PIETRO PITTORE (Petrus Pictor). - Poet and theologian, of whom detailed biographical information is lacking. He lived between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th and was a canon of St-Omer.
He wrote several Latin poems of considerable merit: Contra simoniam (ed. H. Boehmer, in MGH, Libelli de lite, III, pp. 708-10): a violent attack against the Roman clergy; De vita Pilati; De illa quae impudenter Jilum suum adamavit: an evocation of the drama of Phaedra and Hippolytus; De laude Flandriae (Flandria dulce solum), with an allusion to contemporary events. Far more important is the composition De sacra Eucharistia or De Sacramento altaris (different recension: Busée in PL 207, 1135-54 [among the works of Pietro di Blois], preferable: Beaugendre, ibid., 171, 1195-1212 [among the works of Ildeberto di Lavardini]): an exposition of Eucharistic doctrine, inspired Pascasio Radberto (v.).