Month: December 2023

Saint of the Day – 11 December – Saint Damasus I (c305-384) Bishop of Rome from 366-his death on 11 December 384. Pope Damasus was a Poet, a Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy and a Reformer of morals amongst many other qualities. Born in c306 in Rome, Italy of Spanish descendancy and died in 384 in the same City of natural causes. He was initially buried in the Mark and Marcellianus Catacombs in Rome and in …. his bones were re-interred in the Church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, Rome. Patronage – of Archeologists.

The Roman Martyrology reads: “St Rome, St Damasus, Pope and Confessor, who condemned the heresiarch Apollinaris and restored to his See, Peter, Bishop of Alexandria who had been driven from it. He also discovered the bodies of many holy Martyrs and wrote verses in their honour.”

Today is the Feast of Pope St Damasus I, who was elected in October of 366, at roughly the age of 60 and died on this day in 384. He served as Deacon at the Church of St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls. He was elected to the Papacy in the midst of controversy, since a small group of the Clergy supported another candidate, Ursicinus; the followers of this schismatic seized control of the Liberian Basilica (now St Mary Major) and could only be repressed with violence and the exile of the anti-Pope.

St Damasus was a strenuous Defender of the Orthodox Christian faith, holding Synods in Rome to condemn the heresies of Macedonius and Apollinaris, sending legates to the First Council of Constantinople and excommunicating the Arian bishop of Milan, Auxentius, who was later succeeded by St Ambrose. It was at his (St Ambrose’) behest that St Jerome revised the Latin text of the Gospels and it is in a letter to him that St Jerome famously describes the need for such a revision by saying, “There are as many versions (of the Sacred Scriptures) as there are copies.” Pope Damasus then befriended St Jerome and employed him as his Secretary, a position he held for many years. They worked together on exegetical matters but, perhaps Damasus’ most important contribution to the Church, was that he commissioned Jerome to revise the existing Latin translation of the Gospels based on the original Greek. This was to become the Sacred Scripture translation which was later called “The Vulgate.” St Jerome is traditionally represented as a Cardinal because of the time he spent in Rome as Damasus’ Secretary.

Our Saint is today, venerated too, as the Patron Saint of Archeologists and, particularly those who work in the field of early Christian archeology, because of his great encouragement of devotion to the Roman Martyrs and his efforts to preserve their memories. He built a Church in honour of St Lawrence within his own house in the centre of Rome, now known as “San Lorenzo in Damaso” and also a Shrine at the Catacomb of St Sebastian, where the bodies of Ss Peter and Paul were once kept and the Baptistery of the ancient Basilica of St Peter. Within many of the Roman Catacombs, he had the areas around the Martyrs’ graves restored to make them more accessible to pilgrims ..

As a young man, Damasus had worked in the Papal Archives (the first reference to a Papal Archive), where he read about the lives and deaths of the Martyrs. Now that the persecutions were over, he worked tirelessly to promote the Martyr cult. He encouraged pilgrimages to the Catacombs and re-opened them, after they had been closed by Emperor Diocletian. He restored them, built staircases and skylights, all with the aim of demonstrating that the real splendour of Rome was not pagan but Christian.

Damasus also decorated the graves of many Martyrs with Epitaphs, composed by himself and carved into marble, with a special kind of lettering invented for the purpose. This Font, in which the bars of the letters are alternately thick and thin, with curved serifs at the corners, is known as either “Philocalian” lettering from its inventor, a friend of his named Furius Dionysius Filocalus, or “Damasian” after himself. We have a total of about 70 of these Inscriptions; about 40 of the originals are preserved, while the rest are recorded in various sources, although the stones themselves have been lost.

One of the best preserved of these is at the Church of St Agnes Outside-the-Walls on the Via Nomentana, the High Altar of which rests over her Gravesite. As seen in the photograph below, only the upper left corner is missing.

After recounting the Martyrdom and burial of St Agnes (including the story that when her clothes were torn off, her hair miraculously grew to cover her exposed body), the final line asks the “renowned Martyr to favour the prayers of Damasus.” These Inscriptions are particularly valuable witnesses to the authenticity of various Martyrs and the Liturgical devotion paid to them, since we know that Pope Damasus took care to inform himself about the Martyrdoms as best he could. At the grave of Ss Peter and Marcellinus, who were killed in the persecution of Diocletian in 304, he placed an Epitaph in which he gives the story of their deaths and then notes that he learned the details when he was a boy, by interviewing the Martyrs’ own executioner!Being himself born in the very heart of the persecution and. therefore. a young Cleric in Rome in the early years of the peace of the Church, he must also have known many who had actually, themselves, witnessed the Martyrdoms of Sts Agnes, John and Paul and Sebastian, just to name a few.

Pope Damasus’ relationship with the Eastern Church was unhappy. There, St Basil the Great (329-379) fought to restore orthodoxy on the basis of a refined new explanation of the Nicene Doctrine. Like the West, in general,, Damasus did not understand the new development and when Antioch was divided between rival Bishops, the Pope stubbornly clung to the support of Paulinus, the unrepresentative leader of a reactionary group, instead of Meletius, on whom the Eastern hope of unity rested . When Meletius died in 381, Damasus refused to enter into Church communion with his successor, Flavian. In desperation, Basilios described the Pope as improbably arrogant, who did nothing to contribute to the constructive détente between East and West that was now underway.

The second Ecumenical Council took place in Constantinople from May to July 381. Originally, it was an Eastern Council, where only about 150 Eastern Bishops participated. Pope Damasus was not present but when the Council decisions were later presented to him, he approved them and the Council was thus considered Ecumenical. Here the Doctrine of the Trinity was established for good and the Council adopted a powerful declaration of the deity of the Holy Ghost, directed against the Macedonians and the Pneumatomas (who rejected the deity of the Holy Ghost). The Council also condemned the Arians and Semi-Arians.

It was Pope Damasus I who introduced the Doxology Gloria Patri (Glory be to the Father) at the end of the Hymns. He was also the first to take over the title of Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) from the Roman Emperors. He also authorised the Ambrosian Rite and introduced the use of the Hebrew term “Hallelujah” (Latin: Alleluia ).

Damasus died on 11 December 384 in Rome and was first interred in the Catacomb of Mark and Marcellianus, near the Catacomb of Domitilla, on the Via Ardeatina, in a burial place he had prepared for his mother and sister, Irene. Later, his Relics were transferred to the Church of St Lorenzo in Damaso, which he had built himself. There, after being forgotten for a long time, they were found again in 1645. His Feast has been celebrated on 11 December since the 7th Century.