'the World': Asceticism, Reform and Society in Eleventh-Century Italy

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Peter Damian and ‘the World’: Asceticism, Reform and Society in Eleventh-Century
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Gledhill, Michael
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T itle:
Peter Damian and ‘the World’: Asceticism, Reform and Society in Eleventh-Century
Italy

A uthor:Michael Gledhill
The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information
derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement.
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Peter Damian and ‘the World’: Asceticism, Reform and
Society in Eleventh-Century Italy

Michael Richard Gledhill

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department of History, King’s College London

2012

1
Contents

Acknowledgements 3

List of abbreviations 4

List of maps and Illustrations 4

Abstract 5

Introduction 6

Chapter One: Damian, Ravenna and Urban Cultures 36

Chapter Two: Damian and the Italian Magnates 94

Chapter Three: Peter Damian, his Hermitages and Material Exchange 135

Chapter Four: Peter Damian and the Empress Agnes 197

Concluding Remarks 243

Bibliography of Works Cited 248

2
Acknowledgements
I would, first and foremost, like to thank my two supervisors, Prof. Janet Nelson and Dr.
Serena Ferente, who have advised me with patience and support for the last few years.
It was Prof. Nelson’s MA course on ‘official and unofficial’ medieval religion that first
introduced me to Peter Damian, and to his amazingly rich collection of letters. Both of
my supervisors have always brought stimulating questions and challenging ideas to the
work that I have discussed with them, and I count myself incredibly lucky to have
worked with historians of such calibre. I will be forever grateful that they took me on as
their student, and I am proud to have been (so far as I am aware), Prof. Nelson’s last,
and Dr. Ferente’s first, student to submit their thesis. I cannot overstate how much I
have learned from both of them.

The financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council has been crucial for
the completion of this project. Their money bought me the time I needed to undertake
the research and training necessary to write this thesis. On top of this they funded my
research trip to Italy (November – December 2011), where I was lucky enough to be
able to spend precious time with the manuscripts in the Vatican Library, and to travel to
Fonte Avellana and Monte Cassino to get a first-hand look at the landscape of medieval
asceticism. The librarians in the Vatican Library were extremely curteous and helpful,
as were the staff at the monasteries I visited, and they have my thanks.

King’s College London has been a wonderful institution at which to pursue my
research. The college has my especial gratitude for providing me with vital training,
particularly in languages, free of charge. The library staff at the Maughan have also
been a great help. But, much more than this, I have been lucky to work in a stimulating
research environment in the department of History. The post-graduate medievalist
community at King’s – Henry Fairbairn, Chris Tilley, Julie Mumby, Richard Cassidy,
Mike Clasby, Sophie Ambler, William Stewart-Parker and Dhwani Patel – have always
been willing to share ideas and blueberry muffins in the canteen at the IHR. The IHR
itself, and the evening seminars that it supports, have been very useful indeed.

I would also like to thank my parents for their love and support, and for accepting that
their son was going to be a student for much longer than might be deemed reasonable.
My grandfather, Harland Thickett, has been a great help with proof-reading drafts of the
chapters that follow. My erstwhile flatmate Chris Millard, with whom I have shared the
road of academic development for the last 9 years, has been a veritable fountain of ideas
3
and a rock of companionship. There are many others whose ideas, support and
friendship have been invaluable. And (saving the best till last) I’d like to thank my
wife, Ann O’Reilly, without whom, constant in her belief, love, and willingness to
discuss eleventh-century hermits more often than anyone should have to, this project
could not have been finished.
List of Abbreviations
BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Blum O. Blum and I. Resnick, Fathers of the Church Medieval Continuation:
The Letters of Peter Damian, 6 vols (1-3, 5-7) (Washington, 1989-
2005)

MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica

MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores

PL Patrologiae Latina ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844 – 1864)

Reindel K. Reindel, (ed.), Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, 4 vols (Munich,
1983-1993)

SCH Studies in Church History

Illustrations and Maps
Fig. 1: Fonte Avellana looking south-east 34
Fig. 2: Monte Cassino 35
Fig. 3: Tenth-century chuch at Fonte Avellana 35
Fig. 4: Cloister at Fonte Avellana 35
Fig. 5: Teuzo in Florence 93
Fig. 6: Neumes in Ottob. Lat. 339, 6r 157
Fig. 7: Map of places in Chapter 3 196
4
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to conduct an analysis of Peter Damian’s letters specifically
grounded in the immediate social and political contexts within which the letters were
produced. Whilst Damian (c. 1007 – 1072) is generally seen as an important figure in
the history of the Church as a whole, he is rarely studied as an active member of his
contemporary Italian society. This thesis will seek to relate the ecclesiastical to the
social, and the clerical/monastic to the lay, and to integrate Damian’s approach to
women and to gender into the broader picture of his activity in northern and central
Italy.

The thesis examines how Damian interacted with “the world” – what he saw as
constituting the “saeculum”, and how he set himself apart from it. As a hermit, prior,
cardinal, papal legate and reformer, Damian straddled institutions, and came into
contact with powerful lay people and ecclesiastics alike. What must be done is to build
a context, through these interactions, for Damian’s rhetoric. There is a sizable corpus of
material relating to Damian’s social contacts, comprising letters, charters and some
narrative works. His role as prior of Fonte Avellana brought him into a series of
complex relationships with religious institutions and laymen, yet it remains
understudied. Through this material we can see how Damian’s positioning of himself as
being ‘otherworldly’ was in fact a key aspect of how he acted in the world.

N.B. Biblical quotes are taken from the Douay-Rheims English translation of the Latin
Vulgate.
5
Introduction

With this thesis I hope to reveal an aspect of the life of Peter Damian (c. 1007 – 1072)
that has received very little attention from historians up till now: Damian’s relationship
with ‘the world’, or the saeculum as it appears in his writings.1 This enquiry will not be
limited to ‘the world’ as an abstract concept, but will look at the relationships that
Damian formed with men and women across northern and central Italy’s social
landscape: from the peasantry that surrounded his rural hermitages and urbanised local
notables, through aristocrats high and low, to the emperor and empress themselves.

In studying such a well-known and influential figure, I am naturally building upon an
already rich and diverse body of historical scholarship. Much of the historiography
surrounding Peter Damian has come from a strong tradition of religious (particularly
Catholic) and theological history. This has focused, by and large, on his theological and
philosophical writings.2 Irven Resnick (who completed the task of translating Damian’s
Letters following the death of the previous translator, Owen Blum O.S.B.) has
contributed a great deal to our understanding of the complex ideas contained in some of
his longer works. Damian’s De Divina Omnipotentia (Letter 119) is perhaps his most
famous theological work, and it is this text, which explores the relationship between
God and time, which ensures Damian a place in histories of medieval philosophy.3 In a
similar vein, there has been a lot of work on Damian’s writings that concern the

1 The saeculum is a key Augustinian concept, where the Two Cities were permixtae – ‘all mixed up’. See
R. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge, 1970).
2 See, for example, P. McNulty, St. Peter Damian: Selected Writings on the Spiritual Life (London,
1959).
3 I. Resnick, ‘Peter Damian on the Restoration of Virginity: A Problem for Medieval Theology’, Journal
of Theological Studies 39 (1988), pp. 125 – 134; I. Resnick, Divine power and possibility in St Peter
Damian's De divina omnipotentia (New York, 1992). John Marenbon points out that in this work
Damian anticipated thirteenth- and fourteenth-century discussions of divine omnipotence, Early Medieval
Philosophy (450 – 1150) (London, 1988), pp. 91 – 94. The text also gets a passing mention in B. Russell,
History of Western Philosophy (London, 1946), p. 434.
6
monastic and eremitic life. Irven Resnick, Colin Phipps and Emily Bannister have
explored the distinction between eremitism and coenobitic monasticism in Damian’s
thought, and have found that there was a significant dialogue between the two. Nor was
this a purely theoretical interaction, as Damian corresponded with, and visited Monte
Cassino and Cluny (particularly with the abbots, Desiderius and Hugh respectively), and
exchanged ideas with both.4

The context of the eleventh-century reform movements has dominated the study of
Damian’s writings. The importance of Damian’s Liber Gratissimus (a treatise on
simony in which he asserted that the ordinations performed by simoniacal bishops
remain valid) has long been recognised,5 and the text positions Damian as a moderate
voice in the ecclesiastical-legal histories of the reforms.6 More recently attention has
been given to Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus (Book of Gomorrah), in which he heavily
criticised the sexual practices of the clergy, and warned against the spread of sodomy.
After Pierre Payer published an English translation of the book as a stand-alone text,7 it
was taken up by John Boswell in his history of homosexuality, and is now treated as a
pivotal text by historians of sexuality, whether they agree with the ‘Boswell Thesis’ or
not.8

4 I. Resnick, ‘Odo of Tournai and Peter Damian: Poverty and Crisis in the Eleventh Century’, Revue
Bénédictine 104 (1988), pp. 114 – 140; I. Resnick, ‘Peter Damian on Cluny, Liturgy and Penance’,
Journal of Religious History 15 (1988), pp. 61-75; C. Phipps, ‘Romuald — Model Hermit: Eremitical
Theory in Saint Peter Damian's Vita Beati Romualdi, Chapters 16-27’ in W. Sheils (ed.), Monks, Hermits
and the Ascetic Tradition (SCH 22, 1985), pp. 65–77; E. Bannister ‘‘A monastic ark against the current
flood’: the manuscripts of Peter Damian at the Abbey of Montecassino’, European Review of History 17
(2010), pp. 221–40.
5 J. P. Whitney, ‘Peter Damiani and Humbert’, The Cambridge Historical Journal 1 (1925), pp. 95-142.
6 The works of Ian Robinson, Gerd Tellenbach and Uta-Renate Blumenthal are good examples of this
tradition.
7 P. J. Payer, Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices
(Waterloo, Ontario, 1962).
8 J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980); M. Jordan, The
Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1998).
7
Given the importance of his work to these, to put it broadly, histories of thought, it has
been remarked that there has been a surprising lack of biographical works on Damian,9
but as the study of reform itself has advanced since the 1980s, this has started to impact
on how Damian is seen. Henrietta Leyser and Lester Little both produced very
important (though quite different) analyses of eleventh- and twelfth-century eremitism
as a social phenomenon,10 and in 1980 Bob Moore published the tremendously
influential paper ‘Family, Community and Cult on the Eve of the Gregorian Reform’.11
What makes Moore’s paper so important is that previously the study of reform rhetoric
(particularly the focus on simony and nicolaitism) and theology had proceeded more or
less independently of the study of the social, political and economic developments of
the eleventh century. The Church and monasteries had certainly been part of the social
story, but as powerful institutions in the Italian landscape.12 Moore, drawing on the
work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas,13 sought an analysis that encompassed both
the changes in religious rhetoric and the social upheaval of the time. Focusing less upon

9 E. Bannister, Peter Damian (c. 1007 – 1072), monastic ideology and the religious revolution of the
eleventh century (Unpublished PhD thesis, Keele, 2008), pp. 68 – 69.
10 H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe
1000 – 1150 (London, 1984); L. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe
(London, 1978); Little’s work does not focus solely on the eleventh century, but it occupies a pivotal
place in his narrative as a period of economic change. A thesis of economic change (particularly
monetisation) driving religious change in this period was also put forward in A. Murray, Reason and
Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), and R. I. Moore The First European Revolution, c. 970 – 1215
(Oxford, 2000).
11 R. I. Moore, ‘Family, Community and Cult on the Eve of the Gregorian Reform’, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society Fifth Series, Vol. 30, (1980), pp. 49-69.
12 C. Violante, ‘I Vescovi dell’Italia Centro-Settentrionale e lo Sviluppo dell’Economia Monetaria’, Studi
sulla Cristianità Medioevale: Società, Istituzioni, Spiritualità 5 (1964), pp. 325 – 347; G. Dameron,
Episcopal Power and Florentine Society: 1000 – 1320 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991); cf. L. Provero,
‘Forty Years of Rural History for the Italian Middle Ages’ in I. Alfonso (ed.), The Rural History of
Medieval European Societies: Trends and Perspectives (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 141 – 172.
13 The first medievalist to introduce Douglas as an aid to understand Europe around the millenium was
Janet L. Nelson in her ‘Society, Theodicy and the Origins of Heresy: Towards a Reassessment of the
Medieval Evidence’ in D. Baker (ed.) Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest SCH 9 (1972), pp. 65 – 77.
Nelson took inspiration from Douglas’s Natural Symbols to try and understand the new ascetics as a
‘natural symbol’ of the renewed cosmic order. Most other medieval historians, including Moore, Leyser,
Elliot and others, have turned instead to Purity and Danger, where Douglas laid out the basis of
‘pollution theory’, whereby people and things should not be understood as inherently offensive, but rather
as offensive to the order of social categories (hence the famous phrase that dirt is ‘matter out of place’).
In later years Douglas critiqued and refined her theories, although these works, like How Institutions
Think and Risk and Blame have not had any real impact on the historiography of the eleventh century. For
Douglas references, see bibliography.
8