medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (11. December) is the feast day of:
1) 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 ejected from the last of their churches only in the following year. D. spent much of his papacy putting his personal stamp on the church of Rome by combating 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 D. had erected, one of which housed the archives of the Roman church). His keenness 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. Here's a view of D.'s epitaph for St. Agnes of Rome (_Epigrammata Damasiana_, ed. Ferrua, no. 37), inscribed in Filocalian letters and set up at the Basilica di Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura:
http://www.santagnese.org/fotoHR%5Ccarme_11-01-04.jpg
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
2) Sabinus of Piacenza (d. ca. 395). S. (in Italian, Savino) is the traditional second bishop of the Emilian city of Piacenza. He may have been the Milanese deacon who under pope St. Damasus was sent to Antioch in 372 to reconcile competing factions in the government of that church and whose success in this effort is reported in the correspondence of St. Basil the Great. His election to the see of Piacenza (anciently Placentia) is dated by Lanzoni to the year 376. As bishop he upheld Nicene orthodoxy at the Council of Aquileia in 381, maintained a correspondence with St. Ambrose of Milan, founded a church dedicated to the Holy Apostles, and presided over the Invention of the relics of the presumed martyr St. Antoninus of Piacenza.
S.'s church of the Holy Apostles (which arose over an extramural cemetery going back to the fist century CE) came in time to be called after him, presumably because his remains were entombed there. They now repose in the tenth-century crypt of that building's present-day successor on the site, Piacenza's largely eleventh- and twelfth-century Basilica di San Savino, consecrated in 1107 and now sporting an early modern facade. Here's a view of the interior:
http://www.fujiso.com/bo1hp/pmi667.html
Some views of capitals in the nave:
http://www.fujiso.com/bo1hp/pmi669.html
http://tinyurl.com/24j28a
Chancel screen:
http://www.fujiso.com/bo1hp/pmi670.html
Capitals in the tenth-century crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/26bexc
Mosaic floor (late eleventh- or twelfth-century) in the crypt:
http://tinyurl.com/yq94en
Mosaic floor (late eleventh- or twelfth-century) in the presbytery:
http://tinyurl.com/2d2tvw
http://tinyurl.com/2fqnrg
3) Daniel the Stylite (d. 493). According to his Bios (several versions; BHG 489 etc.), the Syrian D. was a monk who after an early meeting with St. Simeon the Stylite the Elder resolved to become similarly ascetic. In time, having become hegumen of his community, he passed the reins of governance on to a capable assistant, visited Simeon again and then headed to the vicinity of Constantinople, where he took up residence first at and then near the Constantinian church of St. Michael at Anaplus, resisted demons, and gained the confidence of the archbishop Anatolius. After nine years had passed D. received a vision of the now deceased Simeon and became in his turn a pillar saint.
D. spent thirty-three years and three months on his pillar, enduring extreme privation, performing miracles, and giving spiritual advice to those who either sought it (including the emperors Leo II and Zeno) or who did not but who needed it just the same (the initially pro-monophysite usurper Basiliscus, whom D. was persuaded by an orthodox crowd to visit in a highly unusual departure from his perch). Leo II saw to it that D. got a more capacious column; he also (with difficulty, of course) persuaded D. after a particularly vicious ice storm to accept a shelter atop his parapet. That shelter is shown in this icon of D. reproduced by the Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon from an undisclosed source:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Daniel_Stylitis.jpg
It is not shown in the depiction of D. in the Menology of Basil II (Vat. gr. 1613) tinily reproduced near the bottom of this page:
http://www.30giorni.it/us/articolo.asp?id=11946
D.'s sainthood was widely recognized in his lifetime. The archbishop Euphemius gave him a public funeral and had him buried underneath an oratory adjacent to his pillar. His Bios, written by a young disciple shortly after his death, is deservedly a classic. The standard English-language translation is in Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes, tr., _Three Byzantine Saints: Contemporary Biographies translated from the Greek_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948; later reprints).
Best,
John Dillon
(Damasus lightly revised from last year's post)
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