[1] He entered the Order of Franciscans at a young age, and took a degree in theology; he held the title Magister.

[4] He held the bishopric until he was named a cardinal, a matter of some fifteen months; his successor was Angelerius de Bentevengis, his own brother.

In a papal bull of 12 September 1278, Cardinal Bentivenga is mentioned as having been an examiner into the election of a new abbot for the Monastery of Nonantola.

[6] In January 1279 he sat on a cardinalatial committee that examined and approved the election of John Peckham as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Nicholas III had created a total of nine cardinals, and had taken care to diminish greatly the number of adherents of the Angevin King Charles I of Sicily, who had had a strong hand in the previous four conclaves.

At the time of the Pope's death there were thirteen cardinals, three of whom were Orsini who would never vote to accommodate King Charles.

[13] With these powers, on 25 September, Cardinal Bentivenga dispensed a priest who, against the rules of his diocesan synod, had taken longer than a year to be ordained after obtaining a parish, and thereby occurred the penalty of excommunication.

[15] Nine days after his election and twenty days before his Coronation, on Monday 3 March, Pope Martin IV granted Cardinal Bentivenga a number of penitential powers, individually denominated, which belonged to the Pope, including the right of absolving from ecclesiastical censures and excommunications, including those imposed by diocesan bishops and by the University of Paris; this extended to persons travelling to the Holy Land on penitential pilgrimages.

On 12 August the Cardinal was granted the power of absolving the Romans who had participated in the forbidden election of King Charles to the office of Senator of Rome.

[17] Cardinal Bentivenga participated in the Papal election, 1285—a one-day Conclave that produced a pope on the first ballot, the Roman aristocrat, Giacomo Savelli, who took the name Honorius IV;[18] and the Papal election, 1287-1288—a long drawn out affair, due to illnesses and the plague, that caused all the cardinals but one to leave the Conclave to convalesce or die in their own homes.

[23] The Annales Minorum state that Cardinal Bentivenga died at Todi on 16 March (xvii kal.

[24] Ferdinando Ughelli agrees as to the place, but puts Bentivenga's death on March 26 (vii kal.