after being abbot for a short time of a monastery in Calabria returned to France; and of Ernald, a nephew, who became abbot of S. Laumer at Blois.[1]
Peter's name suggests that he was born at Blois: yet in a letter which he writes in 1176 to John of Salisbury, the bishop-elect of Chartres (Ep. 223), he speaks of having received ' all the sacraments of the Christian faith ' in the church of the Virgin there; so that unless his baptism was deferred, we should naturally think of Chartres as his birthplace.[2] The date of his birth may be placed about 1135: this would agree with the statement that he was offered more than one bishopric when he was in Sicily in 1168, and would make him a little over seventy when he died.
Where he obtained his first education we are not told; but he gives us (Ep. 101) some interesting details of his early studies. When he wrote Latin verses as a boy, his themes were taken from history and not from fable. Besides the ordinary school books he read much history;[3] and, in view of the particular department of literature in which he achieved his permanent fame, we may note that he was made as a youth to learn by heart as models of epistolary style the letters of Hildebert bishop of Le Mans. The clever and ambitious lad presently found his way to Paris, where he continued his studies and supported himself by teaching. From Paris he went to Bologna, where he studied both canon and civil law (Epp. 8, 26). Near the beginning of the pontificate of Alexander III he visited the Roman court; and on the way thither his party was captured by the adherents of the antipope, Victor IV (1159-64) and Peter himself narrowly escaped being thrown into prison.[4] He returned to Paris, and devoted his whole attention to the study of theology. He found himself in some pecuniary difficulty, but he was relieved by the timely liberality of his friend Reginald the archdeacon of Salisbury.
- ↑ Christiana the nun, to whom Peter writes Ep. 36, is generally regarded as his sister: but 'carissima soror' in the salutation and 'dilectissima soror' at the end of the letter need not imply such relationship.
- ↑ The phrase may be merely a rhetorical way of saying that he received minor orders and the diaconate at Chartres: cf. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, i. 14 'cui omnia benedictionum sacramenta praeter sacerdotium contulisset'. In Ep. 49 he seems to speak of Chartres as 'domus nativitatis': but this again is rhetorical, and may refer more generally to France.
- ↑ He enumerates Trogus Pompeius, Josephus, Suetonius, Hegesippus, Q. Curtius, Tacitus, and Livy. But he has evidently taken over this list from John of Salisbury, Policr. viii. 18: some of these authors he can hardly have known except by name.
- ↑ Ep. 48. This must have occurred before April 1162, when Alexander took refuge in France. Peter in his metaphorical manner says that he left his garment behind him and was let down over the wall in a basket!
