This week brings the feast of St Peter Damian (d February 22, 1072 or 1073), Doctor of the Church (February 23 in the traditional calendar, the 21st in the Ordinary Form – so as to make way for the feast of the Cathedra of Peter on the 22nd).
Peter Damian was a monk, a cardinal and, to start out, an orphan. He was a great reformer of monastic and clerical life, preceding Francis of Assisi and Gregory VII, a brilliant Latinist, a deep theologian, and an astute diplomat in turbulent times.
We have quite a large body of his writings, including theological treatises, sermons and liturgical texts. It is he who composed the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was included in many Catholic prayer books down to our own day. So great was his influence that Dante, in his Paradiso, placed him very high in the Seventh Heaven’s silent Sphere of Saturn. It is unpopular today to mention one of his hardest-hitting works, his Liber Gomorrhianus, which blasts homosexuality and pederasty among the clergy.
