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The saints

St. Peter Damian

An orphan treated like a servant who grew into a fearless reformer of a corrupt clergy.

Feast: 21 February · died 1072 · The Middle Ages · Ravenna and Fonte Avellana, Italy

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Carved stone bust of St. Peter Damian, bearded.

Srnec at English Wikipedia, 2009. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.

Home / The saints / St. Peter Damian

Ravenna, Italy, the 11th century

Peter was orphaned as a child and treated badly by one of his brothers, sent out to herd pigs.1

Another brother, a priest, took him in and gave him an education.1

He became a brilliant teacher, and then left it all to be a hermit monk.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church honors him as a Doctor of the Church and reformer of the clergy.

01St. Peter Damian

The reformer

He wrote and preached against the buying of church offices and against priests who broke their vows.1

The pope made him a cardinal, and he kept speaking bluntly to popes and emperors alike.1

02St. Peter Damian

Poor at his table

He never forgot being poor, and he liked to have poor people eat with him.1

Live it this week

Have a poor person eat with you

Peter Damian made a habit of eating with the poor. This week, share a real meal with someone in need: buy lunch for a homeless man and sit down with him, or serve at a soup kitchen and eat there too.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Peter Damian”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.