Blomevenna (Blommeveen), Petrus

BLOMEVENNA (BLOMMEVEEN), PETRUS. - Ascetic-mystical writer, also called Petrus Leydenis, from the city of Leiden (Holland), where he was born on 29 March 1466; he died at Cologne on 30 September 1530. He studied at Cologne, where he took the Carthusian habit in 1489 and made his profession on 7 March 1490. In 1507 he was elected prior, and shortly afterwards also visitor of the Roman province. He held these offices until his death. During his long priorate, the Carthusian monastery of Cologne became a center of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

He left various writings in which he shows himself a disciple of Ruysbroeck (v.) and of Hendrik Herp (v.). Of the latter he translated into Latin the Spiegel der Volumenheit, under the title Directorium contemplativorum (Cologne 1509), to which he prefixed a Formula brevis introductoria in vitam contemplativam of his own, and to which he also added, likewise of his own, the Tractatus de effusione cordis and the Remedium contra distractiones. The Formula brevis was afterwards reworked by him: Libellus introductorius in vitam contemplativam, cui titulus Directorium parvum contemplari inchoantium (ibid. 1527). - He then wrote Enchiridion Sacerdotum... (ibid. 1532); De Bonitate divina libri IV (ibid. 1532), his principal work, in which he sets out his method of contemplation. He also published apologetic treatises: Candela evangelica (1526); Assertio purgatorii (1534); De auctoritate Ecclesiae (1534), all at Cologne. He also collaborated on the edition of the works of Dionysius the Carthusian (ibid. 1530-35).

Anselmo Musters