Pope Damasus I
Pope Damasus I | |
|---|---|
| File:Vatican coa.png | |
| Installed | 366 |
| Term ended | 383 |
| Predecessor | Liberius |
| Successor | Saint Siricius |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Damasus ca. 305 |
| Died | 383 |
Saint Damasus I (ca. 305-383) was Pope from 366. Probably born near the city of Guimarães (in Gallaecia, Hispania), in what is present-day Portugal, under the Western Roman Empire, his life coincided with the rise of Constantine the Great and the reunion and redivision of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire as well as what is sometimes known as the Constantinian shift associated with the widespread legitimization of Christianity and the later adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman state.[1]
Damasus I is known to have been raised in the service of the church of the martyr St. Laurence in Rome, and following the death of Pope (later Saint) Liberius, he succeeded to the Papacy amidst factional violence. A group of Damasus' supporters, previously loyal to the Antipope Felix II, attacked and killed rivals loyal to Liberius' deacon Ursinus, in a riot that required the intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to quell.
Damasus faced accusations of murder and adultery in his early years as Pope. The neutrality of these claims have come into question with some suggesting that the accusations were motivated by the schismatic conflict with the supporters of Arianism. His personal problems were contrasted with his religious accomplishments, which included restoring the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, appointing the later-Saint Jerome as his personal secretary,creating (through Jerome) a translation of the Old Latin Bible that commoners could more easily understand that was also more accurate in that the version of the Old Testament from which this was translated was the original Hebrew instead of Greek, and presiding over the Council of Rome in 382, at which, according to Catholic tradition and the 6th century document Decretum Gelasianum, the modern Catholic canon of scripture was first set down.
Early life
Damasus was the son of Antonius, a priest at the Church of San Lorenzo in Rome. The name of his mother, Laurentia, was not known until the beginning of the 21st century. Damasus was raised in service of the Church.
During Damasus' early years, Constantine I rose to rule first the Western Roman Empire, presiding over the Edict of Milan (313 AD) and winning religious freedom for Christians in all parts of the Roman Empire. A crisis precipitated by the rejection of religious freedom by Licinius, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, in favor of paganism resulted in a civil war (324 AD) that placed Constantine firmly in control of a reunited Empire, and led to the establishment of Christian religious supremacy in Nova Roma as well as Rome, bringing new challenges to the authority of the Roman Church. Damasus would have been in his twenties at the time.
Rise in the Church
When Pope Liberius was banished by Emperor Constantius to Beraea, in 354, Damasus was arch-deacon of the Roman church and followed Liberus into exile, though he immediately returned to Rome. During the period before Liberius' return, Damasus had a great share in the government of the church.[2]
The succession crisis
In the early Church, new Bishops of Rome were elected or chosen by the clergy and the people of the diocese in the presence of the other bishops in the province, which was the manner customarily used in other dioceses. While this simple method worked well in a small community of Christians unified by persecution, as the congregation grew in size, the acclamation of a new bishop was fraught with division, and rival claimants and a certain class hostility between patrician and plebeian candidates unsettled some episcopal elections. At the same time, 4th century emperors expected to confirm each new pope.
On the death of Liberius 24 September 366, one faction supported Ursinus who had served as deacon to Liberius, while the other faction, previously loyal to the Antipope Felix II, supported Damasus. The upper-class partisans of Felix supported the election of Damasus, but the opposing supporters of Liberius, the deacons and laity, supported Ursinus; the two were elected simultaneously (Damasus election was held in San Lorenzo in Lucina), in an atmosphere of rioting. Supporters already clashed at the beginning of October. Such was the violence and bloodshed that the two praefecti of the city were called in to restore order, and after a first setback, when they were driven to the suburbs and a massacre of 137 was perpetrated in the basilica of Sicininus (as cited in Ammianus Marcellinus), the prefects banished Ursicinus to Gaul. There was further violence when he returned, which continued after Ursicinus was exiled again.
Church historians, such as Jerome and Rufinus, championed Damasus. At a synod in 378 Ursicinus was condemned and Damasus exonerated and declared the true pope. The former antipope continued to intrigue against Damasus for the next few years, and unsuccessfully attempted to revive his claim on Damasus's death. Ursicinus was among the Arian party in Milan, according to Ambrose (Epistle iv).
This dissension climaxed with a riot which led to a three-day massacre and to the rare intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to uphold public order. Damasus prevailed, but only with the support of the city prefect. Once he was securely consecrated bishop of Rome, his men attacked Ursinus and his remaining supporters who were seeking refuge in the Liberian basilica, resulting in a massacre of one hundred and thirty seven supporters of Ursinus. Damasus was also accused of murder before a later prefect, but his rich friends secured the personal intervention of the emperor to rescue him from this humiliation. The reputations of both Damasus and the Roman church in general suffered greatly due to these two unseemly incidents.
Allegations of immorality
Many in both Pagan and Christian society saw in Damasus a man whose worldly ambitions outweighed his pastoral concerns. His entertainments were infamous for their lavishness. Praetextatus, a wealthy aristocrat and a high priest in the cults of numerous gods, reportedly joked to Damasus, "Make me bishop of Rome and I will become a Christian". Some of his critics called him "the ladies' ear-tickler."
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "An accusation of adultery was laid against him (378) in the imperial court, but he was exonerated by Emperor Gratian himself (J. D. Mansi, Coll. Conc., III, 628) and soon after by a Roman synod of forty-four bishops (Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, s.v.; Mansi, op. cit., III, 419) which also excommunicated his accusers.[3]
Association with Jerome, Defending the Church against schism
Damasus I was active in defending the Roman Church against the threat of schisms. In two Roman synods (368 and 369) he condemned Apollinarianism and Macedonianism, and sent legates to the Council of Constantinople that was convoked in 381 to address these heresies.
Damasus appointed Church historian Jerome, whom he appointed his confidential secretary. In Jerome's letter of 409 (letter cxx.10 [4]), he remarks, "A great many years ago when I was helping Damasus, bishop of Rome with his ecclesiastical correspondence, and writing his answers to the questions referred to him by the councils of the east and west [if "east and west" do not betray the passage as an interpolation] Jerome spent three years (382-385) in Rome in close intercourse with Pope Damasus and the leading Christians. Invited there originally to a synod of 382 convened to end the schism of Antioch, he made himself indispensable to the pope, and took a prominent place in his councils.
Damasus encouraged the highly respected scholar to revise the available Old Latin versions of the Bible into a more accurate Latin on the basis of the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, in order to put an end to the marked divergences in the western texts of that period, resulting in the Vulgate. Jerome devotes a very brief notice to Damasus in De viris illustribus, written after Damasus' death: "he had a fine talent for making verses and published many brief works in heroic metre. He died in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius at the age of almost eighty" (ch. 103).
Associates Roman glory with Christianity
Damasus also contributed greatly to the liturgical and aesthetic enrichment of the city churches. He employed a calligrapher, one Dionysius Philocalus, to adorn the shrines of martyrs and Roman bishops with epigrams.
These ceremonial embellishments and the emphasis on the Roman legacy of Peter and Paul amounted to a general claim to the Roman upper classes that the real glory of Rome was Christian and not pagan. All this made it more socially acceptable for the upper classes to convert to Christianity. Often, the women of the family were the first to abandon pagan ways, while the men tended to hold on to them longer, being generally more conservative in their idealised views on the greatness of the Empire. This was often more for aesthetic and antiquarian reasons, rather than strictly religious ones. To these elegant, austere citizens, the pagan zeal of the previous Emperor, Julian was an embarrassment nearly as grating as that of any Christian evangelist.
Emperor Gratian
The reign of Gratian, during Damasus' papacy, forms an important epoch in ecclesiastical history, since during that period (359 - 383) Orthodox Christianity for the first time became dominant throughout the empire. Under the influence of Ambrosius, Gratian prohibited pagan worship at Rome; refused to wear the insignia of the pontifex maximus as unbefitting a Christian; removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate House at Rome, despite protests of the pagan members of the Senate, and confiscated its revenues; forbade legacies of real property to the Vestals; and abolished other privileges belonging to them and to the pontiffs.
Churches of Saint Laurence
According to legend, Laurence was slowly roasted to death on a grill, or gridiron, near the field of Verano in Rome.
After his martyrdom, Saint Laurence was buried in the Via Tiburtina in the Catacomb of Cyriaca by Hippolytus and Justinus, a presbyter. Constantine the Great is said to have built a small oratory in honour of the martyr. Pope Damasus rebuilt or repaired the church, known as Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura ("St Lawrence outside the walls"), which by the 7th century was a station on the itineraries of the graves of the Roman martyrs.
Damasus devotion for the Roman martyr is attested also by the tradition, according to which the pope built a church devoted to Laurence in his own house, San Lorenzo in Damaso.
The letters from Jerome to Damasus have sometimes been adduced as examples of the primacy of the seat of Peter:
- ...Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord. Consequently I here follow the Egyptian confessors who share your faith, and anchor my frail craft under the shadow of their great argosies. I know nothing of Vitalis; I reject Meletius; I have nothing to do with Paulinus. He that gathers not with you scatters; he that is not of Christ is of Antichrist.
Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus, 376, 2
External links
Bibliography
- "The Pelican History of the Church - 1: The Early Church" by Henry Chadwick
- "A History of the Christian Church" by Williston Walker