790 FOURTH PERIOD. A. 1). 590-1049.
by the Lateran Council of 1059. He also condemned in the clergy the practice of bearing arms, although even Pope Leo IX., in 1053, led an army against the pillaging Normans. He firmly maintained that a priest should not draw the sword even in defense of the faith, but contend only with the Word of God and the weapon of the Spirit.
A man of such talent, piety and energy could not remain hidden in the desert. He was drawn to Rome, and against his will chosen bishop of Ostia and Cardinal of the Roman church by Stephen X. in 1058. He narrowly escaped the triple crown in 1061. He was the spiritual counsellor and censor of the Hildebrandian popes (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Stephen X., Nicolas II., Alexander II.), and of Hildebrand himself. He was employed on important missions at Milan, Florence, Montecassino, Cluny, Mainz, Frankfort. He helped to put down the papal schism of Cadalous.1 He had the confidence of the Emperor Henry III. whom he highly praised as a second David, became confessor of the widowed Empress Agnes, and prevented the divorce of her son Henry IV. from his wife Bertha. He resigned his bishopric, but was again called out from his retreat by Hildebrand ; hence he called him his holy Satan, and also the lord of the pope.2 He despised the vanities and dignities of high office. He preferred his monastic cell in the Apennines, where he could conquer his own world within, recite the Psalter, scourge himself, and for a change write satires and epigrams, and make wooden spoons. "What would the bishops of old have done/7 he said, "had they to endure the torments which now attend the episcopate ?
1 Or Cadalus, bishop of Parma, very rich and guilty of simony. a In two of his best epigrams, he says of Hildebrand (Migne, II. 961, 967) : " Vivere vis Romse, clara depromito voce:
Pitts Domino papse guam Domno pareo papx.
********
Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro:
Tu fads hunc Dominum; te facit iste Deum."
\ 182. ST. PETER DAMIANI. 791
To ride forth constantly accompanied by troops of soldiers with swords and lances, to be girt about with armed men, like a heathen general ! Every day royal banquets, every day pa rade ! The table loaded with delicacies for voluptuous guests ; while the poor pine away with famine ! "
His last work was to heal a schism in the church of his native city. On his return he died of fever at Faenza, Feb. 23, 1072, one year before Hildebrand ascended the papal chair to carry out the reforms for which Damiani had prepared the way with narrow, but honest, earnest and unselfish devotion.
II. The WORKS of Damiani consist of Epistles, Sermons, Lives of Saints, ascetic tracts, and Poems. . They are a mirror of the church of his age.
1. The Epistles are divided into eight books. They are ad dressed (a) to contemporary Roman Bishops (Gregory VI., Clement II., Leo IX., Victor II., Nicolas II., Alexander II., and the Anti-pope Cadalous or Honorius II.) ; (b) to the Car dinal Bishops, and to Cardinal Hildebrand in particular ; (c) to Patriarchs and to the Archbishops of Ravenna and Cologne ; (d) to various Bishops ; (e) to Archprcsbyters, Archdeacons, Presbyters and other clergy. They give a graphic picture of the corruptions of the church in his times, and are full of zeal for a moral reform. He subscribes himself " Petrus pcccator monachns" The letters to the anti-pope Cadalous show his power of sarcasm; he tells him that his very name from cado, to fall, and ^«6c, people, was ominous, that he deserved a triple deposition, that his new crime was adultery and simony of the worst sort, that he had sold his own church (Parma) and bought another, that the church was desecrated to the very top by such adulteries. He prophesied his death within one year, but Cadalous outlived it, and Damiani defended his pro phecy as applying to moral death.
2. Sermons, seventy-four in number.1 They are short and 1 Migne, I. 506-924.