Today, February 21, is the memorial of Saint Peter Damian.
Doctor of the Church.
Peter Damian was born in 988 in Ravenna, Italy. He came from a large and impoverished family. When he was a young orphan, his brother mistreated him and forced him to work in a piggery.
He was later sent to live with another brother, a priest named Damian. The pious youth saw a role model in his brother that he adopted the name Damian, to add to his name Peter. Soon, Peter Damian became well educated, serving as a professor.
He retired from teaching in 1035 to become a Benedictine monk. When he tried to replace sleeping with praying, his health declined. He was ordered to become healthy. He spent his time studying Scripture and teaching his brother monks. He became prior, renovated the monastery, improved the library, and founded hermitages.
He attended a synod in Rome in 1047, and encouraged Pope Gregory VI to support a revitalization of Church zeal and clerical discipline. He wrote Liber Gomorrhianus, which described the vices of priests, mainly in their concern with worldly matters, with money, and the evil of simony.
Among his works were fighting simony and bringing back the primitive discipline among priests and religious who were becoming more and more worldly.
Peter Damian was a prolific writer. He wrote dozens of sermons, seven biographies (including St. Romuald’s), and poetry, recognized as the best Latin of the time. Although he wanted to live a quiet life as a monk, he was constantly called to serve as papal legate and to rebuild the friendships of arguing monastic houses, clergymen, and government officials, etc.
He died in 1072. Pope Leo XII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1828.