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St. Peter Damian
Feastday: February 23
St. Peter Damian is one of those stern figures who seem specially
raised up, like St. John Baptist, to recall men in a lax age from
the error of their ways and to bring them back into the narrow path
of virtue. He was born at Ravenna and, having lost his parents when
very young, he was left in the charge of a brother in whose house
he was treated more like a slave than a kinsman. As soon as he was
old enough he was sent to tend swine. Another brother, who was archpriest
of Ravenna, took pity on the neglected lad and undertook to have
him educated. Having found a father in this brother, Peter appears
to have adopted from him the surname of Damian. Damian sent the
boy to school, first at Faenza and then at Parma. He proved an apt
pupil and became in time a master and a professor of great ability.
He had early begun to inure himself to fasting, watching and prayer,
and wore a hairshirt under his clothes to arm himself against the
alurements of pleasure and the wiles of the devil. Not only did
he give away much in alms, but he was seldom without some poor persons
at his table, and took pleasure in serving them with his own hands.
After a time Peter resolved to leave the world entirely and embrace
a monastic life away from his own country. While his mind was full
of these thoughts, two religious of St. Benedict, belonging to Fonte
Avellana of the Reform of St. Romuald, happened to call at the house
where he lived, and he was able to learn much from them about their
Rule and mode of life. This decided him and he joined their hermitage,
which was then in the greatest repute. The hermits, who dwelled
in pairs in separate cells, occupied themselves chiefly in prayer
and reading, and lived a life of great austerity. Peter's excessive
watchings brought on a severe insomnia which was cured with difficulty,
but which taught him to use more discretion. Acting upon this experience,
he now devoted considerable time to Sacred studies, and became as
well versed in the Holy Scriptures as he formerly had been in profane
literature. By the unanimous consent of the hermits he was ordered
to take upon himself the government of the Community in the event
of the superior's death. Peter's extreme reluctance obliged the
abbot to make it a matter of obedience. Accordingly after the abbot's
decease about the year 1043, Peter assumed the direction of that
holy family, which he governed with great wisdom and piety. He also
founded five other hermitages in which he place Priors under his
own general direction. His chief care was to foster in his disciples
the spirit of solitude, charity, and humility. Many of them became
great lights of the Church, including St. Dominic Loricatus, and
St. John of Lodi, his successor in the priory of the Holy Cross,
who wrote St. Peter's life and at the end of his days became Bishop
of Gubbio. For years Peter Damian was much employed in the service
of the Church by successive Popes, and in 1057 Stephen IX prevailed
upon him to quit his desert and made him Cardinal-bishop of Ostia.
Peter constantly solicited Nicholas II to grant him leave to resign
his bishopric and return to the solitude, but the Pope had always
refused. His successor, Alexander II, out of affection for the holy
man, was prevailed upon with difficulty to consent, but reserved
the power to employ him in Church matters of importance, as he might
hereafter have need of his help. The saint from that time considered
himself dispensed not only from the responsibility of governing
his See, but from the supervision of the various religious settlements
he had controlled, and reduced himself to the condition of a simple
monk.
In this retirement he edified the Church by his humility, penance
and compunction, and labored in his writings to enforce the observance
of morality and discipline. His style is vehement, and his strictness
appears in all his works - especially when he treats of the duties
of the clergy and of monks. He severely rebuked the Bishop of Florence
for playing a game of chess. That prelate acknowledged his amusement
to be unworthy, and received the holy man's reproof meekly, submitting
to do penance by reciting the psalter three times and by washing
the feet of twelve poor men and giving them each a piece of money.
Peter wrote a treatise to the Bishop of Besancon in which he inveighed
against the custom by which the Canons of that Church sang the Divine
Office seated in choir, though he allowed all to sit for the lessons.
He recommended the use of the discipline as a substitute for long
penitential fasts. He wrote most severely on the obligation of monks
and protested against their wandering abroad, seeing that the spirit
of retirement is an essential condition of their state. He complained
bitterly of certain evasions whereby many palliated real infractions
of their vow of poverty. He justly observed, "We can never restore
primitive discipline when once it is decayed; and if we, by negligence,
suffer any diminution in what remains established, future ages will
never be able to repair the breach. Let us not draw upon ourselves
so foul a reproach; but let us faithfully transmit to posterity
the example of virtue which we have received from our forefathers."
St. Peter Damian fought simony with great vigor, and equally vigorously
upheld clerical celibacy; and as he supported a severely ascetical,
semi-eremitical life for monks, so he was an encourager of common
life for the secular clergy. He was a man of great vehemence in
all he said and did; it has been said of him that "his genius was
to exhort and impel to the heroic, to praise striking achievements
and to record edifying examples...an extraordinary force burns in
all that he wrote". In spite of his severity, St. Peter Damian could
treat penitents with mildness and indulgence where charity and prudence
required it. Henry IV, the young king of Germany, had married Bertha,
daughter of Otto, Marquee of the Marches of Italy, but two years
later he sought a divorce under the pretense that the marriage had
never been consummated. By promises and threats he won over the
archbishop of Mainz, who summoned a council for the purpose of sanctioning
the annulment of the marriage; but Pope Alexander II forbade him
to consent to such an injustice and chose Peter Damian as his legate
to preside over the synod. The aged legate met the king and bishops
at Frankfurt, laid before them the order and instructions of the
Holy See, and entreated the king to pay due regard to the law of
God, the Canons of the Church and his own reputation, and also to
reflect seriously on the public scandal which so pernicious an example
would give. The nobles likewise entreated the monarch not to stain
his honor by conduct so unworthy. Henry, unable to resist this strong
opposition, dropped his project of a divorce, but remained the same
at heart, only hating the queen more bitterly than ever.
Peter hastened back to his desert of Fonte Avellana. Whatever austerities
he prescribed for others, he practiced himself, remitting none of
them even in his old age. He use to make wooden spoons and other
little useful things that his hands might not be idle during the
time he was not at work or at prayer. When Henry, Archbishop of
Ravenna, had been excommunicated for grievous enormities, Peter
was again sent by Alexander II as legate to settle the troubles.
Upon his arrival at Ravenna he found that the prelate had just died,
but he brought the accomplices of his crimes to a sense of their
guilt and imposed on them suitable penance. This was Damian's last
undertaking for the Church. As he was returning towards Rome he
was arrested by an acute attack of fever in a monastery outside
Faenza, and died on the eighth day of this illness, while the monks
were reciting Matins round about him, on February 22, 1072.
St. Peter was one of the chief forerunners of the Hildebrandine
reform in the Church. His preaching was most eloquent and his writing
voluminous, and he was declared a doctor of the Church in 1828.
His feast day is February 23rd.
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