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The Carolingian Afterlife of the Damasan Inscriptions Maya Maskarinec

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The Carolingian Afterlife of the Damasan Inscriptions Maya Maskarinec The Carolingian afterlife of the Damasan inscriptions Maya Maskarinec This paper investigates the multiple impulses that contributed to the early medieval interest in Pope Damasus’s inscriptions. In part, Damasus’s verses were read as guides to Rome’s martyrial topography; in part, they served as models of a classicizing Christian style. Above all, the appeal of these verses derived from their association with Damasus himself, who came to be seen as a secure mediator of the early Christian past. Concurrently, the figure of Damasus grew in stature, as a saint marked by his solicitude for the Christian community, whether living or dead. Damasus has pronounced his merit: you, venerate his grave1 Beginning in the late fourth century a new Christian topography of Rome began to develop, turning the classical city inside out. Rome’s peripheral cemeteries, located, according to Greco-Roman burial customs, outside the city’s walls along the roads leading into the city, became increasingly central as the Christian cult of saints transformed Rome’s martyrial shrines into sacred sites. Instrumental in this process were the efforts of Pope Damasus (r. 366–88). By adorning martyrial tombs with large monumental marble plaques with verses that co-opted Vergilian diction to honour the Christian martyrs, Damasus helped map out an extramural topography of ‘Christian heroes’.2 Today, only scat- tered physical fragments of Damasus’s grand strategy survive. Many more of his verses, however, are transmitted by Carolingian manuscripts, a phenomenon that is representative of a wider early medieval interest in Damasus as an inscriber and poet. 1 ‘expressit Damasus meritum venerare sepulchrum’: lines from Damasus’s epitaph for Eutychius, see n. 35. 2 C. Pietri, ‘Concordia apostolorum et renovatio urbis (Culte des martyrs et propagande pontificale)’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Antiquité 73 (1961), pp. 275–322. Early Medieval Europe 2015 23 (2) 129–160 © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 130 Maya Maskarinec Damasus’s inscriptions resonated with early medieval audiences in multiple respects. For visitors to Rome (or those who imagined visiting the city), the monumental verses functioned as signposts, a guide through the landscape of Rome’s early Christian martyrs. Even when detached from their physical settings, they continued to be appreciated and mined for their literary style of classicizing Christianity and read for their vignettes of Christian martyrs. From a medieval perspective, Damasus had successfully synthesized Rome’s classical and early Christian pasts. Damasus’s verses also frequently stress his role in preserving the memory of saints threatened by oblivion; in turn Damasus came to serve as a trusted mediator, whose commemoration of saints could provide medi- eval audiences with a secure bridge to the distant past of the Christian persecutions. Although Damasus can never be said to have achieved widespread popularity, his inscriptions left their imprint on the early Middle Ages. As with other late antique popes, most famously Pope Sylvester, the figure of Pope Damasus increased in stature over time: his tomb was venerated, and his life accumulated legendary anecdotes.3 What distinguishes Damasus, however, is the way his use of the epigraphic habit to promote saints’ cults gave a particular inflection to his own cult.4 Before turning to the early medieval interest in Damasus it is helpful first to summarize the scope and aims of Damasus’s epigraphical pro- gramme and the degree to which modern knowledge of his inscriptions derives from the transcriptions transmitted in Carolingian manuscripts. During his pontificate, Pope Damasus commissioned more than thirty monumental marble inscription-plaques to adorn the tombs of saints buried along the roads leading into Rome.5 As has been demonstrated, 3 In contrast to Damasus, Pope Sylvester was better known (as attested already in the Acts of Sylvester) for his conversion of Constantine and slaying of a dragon than for his construction of, and donation to, martyrial basilicas: A. Amore, ‘Silvestro, I, papa’, Bibliotheca Sanctorum. Enciclopedia dei Santi, 12 vols (Rome, 1961–70), IX, pp. 1077–9. Likewise other late antique/ early medieval popes around whom extensive cults developed (such as Leo and Gregory) were not primarily remembered for their attentiveness to saints’ cults. 4 Although Damasus was not unique among late antique popes in commissioning inscriptions, there is no evidence for a comparable late antique papal programme, nor, to my knowledge, of a pope whose later legacy emphasizes his epigraphy in the same way. Popes who commissioned inscriptions and were noted by the Liber Pontificalis for their extensive promotion of saints’ cults include Sixtus III (r. 432–440) and Honorius (r. 625–38). Yet while a cult for Sixtus III would develop, it does not appear ever to have focused on his inscriptions. 5 The most recent edition of Damasus’s epigrams is A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana (Vatican City, 1942), which provides extensive commentary on the inscriptions and Damasus’s pro- gramme; still useful is the older commentary by M. Ihm, Damasi epigrammata: accedunt pseudo Damasiana aliaque ad Damasiana inlustranda idonea (Leipzig, 1895). Regarding Damasus himself, see U. Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366–384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen, 2009). Damasus may have erected one epitaph outside Rome, that for Felix in Nola; see Ferrua, no. 59,pp.213–15; P. Sims-Williams, ‘Milred of Worcester’s Collection of Latin Epigrams and its Continental Counterparts’, ASE 10 (1982), pp. 21–38,atp.34; T. Lehmann, ‘Eine spätantike Early Medieval Europe 2015 23 (2) © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd The afterlife of the Damasan inscriptions 131 most specifically by Marianne Sághy, Damasus’s programme was heavily influenced by his contested election and struggles against heretical groups.6 The inscriptions served to mark which saints were approved of by the Catholic church; for the most part, Damasus’s efforts in this respect were so successful that the saints he marked out are by and large those whose cults have continued to the present day.7 Damasus’s inscriptions were standardized and distinctive, both in their form and their literary style. Located on the major roads encircling Rome, the inscriptions articulated the martyrs as a corps surrounding the city;8 a new population of Rome ‘offering Rome’s Christians and Chris- tianizing Romans a new vision of themselves’.9 The monumental marble inscriptions were conspicuous by their sheer size (many are one by two, or even three, metres).10 Furthermore, they were easily recognizable, carved in a unique style of elegant rounded lettering carried out by Furius Dionysius Philocalus (or his workshop).11 The verses themselves are hex- ameters, modelled on the language of Vergil but stressing ‘the superiority of the martyrs’.12 Many similar formulas are repeated throughout the oeuvre, emphasizing the martyrs’ heroism, their triumph achieved through devotion to God, their immortality, their Romanness (regardless of their origins) through martyrdom and the consensus and concord of the entire Christian community, living and dead. In the inscriptions, Damasus himself takes centre stage; his name is mentioned, and he often positions himself as a mediator between the saint and the Christian community. Almost all of the known Damasan inscriptions were erected at the tombs of saints (either martyrs or popes). A few inscriptions were dedi- cated to family members (his mother Laurentia, his sister Irene, and Inschriftensammlung und der Besuch des Papstes Damasus an der Pilgerstätte des Hl. Felix in Cimitile/Nola’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 91 (1992), pp. 243–81. 6 M. Sághy, ‘Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome’, EME 9 (2000), pp. 273–87. 7 See below, nn. 84–5. 8 J. Guyon, ‘Damase et l’illustration des martyrs: les accents de la dévotion et l’enjeu d’une pastorale’, in M. Lamberigts and P. van Deun (eds), Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (Leuven, 1995), pp. 157–78,atp.161 and Fig. 1. 9 D.E. Trout, ‘Damasus and the Invention of Early Christian Rome’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003), pp. 517–36,atp.519. Cf. S. Diefenbach, ‘Urbs und ecclesia – Bezugspunkte kollektiver Heiligenerinnerung im Rom des Bischofs Damasus (366–384)’, in R. Behrwald and C. Witschel (eds), Rom in der Spätantike. Historische Erinnerung im städtischen Raum, Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien 51 (Stuttgart, 2012), pp. 193–249, regarding Damasus’s efforts to ‘Romanize’ the Christian extramural martyrial land- scape, widening the bishop’s flock both geographically and symbolically. 10 See Guyon, ‘Damase’, pp. 163–8. 11 This is explicitly specified on the margins of some of the inscriptions, such as Ferrua, no. 27,pp. 157–9. 12 Trout, ‘Damasus’, p. 521. Early Medieval Europe 2015 23 (2) © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 132 Maya Maskarinec himself) or other recently deceased individuals.13 In their form and lan- guage these inscriptions are indistinguishable from the rest; for example, the epitaph for his sister stresses her pious virginity. In addition to his interventions at martyrs’ tombs, Damasus undertook construction inside and outside the city, in particular building or rebuilding a church for St Lawrence (eventually known as S. Lorenzo in Damaso), with inscriptions celebrating his own work.14 Damasus also composed poetical works that were not inscribed in stone, as well as a wider range of prose texts.15 Apart from a poem in honour of St Paul and verses of unsure attribution exhorting a friend to Christian study, however, these other verses do not survive.16 Neither Damasus nor any of his contemporaries are known to have compiled his epitaphs as a published oeuvre – at least no record of such an endeavour survives. However, the inscriptions certainly had an imme- diate impact.
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