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VI SPIRITUAL FATHERSWHO AREDEFILED ALONG WITH THEIRCHILDREN O unheard ofcrime! O outrage to be mourned with awhole fountain of tears! If those who consent to the ones doing these things are to be punished with death, what torment could be thought fitting for those who commit these great evils with their spiritual children—evils to be punished with damnation? What fruitfulness can still be found in the flocks when the shepherd is so deeply sunk in the belly of the devil? Who would still remain under the rule of one who, he knew, was separated from God as an enemy? Whoever makes a mistress out of a penitent whom he had spiritually borne as a child for God subjects the servant to the iron rule of diabolical tyranny through the impurity of his flesh. If someone violates a woman whom he raised from the sacred font, is it not determined that he be deprived of communion without delay, and ordered to pass through public penance by censure of the sacred canons?33 For it is written: spiritual generation is greater than carnal.34 Likewise it follows that the same sentence is justly inflicted both on one who has ruined a natural daughter and on one who has corrupted a spiritual daughter through a sacrilegious union, unless perhaps in this 33 Ryan, Damiani (29, text 17), suggests that Burchard, Decretum 17, 8 (PL 140, 920C), is Damian's source for these remarks. 34 I am unable to identify the source for this saying. The same expression is used elsewhere by Damian without any suggestion of its being a citation; Opusc. 17 (PL 145, 385A). Perhaps it is a reflection of the Council of Trullo, canon 53 in Mansi 11, 907. 41 42 Book of Gomorrah matter the quality of each crime is distinguished, since, although sinning incestuously, nevertheless, they each sinned naturally because they sinned with a woman. However, anyone who commits a sacrilege with his son is guilty of the crime of incest with a male and breaks the laws of nature. And it seems to me to be more tolerable to fall into shameful lust with an animal than with a male.35 That is, one who perishes alone is judged much more lightly than one who also draws another along with himself to disastrous ruin. In fact, it is a sad situation where the ruin of one person depends in this way on the ruin of another so that whileone isdestroyed the other necessarilyfollows to death close behind. 35 Perhaps an explicit contradiction of the "Second Diocesan Statute" of Theodulf of Orleans which reads, "For just as it is more abominable to mix with a mule than with a male, so it is a more irrational crime to mix with a male than with a female." Edited in C. De Clercq, La legislation religieuse franque de Clovis a Charlemagne (Louvain, 1936), no. 39, 336 (PL 105, 214D). ...

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