It is a curious question this. It is only another proof of the neglect into which a great man has fallen. For Hermann is called “nostri _miraculum_ seculi” by the next generation who came after him. And there is no _absolute_ proof that, “without lexicon or grammar” (for so Jourdain puts it), he could not have mastered Arabic. Observing the topics of his other writings cognate to those of Aristotle, I am therefore not in the least inclined to yield to even M. Charles Jourdain. CHAPTER XVI. PETER DAMIANI, CARDINAL AND FLAGELLANT. It is not every poet who begins by keeping the swine and ends by wearing the red hat and purple robe of a cardinal-bishop. Nor is it every poet who commences as a forlorn and deserted foundling, to whom it is a great mercy to have even swine to keep by way of getting his daily bread. But all this and more befell Damiani. We are not informed about his parentage, except that he had a mother who abandoned him, and a brother (or, more probably, an uncle) who took pity on him. He was born in Ravenna. Some authorities say it was in 988; others that it was in 1007. A modern hymnologist, anxious to be right (though he is frequently wrong), sets it at 1002. But 1007 has the greatest weight of evidence. This brother, or uncle, had compassion on the lad, and poor little outcast Peter was sent by him “into his fields to feed swine,” a much more honorable employment of course in Italy than in Palestine, and one which he shared with Nicholas Brakespeare, the English pope, Hadrian IV. What was his previous history we cannot discover, though the _Acta Sanctorum_ for February 23d is full of legendary accounts. We only know that his natural abilities attracted the notice of another relative (brother, some say), who was an archdeacon at Ravenna. He it was who advanced Peter to the opportunities of education, and who proved so fast a friend that the boy took his patron’s name for his own. As Eusebius called himself Eusebius Pamphili (Pamphilus’s Eusebius), so Peter became Peter Damiani, “Damian’s Peter,” and this designation has adhered to him ever since. It is amusing to read now and then of _Peter Damianus_, as if Damiani were an Italian nominative case instead of a Latin genitive. His birth was too obscure to lead any person to interfere with him. He therefore quietly studied and improved, to the edification of his fellow-pupils and the admiration of his teachers. His school-training was, first of all, in Faenza. Thence he was sent to Parma, and eventually he returned to Ravenna, where he taught with distinction and popular approval, until he was nearly or quite thirty years old.