The Letters of Peter Damian 151–180 by Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., Irven M. Resnick (review)

REVIEWS 259 This study is very original, most of all for its interdisciplinary perspective. It cannot be thought of as a thorough literary-critical assessment, as the author himself recognizes, admitting that his observations are the product of a philosophical and cultural analysis; medieval and Renaissance scholars, however , will find in this work many interesting insights. ROSSELLA PESCATORI, Italian, UCLA The Letters of Peter Damian 151-180, trans. Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., and Irven M. Resnick (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press 2005) xxiv + 310 pp. Upon the 2004 publication of the previous volume of Peter Damian’s letters (121–150), one of the stylistic qualities that this reviewer found most striking was Damian’s skilled eloquence, which he ostensibly denied. “One should hear from the mouth of a Christian, not the Latinity of Cicero, but the simplicity of Christ,” he wrote his nephew, but the reader (then and now) could smile wryly at the fact that Damian was clearly capable of ornate expression. Now with the last volume of the translated letters available, readers are again encouraged to explore the often outspoken Damian. To be sure, the focus of this edition, as it was of previous ones, is Damian’s opinions on monastic life and the on-going controversies surrounding the cura pastoralis and its place in the secular world. Moreover, Damian’s circle of correspondents was such to involve him in matters of state and those who sought, or needed, advice therein. The publisher advertises two letters of the first variety – monastic rule and reputation—on the book’s jacket, and these certainly have their merit and anchor the present volume both with their size and scope. Admirers of such texts as the Ancrene Wisse will especially enjoy Letter 153, in which Damian exhorts the monks of Pomposa to lead an ideal monastic life beyond even the standards set by St Benedict’s Rule. In so doing, he necessarily defines at length (over nearly sixty pages) what this monastic life should be, and the subsequent, detailed instructions have the air of a manual. The other advertised letter, 165, reads as a companion piece, in that Damian seeks both to critique and correct monastic error, while he simultaneously defends the importance of the life to the secular world. Despite the dominating presence of these letters, Damian did not compose a book of manners, and his letters should not be pigeonholed as such. To return to his eloquence and imagination as an epistolary writer, what often catches the reader unawares is the subtle appearance of beauty in Damian’s writing. It is difficult to ascribe Damian’s more elegiac thoughts to a man looking back at his age from the last days of life (Letters 151–170 are dated up to 1070, two years before his death, but the remaining epistles are not datable), but it is tempting nonetheless. Filled with thoughts of a declining world, Damian has no accusatory or inflammatory tone in writing “Decency has gone, honesty disappeared , religious devotion has fallen on bad times, and like an army on the march, the throng of all the holy virtues has withdrawn at a distance” (Letter 165). On the level of pastoral concern for a sinner’s soul (163; “Oh, how lamentable, how doleful is this belated and fruitful repentance …”), Damian is no less insistent on time and the departing soul that must ponder it: “That which went by in an instant is most short indeed, while the path it must now take will REVIEWS 260 never end” (the pun of running is difficult to translate; “Id enim brevissimum est, quod velut in puncto transcurrit, huic autem viae nunc ingreditur, nullus omnino finis occurrit”). Yet what makes such universal elegy all the more resounding are the moments of introspection, clearly the moments that justify Damian’s call for the cloistered life. Amidst all the chidings and political debates, Damian remains himself steadfast in peace and optimism, and just when the reader – mired in such letters as 153 and 165—expects it least, Damian shows just how devoted he is to the cura pastoralis at its most intimate levels. Perhaps no letter gives a better glimpse...