ei totis fidei viribus resisterent et scriptis ac disputationibus esse detestandam ac damnabilem demonstrarent." That is, "that I may follow the custom of those Fathers, who passed over no heresy in silence ever, even the lightest (as I will thus call it), but rather resisted it with all the strength of their faith, and showed it, through writings and arguments, to be detestable and damnable." While his interpretation of Islam was basically negative, it did manage in "setting out a more reasoned approach to Islam…through using its own sources rather than those produced by the hyperactive imagination of some earlier Western Christian writers." Although this alternative approach was not widely accepted or emulated by other Christian scholars of the Middle Ages, it did achieve some influence among a limited number of Church figures, including Roger Bacon. At his weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square on 14 October 2009, Pope Benedict XVI used Peter as an example of compassion and understanding, citing Peter's governance of Cluny, diplomacy, and study of Islam. See also Qur'an translations Notes and references Further reading Constable, Giles. Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2 vols. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967. Goddard, Hugh. A History of Muslim-Christian Relations. Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2000. Peter the Venerable Against the Inveterate Obstinacy of the Jews, translated by Irven M. Resnick. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Peter the Venerable Writings Against the Saracens, translated by Irven M. Resnick. Washington D.C.:The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Kritzeck, J. Peter the Venerable and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Microsoft Encarta. 2005 ed., s.v. "Peter the Venerable." Southern, R.W. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Kenneth Stevenson, "The Transfiguration Sermon of Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny," in Melanie Ross and Simon Jones (eds), The Serious Business of Worship (London, Continuum, 2010), 78–87. Year of birth uncertain 1156 deaths 12th-century French people 12th-century French Roman Catholic priests Christian critics of Islam Cluniacs Folk saints French abbots French Benedictines