono's death, the John-Bonites (Johann-bonitae, Jambonitae), whom their founder had vested with a gray habit, were bound by Innocent IV. to the Augustinian rule. Alexander IV., by bull of Aug. 13, 1256, forced them to enter his newly founded order of Augustinian hermits, thus terminating their independent existence. The efforts to canonize Giovanni Buono, originating chiefly from Mantua and begun as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, resulted only in his beatification by Sixtus IV. in 1483; nevertheless, he is the chief patron of Mantua, where his remains have reposed in the church of Santa Agnese Nuova since 1451.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Vita of the founder, by A. Calepino, with commentary, is in ASB, Oct., ix. 693-886; Helyot, Ordres monastiques, iii. 8 sqq.
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