The Medieval Mind. Henry Osborn Taylor
year. They lived ascetically, two in a cell together, spending their time in watching, fasting, and prayer: thus they fought the Evil One. Damiani was not satisfied merely with following the austerities practised at Fonte Avellana. Quickly he surpassed all his fellows, except a certain mail-clad Dominic, whose scourgings he could not equal. His chief asceticism lay in the temper of his soul.
From this congenial community (the hermits had made him their prior) Damiani was drawn forth to serve the Church more actively, sorely against his will, and was made Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX. in 1058. It was indeed the hand of Hildebrand, already directing the papal policy, that had fastened on this unwilling yet serviceable tool. Peter feared and also looked askance upon the relentless spirit, whom he called Sanctus Satanas, not deeming him to be altogether of the kingdom of heaven. He deprecates his censure upon one occasion: “I humbly beg that my Saint Satan may not rage so cruelly against me, and that his worshipful pride may not destroy me with long-reaching rods; rather, may it, appeased, quiet to a calm around his servant.” In this same letter, which is addressed to the two conspiring souls, Pope Alexander II. and Archdeacon Hildebrand, he sarcastically likens them to the Wind and the Sun of Aesop’s fable, who contended as to which could the sooner strip the Traveller of his cloak.[323] Peter’s tongue was sharp enough, and apt to indulge in epigram:
“Wilt thou live in Rome, cry aloud:
The Pope’s lord more than the Pope I obey.”
And another squib he writes on Hildebrand:
“Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro;
Tu facis hunc dominum, te facit iste deum.”[324]
It was, however, for his own soul that Damiani feared, while in the service of the Curia. To Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, he exclaims: “He errs, Father, errs indeed, who imagines he can be a monk and at the same time serve the Curia. Ill he bargains, who presumes to desert the cloister, that he may take up the warfare of the world.”[325]
Albeit against his will, Damiani became a soldier of the Church in the fields of her secular militancy against the world. He was sent on more than one important mission—to Milan, to crush the married priests and establish the Pope’s authority, or to Mainz, there to quell a rebellious archbishop and a youthful German king. Such missions and others he might accomplish with holy strenuousness; his more spontaneous zeal, however, was set upon the task of cleansing the immoralities of monks and clergy. In spite of his enforced relations with the powers of the world, he was a fiery reforming ascetic, a scourge of his time’s wickedness, rather than a statesman of the Church. His writings were a vent for the outcries of his horror-stricken soul. The corruption of the clergy filled his nostrils: they were rotten, like the loin-cloth of Jeremiah, hidden by the Euphrates; their bellies were full of drunkenness and lust.[326] As for the apostolic see:
“Heu! sedes apostolica,
Orbis olim gloria,
Nunc, proh dolor! efficeris
Officina Simonis.”[327]
These, with other verses written in tears, relate to schisms of pope and antipope which so often rent the papacy in Peter’s lifetime.[328] He never ceased to cry out against monks and clergy, denouncing their simony and avarice, their luxury, intemperance and vile unchastity, their viciousness of every kind. Such denunciations fill his letters, while many of his other writings chiefly consist of them.[329] They culminate in his horrible Liber Gomorrhianus, which was issued with the approval of one pope, to be suppressed by another as too unspeakable.
Naturally over so foul a world, flame and lower the terrors of the Day of Judgment. For Damiani it was near at hand. He writes to a certain judge:
“Therefore, most dear brother now while the world smiles for thee, while thy body glows in health, while the prosperity of earth is sweet and fair, think upon those things which are to come. Deem whatever is transitory to be but as the illusion of a dream. And that terrible day of the last Judgment keep ever present to thy sight, and brood with quaking bowels over the sudden coming of such majesty—nor think it to be far off!”[330]
Beware of penitence postponed!
“O how full of grief and dole is that late unfruitful repentance, when the sinful soul, about to be loosed from its dungeon of flesh, looks behind it, and then directs its gaze into the future. It sees behind it that little stadium of mortal life, already traversed; it sees before it the range of endless aeons. That flown moment which it has lived it perceives to be an instant; it contemplates the infinite length of time to come.”[331]
From Damiani’s stricken thoughts upon the wickedness of the age, we may turn to the more personal disclosures of one who wrote himself Petrus peccator monachus. There is one tell-tale letter of confession to his brother Damianus, whom he loved and revered:
“To my lord Damianus, my best loved brother, Peter, sinner and monk, his servant and son.
“I would not have it hid from thee, my sweetest father and lord in Christ, that my mind is cast down with sadness while it contemplates its own exit which is so near. For I count now many long years that I wait to be thrown to dogs; and I notice that in whatever monastery I come nearly all are younger than myself. When I consider this, I ponder upon death alone, I meditate upon my tomb; I do not withdraw the eyes of my mind from my tomb. Nor is my mind content to limit its fear and its consideration to the death of the body; for it is at once haled to judgment, and meditates with terror upon what might be its plea and defence. Wretched me! with what fountains of tears must I lament! I who have done every evil, and through my long life have fulfilled scarce one commandment of the divine law. For what evil have not I, miserable man, committed? Where are the vices, where are the crimes in which I am not implicated; I confess my life has fallen in a lake of misery; my soul is taken in its iniquities. Pride, lust, anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence, robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance, negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like ravening beasts have devoured my soul. My heart and my lips are defiled. I am contaminate in sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. And in every way, in cogitation, in speech or action, I am lost. All these evils have I done; and alas! alas! I have brought forth no fruit meet for repentance.
“One pernicious fault, among others, I acknowledge: scurrility has been my besetting sin; it has never really left me. For howsoever I have fought against this monster, and broken its wicked teeth with the hammer of austerity, and at times repelled it, I have never won the full victory. When, in the ways of spiritual gladness, I wish to show myself cheerful to the brethren, I drop into words of vanity; and when as it were discreetly for the sake of brotherly love, I think to throw off my severity, then indiscreetly my tongue unbridled utters foolishness. If the Lord said: ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,’ what judgment hangs over those who not only are slack at weeping, but act like buffoons with laughter and vain giggling. Consolation is due to those who weep, not to those who rejoice; what consolation may be expected from that future Judge by those who now are given to foolish mirth and vain jocularity? If the Truth says: ‘Woe unto ye who laugh, for ye shall weep,’ what fearful judgment shall be theirs who not only laugh themselves, but with scurrilities drag laughter from their listeners?”
The penitent saint then shows from Scripture how that our hearts ought to be vessels of tears, and concludes with casting himself at the feet of his beloved “father” in entreaty that he would interpose the shield of his holy prayers between his petitioner and that monster, and exorcise its serpentine poison, and also that he would ever pour forth prayers to God, and beseech the divine mercy in behalf of all the other vices confessed in this letter.[332]
A strange confession this—or, indeed, is it strange? This cowled Peter Damiani who passes from community to community, seeing more keenly than others may, denouncing, execrating every vice existent or imagined, who wears haircloth, goes barefoot, lives on bread and water, scourges himself with daily flagellations, urging others to do likewise—this Peter Damiani is yet unable quite to scourge out the human nature from him, and evidently cannot always refrain from that jocularity and inepta laetitia for which the Abbess Hildegard also saw sundry souls in hell.[333] Perhaps, with Peter, revulsions from