Back to the Future: Saint Peter Damian

Pope Gregory VII--sponsor of the Gregorian
Reformation in the 11th century

Today is the Feast of Peter Damian—one of the most important reformers n the history of the Church and one of my favorite saints.  Peter lived a thousand years ago (1007-1072) at a time when there was an even greater need for Church reform than there is today.  The Church had become hopelessly entangled in the political scene as the Ottonian emperors (Otto I, II, and III as well as Henry II) used their imperial power to reform the Church but in the process had subjugated it to imperial politics.  What had begun as reform threatened to make the Church little more than a slave of the State and it became necessary for Church to both undertake internal reform and seek independence from the Crown.  The struggle would culminate under Gregory VII, the pope for whom the Gregorian Reform is named and who would challenge Henry IV and begin a long struggle between the papacy and the Salian (and later Hohenstaufen) Emperors.  It was not a good time for anyone—kings, popes, or faithful, but it ended with the Church asserting its independence and having benefitted from the Gregorian and then the Innocentian reformations.  Although Gregory VII (the monk Hildebrand) is credited with the Gregorian Reform there were a number of others equally important and one of these is Peter Damian.  Damian is most noted for insisting on the Reform of the clergy, especially as regards enforcing celibacy and his demands that the clergy be purged of all those whose lives did not conform to traditional moral norms.  I want to reprint some material (edited) from an earlier blog posting. 
      There was reason for Peter Damien to insist on reform with a passion. The secular clergy were not taking celibacy seriously. This was a time in which the Church was drawing more seriously on canons (church laws) derived from various early regional church synods (Elvira 306, Carthage 387, Turin 401, Orange 441) that prohibited bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons from being married. As we discussed in some earlier postings (July 21, 23, 24 2011) the concern in the eleventh and subsequent centuries was primarily the protection of church property from being alienated to clergy families and many bishops turned a blind eye to the fact that most of their clergy were living in what we might call common-law marriages. To Peter Damian, however, this was not marriage of any sort but concubinage. The clergy wives were, to his mind and in his vocabulary “whores”; the clergy themselves men who had given themselves over to base passions.
     Speaking of base passions, if Peter Damian thought little of the secular clergy for their loose morals, he thought less of his fellow monks. Monasteries, whether in fact or in Peter Damian’s perception (and probably to some extent in both) were filled with homosexuals, and monks, when not busy with Divine Worship, gave themselves over to the most gross of sexual practices. Peter Damian wrote a book, the Liber Gomorrhianus, (The Gomorrhean Book—named after the famous Gomorrah, twin cities with Sodom) outlining the same-sex practices of the contemporary clergy with the most explicitly vivid detail.) By the way, he did not limit his accusations of clerical homosexuality to the monks but extended it to the papal court (the Curia) whom he thought were nothing more than a coven of mincing catamites. (Now that is a word you don’t hear often.) 
      Peter Damian was even more intolerant of gay clergy than married clergy. He wanted men inclined to same-sex relations barred from ordination and those who were ordained stripped of their Orders and reduced to the lay state. When Leo IX (pope from 1049-1054 and himself an ardent reformer of the Church) refused, Peter Damian turned his anger on the pope and wrote an angry letter accusing the pope of neglect in his duties. 
      Peter Damian was by no means a stupid man, but he was quite anti-intellectual. Steeped in monastic tradition—and the tradition of the ancient desert monks more than the urbane Benedictinism, Damian rejected the importance of secular studies, even (and perhaps especially) Philosophy. For him, as for Cassian and the early monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, the monk was a “man of one book”—the Bible. This no doubt contributed to his zeal (some would say fanaticism) in “purifying” the Church. He was one who, like the Gnostics in early Christianity and the Puritans in the English Reformation could simply not bear compromise with what he believed to be the Christian ideal. 
       Surprisingly, while such a “puritan” and anxious to rid the church of what was its biggest problem, simony (the buying and selling of Church offices or positions), he was not nearly as rigid with simonical clergy as with sexually active clergy. He wrote a second book defending not simony, but the validity of the ordination of bishops and priests who had purchased their offices. Some in the Church were saying that simoniacs (those clergy who had obtained their position by purchase) were not validly ordained. (The subject of valid orders is an interesting one and one that we should take a look at sometime as it has impact on contemporary ecumenical affairs.)
To his credit, Peter Damian was a monk and not a man of ambition; nevertheless, he was forced by Pope Stephen IX in 1057 to accept nomination as a Cardinal. Stephen and subsequent popes frequently used Peter Damian as a legate to conduct business in the pope’s name in various places where the Church was having difficulties. His most important legation was to Milan in 1059, representing Pope Nicholas II to decide the dispute between the clergy of Milan—who openly violated the canons on celibacy and who, for the greater part, had obtained their various benefices through purchase. One of the cathedral canons, Arialdo of Cucciago had allied himself with Bishop Anselm of Baggio, the Bishop of Lucca, to form the pataria, an organization that motivated the faithful to reject the ministry of married clergy. Arialdo and Anselm mobilized the middle and working classes against the Bishop, Guido da Velate, and the nobility who supported the married (and simonical) clergy. It was a very complex issue, as married clergy were still the norm through much of the Church and as for simony—well that too, if wrong, was a well-established practice. Beneath the surface there were other issues. One was the attempt of the papacy to establish control over the independent dioceses such as Milan who often were allied with the Emperor and his policies.             
     Another issue was the social conflict between the working classes that supported Arialdo and the propertied classes that supported the bishop. In any event, Peter Damian effected a compromise. The archbishop agreed that no church position would be given in return for money or gifts. He then imposed penances on all who had purchased Church office, but agreed that they should keep their positions if they accepted the obligations of celibacy. The rigorists were furious, because they wanted the offending clergy—both simoniacs and married clergy—permanently deprived of office, but Damian’s compromise held—temporarily. It was to break out again under Alexander II. 
        When Nicholas II died in 1061, the Cardinals met per his instruction (Nicholas was the pope who in 1059 had designated the Cardinals to be the sole electors of the pope; see blog entry January 12, 2011) and elected the aforementioned Bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, as pope. Anselm, as we saw, was a proponent of reform. Several weeks later, an anti-reform group of bishops met at the summoning of the Empress Regent, Agnes of Poitou, and elected Pietro Cadalus as Honorius II. This created a schism in the Church as the Reform Party and Imperial Party struggled for control. This shows what the real issue for the Gregorian Reform was to be—not Church reform per se, but imperial control of the papacy. Was the pope to be free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the Emperor or was he to administer the Church at the Emperor’s bidding? Peter Damian was on the side of a free papacy and did his best to resolve the schism in the Church in favor of Alexander. He was unsuccessful in the short run, but at a synod convoked in Augsburg by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, in 1062 Peter Damian made a spirited defense of Alexander and the autonomy of the papacy. Through the influence of Peter Damian, Alexander was determined to be the authentic successor of Saint Peter.

A Good Pope Goes Bad

The Papal Throne in the Pope's

Cathedral, the Basilica of Saint John

Lateran--at the time of Gregory VI

the popes lived in a palace adjoining

the Lateran Basilica.

While Romuald was reforming monasteries and Peter Damian was going after gay clergy, the eleventh-century papacy was having its ups and downs.  We saw (July 17) that Sylvester II, Otto III’s candidate for pope who reigned from 999 until 1003 was a reform pope who brought stability to the papacy after a long period of immoral and/or incompetent popes.  (History shows us that some bad men were, in fact, good popes and some bad popes were good men even as some bad men have been among our best presidents and some exceptionally good men among our worst.)  The period immediately after Sylvester saw the papacy fall again into the control of the Roman mob which, in turn, was driven by the Crescentii family. (Crescentii is the plural of Crescentius in case you see that name somewhere.)  Some of these, such as Sergius IV, was a good man, but all of them—John XVII, John XVIII, Sergius IV—were  controlled, good and bad alike, by the Crescentii.  The Ottonians—the reform party—were able to regain control of the papacy with Benedict VIII (reigned 1012-1024) who was a good man but who was part of the Theophylact clan—those wonderful people who had brought you the pornacracy  (see entries of January 15, and June 9, 6, 18), the so-called “Rule of Whores” when a Roman mother-daughter team slept their way into control of the papacy in the tenth century.  (The Theophylacts were political rivals of the Crescentii.) Despite his shady relatives, Benedict was a capable pope and enjoyed the confidence and patronage of the last of the Ottonian Emperors, Saint Henry II.  He was succeeded, in turn, by his brother as John XIX.   OK—, while Benedict may have been a good man this isn’t a good sign as it indicates a family control of the papacy, and again by a family that had controlled the papacy before and had exploited it for the sake of family wealth and power.  Moreover, John was a far more mediocre pope than his brother, Benedict, had been.  And it gets worse.  John is succeeded by another family member—his nineteen year old nephew, Benedict IX. 
      Benedict was a pretty dissolute character—but hey, he is at that age where hormones are raging.  Nineteen-year-old popes are not a good idea. In the Liber Gomorrhianus Peter Damian called him a “demon in the mask of a priest.”  He did not let his being an active homosexual get in the way of the occasional heterosexual adultery or rape and allegedly was responsible for more than one murder.  But then boys will be boys. 
      Fortunately, Benedict IX did not want to be pope—at least not at that time in his life.  (He would become a problem, like a bad penny he kept turning up in the papal chair—three terms but we will save that story for later.  At this point he wanted out, but he had no money.  He may not have wanted to be pope but frankly he needed the job.  Along came his godfather with a solution that appeared to be a win/win scenario—win/win for Benedict, for the godfather, and for the Church.  Unfortunately they overlooked two details—one was Benedict’s character and the other was the godfather’s naiveté.  
      The godfather was a priest by the name of John Gratian.  You have to be careful because there is more than one Gratian in the history of the Church and several of these Gratians are named John.  This one was the Archpriest of the Church of Saint John at the Latin Gate.  That church still stands today.  Gratian was a canon lawyer and a pious man but he lacked some discretion.  He suggested that if Benedict resigned the papacy in his (Gratian’s) favor, he (Gratian) would make sure that the young man would have sufficient means for a life of comfort and ease.  (He didn’t say debauchery, but if you have money debauchery is cheap.)  Thus Gratian became Gregory VI.  The new pope did not want power, he wanted to reform the Church.   
   The reform party was delighted with this deal—the papacy was now in the hands of a reform minded pope and both Peter Damian and the monk Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII for whom the Gregorian Reform is named, were ecstatic.  But there was a problem and the problem is that technically Gratian had bought the papacy from Benedict and thus was guilty of simony.    Many of the clergy resented—or actually actively opposed Gregory’s reform program, especially regarding celibacy and forbidding the clergy to engage in the political strife that was responsible for all the fighting over the papacy that had almost destroyed the Church over the last two centuries.  They were quick to bring charges of simony against their bishops.  Complicating this was the fact that Benedict soon came to regret having given up the papacy and tried to reassume it. Complicating it even further, there was a third claimant to the papal throne, one Sylvester, who had been the Crescentii family candidate chosen for the papacy at a time when the Roman mob had forced the young Benedict to flee Rome, and thus, according to some, forfeited the papacy.  It was a mess—three popes and two of them no good whatsoever.  The Emperor Henry III came down to Italy and convoked a synod at Sutri that recognized Gregory as the authentic pope and declared Benedict and Sylvester to have no legitimate claims to the papacy.  That same synod, though it acknowledged Gregory as legitimate pope, also told him that because he had bought the papacy he did not in fact have the moral authority to govern the Church and that he should resign.  A good man, he did.   Henry’s candidate for the job, now that it was open, was a German by the name of Suidger of Morsleben and Hornburg and he was elected Clement II.  It’s good to have an emperor for your campaign manager—it more or less guarantees success.  Especially if the Emperor has an army sitting by watching.  Clement  too was an ardent reformer and continued Gregory VI’s program of Reform with the power of  the Emperor to back him up.  Gregory went into exile in Germany where he died.  He was accompanied in exile by his chief supporter, the monk Hildebrand.  Remember him.  He is the key player in this reform. 
      What we see here is that a good pope is not necessarily a good man and a bad pope is not necessarily a bad man.  We also see that sometimes in history good popes have come to power in sinful ways—either through naiveté or an ends-justifies-the-means desire to do good for the Church.  Of course we also see that some popes have led very immoral lives and that does not mean that they are not true popes.  We see too that one of the key needs that the Church had in the central Middle Ages was to free the papacy from mob control and we see that in an effort to do this the papacy  actually became beholden to the Emperor.  In fact, the papacy ended up in the gift of the Emperors who had the  power, if not the authority, to name popes or force them to resign.  And we see that a man, even a good man, may be pope but still lacks the actual moral authority to give the Church the leadership it needs.  Popes may be, under certain restricted circumstances, infallible but they are never about the ability to make some very crucial errors in judgment, much less are they ever unable to sin.  Beneath the robes and triple crown is a very ordinary man.   Wisdom, much less sainthood, does not go automatically with the papal office. 

Gay Clergy and Married Clergy--An 11th Century Program of Reform

13th centur Bas-Relief on the facade of Lucca

Cathedral depicting the celebraiton of Mass--notice

the celebrant is facing the people over the altar, a

witness to the fact that this is not an innovation but

the restoraiton of an ancient practice.  The 11th century

bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, was a key

reformer of the Church. 

We spoke in our last post of Saint Romuald of Ravenna, a monastic reformer who founded several monastic communities, most notably the Hermits of Camaldoli, and who laid some of the spiritual groundwork for the Gregorian Reformation.  Over the years, the Camaldoli Monastery and its daughter houses—the Camaldolese Benedictines—have made a great contribution to the Church including Pope Gregory XVI, (reigned 1831-1846), one of the more conservative popes (understatement) who, in his zeal for the modern world, condemned railroads as the work of the devil (literally chemins de enfer—roads of hell—a play on the French for “railroad”: chemins de fer—roads of iron.)   I’m sure he thought it was a rather clever pun but that’s what happens to sophisticated humor when you spend too much time in a monastery.  Fortunately it was not an infallible proclamation.
     Although it was Camaldoli that made Romuald famous (well, relatively famous, like Mel Brooks’ characters Frederick and Anna Bronski in To Be or Not To Be, “world famous in Poland,” it was his foundation at Fonte Avellana that proved to be the springboard of Reformation in the eleventh century.  From that foundation came many holy monks, one of them being Saint Peter Damian who was quite literally a “holy terror.” 
     Unlike the founder, Romuald, who was a serious monk but not at all rigid, Peter Damian found no penance sufficient for his desire for austerity and self-mortification.     It was Peter Damian who introduced the practice of the disciplina, that is of self-flagellation into monastic practice.  Peter Damian was determined to root out all sexual vice from monastic life and indeed from the Church.  One could say that he went after passion with a passion.  That’s a bit lame; perhaps I am guilty of the very monastic overdose of which I accuse Gregory XVI.  
   Lame as it may be, there was reason for him to go after passion with a passion.  The secular clergy were not taking celibacy seriously.  This was a time in which the Church was drawing more seriously on canons (church laws) derived from various early regional church synods (Elvira 306, Carthage  387, Turin 401, Orange 441) that prohibited bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons from being married.  As we discussed in some earlier postings (July 21, 23, 24) the concern in the eleventh and subsequent centuries was primarily the protection of church property from being alienated to clergy families and many bishops turned a blind eye to the fact that most of their clergy were living in what we might call common-law marriages.  To Peter Damian, however, this was not marriage of any sort but concubinage.  The clergy wives were whores; the clergy themselves men who had given themselves over to base passions. 
     Speaking of base passions, if Peter Damian thought little of the secular clergy for their loose morals, he thought less of his fellow monks.  Monasteries, whether in fact or in Peter Damian’s perception (and probably to some extent in both) were filled with homosexuals and monks, when not busy with Divine Worship,  gave themselves over to the most gross of sexual practices.  Peter Damian wrote a book, the Liber Gomorrhianus,  (The Gomorrhean Book—named after the famous Gomorrah, twin cities with Sodom) outlining the same-sex practices of the contemporary clergy with the most explicitly vivid detail.)  By the way, he did not limit his accusations of clerical homosexuality to the monks but extended it to the papal court (the Curia) whom he thought were nothing more than a coven of mincing catamites.  (Now that is a word you don’t  hear often.)  
    Peter Damian was even more intolerant of gay clergy than married clergy. He wanted men inclined to same-sex relations barred from ordination and those who were ordained stripped of their Orders and reduced to the lay state.  When Leo IX  (pope from 1049-1054 and himself an ardent reformer of the Church) refused, Peter Damian turned his anger on the pope and wrote an angry letter accusing the pope of neglect in his duties.  
    Peter Damian was by no means a stupid man, but he was quite anti-intellectual.  Steeped in monastic tradition—and the tradition of the ancient desert monks more than the urbane Benedictinism, Damian rejected the importance of secular studies, even (and perhaps especially) Philosophy.  For him, as for Cassian and the early monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, the monk was a “man of one book”—the Bible.  This no doubt contributed to his zeal (some would say fanaticism) in “purifying” the Church.  He was one who, like the Gnostics in early Christianity and the Puritans in the English Reformation could simply not bear compromise with what he believed to be the Christian ideal. 
     Surprisingly, while such a “puritan” and anxious to rid the church of what was its biggest problem, simony (the buying and selling of Church offices or positions), he was not nearly as rigid with simonical clergy as with sexually active clergy.  He wrote a second book defending not simony, but the validity of the ordination of bishops and priests who had purchased their offices.  Some in the Church were saying that simoniacs   (those clergy who had obtained their position by purchase) were not validly ordained.  (The subject of valid orders is an interesting one and one that we should take a look at sometime as it has impact on contemporary ecumenical affairs.)  
     To his credit, Peter Damian was a monk and not a man of ambition; nevertheless, he was forced by Pope Stephen IX in 1057 to accept nomination as a Cardinal.  Stephen and subsequent popes frequently used Peter Damian as a legate to conduct business in the pope’s name in various places where the Church was having difficulties.  His most important legation was to Milan in 1059, representing Pope Nicholas II to decide the dispute between the clergy of Milan—who openly violated the canons on celibacy and who, for the greater part, had obtained their various benefices through purchase.  One of the cathedral canons, Arialdo of Cucciago had allied himself with Bishop Anselm of Baggio, the Bishop of Lucca, to form the pataria, an organization that motivated the faithful to reject the ministry of married clergy.  Arialdo and Anselm mobilized the middle and working classes against the Bishop, Guido da Velate, and the nobility who supported the married (and simonical) clergy.  It was a very complex issue, as married clergy were still the norm through much of the Church and as for simony—well that too, if wrong, was a well-established practice.  Beneath the surface there were other issues.  One was the attempt of the papacy to establish control over the independent dioceses such as Milan who often were allied with the Emperor and his policies.  (We will see in a future blog that a key element of the Gregorian Reform was the struggle for power between the Emperors and the Popes.)  Another issue was the social conflict between the working classes that supported Arialdo and the propertied classes that supported the bishop.  In any event, Peter Damian effected a compromise.  The archbishop agreed that no church position would be given in return for money or gifts.  He then imposed penances on all who had purchased Church office, but agreed that they should keep their positions if they accepted the obligations of celibacy.  The rigorists were furious, because they wanted the offending clergy—both simoniacs and married clergy—permanently deprived of office, but Damian’s compromise held—temporarily.  It was to break out again under Alexander II. 
    When Nicholas II died in 1061, the Cardinals met per his instruction (Nicholas was the pope who in 1059  had designated the Cardinals to be the sole electors of the pope; see blog entry January 12, 2011) and elected the aforementioned Bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, as pope.  Anselm, as we saw, was a  proponent of reform.  Several weeks later, an anti-reform group of bishops met at the summoning of the Empress Regent, Agnes of Poitou, and elected Pietro Cadalus as Honorius II.  This created a schism in the Church as the Reform Party and Imperial Party struggled for control.  This shows what the real issue for the Gregorian Reform was to be—not Church reform per se, but imperial control of the papacy.  Was the pope to be free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the Emperor or was he to administer the Church at the Emperor’s bidding?  Peter Damian was on the side of a free papacy and did his best to resolve the schism in the Church in favor of Alexander.  He was unsuccessful in the short run, but at a synod convoked in Augsburg by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, in 1062 Peter Damian made a spirited defense of Alexander and the autonomy of the papacy.  Through the influence of Peter Damian, Alexander was determined to be the authentic successor of Saint Peter.