Peter then continues with excellent advice for the young noblewoman, exhorting her to deeds of mercy and kindness, and warning her against the enjoyment of revenues wrung from the poor.[334] Indeed Damiani’s writings contain much that still is wise. His advice to the great and noble of the world was admirable,[335] and though couched in austere phrase, it demanded what many men feel bound to fulfil in the twentieth century. His little work on Almsgiving[336] contains sentences which might be spoken to-day. He has been pointing out that no one can be exercising the ascetic virtues all the time: no one can be always praying and fasting, washing feet and subjecting the body to pain. Some people, moreover, shun such self-castigation. But one can always be benevolent; and, though fearing to afflict the body, can stretch forth his hand in charity: “Those then who are rich should seek to be dispensers rather than possessors. They ought not to regard what they have as their own: for they did not receive this transitory wealth in order to revel in luxury, but that they should administer it so long as they continue in their stewardship. Whoever gives to the poor does not distribute his own but restores another’s.”[337] This sounds modern--it also sounds like Seneca.[338] Yet Damiani was no modern man, nor was he antique, but very fearful of the classics. Having been a rhetorician and grammarian, when he became a hermit-monk he made Christ his grammar (_mea grammatica Christus est_).[339] Horror-stricken at the world, and writhing under his own contamination, he cast body and soul into the ascetic life. That was the harbour of escape from the carnal temptations which threatened the soul’s hope of pardon from the Judge at the Last Day. Therefore Peter is fierce in execration of all lapses from the hermit-life, so rapturously praised with its contrition, its penitence, and tears. His ascetic rhapsodies, with which, as a poet might, he delighted or relieved his soul, are eloquent illustrations of the monastic ideal.[340] Other men in Italy less intelligent than Damiani, but equally picturesque, were held by like ascetic and emotional obsession. Intellectual interest, however, in theology was less prominent, because the Italian concern with religion was either emotional or ecclesiastical, which is to say, political. The philosophic or dialectical treatment of the Faith was to run its course north of the Alps; and those men of Italian birth--Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, and Aquinas--who contributed to Christian thought, early left their native land, and accomplished their careers under intellectual conditions which did not obtain in Italy. Nevertheless, Anselm and Bonaventura at least did not lose their Italian qualities; and it is as representative of what might come out of Italy in the eleventh century that the former may detain us here.