The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

The age was barbarous and good professors were scarce. It seems to have been expected that brilliant minds would go on shining like those exhaustless lamps which are fabled to have been found in the tombs of the old magicians. If such was the case, with the intense intellect of Damiani he must have tapped some source of real spiritual power early in his course, for he burns brightly even now as we read his vivid truthfulness and peruse some of his lovely verses, out from which leap, nevertheless, tongues of flaming scorn for hypocrites and simonists.

Yes, the age was barbarous, and therefore Peter Damiani was soon a professor, with many students and an abundance of fees. Knowledge in those days not only meant power but wealth, and he was fast growing rich in Ravenna. It was a delightful life, but it did not suit him. He was, in fact, the “spiritual kinsman, and in many respects the pioneer” of Gregory VII. Hildebrand came to be, after awhile, his personal friend, his sanctus Sathanas, his Mephistopheles, his instigator and stimulant. Of a sudden, then, he departed from Ravenna to take up his abode with the hermits of Fonte Avellana, near Gubbio. Here he was known by the name of Frater Honestus, and surely he deserved the title, for he was a swift witness against every sort of sin. Guy, the abbot, persuaded him to undertake the instruction of the brethren, and thus he found himself back at his old work of teaching once more.

It was not long before the new monk became prior of the convent. Then, in 1041, he rose to be abbot. And then, in 1047, he indited to Pope Leo IX. his famous Liber Gomorrhianus. This Gomorrah Book is just what its name implies. It is one of the earliest protests uttered within the Church against the awful wickedness which was everywhere prevalent.

The subject is far too unpleasant for me to deal with it at any length. And yet this disagreeable topic forces itself upon the notice of the student of that period wherever he may turn. Most ingenious and sophistical distinctions were made in those days relative to sin. This thing, for instance, was wrong; but that other was not half so wrong as this was. Such an offence was to be condoned by a trifling penance, and such another was to be only met by years of contrition. Against all this hypocritical nastiness Damiani set his pen. No more scathing book was ever written. And the only wonder is that it has evaded the vigilance of the men who suffered by it, and has made its escape into type, never again to be in peril of its existence. Bayle—who may be safely accounted unapproachable in such abstruse inquiries—has given us the whole story of this book. It was a terrible scourge to the vices of the clergy, and even Baronius allows that it was not written one moment too soon.

The pope to whom this remarkable document was addressed was a man of appropriate spirit. He was the third in the series of five able German popes, who labored so hard in the cause of disciplinary reform. At Hildebrand’s advice, he had laid aside the papal insignia, which he donned at his election, and came to Rome as a barefooted pilgrim in 1048. He aimed to put down simony, to stop the barter and sale of benefices, and to secure the celibacy of the clergy. To this end he used the synods with vigor, and was ready for almost any proposed reform which fell in with his line of operations. He was of the German, not the ultramontane party, and therefore was quite liberal in his construction of the great text, “Thou art Peter,” and went so far as to say that the Church should first of all be built upon the true rock, which was Christ. To him, then, the Gomorrah Book went, and it made a stir.

The next four popes occupied among them no longer period of ecclesiastical rule than from the year 1054 to the year 1061. Matters were unsettled. No one continued in office. But the finger of Hildebrand the cardinal was mightier than the hand of any pope. Nicholas II. was guided by him, and Alexander II., who came forward in 1061, was unquestionably under his control. And when Alexander appeared, it seemed that the Gomorrah Book was still an element of unrest and disturbance, at a time when the claims of an Antipope (Honorius II.) had been set up by the Imperialist party, and it was necessary for even Hildebrand’s friends to give as little offence as possible to the clergy. For the election of Alexander was clearly irregular, because it was in defiance of the rules laid down by Nicholas II. at a Lateran Synod in 1059. With a genial and suave manner the new pontiff now borrowed the work for the ostensible purpose of having it copied by the help of the Abbot of St. Saviour. That was the last that Damiani saw of it for some little while.

If Alexander thought that the hermit abbot of Fonte Avellana would submit to this method of suppression he flattered his soul in vain. Damiani, after a reasonable delay, appealed to his friend Hildebrand. The book was like a part of himself, and he had no desire to have it treated with neglect. One cannot here follow the windings of the story further than to say that Damiani got his book again, and now we have it too.

I am surprised at the blindness which prevents some writers from seeing in this Peter de Honestis a most noble and consistent character. Morheim only pays him a merited compliment when he says that his “genius, candor, integrity, and writings of various kinds, entitle him to rank among the first men of the age, although he was not free from the faults of the times.” But how could one easily avoid the extreme of severity who was confronted by the grossest sins that ever carried a hissing sibilant in front of their names! Flagellation was a natural reaction from those fleshly lusts that warred against the soul.

Somehow Hildebrand took a great fancy to this genuine reformer. His own great schemes were ripening, and Damiani was just the man to be made of value in the office of cardinal. In 1057, then, the abbot had been created cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Pope Nicholas II., and in the year following deacon of the holy college. At first he strenuously resisted the honor, but was forced to assume it by the Pope’s command. In 1059 he had acted as papal legate to the semi-independent Ambrosian Church of Milan. Here he obtained pledges from them that they would conduct their affairs with purity and agree to receive the authority of the Roman pontiff.

He did not remain among the cardinals very long. His convent allured him, and the display requisite to his proper duties was both irksome and repugnant to him. Therefore he went home again, ardently devoted to Hildebrand, but devoid of all ambition, and ready to denounce the Pope or anybody else when it appeared that the rights of the Church were infringed.