The age was barbarous and good professors were scarce. It seems to have been expected that brilliant minds would go on shining like those exhaustless lamps which are fabled to have been found in the tombs of the old magicians. If such was the case, with the intense intellect of Damiani he must have tapped some source of real spiritual power early in his course, for he burns brightly even now as we read his vivid truthfulness and peruse some of his lovely verses, out from which leap, nevertheless, tongues of flaming scorn for hypocrites and simonists. Yes, the age was barbarous, and therefore Peter Damiani was soon a professor, with many students and an abundance of fees. Knowledge in those days not only meant power but wealth, and he was fast growing rich in Ravenna. It was a delightful life, but it did not suit him. He was, in fact, the “spiritual kinsman, and in many respects the pioneer” of Gregory VII. Hildebrand came to be, after awhile, his personal friend, his _sanctus Sathanas_, his Mephistopheles, his instigator and stimulant. Of a sudden, then, he departed from Ravenna to take up his abode with the hermits of Fonte Avellana, near Gubbio. Here he was known by the name of Frater Honestus, and surely he deserved the title, for he was a swift witness against every sort of sin. Guy, the abbot, persuaded him to undertake the instruction of the brethren, and thus he found himself back at his old work of teaching once more. It was not long before the new monk became prior of the convent. Then, in 1041, he rose to be abbot. And then, in 1047, he indited to Pope Leo IX. his famous _Liber Gomorrhianus_. This _Gomorrah Book_ is just what its name implies. It is one of the earliest protests uttered within the Church against the awful wickedness which was everywhere prevalent. The subject is far too unpleasant for me to deal with it at any length. And yet this disagreeable topic forces itself upon the notice of the student of that period wherever he may turn. Most ingenious and sophistical distinctions were made in those days relative to sin. This thing, for instance, was wrong; but that other was not half so wrong as this was. Such an offence was to be condoned by a trifling penance, and such another was to be only met by years of contrition. Against all this hypocritical nastiness Damiani set his pen. No more scathing book was ever written. And the only wonder is that it has evaded the vigilance of the men who suffered by it, and has made its escape into type, never again to be in peril of its existence. Bayle—who may be safely accounted unapproachable in such abstruse inquiries—has given us the whole story of this book. It was a terrible scourge to the vices of the clergy, and even Baronius allows that it was not written one moment too soon.