Today is the 4th Sunday of Easter. The liturgical color is white.
Saints & Celebrations:
On April 29, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the Church. It is a memorial.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter of Verona, OP, martyr, who died in A.D. 1252. It is a Class III day.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Catherine of Siena, you can click here.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter, you can click here.
For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.
Readings:
To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.
Or you can click play to listen to them:
Devotional Information:
According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:
7. Some consequences derive immediately from what has been called to mind. If the prayer of a Christian has to be inserted in the Trinitarian movement of God, then its essential content must also necessarily be determined by the two-fold direction of such movement. It is in the Holy Spirit that the Son comes into the world to reconcile it to the Father through his works and sufferings. On the other hand, in this same movement and in the very same Spirit, the Son Incarnate returns to the Father, fulfilling his Will through his Passion and Resurrection. The “Our Father,” Jesus’ own prayer, clearly indicates the unity of this movement: the Will of the Father must be done on earth as it is in heaven (the petitions for bread, forgiveness and protection make explicit the fundamental dimensions of God’s will for us), so that there may be a new earth in the heavenly Jerusalem.
The prayer of Jesus6 has been entrusted to the Church (“Pray then like this”, Lk 11:2). This is why when a Christian prays, even if he is alone, his prayer is in fact always within the framework of the “Communion of Saints” in which and with which he prays, whether in a public and liturgical way or in a private manner. Consequently, it must always be offered within the authentic spirit of the Church at prayer, and therefore under its guidance, which can sometimes take a concrete form in terms of a proven spiritual direction. The Christian, even when he is alone and prays in secret, is conscious that he always prays for the good of the Church in union with Christ, in the Holy Spirit and together with all the Saints.7
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Jimmy – Are we able to draw any conclusions about the legitimacy or morality of the Inquisition because of the sainthood of St. Peter of Verona, who was an Inquisitor General in northern Italy?
I’ve been trying to do a little research to see if St. Peter of Verona was directly involved in any executions, but I haven’t turned up very much. The one specific piece of evidence I was able to find came from Henry Charles Lea’s “A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.” I’m aware of Lea’s anti-Catholic bias, and the section of his book that deals with Peter doesn’t give the level of detail I would like, really. He writes:
“In 1223 he [Peter] was sent to Milan, where, thus far, all the efforts of papal missives and legates had proved ineffectual to rouse the authorities and the citizens to undertake the holy work… All this changed when Piero de Verona made his influence felt. Not only did he cause Gregory’s legislation of 1231 to be adopted in the municipal law, but he stimulated the podesta, Oldrado da Tresseno, and the archbishop, Enrico de Sattala, to work in earnest. A number of heretics were burned, who were probably the first victims of fanaticism which Milan had seen since the time of the Cathari of Montefore.”
Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 208 (http://books.google.com/books?id=A3mC_8xON5kC&pg=PA208)
While I know that the Inquisitors themselves would not have been ordering the execution of heretics, the implications of Lea’s account of the events in Milan certainly imply that St. Peter encouraged the secular authorities to take heresy seriously, and in the context of the 13th century, encouraging the involvement of secular authorities in these matters would almost certainly mean handing them over for execution.
Does the fact that a canonized saint was a leader of the medieval Inquisition argue in favor of the opinion that the Inquisition was morally legitimate? Does St. Peter of Verona’s possible involvement in the execution of heretics mean that was morally legitimate as well?
(For better or for worse, St. Peter of Verona’s case doesn’t seem to speak at all on the question of Inquisitorial torture, or torture in general, since he predates the period when torture became legalized for Inquisitors.)
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on the matter! 🙂