While our knowledge of the Middle Ages has increased dramatically during the last century, there are still riches to discover. Peter Damian is one such treasure. Born in Ravenna in 1007, Damian’s life and writings are relatively unexplored and greatly underappreciated. The goal of this book is to remedy this regrettable situation.

Modern neglect is at least partially due to the sorry state of his writings until recently. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of a few scholars we now have critical editions of all letters and sermons.¹ Unfortunately, secondary sources have been slow to follow.² There is no modern biography.³...

“Scarcely five years before I was born, Otto III passed away,” Peter Damian writes to Duke Godfrey of Tuscany.¹ This, the only reference Damian makes to the date of his birth, would be 1007, and most scholars accept the date as valid.² Peter held Emperor Otto III in high regard, for both had a special relationship with Ravenna, a northern Italian city of ancient Roman glory and Peter’s birthplace. It was in Ravenna in 996 that the Roman ambassador first greeted Otto and his army after he took over the reins of the empire, and it was here that Otto...

After a year’s novitiate (ca.1035–36) Damian traveled to different monasteries throughout Italy. At the monastery of S. Vincenzo at Petra Pertusa he began writing Romuald’s vita around 1042, but a year or two before he had probably written another work, Tract against the Jews, his first lengthy work for public consumption. In Romuald’s vita we have our first glimpse of Damian’s spiritual principles and outlook; in Letter 1 we have his initial speculative thoughts as he begins his literary and ecclesiastical career. While ostensibly a defense of Christianity against Jewish arguments, and written at the request of a monk...

Each in its own way, the two opuscula Liber “Dominus vobiscum” and Liber Gomorrhianus, written mid-century, are essential to any study of Peter Damian’s life, thought, and influence.¹ Given their significance, readers needs to be well acquainted with their content before judging Damian for themselves.

Because the eremitic movement was young, limited in number and location, and isolated by definition, members were not always sure of proper protocol. When Romuald’s first mentor, Marino, started his quest for solitude, “no one had trained him in the hermit life; he had simply taken it on by himself, moved by his own good...

It is clear that Damian was a force to be reckoned with when he wrote Liber Gomorrhianus. Even Leo IX tells Damian he will act “according to your wishes” and offers him a shield against those who “dare to criticize or attack” him.¹ Leo’s closing remarks in the prelude reinforce the power of Damian’s witness, for the pope praises Damian not for his writing but for the testimony of his life: “I rejoice indescribably that you promote by the example of your life whatever you have taught by your eloquence,” Leo proclaims, adding that it is this witness that ultimately...

Ariald is best known for his negative assaults on clerical simony and marriage in Milan during the Patarine crisis, but history also records some positive contributions he made to Western clerical life. Two of these are significant here: his emphasis on the power of clerical witness through imitatio Christi, and the promotion of vita communis.¹ His central message was succinct: Christ is the light of the world and the priest is to shine that light to the corners of the earth by preaching to the literate and by example for the illiterate.² If clerics would offer proper verbal and visual...

When Damian first articulated his concern for stewardship in Letter 2, he did so while lecturing margrave Boniface of Tuscany on the nature of his authority. God, not humans, “committed so many thousands of people to your rule, placed the necks of your enemies under your feet, and so gloriously [has] distinguished you above all other powerful men in the kingdom,” Damian tells him, so Boniface must remember that “if you are zealous in keeping his commandments he will advance you through earthly goods to those of heaven.”¹ This is Damian’s starting point. Secular authority, although temporary, is good, a...

Allowed to speak for himself, the real Peter Damian emerges. He is a man of his time in presentation, a man who transcends his time in content. With acute sensitivity to his surroundings, he experiences life first as a son and brother, then as orphan, student, master, hermit, theologian, author, preacher, prior, papal legate, and cardinal, and finally as hermit once again. His many roles afforded him a vantage point for viewing eleventh-century Italian society that few others had, and he took full advantage of that opportunity. That he recorded his observations and reflections is most fortunate, for they form...