The second great Ravennese of the Middle Age, S. Peter Damian, who was born about 988 in Ravenna, of a good but at that time poor family, was the youngest of many children. He was early left an orphan, and living in his brother's house was treated, it would appear, rather as a beast than a man. Presently, however, another brother, then archpriest of Ravenna, took pity on him and had him educated, first at Faenza but after at Parma, where he studied under a famous master. Here he became immersed in the religious life so that when two monks belonging to Fonte Avellana, "a desert at the foot of the Apennines in Umbria," happened to call at the place of his abode he followed them. After a life of penitence and hardship, in 1057 pope Stephen IX. prevailed upon him to quit his desert and made him cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and later pope Nicholas II. sent him to Milan as his legate, till in 1062 the successor of Nicholas allowed him to return to his solitude; but in 1063 he was sent to France as papal legate. Later we find him as papal ambassador in Ravenna--this in 1072. He was then a very old man, and on his way back to Rome he died at Faenza. This famous saint has often been confused with the third great Ravennese of this time, Pietro degli Onesti, called Pietro _Il Peccatore_[1] This confusion, which Dante disposes of in the well-known passage of the _Paradiso_: "In quel loco fui 10, Pier Damiano, e Pietro Peccator fu nella casa Di nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano,"[2] is commented upon in one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ was of the Onesti family, as was S. Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as we have seen, the first as we may think in 1119. [Footnote 1: It is I confess doubtful whether Pietro degli Onesti was ever called _Il Peccatore_ till a later epoch. The authenticity of the letters in which he so styles himself is open to question and the inscription on his tomb is it seems of the fifteenth century.] [Footnote 2: _Paradiso_, xxi. 121-123. "In quel loco" refers to Fonte Avellana.] [Footnote 3: Cf. Corazzini, _Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni Boccaccio_ (Firenze, 1877), p. 307.]