February 21: Feast of St Peter Damian 1007-1072
St Peter Damian lived in troubled times in the eleventh century. It was a time when the Eastern and Western Churches were drifting apart, when invasions of the Vikings and others had weakened governance of cities and the Church, office in the Church was a business as well as a calling, and movements for reform were beginning in the monasteries, particularly in the French Abbey in Cluny. Peter Damian was one of many Christians who worked for a reform of the Church.
He was born into a noble but impoverished family in Italy, was orphaned as a child and treated as a slave by his elder brother. He was rescued by another brother, Damian, whose name he took, and who gave him access to education. Peter became an outstanding scholar and teacher. In his late 20’s, however, he joined a very strict monastery in central Italy, and his severely penitential life affected his health. After he recovered, he was asked to teach the monks in the local monasteries, was appointed Prior, and became a prominent monastic reformer He introduced penitential practices which met with opposition from many monks. Among his reforms, however, was the introduction to monastic life of an afternoon siesta.
As prior, too, he became involved in pressing for wider church reform. In this, Hildebrand, the Abbot of Clunes and later reforming Pope Gregory VII, was an associate and friend. The Papacy needed to be reformed. Benedict IX, for example, was elected three times as Pope, on one occasion resigned only after demanding a severance pay-out, and had a widespread reputation for greedy, immoral and violent living. At the time, too, priests were poorly educated, were sometimes openly married, and demanded payment for their sacramental services. Peter Damian was one of many monks demanding reform.
In 1057 he reluctantly accepted ordination as the local Bishop and set about reforming the local clergy. Popes also commissioned him to be a Papal gate to resolve conflicts in many churches, notably in France and Milan where there was resistance to the reform of money for sacramental and of married clergy. In Milan he faced down the local clergy in the Cathedral and arrived at a moderate solution that offended some of his allies who sought more radical change. His moderation was in notable contrast to the contemporaneous confrontational conduct of Humbert, the Papal Legate to Constantinople, who lit a fire under the schism between the Western and Eastern Church.
Peter Damian also wrote on theological issues and on reform in the Church, most notably in a treatise outlining and condemning the vices of the clergy. Many modern readers will recoil at his very strict understanding of sexual morality and violent polemic against those who violated it. And yet his treatise is also exceptional in its condemnation of pederasty and of monks’ sexual relations with children.
Peter Damian was a man of his time, a man of the Church, who dedicated his life to shape it after Christ’s pattern.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
