Petrus Venerabilis

Abbot Peter and three monks (illumination 13th century)

Petrus Venerabilis , Peter the Venerable (* 1092 or 1094 in Auvergne , † December 25, 1156 in Cluny ), was a theologian and reformer of the monasteries of the Middle Ages . The Martyrologium Romanum counts him among the blessed of the Catholic Church ; his feast day is December 25th.

Life

Petrus' birth name is Pierre Maurice de Montboissier. The Burgundian noble family Montboissier was closely connected with the Benedictine monastery Cluny in Burgundy. He was a great-nephew of Abbot Hugo I. The Montboissier family founded a Cluniac monastery. Therefore, even before his birth, Peter was promised the Cluny monastery, he was thus an oblate , and as such he entered the Sauxillanges monastery , which was a Cluny priory , at the age of 16 . He became prior of Vézelay and Domène before being elected ninth abbot of Cluny in 1122, at the age of 28. His predecessor left him with huge financial and disciplinary problems. He was to hold the office of abbot of Cluny for 34 years.

Through his teaching letters he made a decisive contribution to leading the monasteries of his time back to more prayer and asceticism . Cluny experienced a theological and economic boom under his reign. In his correspondence , u. a. with Bernhard von Clairvaux , he spoke out in favor of reconciliation and advocated non-violence. After the double election of Popes in 1130, he supported Innocent II. Peter granted refuge to the philosopher and poet Petrus Abelardus, accused of heresy .

Peter was not afraid to express criticism in his letters, but he did so in a sensitive and therefore acceptable manner. In a "fraternal rebuke" (Admonitio Fraternalis or Correctio fraterna ) , he followed the recommendations of the Bible . So he wished z. B. a certain Master Peter after the expression of his respect and his rebuke "a watchful eye" (oculum videntem) and attentive hearing and signed as a "humble abbot".

On the other hand, he did not spare people of other faiths in his treatises, especially the Jews, who for him were Christ's enemies. When a special tax was to be introduced in 1146 to finance the Second Crusade , he said: "It would not do to go against the Saracens as long as the Jews, the real enemies of Christ, are spared in our midst."

Peter von Cluny commissioned the first translation of the Koran into Latin from the Translation School in Toledo , which was completed in 1143. Translators were Robert von Ketton , the baptized Jewish scholar Petrus Alfonsi and the monk Hermann von Carinthia ; a Moor named Mohammed was also involved. Peter von Poitiers revised the finished text stylistically.

King Friedrich Barbarossa awarded him the title Venerabilis in 1153 , which translates as "the venerable". The abbot died in Cluny on Christmas Day 1156.

Petrus Venerabilis and Cluny

Cluny formed the center of a monastic empire and was considered a center of the renewal of monasticism. Cluny enjoyed exceptional privileges and was under the direct protection of the Roman pontiff . About 10,000 monks in more than 600 monasteries belonged to this monastic realm. Cluny's monks were elected popes and cardinals or advised emperors and kings. On the threshold of the 12th century, Cluny was a prominent place in Western Europe.

Peter was shaped by Cluny when the monastic kingdom was at the height of its power. Unlike other places of its time in Europe, Cluny was a place that upheld the values ​​of art and science. Thus Peter stood in the tradition of this influential institution. Peter went down in history as the last of a series of great abbots of Cluny.

The position of his office was extremely important for the practical implementation, especially for the works that were summarized in the Collectio Toletana , also called Corpus Toletanum , the content of which will be discussed later. Being abbot of the most famous and important monastery at the time put him in an extraordinary position. His office gave him immunity from external attacks. This enabled Peter to devote himself to things that the vast majority of European scholars viewed with disinterest or even suspicion.

The trip to Castile and León

The first trip to the north of the Iberian Peninsula was made by Peter for various reasons. So he wanted to visit the Cluniac monasteries. He also accepted an invitation from Alfonso VII , from whom he hoped to solve Cluny's enormous financial problems. From Peter's letters one can also give the impression that he was on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela , but this cannot be said with certainty due to the route he traveled and seems rather improbable.

The journey formed the basis and the beginning of Peter's intensive engagement with Islam . During this stay on the Iberian Peninsula, the interface between Christians and Muslims in Europe, Peter “perceived the relationships between Christians and Muslims with a lasting impression”. So it was not surprising that it was here that the company for translating the Koran found its origin, because this is where the Islamic texts were found and the competence to translate them was also found here. In order to make Islamic teaching accessible to the Christian world, Peter not only had the Koran translated, but also other Islamic texts, which were supplemented by texts from his pen and compiled under the title "Collectio Toletana" or "Corpus Toletanum". On behalf of Peter, the first Latin translation of the Koran was made in 1142.

An important result of the trip to Spain was the alleviation of Cluny's financial problems. A much more important result was Peter's initialization of the Islam project. This marks a momentous event in the intellectual history of Europe. The abbot of Cluny devised, planned and financed the project to study Islam.

The image of Islam in the Middle Ages

The image of Islam before Peter

It was the crusade movement that drew Christians' attention to the Islamic religion. But even before the Crusades, a lot was known about Islam. This knowledge came partly from Byzantine sources, and partly from Christian-Muslim contacts in Al-Andalus . The picture that developed from this was consistently very confused. Saracens were considered idolaters who owned more than half of the earth and worshiped Mohammed, who was considered a magician. It was also believed that Islam allowed sexual freedom.

The "Golden Age of the Islamic Problem" began around the year 650 and ended around 1570. For medieval people, this problem affected all levels of everyday life. From a theological point of view, it was necessary to counter this problem by shedding light on the darkness of ignorance about the nature of Islam. But this could only be achieved by becoming aware of the facts; these in turn required linguistic and literary knowledge. Because of the feeling of inferiority, because of the threat that medieval people saw in Islam, an objective approach was out of the question. For the people "there was too much at stake to have room for such tolerance". In particular, the people in northern France, Flanders and Germany, especially in those countries that had no direct contact with the Muslims, developed an enormous hatred. It is against this background that one must consider the image of Islam in the Middle Ages.

Peter's image of Islam

Petrus Venerabilis was one of the most important people of this time who helped to straighten out the image of Islam. Peter had the Koran translated and then wrote a presentation of Islamic teaching himself, the Summa totius haeresis saracenorum , as well as a refutation in the Liber contra sectem sive haeresim saracenorum . Together with the translations, it was the first scientific work on Islam. The Summa in particular was free of the gross errors that had manifested themselves in the centuries before. This new approach did a lot to create a new image of Islam.

Peter worked at a time that was dominated by the successful 1st Crusade. With that, the image of Islam began to change. With the conquest of Jerusalem, the feeling of inferiority that had arisen towards Islam in the West was pushed into the background. This feeling has been supplanted in favor of a feeling of triumph over Islam. In the past, Western Christendom feared the military strength of the Saracens, but now the Norman knights have proven they were up to them. Against the background of the crusade and the suppression of Christianity's self-doubts, in a time of triumph over Islam, Peter, in contrast to his predecessors, begins to deal systematically with Islam. The Abbot of Cluny countered the 500 years of ignorance and polemics in the dispute with Islam. He objectified it and took a more scientific attitude towards Islam. Peter was the first to lay the "foundations for dealing with Islam".

Peter was one of the few people in the Middle Ages who was not entirely enthusiastic about the direction the idea of ​​the Crusade was taking. Nonetheless, he was a Christian, and as a Christian of his day it was a legitimate goal for him, too, to gain free access to the holy places of Christianity. Nor should it be forgotten that he was more disgusted than his contemporaries with paganism and heresy. Yet for Peter the Muslims were enemies only insofar as they rejected "His redemption". Should the Muslims recognize this, however, then for Peter the enmity would also be settled. So he clearly opposed the cold-blooded murder on the Crusades. In a letter to King Louis VII he wrote: "God does not want cold-blooded murder or slaughter."

Furthermore, Peter even said that the Muslims are actually better than the Jews . He justified this as follows: "... that Christ was born of a virgin, and they agree with us on many things about him." For Peter, the Muslims were closer to Christianity than the Jews. The abbot saw in Islam a heresy of Christianity; he saw it as the most important heresy - and the only one to which Christianity had not yet found an adequate solution. Peter did not go into the opposition for the crusade or crusades; as mentioned, they went in the wrong direction for him. Because for him the real goal, the central Christian interest, lay in the conversion of Muslims.

The first Latin translation of the Koran

Immediately after his return from Spain, Peter sent the translation of the Koran to Bernhard von Clairvaux . In an accompanying letter to Bernhard, Peter described the intentions he intended with his translation and also gave the names of those who were involved in the translation.

Peter saw in the translation of the Koran a component of his "project [s] to refute Islam". It was an urgent concern for him to stop the spread of Islam. He commissioned Robert von Ketton and Hermann von Dalmatien with the translation. Then there were Petrus Toletanus and Petrus von Poitiers, the secretary of Petrus Venerabilis, as well as a Muslim named Mohammed the Saracen, about whom nothing more is known. The translation was completed a good year after the assignment. Immediately after returning from Spain, Petrus sent a translation to Bernhard von Clairvaux. Overall, the translation is not free of errors, because the difficulty of the Arabic language and the often encrypted expression of the Koran led to incorrect translations, arbitrary changes and omissions of suras .

Peter did not want to oppose Islam with violence but with the power of the word. In this context, the “Koran translation can be seen as a basic work for refuting Islam”. The translation thus joins the series of writings that Peter called christianum armarium . By this, Peter understood a Christian library that is to "serve as a weapon against these enemies"; but certainly not only as a weapon in the offensive sense, but also as a kind of protective shield, which should protect Christianity. Peter's main aim , which he pursued with the translation and the Collectio Toletana , was to provide European Christians with accurate information about Islam. He tried this with a short treatise on Islamic teaching, which he gave the title Summa totius haeresis saracenorum .

literature

• Neithard Bulst: Petrus Venerabils . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 1985-1987.
• Richard Fletcher: An Elephant for Charlemagne: Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages , Darmstadt 2005.
• Reinhold F. Glei (ed.): Schriften zum Islam / Petrus Venerabilis ( Corpus Islamo-Christianum , Series Latina, 1), Altenberge 1985.
• José Martínez Gázquez, Óscar de la Cruz, Cándida Ferrero, Nàdia Petrus: The Latin translations of the Koran in Spain. In: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Alexander Fidora (ed.): Jews, Christians and Muslims: Religionsdialoge im Mittelalter , Darmstadt 2004.
• Nicolaus Heutger :  Petrus Venerabilis. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 382-383.
• Karl-Josef Kuschel : From quarrel to competition. Lessing and the Challenge of Islam , Düsseldorf 1998.
• J. Kritzeck: Peter the Venerable and Islam , Princeton 1964.
• Siegfried Raeder: Islam and Christianity: A Historical and Theological Introduction , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001.
• Richard W. Southern: The Islamic image of the Middle Ages . Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, Mainz 1981.
• William Montgomery Watt: The Influence of Islam on the European Middle Ages , Berlin 2001.
• CA Wilkens: Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny: A Monks-Life (1857) 308p. Digital at archive.org
• Joachim Wollasch: Cluny - "Light of the World": The rise and fall of the monastic community , Zurich et al., 1996.

Web links

• Literature by and about Petrus Venerabilis in the catalog of the German National Library
• (from Peter's correspondence)
• Catechesis of Pope Benedict XVI. about St. Petrus Venerabilis

predecessor	Office	successor
Hugo II	Abbot of Cluny 1122-1156	Hugo III