Abbot of the monastery of Cluny (1122-1156), and author of polemic texts against Islam.
Peter’s many and varying endeavors made him one of the major figures in twelfth-century Latin monasticism: management of the lands and moneys of one of Europe’s richest and most prestigious monasteries, care of his monks’ physical and spiritual needs, promotion of a Cluniac program of monastic reform in the face of sharp criticism from Cistercians, and authorship of a triptych of polemical treatises against Jews, Petrobrusian heretics, and Muslims. These activities were intended to nourish and defend a church of which monasteries like Cluny represented the summit, and whose aim was to lead the faithful from sin to salvation. Peter never promoted the crusade like his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux, although in various letters he praised the Templars for their relentless war against the Saracens and offered prayers for success of Louis VII of France and Roger II of Sicily in their wars against Muslims. Peter saw his own contribution to the fight against “Saracen error” as intellectual and spiritual. In 1142-1143 he traveled to Spain, where he commissioned a team of translators to produce a full, annotated Latin version of the Qur’an, along with translations of other Muslim texts. Peter himself subsequently composed two anti-Islamic tracts: the Summa totius haeresis Sara-cenorum (1143) described and vilified Islam to a Christian readership; the Contra sectam sive haeresim Saracenorum (1155-1156) attempted to refute Islam on its own terms and enjoined its Muslim readers to convert to Christianity.
-John Tolan
Bibliography
Petrus Venerabilis, “Liber contra secta, sive haeresim
Saracenorum and Summa totius haeresis Saracenorum,” in Schriften zum Islam. ed. and trans. Reinhold Glei (Altenberg: CIS, 1985).
Iogna-Prat, Dominique, Order and Exclusion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
Tolan, John, “Peter the Venerable on the ‘Diabolical Heresy of the Saracens,’” in The Devil, Heresy, and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed.
Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 345-367.
World History
