And so, in this later manner, lived and died Hermann Count of Vöhringen, who laid down earthly honors to take up the pursuit of heavenly glory; who overcame peevishness of mind and weakness of body by faith and hope and love; who looked out upon his times from this serene distance, and who went to his last sleep beneath the shadow of the rock.
Note.—I am not ignorant that Jourdain (Recherches critiques sur l’Age et l’Origine des Traductions latines d’Aristote. Paris, 1819 and 1843) has attacked the ascription of translations of Aristotle from the Arabic to our Hermann, denying that the cripple of Reichenau possessed any knowledge of that tongue. Briefly stated his arguments are these: 1. That Trithemius followed Jacobus of Bergamo in ascribing to H. Contractus a knowledge of Arabic. 2. That Metzler (whom he calls Mezler) has added the statement about the Poetics and Rhetoric. 3. That every one else has followed these two authorities. 4. That “H. Alemannus” wrote in Toledo, to which the other Hermann could not have journeyed. 5. That the translations were by this “H. Alemannus” (Hermann the German) who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century.
It is enough of a reply to say: 1. That the concluding words of a manuscript relate, not to its author, but to its transcriber. The MS. mentioned by Jourdain and the other MS. in the Bibliotheque Royale of the fifteenth century (viz., Doctrina Matumeti, quae apud Saracenos magnae auctoritatis est, ab Hermanno latine translata. Cod. MS., No. 6225) are both later than their original date. This second MS. may be by Hermann de Schildis, a monk of the thirteenth century. 2. Every one has not “followed” the authority of Metzler and Trithemius. The “Anonymus Mellicensis” (twelfth century) enumerates treatises by Hermannus Contractus upon Computation, Astronomy, Physiognomy and Poetry, which at least imply that Aristotle had largely affected his studies. 3. It is notable also to find H. Alemannus quoting Cicero in his two introductions, when we know H. Contractus to have been very fond of Cicero. 4. H. Alemannus says that he has met great “impediments” and “difficulties” in accomplishing this translation, and that the difference between Latin and Arabic poetry forbade a poetical rendering. Which would coincide with H. Contractus’s personal obstacles and with his natural desire as a poet to attempt a rendering in verse. 5. H. Alemannus refers to “Johannes Burgensis” (John of Burgau, in Suabia) as a bishop and the king’s chancellor and his personal friend and the promoter of this work. I cannot find “John of Burgau;” but H. Contractus was a Suabian, and Suabia is very near to Reichenau. H. Contractus was also closely associated with Conrad and Henry III., whose lives he wrote.
It is a curious question this. It is only another proof of the neglect into which a great man has fallen. For Hermann is called “nostri miraculum seculi” by the next generation who came after him. And there is no absolute proof that, “without lexicon or grammar” (for so Jourdain puts it), he could not have mastered Arabic. Observing the topics of his other writings cognate to those of Aristotle, I am therefore not in the least inclined to yield to even M. Charles Jourdain.
CHAPTER XVI.
PETER DAMIANI, CARDINAL AND FLAGELLANT.
It is not every poet who begins by keeping the swine and ends by wearing the red hat and purple robe of a cardinal-bishop. Nor is it every poet who commences as a forlorn and deserted foundling, to whom it is a great mercy to have even swine to keep by way of getting his daily bread. But all this and more befell Damiani.
We are not informed about his parentage, except that he had a mother who abandoned him, and a brother (or, more probably, an uncle) who took pity on him. He was born in Ravenna. Some authorities say it was in 988; others that it was in 1007. A modern hymnologist, anxious to be right (though he is frequently wrong), sets it at 1002. But 1007 has the greatest weight of evidence.
This brother, or uncle, had compassion on the lad, and poor little outcast Peter was sent by him “into his fields to feed swine,” a much more honorable employment of course in Italy than in Palestine, and one which he shared with Nicholas Brakespeare, the English pope, Hadrian IV. What was his previous history we cannot discover, though the Acta Sanctorum for February 23d is full of legendary accounts. We only know that his natural abilities attracted the notice of another relative (brother, some say), who was an archdeacon at Ravenna. He it was who advanced Peter to the opportunities of education, and who proved so fast a friend that the boy took his patron’s name for his own. As Eusebius called himself Eusebius Pamphili (Pamphilus’s Eusebius), so Peter became Peter Damiani, “Damian’s Peter,” and this designation has adhered to him ever since. It is amusing to read now and then of Peter Damianus, as if Damiani were an Italian nominative case instead of a Latin genitive.
His birth was too obscure to lead any person to interfere with him. He therefore quietly studied and improved, to the edification of his fellow-pupils and the admiration of his teachers. His school-training was, first of all, in Faenza. Thence he was sent to Parma, and eventually he returned to Ravenna, where he taught with distinction and popular approval, until he was nearly or quite thirty years old.