THE PURPOSE OF ASCETICISM
Christian asceticism is directed to one end, the
enjoyment of
the visio Dei, and the ascetic life can only be
understood in
relation to this end; therefore, if Damian's
ascetical teaching is
to be seen in its true light, it must be so
considered. Was he a
contemplative in the tradition of Augustine and
Gregory?
Were his incredible penances, his severe rule of
life and his
defence of flagellation the fruit of a burning
love of God and a
desire for the exquisite delight of mystic union,
or was he in
fact a cold, austere figure, a mere master of
negative asceticism,
a masochist with an almost Manichaean hatred of
the flesh, as
he has sometimes been pictured ? It was not
hardness of heart
that led him to shun the delights of human
society, for, as has
rightly been said, it is not the man whose senses
are blunt who
makes the sternest ascetic. All his actions sprang
from the
fervour of his love for God; it was this that
moulded his mind
and character. He was in the truest sense a
contemplative.
Dante Alighieri recognized this quality in him.
The poet
spent some time at Fonte Avellana, and could not
fail to imbibe
something of the spirit of its second founder.
When, in the
Paradiso> Damian draws near to the poet as he
beholds Jacob's
ladder, thronged with bright spirits, which
stretches up from
Saturn, the latter says to him: *Io veggio ben
Famor che tu
m'accene', and the saint later describes his life
at Fonte Avel-
lana to Dante in the following words:
'. . . Quivi
al servigio di Dio mi fei si fermo
che pur con cibi di liquor d'ulivi
lievemente passava caldi e gieli,
contento nei pensier contemplativi.' 1
Commenting on Dante's remarks, J. P. Whitney said:
'Damian
is the type of the contemplative life which comes
nearest to
God, and is therefore most useful to man. If we
take this as the
centre of Damian's personality, all his activities
and his writ-
ings fall into their proper place. Instead of
accidental denun-
ciations of corruptions and evils, isolated
comments on theo-
logical or clerical life, we have a coherent
whole, a full ex-
pression of a well-ordered personality. If to most
people he is
merely an ascetic, and a prophet of asceticism, he
himself
valued the ascetic life as a help to
contemplation, and as
necessary to ensure its perfection.'
But the best answer to the critics is Damian's
own. At the
beginning of the eighth chapter of the De
Perfections Mona-
1 Dante, Diviw Commedia, Paradiso, Canto xxi,
chorum> he defines the purpose of the monastic
life: 'Our whole
new way of life and our renunciation of the world
has but one
end: rest. But a man can only come to this state
of rest if he
stretches his sinews in many labours and
strivings, so that
when all the clamour and disturbance is at an end
the soul may
be lifted up by the grace of contemplation to
search for the
very face of truth.' Who serves God, he asks, that
he may
endure toil and hardship and suffer temptation?
All who seek
God do so with one hope and expectation: that they
may find
rest, and sleep in the joys of contemplation as
though in the
arms of the lovely Rachel.
This, then, is the end of the religious life. For
although
Damian does not regard the grace of contemplation
as the sole
prerogative of those living the monastic life, he
believes that
it is most surely attained in the cloister. Men,
like the children
of Israel long ago, must go forth into the desert
if they are to
see the pillar of light which is Christ; and the body
of monks
has this in common with the wandering Hebrews. So
he writes
to the monks of Cluny: c As a fiery light shone in
the night's
darkness upon those wandering in the desert, so
those who
dwell in spiritual monasteries are often lightened
by the rays
of a supernal light, which dispels the darkness of
fleshly
passions and bathes them in the brilliance of
inward contem-
plation.' 1 The parallel is carried still further
in his thought.
For him, those who literally choose the desert,
who seek the
solitude of the hermitage, are putting themselves
even more
surely in the way of such grace than their
cenobitic brethren.
He believes that of all forms of religious life
the eremitic is the
most perfect; even when he praises the
spirituality of Cluny,
it is because its monks might almost be hermits.
The contem-
plative must be a solitary at least in spirit;
Damian holds, with
Catherine of Siena, that knowledge of the Godhead
does not
come *senza 1'abitatione della cella del cuore e
dell' anima
nostra'.
In what did contemplation consist for Peter Damian
? Like
all other great mystics, he desired union with
God. The con-
1 Epistohe lib. vi, 5. P.L. 144, 381.
28
templative life has been described in the
following words:
'The mystics' claim has been expressed by the
Christian mystics
as "the experimental perception of God's
presence and being"
and especially "union with God" a union,
that is to say, not
merely psychological, in conforming the will to
God's will, but,
it may be said, ontological, of the soul with God,
spirit with
spirit. And they declare that the experience is a
momentary
foretaste of the bliss of Heaven.' 1
Certainly Damian believed that the holy man can
see his
Creator while still in the body of this death, and
that he can be
mystically united to Him in spiritual wedlock. He
says so quite
clearly in a letter to Desiderius: 'Holy men are
able to look
even now upon their Creator by the grace of
contemplation/
He goes on to say that this glimpse of God is
necessarily in-
complete, but this does not make the statement any
the less
striking in itself. Again, writing to his beloved
Empress Agnes,
he speaks of the mystical marriage of
contemplation, and prays
that its grace may be vouchsafed to her: 'May
Christ hold con-
verse with you; may he be your comrade and your
guest . .
may he clasp you in his virginal embrace, so that
in you also
the words of Isaiah may be fulfilled: "As the
bridegroom
rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice
over thee."
Secure in his embraces may you sweetly rest, so that
He may
offer as if to Himself a haven of inward peace Who
vouchsafed
to suffer shipwreck for you amid the rising storms
of this
world/
Like his predecessors, Damian makes use of many
analogies
in an endeavour to describe the contemplative
state; like them
too, he has recourse above all to two images. The
first and
most frequent is that of light. That which the
mystic beholds
in contemplation he calls, in various places, 'the
light of
eternity', 'the light of contemplation', 'the
heavenly light', 'the
splendour of inward contemplation'. He is
illumined 'by the
shining rays of the Divine light'. This is the
language of the
early western contemplatives; he makes no mention
of rays of
Divine darkness or dark nights of the soul, but is
true to
1 Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, prologue.
2 9
the tradition of what has been called Benedictine
asceticism.
His second analogy has an equally long and
distinguished
history. By it, the contemplative state is
described as a spiritual
marriage. Two examples will suffice as
illustration. The first is
again addressed to the Empress Agnes: *It remains
for you to
come to the innermost sweetness of your husband
(Christ), to
that delightful union of conjoined spirits'; 1 the
other comes
from a letter to a fellow-bishop: 'When any holy
soul is truly
joined to its Redeemer by love, then it is united
with Him as
if on the bridal couch in a bond of intimate
delight.' 2
His words leave no doubt that for him the vision
of God is
the aim of the ascetic life. But he does not claim
that this vision
is enjoyed by the contemplative still imprisoned
in the bonds
of the flesh in exactly the same manner as it is
by the blessed in
Heaven. Something is inevitably lacking; a magnum
aliquid, as
he described it to Desiderius, to which man's
spirit cannot
aspire while it remains within the corruptible
body. In an
admirable and striking passage he compares the
soul to a flying-
fish; with the aid of the wings of virtue it leaps
from the con-
fining waters into the heavenly air of
contemplation, yet must
of its nature always fall back into the sea of
everyday human
life.
It must be stressed that Damian did not regard
contempla-
tion as the prerogative of the intellectual. It
was not an eso-
teric science, though it demanded discipline and
method, but a
way of life as accessible to the simple and
unlettered as to the
scholar: 'There are some simple brethren who do
not know
the meaning of contemplation, and therefore cannot
exert
themselves in spiritual studies; but when they
make them-
selves utterly dead to the world, and strive to
wear themselves
out in labours for obedience' sake, and long in
all things to
obey their superiors they obtain a place very near
to God.' 3
Indeed, mere worldly learning could be a hindrance
rather than
a help to contemplation; certainly it was not
essential. 'Who
1 opusc. 56, 6. P.L. 145, 815.
2 Epistolae lib. iv, 16. PX. 144, 333.
8 Epistolae lib. ii, 12. P,L. 144, 280.
lights a lantern that he may seen the sun, or
candles that he
may behold the glory of the stars ?' 2 asks
Damian.
Contemplation, then, is the visio Dei here on
earth; it is the
beholding of the face of truth, albeit
imperfectly; it is attain-
able by all who desire it and strive for it; its
root is love of
God, its stem the mortification of flesh and
spirit, its fruit the
sweetness of the mystic union, its flower an
all-embracing
charity. But although he maintains that it can be
granted to
anyone, Damian never fails to remind us that it is
a charisma,
a grace freely given, bestowed or withheld by God
as He sees
fit. He speaks always of "the grace of
contemplation', of 'the
things which it was given to me to behold'. Here
is no Pelagian
reliance on the will and power of man; the ascetic
must strive,
but he must also pray. Contemplation is a gift,
not a virtue.
The preparations which the would-be contemplative
must
make, the spiritual journey to that point from
which he may
see, by God's grace, those things which eye has
not seen, nor
ear heard and which the heart of man cannot
conceive, are
described by Damian in the form of an analogy dear
to all
mystical writers from St. Augustine onwards; that
of the two
wives of Jacob, Leah and Rachel. He divides his
comparison
into three sections. The first, represented by the
first of
Jacob's periods of bondage to Laban, is the first
rung of the
contemplative ladder, the destruction of vice by
means of
obedience to the commandments of the Old Law; this
is what
ascetical theologians describe as the purgative
stage. He who
passes through it successfully hopes to come at
once to the
delights of contemplation; but this cannot be.
Instead of the
lovely Rachel, he must marry her elder sister Tor
in the dark-
ness of human ignorance we are enjoined to be
patient in
labour*. The second stage, represented by the
second period of
Jacob's servitude, consists in the implanting of
virtues; the
monk passes from a slavish obedience to the
precepts of the
Decalogue to a free adherence to the counsels of
the New
Testament; for perseverance in good works must be
estab-
lished before the repose of contemplation can be
granted. At
2 Opusc* 45, 8. P.L. 145, 701-2.
last, after years of toil and weariness, Jacob
wins Rachel; the
seeker after God is given the grace of
contemplation. But he
cannot rest there in peace. Rachel is beautiful
but barren; and
like Jacob the monk must continue to be fruitful
in good
works. Damian makes this point even clearer when
he com-
pares the contemplative to Moses going in and out
of the
Temple of the Covenant: *He goes in and out of the
temple to
show us that he who is inwardly rapt in
contemplation is often
outwardly troubled by the affairs of the needy;
within he con-
templates the hidden things of God, but outwardly
he bears
the burdens of carnal things.' 1
But how far were his teachings based upon personal
ex-
perience ? To those who have some knowledge of his
writings
there can be no doubt that Peter Damian was a true
contem-
plative. As Dom Leclercq says: 'The fervour and
beauty and
freshness of his language are certain indications
of personal
experience.' 2 It was the vision of God that he
sought and found
in the rocky solitude of Fonte Avellana. 'I longed
to cleave
with all my heart to the everlasting light. My
heart then, as It
seemed, was made of wax, as that of the Lord's
prophet was of
flesh; and it melted in flame under the breath of
heavenly
desire, and my sorrowing countenance was often
watered by
rich tears. ... I often beheld, by an immediate
perception of
my mind, Christ hanging from the cross, fastened
with nails,
and thirstily received His dripping blood in my
mouth. But if
I were to attempt to tell you of the heights of
contemplation
which were vouchsafed to me, both of our
Redeemer's most
sacred humanity and of the indescribable glory of
Heaven, the
day would be at an end before I had finished.' 3
It was because the burdens and racketings of life
outside the
monastery, even of ecclesiastical life, shattered
the spiritual
quiet so necessary to the pursuit of contemplation
that Damian
partook with reluctance in the ecclesiastical
politics of his day.
He was forced to accept the cardinalate thrust
upon him by
1 Epistolae lib. ii, 12. P.L. 144, 282.
2 J. Leclercq, Contemplation' in Dictionnaire de
Spirituality t.H
8 Opusf. 19. P.L. 145, 432.
Stephen IX, but he spent the ten years after the
latter's death
in trying to rid himself of his episcopal burden.
He went on
papal legations when the good of the Church
demanded it; he
attended many of the important synods held by Leo
IX,
Nicholas II and Alexander II, but he paid the
price in the loss
of that tranquillity which he so greatly prized as
a means to con-
templation, and did not hesitate to point this out
to those who
charged him with the affairs of the Church. It was
perhaps for
this reason that the glimpses which Damian gives
us of those
moments of grace when he was rapt in contemplation
are rare.
But he has a great deal to say about the long and
arduous
preparation for the mystical life, chiefly in the
letters and
sermons addressed to his monks, and his ascetical
teaching was
a vital factor in the life of his own and later
generations.
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