"Plus quam vivus fecerim mortuus faciam contra eos". Vita morte e culto di Pietro da Verona a Milano

Research into the events surrounding Peter of Verona, a Dominican friar killed on the road between Como and Milan in the Spring of 1252 and canonized less than a year later, has produced important studies in the last few years, which now allow us to draw a more precise picture. The impression remains, however, that the reconstruction of the life of the person who was to be venerated as St. Peter the Martyr – both in its hagiographical and historiographical versions, though in opposite senses – is infl uenced by the importance of his destiny post mortem. This paper aims to clarify Peter’s position in the religious and political Milanese chequer board, and more generally, in that of northern Italy in the mid thirteenth century, to shed light on the conspiracy which was to lead to his killing. It also takes into consideration a number of documents, which scholars have so far tended to neglect, regarding the Milanese lay confraternities, whose foundation is made to date back to Peter himself, which appear to shed light on these aspects. The picture which emerges shows a substantial continuity between Peter’s activities in life and the promotion of his cult after his death, in the wider strategies of the Dominican Order and the Papacy.