Saint Peter Damian

Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Feast Day

February 21

Life

1007–1072

Doctor of the Church

1828

Order

Camaldolese Benedictines (eremitical reform of Saint Romuald)

Born

Ravenna, Italy

Pietro Damiani was born in 1007 at Ravenna into a large family. Orphaned young, he was for a time mistreated by an elder brother, then taken in and educated by another brother, the priest Damian, after whom he later named himself. He studied at Ravenna, Faenza, and Parma, became a celebrated teacher, and about 1035 entered the strict Camaldolese hermitage of Fonte Avellana in the Apennines, founded by disciples of Saint Romuald.

He was elected prior of Fonte Avellana in 1043, transformed it into the head of a network of hermitages, and from there exercised a wide reforming influence on the Italian Church. His treatise Liber Gomorrhianus (about 1049), addressed to Pope Saint Leo IX, denounced clerical immorality and the simoniacal abuses of his age in unsparing terms. He likewise wrote against simoniacal ordinations (Liber Gratissimus) and lay investiture, urging the freedom of the Church under what he called the "sacrum imperium" of the priesthood.

Created cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX in 1057, he served as the principal collaborator of the reforming popes who prepared the way for Gregory VII: Nicholas II, Alexander II. He was sent as papal legate to France, Milan, Florence, and Cluny on the most delicate ecclesial questions of the eleventh century. After repeated requests, in 1067 he was permitted to return to his hermitage.

He died at the monastery of Santa Maria fuori le mura at Faenza on February 22, 1072, while returning from a legation to Ravenna. He was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XII in 1828. The reformed General Roman Calendar of 1969 fixed his Optional Memorial on February 21, leaving February 22 free for the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter.