Saint Damasus I

Damasus was born around 305, the son of a priest of the church of San Lorenzo in Rome. He was pope from 366 to 384, and his pontificate begins with a dark page. When Liberius died, the Christians of Rome split and elected two popes: Damasus and Ursinus. Armed clashes followed in the city streets; in a single assault on the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore the chronicles count a hundred and thirty-seven dead. Damasus won, and it weighed on him for the rest of his life. What he did afterward, though, changed the way we know early Christianity. Damasus was the first to take systematic care of the catacombs: he had them reopened, restored and made accessible to pilgrims, and over the tombs of the martyrs he had verses of his own composition carved. They were cut by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus, in beautiful letters you can recognize at a glance: they’re called “Damasian.” Many of those texts are the only thing we know about the martyrs they name — and this page, like quite a few others, exists thanks to him too. And he did one more decisive thing: he took Jerome on as his secretary and entrusted him with revising the Latin Bible. That assignment gave birth to the Vulgate. He died in Rome on December 11, 384, at about eighty. If your name is Damasus, today is your name day.