These, with other verses written in tears, relate to schisms of pope and
antipope which so often rent the papacy in Peter’s lifetime.[328] He never
ceased to cry out against monks and clergy, denouncing their simony and
avarice, their luxury, intemperance and vile unchastity, their viciousness
of every kind. Such denunciations fill his letters, while many of his
other writings chiefly consist of them.[329] They culminate in his
horrible _Liber Gomorrhianus_, which was issued with the approval of one
pope, to be suppressed by another as too unspeakable.
Naturally over so foul a world, flame and lower the terrors of the Day of
Judgment. For Damiani it was near at hand. He writes to a certain judge:
“Therefore, most dear brother now while the world smiles for thee,
while thy body glows in health, while the prosperity of earth is sweet
and fair, think upon those things which are to come. Deem whatever is
transitory to be but as the illusion of a dream. And that terrible day
of the last Judgment keep ever present to thy sight, and brood with
quaking bowels over the sudden coming of such majesty--nor think it to
be far off!”[330]
Beware of penitence postponed!
“O how full of grief and dole is that late unfruitful repentance, when
the sinful soul, about to be loosed from its dungeon of flesh, looks
behind it, and then directs its gaze into the future. It sees behind
it that little stadium of mortal life, already traversed; it sees
before it the range of endless aeons. That flown moment which it has
lived it perceives to be an instant; it contemplates the infinite
length of time to come.”[331]
From Damiani’s stricken thoughts upon the wickedness of the age, we may
turn to the more personal disclosures of one who wrote himself _Petrus
peccator monachus_. There is one tell-tale letter of confession to his
brother Damianus, whom he loved and revered:
“To my lord Damianus, my best loved brother, Peter, sinner and monk,
his servant and son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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