Peter of Verona

Peter of Verona (29 October 1205 – 6 April 1252), also known as Saint Peter Martyr and Saint Peter of Verona, was a 13th-century Italian Catholic priest. He was a Dominican friar and a celebrated preacher. He served as Inquisitor in Lombardy, was killed by an assassin, and was canonised as a Catholic saint 11 months after his death — the fastest canonisation in history.

Biography Thomas Agni da Lentini, Dominican archbishop of Cosenza, and later patriarch of Jerusalem, was the first to write a biography of Peter of Verona. He lived with Peter of Verona for many years and had been his superior.

Peter was born in the city of Verona into a family perhaps sympathetic to the Cathar heresy. Peter went to a Catholic school and later to the University of Bologna, where he is said to have maintained his orthodoxy and, at the age of fifteen, met Dominic of Osma. Peter joined the Order of the Friars Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, and became a celebrated preacher throughout northern and central Italy.

From the 1230s on, Peter preached against heresy, and especially Catharism, which had many adherents in thirteenth-century Northern Italy. Pope Gregory IX appointed him General Inquisitor for northern Italy in 1234, and Peter evangelized nearly the whole of Italy, preaching in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Genoa, and Como. In 1251, Pope Innocent IV recognised Peter's virtues, among them the severity of his life and doctrine, his talent for preaching, and his zeal for the orthodox Catholic faith, and appointed him Inquisitor in Lombardy. He spent about six months in that office, and it is unclear whether he was ever involved in any trials. His one recorded act was a declaration of clemency for those confessing heresy or sympathy to heresy.

In his sermons, he denounced heresy and also those Catholics who professed the faith by words, but acted contrary to it in deeds. Crowds came to meet him and followed him; conversions were numerous,

Carino struck Peter's head with an axe and then attacked Domenico. Peter rose to his knees and recited the first article of the Apostles' Creed. Offering his blood as a sacrifice to God, according to legend, he dipped his fingers in it and wrote on the ground: Credo or Credo in unum Deum,

Once, when preaching to a vast crowd under the burning sun, the heretics challenged him to procure shade for his listeners. According to the legend, a cloud overshadowed the audience as he prayed. St Peter the Martyr's feast day is 6 April although his Dominican brothers celebrate it on 4 June. From 1586, when the feast day was inserted in the General Roman Calendar, to 1969, when it was removed on the grounds of the limited importance now attached to the saint internationally, the celebration was on 29 April; 6 April, the date of his death, was not used because it would too often conflict with the Easter Triduum. The Church of Santa Maria Antiqua in Verona is co-entitled to him.

Carino, the assassin, later repented and confessed his crime. He converted to the Catholic church and eventually became a lay brother in the Dominican convent of Forlì. He is the subject of a local cult as Blessed Carino of Balsamo.

The sculptures on the great door of S. Anastasia, the Dominican Church in Verona, represent scenes from the life of St. Peter Martyr.