PETER of ROSSENHEIM. - Benedictine monastic reformer, preacher, and poet, b. c. 1380 at Wiechs near Rosenheim (hence also called PETRUS VIX), d. 7 Jan. 1433 at Basel. Around 1400 he was a student in Vienna; in 1403 he made monastic profession at Subiaco; in 1413 he was at Mondragone near Capua. He took part in 1416 in the Council of Constance; he was a conciliar orator in the affair of the Hussites. From 1418 to 1423 he was prior of the reformed monastery of Melk. He propagated the observance of Subiaco and Melk as a visitor in Austrian monasteries. From 1426 to 1428 he reformed the monasteries of southern Bavaria; in 1430 he was in Rome; in 1431 he was visitor at Salzburg. In 1432–33 he was a member of the deputation for reform at Basel. P. was the first propagator of Italian monastic Humanism in southern Germany.
His masterpiece is the widely diffused *Roseum memoriale divinorum eloquentium*: a poetic and mnemonic sum for preachers on the entire Holy Scripture, a literary monument of biblical mnemonics in Germany between 1489 and 1570, composed on the model of the *Margaritha* by the Dominican Guido da Ferrara at the encouragement of the cardinal legate at Vienna, Julius Brandis of Castiglione.
Numerous manuscripts of P. (poems, letters, sermons) from the monasteries of southern Germany ended up in the State Library of Munich and the Library of Melk. P. is not to be confused with PETRUS ROSENHAYMER O.P. (active in Regensburg, 1464).
The *Roseum* was printed in the Humanist presses of Bologna (1489), Nuremberg (1493), Leipzig (1505), Pforzheim (1510); then, under the title *Mnemosynon i.e. bibliorum memoriale carmen*, in Vienna 1524 and 1532, Strasbourg 1544, Stettin (1570); the verses on the New Testament were also published in the woodcuts of the *Ars memorandi* produced by Bavarian monasteries of the Melk reform, and in early Humanist printings (Pforzheim 1502 and 1504), under the title *Memorabilis evangelistarum figurae*, or *Rationarium Evangelistarum* (there 1505, 1507, 1508, 1510, Hagenau 1522, Antwerp 1532). Manuscripts of the *Roseum* are found in the Vatican Library and at Piacenza, seat of Cardinal Branda.