„Cuncta per orbem volumina litterarum”: o kazaniu św. Piotra Damianiego na dzień św. Kasjana Męczennika

Abstract

The article analyses Sermon No 39 (Sermo XXXIX: In festivitate sancti Cassiani martyris), an allegorical and grammatological text written by Saint Peter Damiani. Peter Damiani of Ravenna (1007-1072) was a reformer of monasticism, an eremite, a cardinal and also the poet who coined the famous maxim: ‘Mea grammatica Christus est’ (Epistola VIII). That short sentence indicates the existential dimension of writing as the medieval author understood it. Damiani’s sermon on St Cassian’s Day undertakes the subject of writing as life. St Cassian of Imoli (which was at the time called Forum Cornelii) was a teacher of grammar (‘scholarum doctor’). He was stabbed to death with styluses by his students probably at the beginning of the sixth century. The event inspired Damiani to interpret it symbolically and ‘grammatologically’: he shows that Verbum, which is Christ, is more important than all the books and all the literature, litterae. Therefore St Cassian followed his calling of a grammar teacher by giving his life for Verbum.