BLOMEVENNA (BLOMMEVEEN), PETRUS. – Ascetic-mystical writer, also called Petrus Leydenis, after the city of Leyden (Holland), where he was born on 29 March 1466; he died in Cologne on 30 September 1530. He studied in Cologne, where he entered the Carthusian Order in 1489 and made his profession on 7 March 1490. In 1507 he was elected prior, and shortly thereafter also visitor of the Roman province. He held these offices until his death. During his long priorship, the Carthusian monastery of Cologne became a center of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
He left various writings in which he shows himself to be a disciple of Ruvsbroeck (v.) HEBER (v.). Of the latter he translated the Spiegel der Volumenheit into Latin, under the title Directorium contemplativorum (Cologne 1509), to which he prefixed a Formula brevis introductoria in vitam contemplativam of his own and added, also of his own composition, the Tractatus de effusione cordis and the Remedium contra distractiones. He later reworked the Formula brevis: Libellus introductorius in vitam contemplativam, cui titulus Directorium parvum contemplari inchoantium (there 1527). – He then wrote Enchiridion Sacerdotum... (there 1532); De Bonitate divina libri IV (there 1532), his principal work, in which he sets forth his method of contemplation. He also published apologetic treatises: Candela evangelica (1526); Assertio purgatorii
(1534); De auctoritate Ecclesiae (1534), all in Cologne. He also collaborated on the edition of the works of Dionysius the Carthusian (there 1530–35).