Saint Peter of Tarentaise (1102-1174)

Birth at Saint-Maurice-l'Exil

Peter was born around 1101 or 1102 at Saint-Maurice-l'Exil, a small Dauphiné locality near Vienne, on the banks of the Rhône.^[1] The early sources differ by a year on the exact date — a common gap for a child of modest condition at the turn of the twelfth century, whose birth was recorded in no register — but they agree on the place and the setting: a rural, probably peasant family of the diocese of Vienne.^[2] The Cistercian historian Anselme Dimier, who devoted a study to the saint in 1935, challenged certain details of this reputation for poverty handed down by later tradition, without calling the family's humble origins into question.^[3]

The child who knew the whole psalter

Tradition remembers one precise trait of his childhood, handed down from the earliest biographers: as a young shepherd, guarding his family's flocks, he memorized the entire psalter before he could even really read.^[4] The anecdote, sober in appearance, says much about the popular religious formation of the medieval Dauphiné — a child could carry within him, by ear and memory alone, the official prayer of the Church — and it heralds the dominant trait of the saint's whole life: a biblical interiority acquired before any office, before any title, before any honour.

A family turned toward God

Peter's vocation was not an isolated case in his family. One of his brothers, who would become Saint Lambert, became abbot of Chézery himself; another brother entered Bonnevaux as a monk; his mother and a sister joined the monastery of Betton around 1132.^[5] This collective scattering into religious life, typical of many twelfth-century families touched by the Cistercian renewal, illuminates the spiritual climate in which Peter grew up: here vocation was not an individual accident, but the fruit of a whole family atmosphere turned toward the cloister.

Bonnevaux, sixth daughter of Cîteaux

According to the chronicler Joseph-Antoine Besson, Peter entered religion around the age of twenty, in 1118, before making his formal profession at the monastery of Bonnevaux, in the Dauphiné, in 1121 — accompanied, according to some sources, by his father and two of his brothers.^[6] Bonnevaux had been founded in 1117 by Guy of Burgundy, Archbishop of Vienne — the future Pope Callistus II —, consecrated in 1119, and ranked among the very first daughter abbeys of Cîteaux: it in turn founded more than a dozen houses across south-eastern France during the twelfth century.^[7] It was thus in the liveliest surge of the nascent Cistercian reform — the same generation that saw Saint Bernard turn Clairvaux into the spiritual hearth of the West — that Peter embraced monastic life.

First abbot of Tamié (1132)

Eleven years after entering Bonnevaux, in 1132, Peter was sent to found a new abbey at Tamié, in Savoy, in the mountains of the Tarentaise, on land given by the Chevron family: he became its first abbot, at thirty.^[8] Tamié is Bonnevaux's third foundation, after Mazan (1122) and Montpeyroux (1126) — Bonnevaux would found still others, including Léoncel (1137) and Valmagne (1145).^[9] Leading a Cistercian foundation in a place as harsh as the Savoy Alps demanded, from the very first day, a capacity for government that the young abbot would exercise for nine years.

The hospice of the Alps

At Tamié, Peter applied to the letter the Cistercian spirit of welcome and shared poverty: he had a hospice built for travellers crossing the Alpine passes, in a region where traversing the mountains regularly endangered the lives of pilgrims and merchants.^[10] This gesture, seemingly secondary in the biography of a future archbishop, is in reality the matrix of all that followed: concrete charity toward the most exposed would remain, until his death, the thread running through his government — first of an abbey, then of an entire diocese.

Succeeding a deposed usurper

In 1141, the cathedral chapter of Moûtiers called Peter to succeed on the archiepiscopal see of Tarentaise a certain Isdraël, whom Rome had deposed as a usurper.^[11] The diocese, a vast Alpine territory in the upper Isère valley, suffered from serious disciplinary and administrative laxity: the new archbishop inherited a task of recovery, not a quiet see.

The injunction of the General Chapter and the role of Saint Bernard

Peter first refused. He yielded only after a formal injunction of the General Chapter of Cîteaux, the supreme authority of the order, which a Cistercian monk could not legitimately evade — and among the abbots sitting in that General Chapter were friends and saints he venerated, foremost among them Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, whose moral weight in every episcopal appointment touching the Cistercian order of that generation was decisive.^[12] The trait is consistent with everything else in the saint's life: Peter never sought any office, and never accepted fleeing any once it had been legitimately imposed on him by obedience.

Peter II — not to be confused with Peter I or Innocent V

The name "Peter of Tarentaise" designates, in Church history, three distinct persons, too often confused at a quick reading. Our saint is called Peter II precisely because he succeeds a first homonymous archbishop, Blessed Peter I of Tarentaise, former third abbot of La Ferté (c. 1120-1132) then Archbishop of Tarentaise until his death in 1140, himself also venerated as a saint in the diocese.^[13] A third "Peter of Tarentaise", finally, was born nearly half a century after our saint's death: a Dominican, professor at the University of Paris, Archbishop of Lyon then cardinal, he was elected pope under the name of Innocent V in 1276 — the very first Dominican pope in history — and is venerated today as blessed.^[14] The table below fixes the landmarks.

Restoring the discipline of the clergy

Become archbishop, Peter applied to his diocese the Cistercian principles he had learned as abbot: he removed unworthy clerics, supported priests faithful to their charge, reorganized the administration and finances of the see, and revived formation and teaching in a region where ecclesiastical discipline had grown seriously lax before him.^[15] His method was not that of a jurist shut up in his palace: it went through regular pastoral visits, which took him in person to the remotest parishes of the Alpine valley.^[16]

The "pain de mai"

It is to this period that the most durably famous work of his episcopate dates, the "pain de mai" ("May bread"). His biographer, Geoffrey of Auxerre, the Cistercian monk who wrote his Life some ten years after his death, depicts the archiepiscopal household as a veritable hospice open in every season, and even more during the three months before the harvest, when reserves run out.^[17]

Peter instituted in particular a daily distribution of soup and bread during the twenty-eight most critical days of the month of May — the hardest time of year for mountain peasants, when winter reserves are exhausted and the summer harvest has not yet come.^[18] This calculated charity, conceived not as an occasional gesture but as a recurring institution, would cross the centuries in the popular memory of the Tarentaise under the very name it still bears: the May bread.^[19]

The monk's habit beneath the vestments

Another detail, handed down by tradition, says just as much about the man: become archbishop, Peter refused to lay aside the monastic habit, wearing it beneath the episcopal vestments when the liturgy required.^[20] The gesture is not anecdotal in an age when the prestige of a metropolitan see was also measured by its splendour: Peter meant to remain, even beneath the mitre, what he had chosen to be at twenty — a poor, obedient, silent Cistercian monk.

Disappearance

After fourteen years of demanding government, in 1155, Peter suddenly disappeared, without leaving a trace.^[21] No source claims he was abducted or driven out: everything points to a personal decision, that of a man worn out by the weight of an office he had never desired, choosing to return, incognito, to the anonymity of the cloister.

Found again as an anonymous lay brother in Switzerland

He was found again about a year later, sheltered under an assumed name in a small Swiss Cistercian monastery, where he had himself admitted as a simple lay brother — that is, at the humblest rank of monastic life, that of the unlettered monks devoted to manual labour, far below the dignity a former archbishop could have claimed.^[22] The choice of lay-brother status, and not that of a simple choir monk, is significant in itself: Peter sought not only to flee his office, he sought to disappear in the most radical sense, even effacing the very rank he had held before his episcopate.

"Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." — Gospel according to Saint Luke^[23]

The reluctant return

Recognized, Peter was brought back to his see of Tarentaise. He resumed his office, not from a recovered taste for government, but from the same obedience that had led him to it fourteen years earlier.^[24] This episode, unique among the great episcopal figures of the twelfth century, earned Peter a reputation for extreme humility far beyond that of many more famous saints of his time: few archbishops of medieval Christendom ever attempted, in their lifetime, to vanish utterly from their office to become once more the humblest of brethren.

The schism and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa

Peter's final years were dominated by the great schism tearing the Western Church from 1159: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa backed a series of antipopes against the legitimate Pope Alexander III. Peter ranged himself unhesitatingly on Alexander III's side, and threw the full weight of his moral authority behind his cause.^[25] As papal legate, he exercised considerable diplomatic influence with monasteries, the counts of Savoy and the monarchs of Europe, travelling to Lorraine and Alsace to urge the faithful to remain loyal to the legitimate pope.^[26]

Diplomat between the kings of France and England

Peter also intervened as mediator between King Louis VII of France and King Henry II Plantagenet of England, whose rival kingdoms maintained permanent tensions throughout the second half of the twelfth century.^[27] This diplomacy of peace, exercised by a former monk who had asked nothing of either camp, illustrates the singular authority his reputation for holiness and disinterestedness had won him even with the powerful themselves.

The wisdom of the peacemaker

Of this tireless mission as conciliator, tradition reports a saying that would sum up his whole wisdom as peacemaker: refusing quarrels over material goods, which would lose a man both the riches of heaven and those of earth.^[28]

The final mission of peace

It was in the course of a fresh mission of pacification between the monarchs of France and England that Peter, already exhausted, contracted a brief but grave illness.^[29] He would never reach his destination.

Death on the road, near Saint Peter's Spring

Peter died on 14 September 1174 at Notre-Dame de Bellevaux Abbey, in Franche-Comté, surrounded by his Cistercian brethren.^[30] According to local tradition, he collapsed near a spring, about two kilometres from the abbey toward Chambornay — a spring that has borne his name ever since, "Saint Peter's Spring".^[31]

The scattered relics

As was customary for the great saints of the Middle Ages, Peter's body was shared among several communities entitled to his memory: Bellevaux kept the lower part of the body, placed in a gilded reliquary at the left altar of Cirey; the Tarentaise received the upper part of the body; Cîteaux Abbey received his right arm; and Tamié, the abbey he had founded and first governed, received his left arm.^[32] Closer to our own time, in 2008, a translation of relics brought part of the saint's body back to Tamié, a gesture testifying to a cult still very much alive eight centuries after his death.^[33]

The Life by Geoffrey of Auxerre

All that is known in detail of Peter's life rests on the Vita sancti Petri Tarentasiensis episcopi, written in Latin around 1184 — ten years after his death — by Geoffrey of Auxerre, the Cistercian monk who had been Saint Bernard of Clairvaux's secretary before becoming an abbot himself.^[34] The text was composed expressly to support the cause for canonization, with particular insistence on the miracles attributed to the saint after his death — a classic literary genre of medieval hagiography, in which the gathering of miracles aims as much at edifying the faithful as at convincing the Roman curia. The Life was published in the Acta Sanctorum (Maii II, Antwerp, 1680, pp. 320-345) and has come down to us through three manuscripts kept at Troyes, Munster and Saint-Omer.^[35]

The bull of Celestine III (10 May 1191)

Pilgrimages to Peter's tomb at Bellevaux multiplied swiftly after his death, accompanied by miracles recorded by the ecclesiastical authorities.^[36] Seventeen years after his death, Pope Celestine III canonized Peter by a bull dated 10 May 1191 — a relatively swift canonization for the time, a sign of the strength of the popular cult already formed around his tomb.^[37]

Liturgical feast and patronages

The date of Peter's liturgical feast varied with calendars and periods — the 11th, 14 September (the anniversary of his death, his dies natalis), or 10 May (the date of the bull) — before settling, in the most widespread usage today, on 8 May.^[38] He is venerated as patron of the diocese of Tarentaise (Moûtiers) and appears in the proper of the diocese of Saint-Claude.^[39]

Humility that flees honours

The most insistent spiritual lesson of Peter's life comes down to one word: humility. Not show humility, compatible with the peaceful exercise of a power accepted without resistance, but a humility so radical that it drove him, fourteen years an archbishop, to flee until he disappeared — not from ordinary administrative weariness, but from a sincere desire to return to the lowest rank of religious life. This humility directly rejoins the teaching of Saint Benedict, whose Rule — followed by the Cistercians in all its primitive rigour — makes humility the very foundation of all monastic life and the obligatory path toward God.^[40]

Charity that does not calculate

The second dominant trait of his spirituality is a concrete, daily, institutionalized charity — not a passing sentimental surge, but a methodical organization of almsgiving, from the hospice of Tamié to the May bread of Tarentaise. In Peter, charity is never separated from government: to govern, for him, is to feed. This conception rejoins the Cistercian doctrine inherited from Saint Bernard, for whom fraternal charity is the very measure of the authenticity of contemplative life.

An abbot who stayed a monk on the episcopal throne

Finally, Peter embodies a rare figure in medieval ecclesiastical history: that of the bishop who refuses to become anything other than what he was before his appointment. His monastic habit worn beneath the pontifical vestments is no picturesque detail: it sums up his whole implicit theology of pastoral office, understood not as a promotion but as a service rendered out of obedience, without ever changing anything of the servant's deep identity.

In an age when ambition and visibility are often presented as virtues, Saint Peter of Tarentaise recalls a disturbing truth: holiness never seeks power, even when called to exercise it. He teaches first that true obedience can coexist with a sincere desire for silence and self-effacement — accepting an office out of obedience never implies desiring it. He then shows that charity must become an institution, and not remain a sentiment: the May bread, distributed each year for twenty-eight days, is worth more than an occasional alms, because it answers a real and recurring need. He finally recalls that a man can govern an entire diocese, arbitrate between kings and legislate in a pope's name, while remaining, to his last day, the same poor monk who had memorized the psalter while guarding his sheep.

"Humility and the avoidance of glory is the way of the Gospel." — such, summed up in one sentence, could be the spiritual lesson Saint Peter of Tarentaise leaves to every Christian called to exercise responsibility.^[41]

• Saint Bernard of Clairvaux — the great Cistercian abbot whose moral authority weighed in Peter's appointment as archbishop, and the constant reference of his spirituality of charity.
• Saint Stephen Harding — the English founder of Cîteaux and of the Charter of Charity, at the origin of the order to which Peter devoted his entire life.
• Saint Aelred of Rievaulx — another great Cistercian abbot of the same century, Peter's almost exact contemporary, doctor of charity and friendship.
• Saint Thomas Becket — the martyr Archbishop of Canterbury, caught like Peter in the tensions of the same conflict between the English crown and the legitimate papacy.
• Saint Anselm of Canterbury — another great archbishop-monk of the same period, likewise called against his will to an episcopal office he had not sought.