In 1579, at the height of the Milanese Counter Reformation, the Inquisition official G. M. Caneparo published his Scudo inespugnabile de cavaglieri di santa fede della croce di san Pietro Martire (The Invincible Shield of the Knights of the Holy Faith of the Cross of St. Peter Martyr). The book addressed a local confraternity dedicated to assisting the Inquisition in the battle against heresy. As he sought to inflame the brothers' penitential spirit, Caneparo held up the life of their patron saint, the Dominican martyr-inquisitor Peter of Verona, as an example. The book testifies to the longevity and vitality of the cult. Inasmuch as the latter was geared to the suppression of religious dissent, it occupies a special place in western religion. Yet how is the legend of the slain fighter of heretics related to the history of his life, and the development of his cult?
This question motivates Donald Prudlo's study, the first in half a century to attempt a comprehensive portrait of the saint. The author follows in the footsteps of the Dominican Antoine Dondaine, who studied Peter Martyr extensively in the order's journal Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum (23 [1953]: 66–162). Like his predecessor, Prudlo scrupulously examines the largely hagiographical evidence; and, like Dondaine, he does so to correct what he sees as the reduction of the saint's legacy to the repression of heresy. This means, first, reconstructing the saint's life based on a fragmentary, problematic documentation. The book's first part follows Peter from his early thirteenth-century birth in Verona to his (meticulously reconstructed) murder by Cathar henchmen near Seveso in 1252. His lifespan included an upbringing in a Cathar-influenced family, a Catholic education leading to university study at Bologna, and entry into the Dominican order, probably in June 1221. There followed years as a fiery preacher, leadership roles in the Dominican Order, and papal assignments, culminating in an appointment as Lombard inquisitor in his final year of life. This account privileges the early hagiographers, especially Tommaso Agni and Gérard de Frachet; and it largely accords with Dondaine, while correcting him on important details. Prudlo goes farther by sketching the political and ecclesiastical context. Amidst intense papal-imperial power struggles in northern-Italian cities, Peter's career was deeply conditioned by the burgeoning papal offensive against Catharism (often enmeshed with Ghibelline politics), and by the supportive role the young Dominican Order developed in it. Tapping into the devotional fervor of his time, he made the defense of orthodoxy his central enterprise. Yet the author also seeks to nuance his portrait by removing accretions added by later hagiography. The saint does not deserve his reputation as persecuting inquisitor, he argues: he barely had time to grow into that role. Rather, his power rested on his charisma, oratorical skills, and penitential piety. Undoubtedly, however, his combativeness nourished resentments that led to his assassination.
The book's second, more innovative part examines the ways in which Peter's posthumous image and cult were constructed over time. Here, too, the author argues that the simple association of Peter Martyr with the Inquisition is contrary to the earliest hagiographic evidence: it was elaborated only in the fourteenth century. The saint who emerged from a near-immediate canonization (1253) was a preacher, an imitator of Christ, and, especially, a martyr. He thus deserved the ultimate prize of sanctity, the triple crown. The Dominicans seized on this unique opportunity to promote their order, in evident competition with the Franciscans, and articulate their evolving identity. While initially contested in some quarters, Peter became a founding saint on a par with Dominic. His relics and memory were the jealously guarded vehicles which spread his cult across Europe and beyond, in the process reinforcing Dominican influence. That did not prevent others—monarchs, cities, lay associations, and individuals—from appropriating the saint for their own purposes, whether it be protection of dynasty and community, assistance in childbirth, or miraculous healings. The saint's features became progressively diffuse; thus the image of the inquisitor-saint, itself a product of the later reception, was one among many. For Prudlo the miracle tales—along with bequests and other evidence of lay piety—demonstrate the genuine popularity of Peter's cult.
This argument goes to the heart of the book. The author criticizes historians like G. G. Merlo, M. Goodich, and J. Le Goff for seeing behind Peter's sanctity largely political motives, stressing opposition at the expense of devotion, and painting a stereotypical inquisitor-saint. While this charge is a bit overdrawn, Prudlo's effort has considerable merit: his book enriches our understanding of Peter's life and, especially, the dynamic evolution of his cult. At times his presentation appears aimed at distancing Peter from the most violent aspects of the anti-heresy campaigns, while emphasizing the aggressions of his opponents. The insistence on his brief tenure as inquisitor has this effect, as does the point that his “only recorded official activity” in the office was “an act of clemency” (61). Regardless, the evidence offered here only confirms Peter's critical involvement in the Cathar repression—including an infamous street battle in Florence in 1245—from the beginning of his public career. In this sense, Prudlo's revisionism is less dramatic than it might seem.
As he goes about establishing Peter's flesh-and-bones persona and the legitimacy of his cult, the author is nonetheless open to some blind spots. His lack of interest in the Cathar perspective is disappointing, especially so if the assumption of Peter's origins in that community is correct. But as the first chapter title puts it, the latter simply constituted a “false start,” and the author passes up the opportunity to examine Peter's own views on the subject by failing to analyze the Summa Against the Heretics (whose attribution to Peter he accepts) in any detail. Likewise, readers may find the discussion of opposition to Peter's cult all too limited; intriguing evidence of controversy in the miracle tales is relegated to a few pages concluding the final chapter. The author's priority has been to demonstrate, against presumed skeptics, that “Peter is a saint pure and simple” (170). In its curiously apologetic overtones, his book sets itself apart from most recent studies of medieval sanctity. The epilogue ruefully notes that the saint fell out of favor in the twentieth century and in 1969 was “summarily dropped” from the Roman liturgy, “more for imagined sins than historical or devotional reasons” (174). The book concludes with a very useful apparatus (175–262) providing discussion and translations of key primary sources.
