The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (†1252) (review)

In 1953, Dominican historian Antoine Dondaine bemoaned the fact that shadows obscured the "real" Peter of Verona, an inquisitor in northern Italy murdered in 1252 and canonized eleven months later as the Order of Preachers' second saint. Donald Prudlo's The Martyred Inquisitoris animated by much the same illuminating desire as Dondaine's seminal work on St. Peter Martyr. Prudlo seeks to uncover wholly the historical Peter, while narrating the tale of a cult in which he witnesses medieval vitality waning into modern debility and failure.

Part 1, "Peter of Verona," is a detailed, chronologically driven biography of the friar in two chapters. Prudlo carefully places Peter within the contexts of early- to mid-thirteenth century Italy: papal-imperial conflict, urban factions, the Cathar heresy that was interpenetrated with factional conflicts, and the burgeoning Dominican order with its mission against heresy. Part 2, "Peter Martyr," sketches in three chapters the development, expansion, and vibrancy of the slain inquisitor's cult via the Order of Preachers; the papacy; secular rulers; and the lay devout. Following a conclusion, an epilogue briefly charts the decline of Peter's cult, leading to its removal from the Catholic calendar in 1969. Two appendices—numbering together nearly ninety pages, about half as long as the book's body—introduce the source material and translate into English ten pertinent texts, including Peter's vitain the Acta sanctorum, occupying here more than sixty pages.

The Martyred Inquisitor's stated intent is chiefly corrective, restorative, and complementary. Peter "lacks a modern critical biography"; Dondaine should be updated and revised; more comprehensive and interdisciplinary treatment of the cult is now possible (pp. 5–10). The lacunaeappear devotional as well as scholarly: "This work will correct some of the misconceptions that led to Peter's removal from the [Catholic] liturgical roster" (p. 8). As did Dondaine, Prudlo evaluates Peter's genuine sanctity: "That Peter is a canonized saint is easy to establish. Indeed that Peter is a saint pure and simple is quite clear" (p. 170). Treating the hagiographical declaration that Peter never committed a mortal sin, Prudlo argues that although this is "a very early example of a common topossurely… still this was on the witness of the person who would presumably have known the state of Peter's soul best" (p. 83). This judgment provides both a justifying impetus for the book itself and a lens for interpreting the fate of the cult.

Prudlo limns a pious and charismatic preacher, popular even before his murder, who as a saint excited devotion that manifested itself in typical ways. Such would serve The Martyred Inquisitor's perceptible argument, in the spirit of Dondaine, that Peter deserved the medieval acclamation of which he was grievously stripped in 1969. But if Peter and his cult were thoroughly unexceptional, what do they tell historians anew about religion in the Middle Ages? Dondaine consciously moved against the expectation that such piety was incompatible with an inquisitor. Prudlo, however, while not sharing Dondaine's discomfort with inquisition, attenuates Peter's inquisitorial status as largely unimportant, a duty assumed at the very end of his life and a hagiographical focus only slowly sharpened by Dominicans. (Repeated here is R. F. Bennett's claim that master general Humbert of Romans condemned heresy inquisitions as officia odiosathat hindered the order's care of souls [p. 101]. Yves Dossat disproved this, demonstrating that Humbert's inquisitioneswere secular inquests.) Prudlo presents some distinguishing features, such as the newly deployed imagery of the triple crown and the role of Franciscan rivalry. The cult, which developed a strange association with childbirth, indicates lay creativity in adopting and adapting the saint. Most interestingly, a new saint permitted tyro political players in Italian cities to carve out independent sacred-patronage space not colonized by venerable families and interests. However, these...