medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. December) is the feast day of:
Damasus I, pope (d. 384). D. was a Roman deacon who succeeded pope Liberius in 366. His election was followed by violence between his supporters and those of a rival candidate whose adherents were only ejected from the last of their churches in the following year. D. spent much of his papacy putting his personal stamp on the church of Rome by combatting heresy, building churches, and erecting numerous inscriptions bearing his name within the city and at martyrs' burial sites along major roads leading into it. He promoted internal concord and Roman primacy through the cult of Peter and Paul, appointed the first papal vicar of Illyricum, and encouraged Jerome to produce a freshly translated Latin Bible. It was probably on his watch that the Roman church began using prescribed prayers in the Latin language.
D.'s name survives in that of the early modern successor to his basilica dedicated to St. Lawrence, San Lorenzo in Damaso ("_in_ Damaso" because it was in a complex of buildings he had erected, one of which housed the archives of the Roman church). His keennness to identify and to memorialize the resting places of martyrs resulted in the erection of some sixty tablets with verse inscriptions of his composition, many carved in a special letter form designed by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus. A fragment at another Laurentian church, San Lorenzo in Lucina (an originally fifth-century building at whose predecessor, the _titulus Lucinae_, D. was elected pope), may be seen here:
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/lucina/Df0062wb.jpg
Another fragment is on this page:
http://www.santiquattrocoronati.org/NN/4_3ai.htm
And a replica of a complete inscription (at San Silvestro in Capite) can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/yn7xz7
Two recent articles of note on D.'s martyrial inscriptions are Marianne Sághy, "_Scinditur in partes populus_: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome", _Early Medieval Europe_ 9 (2000), 273-87, and Dennis E. Trout, "Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome", _Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies_ 33 (2003), 517-536. For a somewhat broader survey of D.'s activity in Rome, see John Curran, _Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 137-57.
A miniature of D. and Jerome, British Library, Yates Thompson ms. 22 ("The Brantwood Bible"; northern France, ca. 1260):
http://tinyurl.com/yh6nub
D. among the portraits of the popes (1480-81) in the Sistine Chapel:
http://www.tuttipapi.it/TombeMausoleiRitratti/43-Damaso-I.jpg
Best,
John Dillon
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