Pier Matteo Petrucci

Italian cardinal, bishop, Oratorian, and mystical writer (1636–1701) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pier Matteo Petrucci, C.O. (20 May 1636 – 5 July 1701) was an Italian Oratorian priest, bishop of Jesi, cardinal, spiritual director, poet, and mystical writer. He was one of the principal Italian figures associated with the late seventeenth-century Quietist controversy. His writings on acquired contemplation, interior recollection, annihilation of self-will, pure love, and the relation between mystical experience and theological language drew on John of the Cross, Pseudo-Tauler, Louis de Blois, Jean de Saint-Samson, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and other traditions of Catholic mysticism.[1][2]

ChurchCatholic Church
DioceseJesi
In office14 April 1681 – 21 January 1691
PredecessorLorenzo Cibo
Quick facts His EminencePier Matteo Petrucci C.O., Church ...
His Eminence

Pier Matteo Petrucci

C.O.
Cardinal-Priest of San Marcello
Portrait of Cardinal Petrucci
ChurchCatholic Church
DioceseJesi
In office14 April 1681 – 21 January 1691
PredecessorLorenzo Cibo
SuccessorAlessandro Fedeli
Orders
Ordination14 March 1661
Consecration20 April 1681
by Alderano Cibo
Created cardinal2 September 1686
by Pope Innocent XI
RankCardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born20 May 1636
Jesi, Papal States
Died5 July 1701(1701-07-05) (aged 65)
Montefalco, Papal States
DenominationCatholic Church
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Petrucci was made bishop of Jesi in 1681 and cardinal by Pope Innocent XI in 1686. During the Roman campaign against Quietism, his writings were examined by the Roman Inquisition, propositions were extracted from them, and his works were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Unlike Miguel de Molinos, however, Petrucci made his retraction privately, retained his dignity as cardinal, and was not publicly degraded or imprisoned.[1][2]

Modern scholarship has increasingly treated Petrucci not merely as a derivative Quietist, but as a major representative of seventeenth-century Catholic mystical theology whose writings synthesized Dionysian apophaticism, Carmelite spirituality, Rhineland mysticism, and traditions of interior prayer.[2]

Early life and education

Petrucci was born at Jesi on 20 May 1636, the son of Giambattista Petrucci and Aurelia Stella. His family was originally from Siena and was connected with the noble Petrucci family. According to his early biographer Francesco Monacelli, Petrucci was a precocious student with gifts in music, singing, rhetoric, letters, poetry, composition, and teaching; his family house became a meeting-place for poets and literary culture.[1]

After his father's death, Petrucci studied law. He received a degree in utroque iure from the University of Macerata at the age of sixteen and, after returning to Jesi, became public lecturer in jurisprudence. His encounter with Cardinal Alderano Cibo, then bishop of Jesi, was decisive. Cibo opened his library to Petrucci and directed him toward theology, a turn Petrucci later described as central to his conversion from secular studies to religious life.[1]

Oratorian vocation

Petrucci became associated with the local Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, introduced at Jesi in 1646. He received the Oratorian habit on 2 February 1661, received minor orders the following day, and was ordained priest on 14 March 1661.[1]

His Oratorian life was marked by intensive study. He learned Greek, French, and Spanish, and undertook systematic study of Scripture, patristics, scholastic theology, and mystical literature. He also became a noted preacher and spiritual director. On 8 April 1678 he was elected superior of the Oratory at Jesi.[1]

Bishop and cardinal

In 1680, Cardinal Alderano Cibo proposed Petrucci to Pope Innocent XI for appointment as bishop of Jesi. Petrucci accepted, according to his own words, only under the absolute command of the pope. He was appointed bishop of Jesi on 14 April 1681 and consecrated in the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome on 20 April 1681 by Cibo, with Giacomo Altoviti, titular patriarch of Antioch, and Odoardo Cibo, titular archbishop of Seleucia in Isauria, serving as co-consecrators.[3] He entered his diocese on 20 May 1681.[1]

The diocese of Jesi then contained twenty-three parishes and more than two hundred priests. Petrucci undertook a vigorous programme of diocesan reform, including pastoral visitations, synods, and disciplinary measures for the clergy. His first pastoral visitation began on 24 June 1681, and he held a diocesan synod in 1683.[1]

Petrucci paid particular attention to women's monasteries, among which he exercised considerable influence as spiritual director. He supported and reorganized Carmelite religious life in and near Jesi, including a Carmelite foundation that became a centre of his spiritual teaching and correspondence.[1]

On 2 September 1686, Innocent XI created Petrucci cardinal, through the influence of Alderano Cibo. He became Cardinal-Priest of San Marcello on 9 June 1687.[3]

Mystical writings

Petrucci was a prolific spiritual writer. His early works reflect his activity as a spiritual director and his interest in a spirituality of denudation, inwardness, and the stripping away of self-will. His first printed work, La Vergine Assunta (1673), already shows the influence of Pseudo-Tauler and John of the Cross, who remained major models for his mystical vocabulary.[1]

In 1674, he published Meditationi, et esercitii di varie virtù... con un Trattato dell'annichilazione virtuosa, a work treating spiritual exercises and virtuous annihilation. In the following years he issued collections of spiritual letters and treatises. These letters, originally written in the context of spiritual direction, were arranged for publication so as to function as general manuals of spiritual teaching for directors, religious, and devout readers.[1]

Petrucci's most important mystical writings include I Mistici Enigmi disvelati (1680), La contemplazione mistica acquistata (1681), and Il Nulla delle creature e 'l Tutto di Dio (1682). These works developed his characteristic dialectic of the "All" of God and the "nothing" of the creature, together with themes of inward recollection, mystical silence, self-emptying, pure love, and contemplative union.[1][2]

McGinn describes Petrucci as one of the most sophisticated Italian mystical theologians of the late seventeenth century and argues that his writings stand within a much older current of Christian negative theology extending from Dionysius through medieval Rhineland mysticism to John of the Cross.[2]

Sources and influences

Petrucci's spirituality drew upon a wide range of mystical and theological authors. His principal sources included Pseudo-Tauler, John of the Cross, Louis de Blois, Jean de Saint-Samson, Teresa of Ávila, John of Ruysbroeck, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Jean Gerson, and Thomas Aquinas.[1][2]

McGinn notes that Petrucci cited at least forty-five theological and mystical authorities in the English translation of Christian Perfection, with Aquinas appearing more frequently than any other author.[2] He also observes that Dionysius appears repeatedly throughout I Mistici Enigmi disvelati, especially in connection with contemplative darkness, unknowing, and the transcendence of conceptual thought.[2]

John of the Cross was especially important for Petrucci. He used the seventeenth-century Italian translation of John's works, including paratextual and apocryphal materials then commonly associated with the Carmelite saint. From this tradition, he drew language of nothingness, non-possession, the suspension of discursive powers, and the movement from meditation to contemplation.[1]

Petrucci also drew heavily on Jean de Saint-Samson, whom he quoted extensively and often literally. Stroppa and Cavicchioli describe Jean de Saint-Samson as one of the authors closest to the heart of I Mistici Enigmi disvelati and Petrucci's mature mystical vocabulary.[1]

I Mistici Enigmi disvelati

I Mistici Enigmi disvelati was first published at Jesi in 1680. Its subtitle describes it as a concise declaration of a mystical sonnet by Petrucci himself. The treatise is therefore not simply a doctrinal manual, but a prose commentary on a poem whose opening line is "Svelami Amor che stravaganze io provo".[1]

The work uses the sonnet's paradoxes to explore the state of the contemplative soul. Its themes include experimental knowledge of God, obscure or "caliginous" vision, the soul's centres, mystical death, spiritual poverty, darkness, annihilation, and the relation between the creature's nothingness and God's all. Stroppa and Cavicchioli argue that the treatise belongs to the tradition of mystical writing in which poetry serves as the medium for paradoxical experience, while prose provides theological exposition.[1]

McGinn identifies the work as one of the clearest seventeenth-century Italian syntheses of apophatic mystical theology. He notes Petrucci's repeated use of the language of "nothingness", including formulations such as "Nothingness is the exemplar of the mystical life", and places these within a wider mystical tradition associated with figures such as Marguerite Porete, the anonymous The Evangelical Pearl, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, and John of the Cross.[2]

The second edition of the work, published at Venice in 1682, included significant revisions. The editors note especially the insertion of the humanity of Jesus Christ into Petrucci's account of the soul's centres. This revision may reflect the developing Quietist controversy, in which critics such as Paolo Segneri accused modern contemplatives of neglecting meditation on the humanity of Christ.[1][2]

Mystical theology

Petrucci's mystical theology centred on interior recollection, contemplative silence, and the annihilation of self-will before God. He distinguished between ordinary discursive knowledge and a higher contemplative awareness rooted in love, simplicity, and experiential union.[2]

A recurrent theme in his writings is the centro dell’anima or "centre of the soul", also described as the fondo or inward ground of the soul. Drawing on Dionysian and Rhineland mystical traditions, Petrucci described this centre as the deepest point of encounter between the soul and God, beyond images and discursive concepts.[2]

Petrucci frequently employed the language of annihilation and "nothingness". He argued that the creature, considered apart from God, was nothing, while God alone possessed true being. In advanced contemplation the soul passes through darkness, poverty, silence, and self-emptying toward loving union with God.[2]

McGinn argues that these themes belonged to a longstanding current of Catholic mystical theology and were not unique to seventeenth-century Quietism. He notes parallels in Dionysius, Pseudo-Tauler, Porete, Jean de Saint-Samson, and John of the Cross, as well as in earlier traditions of negative theology.[2]

Petrucci also emphasized pure love and passive receptivity before divine action. Critics interpreted some of these formulations as implying the suspension of ordinary moral effort or the abandonment of devotional practices, while defenders argued that they referred only to advanced contemplative states and presupposed traditional ascetical discipline.[2]

Quietist controversy

Petrucci's writings were criticized during the Italian Quietist controversy, especially by the Jesuit preacher Paolo Segneri. Segneri's Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell'orazione (1680) defended meditation and ascetical effort against forms of prayer associated with quiet and passivity.

Petrucci responded to the controversy in La contemplazione mistica acquistata (1681). Stroppa and Cavicchioli describe this work as a systematic theoretical apology for the position of Molinos and François Malaval on acquired contemplation, and therefore as an active intervention in the late seventeenth-century debate over mysticism.[1]

The controversy intensified after the arrest of Molinos in 1685 and the publication of the bull Coelestis Pastor in 1687. McGinn argues that Roman authorities increasingly treated apophatic and annihilation language with suspicion, even when similar themes had long existed within accepted mystical theology.[2]

Petrucci's case nevertheless differed from that of Molinos. Rumours circulated about spiritual extravagances in his direction of souls, especially among religious women, and hostile writers associated him with Beguards, Calvinists, Jansenists, and Quietists. The editors of I Mistici Enigmi disvelati distinguish documented doctrinal suspicion from accusations of moral misconduct, which they treat as unfounded and as the product of local rivalries and envy.[1]

The Holy Office investigation proceeded in three phases in 1687. A first list of fifty-nine propositions was extracted from Petrucci's writings, and thirteen more were later added. In the end fifty-four propositions were incriminated, and his works were placed on the Index. The censors did not agree on all points, and no consensus was reached on the two propositions judged by some to be heretical.[1]

McGinn notes that the censured propositions focused especially on passivity, resignation, annihilation, contemplation, pure love, and the role of reflex acts in the spiritual life. Some propositions were interpreted as minimizing meditation, sacramental practice, or moral resistance to temptation.[2]

Petrucci's retraction was set for 17 December 1687. Unlike the public abjuration of Molinos at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Petrucci's retraction was made privately in Cardinal Cibo's house in the presence of two witnesses. He was allowed to return to Jesi in January 1688.[1]

Later years and death

After the death of Innocent XI in 1689, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni was elected pope as Pope Alexander VIII. Ottoboni had been one of Petrucci's strongest opponents during the proceedings. Petrucci's position worsened: he was suspended from episcopal jurisdiction, recalled to Rome, and an apostolic vicar was sent to Jesi. The vicar remained there for four years and governed with notable severity toward the local clergy.[1]

The Italian biographical tradition records that Petrucci left the government of the diocese in 1691 and withdrew to Rome. Other modern accounts describe a later formal resignation from the see in January 1696, after a period of suspension and restricted episcopal authority.[1][3]

He participated in the conclaves of 1689, 1691, and 1700, which elected Pope Alexander VIII, Pope Innocent XII, and Pope Clement XI, respectively. He served as Camerlengo of the College of Cardinals from 7 December 1693 to 10 January 1695.[3]

According to Stroppa and Cavicchioli, Innocent XII later sought to rehabilitate Petrucci by imposing perpetual silence on the inquisitorial affair. Petrucci died at Montefalco on 5 July 1701, after suffering an attack of kidney stones.[1]

Works

  • La Vergine Assunta (1673)
  • Meditationi, et esercitii di varie virtù... con un Trattato dell'annichilazione virtuosa (1674)
  • Lettere e trattati spirituali e mistici (1676–1678)
  • Lettere brevi, spirituali e sacre (1682–1684)
  • I Mistici Enigmi disvelati (1680)
  • La contemplazione mistica acquistata (1681)
  • Il Nulla delle creature e 'l Tutto di Dio (1682)
  • Christian Perfection, Consisting in the Love of God (English translation, 1704)[4]

Episcopal succession

While bishop, he was the principal consecrator of:[5]

References

Further reading

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