Peter Damian

Peter Damian (c. 1007–1072) was born at Ravenna, orphaned young and educated at Faenza and Parma, where he taught rhetoric. Around 1035 he entered the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, a community following the Rule of Benedict in the tradition of Romuald, and became its prior in 1043. In 1057 he was made Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, and he served several popes as legate. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1828.

He was one of the leading voices of the eleventh-century reform of the Church, writing against simony and clerical incontinence and urging clergy and monks to a stricter life. His letters and treatises join an austere monastic spirituality with sharp moral argument, and his discussion of divine omnipotence in De divina omnipotentia was taken up by the later scholastics.

The library holds De castitate et mediis eam tuendi, a treatise on chastity and the means of preserving it, written as a letter of counsel. It is a direct example of the reform literature for which he is known.