St. Peter Damian

Damiani, or Damian, Peter, Saint, Cardinal, Bishop, and Doctor of the Church, whom Dom Gueranger calls "The austere reformer of the 11th century," was born at Ravenna, about 988. He was the youngest of many children. His mother abandoned him as a babe, and his life was only saved by his being discovered by a faithful female servant, who took care of him until such time as his mother relented and received him back again. Both his parents dying while he was very young, he fell into the hands of a married brother, who, treating him with great harshness and regarding him rather as a slave than a near relation, sent him,”when he was grown up, into the fields to feed swine.” In spite of this treatment, he early developed a virtuous and pious disposition, and another brother, Damian (after whom he is said to have been named), who was arch-priest of Ravenna, took pity on him, and had him educated. The progress he made in learning was the admiration of his teachers, and led very soon to his being employed as a teacher. He was very strict, even as a youth, as regards his mode of life, habituating himself to frequent watching, fasting, self-mortification and prayer. Struck with the self-denial of two Benedictine monks, who happened to call where he was living, he embraced their profession, and became a "religious" (in the monastery of Avellino, in the diocese of Gubbio) of the order of the monks of the Holy Cross of Fontavellana.

Of that community he, in A.D. 1041, became the Superior, and so extended its usefulness that he was looked upon as the second founder, the first having been Ludolphus, a disciple of St. Romuald. He founded no less than five monasteries under the same rule, the Priors of which remained under his jurisdiction. After twelve years of eminent service to the Church, he was induced by Pope Stephen IX. to accept, in 1057, very much against his own wish, the position of Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. This, after much difficulty, he was allowed to resign by Pope Alexander II., in 1062, but coupled with the reserve of a power to employ him in important Church matters, as he might at any time find needful. With his bishopric he also resigned his post as Superior of his old monastery, where he once more took up his abode. During his retirement (a retirement constantly broken in upon by calls from the Pontiff to proceed in a legatine capacity to settle various questions of importance to the Church in different parts of Europe), he lived a life of extraordinary asceticism and self-mortification. It was on his return journey from Ravenna, whither he had been sent as legate to inquire into the enormities charged against Henry, Archbishop of Ravenna, and otherwise adjust the affairs of the Church there, that he was called to his rest in his eighty-fourth year. He died of fever, at Faenza, in the monastery of Our Lady, on the 22nd or 23rd of March, 1072.

Damiani endeavoured by his literary labours to advance the cause of order and morality, and to add his quota, by no means an insignificant one, in worth or amount, to the church's store of Latin hymns. "He has left," as Archbishop Trench remarks, “a considerable body of Latin verse," but it is only with his hymns that we are concerned in these pages. It is not surprising to find these hymns, the work of such a devoted servant of the Church of Rome, deeply tinged with the superstitions of that Church, and thereby to Protestant minds disfigured; but, notwithstanding this drawback, there are very few amongst the compositions of Latin hymn-writers to compare with some of our author's in vivid word-painting and richness of description. Such compositions as "Ad perennis vitae fontem," and "Gravi me terrore pulsas, vitae dies ultima," have very few equals in merit in the school of poetry to which they belong, while the difference between them in thought and treatment is most marked, and exhibits to great advantage the versatility of their composer. In addition to the two hymns named (see "Ad perennis," concerning its disputed authorship), Daniel gives in vol. i. the texts of four hymns in full, and the first stanzas of ten others. The best known in addition to the two named are, "Crux, mundi benedictio;" and "Paule doctor egregie" (q.v.).

[Rev. Digby S. Wrangham, M.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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Damiani, Peter, p. 278, i. His hymns have been collected, with a biographical notice, in Breves , xlviii., Nos. 16-73; the "Ad perennis," p. 13, i., as No. 66; the "Crux mundi," p. 273, i., as No. 18; the "Gravi me," p. 461, ii., as No. 63; and the "Paule doctor," p. 887, i., as No. 45. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)