Peter of Verona

Peter of Verona, commonly called Saint Peter Martyr, was a Dominican priest and preacher of the thirteenth century, born at Verona in northern Italy. His family belonged to, or was closely associated with, the Cathar movement, a dualist current then influential in parts of Lombardy. He nevertheless received a Catholic schooling and later studied at the University of Bologna. There he entered the Order of Preachers as a young man. Later tradition holds that he received the habit in the time of Saint Dominic, who died in 1221. He was ordained and spent his adult life in the Dominican convents of northern Italy, under the usual vows of the order, including celibacy.

He served as prior of several houses, among them those of Como, Piacenza, and Asti, and acquired a wide reputation as a preacher against heresy, especially Catharism, in Lombardy and neighboring regions. Medieval accounts describe large audiences, public disputations, and conversions, as well as miracles attributed to him in his lifetime. The papacy relied increasingly on the Dominicans for the work of inquisition in Italy. In the early 1250s Pope Innocent IV gave Peter inquisitorial authority in the Milanese and Comascene territories. That office, and the convictions and penalties that followed from it, made him a target of those whose communities he pursued.

On 6 April 1252, as he traveled from Como toward Milan, hired assassins attacked him in woodland near Barlassina. Carino of Balsamo delivered a mortal blow to his head with a billhook or similar blade. Hagiographical tradition states that the dying friar wrote on the ground in his own blood the opening words of the Creed, Credo in unum Deum. A Dominican companion, usually named Dominic, was wounded in the same assault and died soon afterward. Peter's body was brought to Milan and interred in the church of Sant'Eustorgio, which became the center of his cult; a monumental tomb and, in the fifteenth century, the Portinari Chapel marked the shrine.

Innocent IV canonized him on 9 March 1253, only eleven months after the murder, an exceptionally rapid process that served both popular devotion and the papal campaign against heresy in Lombardy. There was no separate beatification of the later canonical type. His liturgical feast was for centuries observed on 29 April in the General Roman Calendar, in order to avoid the Easter season, while the Roman Martyrology keeps the anniversary of his death on 6 April. After the calendar reform of 1969 he is no longer in the General Roman Calendar but remains in the Martyrology and in Dominican and local calendars. He is customarily shown in art as a Dominican friar with a cleaver or knife set in his skull. He is venerated as patron of inquisitors and as a saint of his native Verona. Carino, the principal assassin, later converted, became a Dominican lay brother, and died at Forlì in the odor of sanctity.