PIETRO delle CELLE (Petrus Celiensis). — Benedictine, writer on spirituality, born in Champagne around 1115, died at Chartres on 20 February 1183. He was elected abbot of Moûtière-la-Celle (diocese of Troyes) around 1145; in 1162 he assumed governance of the abbey of S. Remigio at Reims, and in 1181 was appointed bishop of Chartres. His writings, with their easy and imaginative style, the fruit of experience, make the Cellese more a witness than a treatise-writer of Benedictine spirituality.
Among his 177 Epistolae (PL 202, 405–636), those written to friends scattered throughout Christendom stand out. The Sermones (cols. 637–926) reflect the inner state of his devout soul; the Tractatus are an allegorical explanation of certain biblical themes: in De panibus (cols. 929–1046), all the allusions in Sacred Scripture to bread acquire the value of a sign, at least implicitly, of the Eucharist; in De tabernaculo Moysi (cols. 1047–84; also ed. Leclercq [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 147–67), the Church becomes the vestibule of heaven; in Commentarius in Ruth (of which Leclercq, pp. 168–73, edited the conclusion), an extensive mystical exegesis is given of Christ’s relations with the Church and the Virgin. His monastic opuscula are noteworthy: De puritate animae (ed. Leclercq, pp. 174–92), addressed to novices; De coscientia (ibid., pp. 193–230), written at Alchero di Chiaravalle (v.), is a treatise on the process by which the soul becomes interiorized through the imitation of Christ. He also wrote De afflictione et lectione (ibid., pp. 231–39) and De claustrali disciplina (PL 200, cols. 1099–1146).