| 182. St. Peter Damiani. | ||||
I. Beati Petri Damiani (S. R. E. cardinalis Episcopi Ostiensis Ordinis S. Benedicti) Opera omnia in quatuor tomos distributa, studio et labora Domni Constantini Cajetani (of Montecassino), first publ. Rom. 1606-'13; in Paris, 1663; in Venice, 1783. Reprinted with Vitae and Prolegomena in Migne's Patrol. Lat., Tom. CXLIV. and CXLV. (1853). Tom. I. 1060 cols.; Tom. II. 1224 cols. | ||||
II. Three biographies of Damiani, one by his pupil, Joannes monachus, who, however, only describes his monastic character. See Migne, I. 47-204. Acta Sanctorum (Bolland.), for February 23, Tom. III. 406-427. Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Bened., Saec. VI. Also the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, ed. Mabillon, Tom. IV., lib. LVIII.-LXII. (which extend from a.d. 1039-1066, and notice the public acts of Damiani in chronological order). | ||||
III. Jac. Laderchi: Vita S. Petri Damiani S. R. E. Cardinalis. Rom. 1702. 3 Tom. Albr. Vogel: Peter Damiani. Jena, 1856. Comp. his art. in Herzog2 III. 466 sqq. F. Neukirch: Das Leben des Peter Dam. Goettingen, 1876. Jos. Kleinermanns (R. C.): Petrus Damiani in s. Leben und Wirken, nach den Quellen dargestellt. Steyl, 1882. Comp. also Ceillier, XIII. 296-324. Neander, III. 382, 397 and passim; Gfroerer Gregor. VII, Bd. I.; Hoefler: Die deutschen Paepste; Will: Die Anfaenge der Restauration der Kirche im elfte Jahrh.; Giesebrecht: Gesch. der deutschen Kaizerzeit, vol. II.; Hefele: Conciliengesch., vol. IV. | ||||
I. Life. Peter Damianus or Damiani (1007-1072),1 a friend of Hildebrand and zealous promoter of the moral reform of the clergy, was a native of Ravenna, had a very hard youth, but with the help of his brother Damianus (whose name he adopted),1 he was enabled to study at Ravenna, Faenza and Parma. He acquired honor and fortune as a teacher of the liberal arts in his native city. In his thirtieth year he suddenly left the world and became a hermit at Fonte Avellano near Gubbio (Eugubium) in Umbria, following the example of his countryman, Romuald, whose life he described. He soon reached the height of ascetic holiness and became abbot and disciplinarian of the hermits and monks of the whole surrounding region. Even miracles were attributed to him. | ||||
He systematized and popularized a method of meritorious self-flagellation in connection with the recital of the Psalms; each Psalm was accompanied with a hundred strokes of a leathern thong on the bare back, the whole Psalter with fifteen thousand strokes. This penance became a rage, and many a monk flogged himself to death to the music of the Psalms for his own benefit, or for the release of souls in purgatory. The greatest expert was Dominicus, who wore an iron cuirass around his bare body (hence called Loricatus), and so accelerated the strokes that he absolved without a break twelve Psalters; at last he died of exhaustion(1063). Even noble women ardently practiced hoc purgatorii genus, as Damiani calls it. He defended this self-imposed penance against the opponents as a voluntary imitation of the passion of Christ and the sufferings of martyrs, but he found it necessary also to check unnatural excesses among his disciples, and ordered that no one should be forced to scourge himself, and that forty Psalms with four thousand strokes at a time should be sufficient as a rule. | ||||
The ascetic practice which he encouraged by word and example, had far-reaching consequences; it became a part of the monastic discipline among Dominicans1 and Franciscans, and assumed gigantic proportions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially during the reign of the Black Death (1349), when fraternities of Flagellants or Cross-bearers, moved by a spirit of repentance, preceded by crosses, stripped to the waist, with faces veiled, made pilgrimages through Italy, Germany and England and scourged themselves, while chanting the penitential psalms, twice a day for thirty-three days, in memory of the thirty-three years of our Lord's life. | ||||
Damiani became the leader of the strict monastic party which centred at Cluny and labored, from the sacerdotal and theocratic point of view, for a reformation of the clergy and the church at a time of their deepest degradation and corruption. He compared the condition of his age to that of Sodom and Gomorrah; he opposed simony and the concubinage of priests, as the two chief sources of evil. He advocated a law which punished simony with deposition, and which prohibited the laity from hearing mass said by married priests. Such a law was enacted by the Lateran Council of 1059. He also condemned in the clergy the practice of bearing arms, although even Pope Leo IX., in 1053, led an army against the pillaging Normans. He firmly maintained that a priest should not draw the sword even in defense of the faith, but contend only with the Word of God and the weapon of the Spirit. | ||||
A man of such talent, piety and energy could not remain hidden in the desert. He was drawn to Rome, and against his will chosen bishop of Ostia and Cardinal of the Roman church by Stephen X. in 1058. He narrowly escaped the triple crown in 1061. He was the spiritual counsellor and censor of the Hildebrandian popes (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Stephen X., Nicolas II., Alexander II.), and of Hildebrand himself. He was employed on important missions at Milan, Florence, Montecassino, Cluny, Mainz, Frankfort. He helped to put down the papal schism of Cadalous. He had the confidence of the Emperor Henry III. whom he highly praise as a second David, became confessor of the widowed Empress Agnes, and prevented the divorce of her son Henry IV. from his wife Bertha. He resigned his bishopric, but was again called out from his retreat by Hildebrand; hence he called him his holy Satan, and also the lord of the pope. He despised the vanities and dignities of high office. He preferred his monastic cell in the Apennines, where he could conquer his own world within, recite the Psalter, scourge himself, and for a change write satires and epigrams, and make wooden spoons. What would the bishops of old have done, he said, had they to endure the torments which now attend the episcopate? To ride forth constantly accompanied by troops of soldiers with swords and lances, to be girt about with armed men, like a heathen general! Every day royal banquets, every day parade! The table loaded with delicacies for voluptuous guests; while the poor pine away with famine! | ||||
His last work was to heal a schism in the church of his native city. On his return he died of fever at Faenza, Feb. 23, 1072, one year before Hildebrand ascended the papal chair to carry out the reforms for which Damiani had prepared the way with narrow, but honest, earnest and unselfish devotion. | ||||
II. The Works of Damiani consist of Epistles, Sermons, Lives of Saints, ascetic tracts, and Poems. They are a mirror of the church of his age. | ||||
1. The Epistles are divided into eight books. They are addressed (a) to contemporary Roman Bishops (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Nicolas II., Alexander II., and the Anti-pope Cadalous or Honorius II.); (b) to the Cardinal Bishops, and to Cardinal Hildebrand in particular; (c) to Patriarchs and to the Archbishops of Ravenna and Cologne; (d) to various Bishops; (e) to Archpresbyters, Archdeacons, Presbyters and other clergy. They give a graphic picture of the corruptions of the church in his times, and are full of zeal for a moral reform. He subscribes himself Petrus peccator monachus. The letters to the anti-pope Cadalous show his power of sarcasm; he tells him that his very name from cado, to fall, and laov, people, was ominous, that he deserved a triple deposition, that his new crime was adultery and simony of the worst sort, that he had sold his own church (Parma) and bought another, that the church was desecrated to the very top by such adulteries. He prophesied his death within one year, but Cadalous outlived it, and Damiani defended his prophecy as applying to moral death. | ||||
2. Sermons, seventy-four in number. They are short and treat of church festivals, apostles, the Virgin Mary, martyrs, saints, relics, and enjoin a churchly and ascetic piety. | ||||
3. Lives of Saints, of the Benedictine order, namely, Odilo of Cluny, Romuald, Rodulphus, and Dominicus Loricatus (the hero of self-flagellation), whose examples are held up for imitation. | ||||
4. Dogmatic Discussions, De Fide Catholica; Contra Judaeos; Dialogus inter Judaeum et Christianum; De Divina Omnipotentia; De Processione Spiritus Sancti (against the Greeks), etc. | ||||
5. Polemic and ascetic treatises. The most important is the Liber Gomorrhianus (1051), a fearless exposure of clerical immorality which appeared to him as bad as the lewdness of Sodom and Gomorrah (hence the title). It is addressed to Pope Leo IX. and calls on him to exercise his authority in removing the scandals. The Liber Gratissimus, addressed to Henry, archbishop of Ravenna, is directed against simony. He wrote also tracts on the contempt of the world, on monastic perfection, on the life of hermits, on sacerdotal celibacy, against intemperance, against avarice, etc. | ||||
6. On Miracles and Apparitions. | ||||
7. On the Pictures of the chief Apostles, especially Peter and Paul. | ||||
8. Exposition of the Canon of the Mass, and other liturgical topics. | ||||
9. Exegetical Fragments on the Old and New Testaments. | ||||
10 Poems, satires, epigrams and Prayers. | ||||
His best hymn is on the glory of Paradise, based on poetic prose of St. Augustine: Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sativit arida. | ||||
| ||||
Vol.. 5: THE MIDDLE AGES. | ||||
Papal Theocracy In Conflict With The Secular Power. (From Gregory VII. To Boniface VIII. a. d. 1049-1294.) | ||||
The fifth period of general Church history, or the second period of mediaeval Church history, begins with the rise of Hildebrand, 1049, and ends with the elevation of Boniface VIII. to the papal dignity, 1294. | ||||
In this period the Church and the papacy ascend from the lowest state of weakness and corruption to the highest power and influence over the nations of Europe. It is the classical ageof Latin Christianity: the age of the papal theocracy, aiming to control the German Empire and the kingdoms of France, Spain, and England. It witnessed the rise of the great Mendicant orders and the religious revival which followed. Itbeheld the full flower of chivalry and the progress of the crusades, with the heroic conquest and loss of the Holy Land. It saw the foundations laid of the great universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford. It was the age of scholasticphilosophy and theology, and their gigantic efforts to solve all conceivableproblems and by dialectical skill to prove every article of faith. During itsprogress Norman and Gothic architecture began to rear the cathedrals. All the arts were made the handmaids of religion; and legendary poetry and romanceflourished. Then the Inquisition was established, involving the theory of the persecution of Jews and heretics as a divine right, and carrying it intoexecution in awful scenes of torture and blood. It was an age of bright lightand deep shadows, of strong faith and stronger superstition, of sublime heroismand wild passions, of ascetic self-denial and sensual indulgence, of Christiandevotion and barbarous cruelty.1 Dante, inhis Divina Commedia, which"heaven and earth combined to produce, gives a poetic mirror of Christianity and civilization in the thirteenth and the opening years of the fourteenth century, when the Roman Church was at the summit of its power, and yet, by the abuse of that power and its worldliness, was calling forth loudprotests, and demands for a thorough reformation from all parts of Western Christendom. | ||||
A striking feature of the Middle Ages is the contrast and co-operation of the forces of extreme self-abnegationas represented in monasticism and extreme ambition for worldly dominion as represented in the papacy.2 The former gave moral support to the latter, and the latter utilized the former. The monks were the standing army of the pope, and fought his battles against the secular rulers of Western Europe. | ||||
The papal theocracy in conflict with the secular powers and at the height of its power is the leading topic. The weak and degenerate popes who ruled from 900-1046 are now succeeded by a line of vigorous minds, men of moral as well as intellectual strength. Theworld has had few rulers equal to Gregory VII. 1073-1085, Alexander III.1159-1181, and Innocent III. 1198-1216, not to speak of other pontiffs scarcely second to these masters in the art of government and aspiring aims. The papacy was a necessity and a blessing in a barbarous age, as a check upon brute force, and as a school of moral discipline. The popes stood on a much higher plane than the princes of their time. The spirit has a right to rule over the body; the intellectual and moral interests are superior to the material and political. But the papal theocracy carried in it the temptation to secularization. By the abuse of opportunity it became a hindrance to pure religion and morals. Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven, but he also said, My kingdom is not of this world. The pope coveted both kingdoms, and he gotwhat he coveted. But he was not able to hold the power he claimed over the State, and aspiring after temporal authority lost spiritual power. Boniface VIII. marks the beginning of the decline and fall of the papal rule; and theseeds of this decline and fall were sown in the period when the hierarchy was in the pride of its worldly might and glory. | ||||
In this period also, and chiefly as the result of the crusades, the schism between the churches of the East and the West was completed. All attempts made at reconciliation by pope and councilonly ended in wider alienation. | ||||
The ruling nations during the Middle Ages were the Latin, who descended from the old Roman stock, but showed the mixture of barbaric blood and vigor, and the Teutonic. The Italians and French had the most learning and culture. Politically, the German nation, owingto its possession of the imperial crown and its connection with the papacy, was the most powerful, especially under the Hohenstaufen dynasty. England, favoredby her insular isolation, developed the power of self-government and independent nationality, and begins to come into prominence in the papaladministration. Western Europe is the scene of intellectual, ecclesiastical,and political activities of vast import, but its arms and devotion find their most conspicuous arena in Palestine and the East. | ||||
Finally this period of twocenturies and a half is a period of imposing personalities. The names of the greatest of the popes have been mentioned, Gregory VII., Alexander III., and Innocent III. Its more notable sovereigns were William the Conqueror, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II., and St. Louis of France. Dante the poet illuminesits last years. St. Bernard, Francis d'Assisi, and Dominic, the Spaniard, riseabove a long array of famous monks. In the front rank of its Schoolmen were Anselm, Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Duns Scotus. Thomas Becket and Grosseteste are prominent representatives of the body of episcopal statesmen. This combination of great figures and of great movementsgives to this period a variety of interest such as belongs to few periods of Church history or the history of mankind. | ||||