Latin poem by Pope Damasus, composed for the tomb of *Gorgonius (martyr of Rome, S00576) in the cemetery of Peter and Marcellinus /ad duas lauros, via Labicana, Rome. Written in Rome, 366-384.
Evidence ID
E07177
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus of Rome, Epigrammata 32 (ICVR VI, 16962)
Martyris hic tumulus magno sub vertice montis
Gorgonium retinet servat qui altaria Christi.
hic quicumq(ue) venit sanctorum limina quaerat;
inveniet vicina in sede habitare beatos,
ad caelum pariter pietas quos vexit euntes.
Damasi episcopi
'This martyr’s tomb beneath the lofty peak of a hill
holds Gorgonius, who guards the altars of Christ.
Whoever comes here, let him seek the thresholds of the saints;
he will find that blessed ones dwell in the area roundabout,
whom at the same time piety sent sailing heavenward.
(verses) of Damasus the bishop'
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 136-137 (modified).
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical Activity
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related ObjectsInscription
Source
The poems of DamasusThe surviving corpus of poetry by Damasus, pope from 366 to 384, comprises about sixty poems. Almost all are in honour of saints and martyrs, and were originally displayed at the tombs of martyrs in the cemeteries and catacombs that surrounded the city of Rome. They were inscribed on large marble plaques with distinctive lettering ('Philocalian script') by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus (see Trout 2015, 47-52). The inscriptions were an important part of the programme of monumentalisation of the sites of saintly cult initiated by Damasus (see Trout 2015, 42-47).
The poems of Damasus are the first substantial corpus of texts devoted specifically to the cult of saints. They are of great importance for the history of saints' cult at Rome because, aside from what their content tells us, they can be dated so securely. If a martyr is the subject of a poem in the Damasan collection, this shows that their cult was established and formally recognised at Rome no later than the early 380s; the only comparable, but much briefer, material is that in the Chronography of 354 (E01052). By contrast, the surviving Roman saints' lives are of very uncertain date and almost certainly all later than Damasus' poems (which they sometimes used as a source: Lapidge 2018, 637-8).
Survival of the poems
Only a handful of Damasus' inscriptions survive intact; others partially survive in fragments, but the majority survive only through manuscript transmission, primarily via syllogae – collections of inscriptions from the martyr shrines and churches of Rome which were transcribed by pilgrims and then circulated in manuscript. The earliest of these seem to have been compiled in the 7th century, at the same time as the earliest pilgrim itineraries, and they were organised on the same basis, according to the location of inscriptions on the routes followed by pilgrims around the city. Unlike the itineraries, no sylloge survives in its original form: the extant syllogae were all compiled from earlier manuscript collections (whose traces are sometimes evident in the structure of the syllogae). The syllogae were edited by De Rossi in vol. 2.1 of the first edition of ICUR (1888), which remains the only modern edition of the syllogae as such (as opposed to the individual poems). On the syllogae containing Damasus’ poems, see Trout 2015, 63-65; Lapidge 2018, 638.
The most important syllogae for the transmission of Damasus' poems are the following:
The Sylloge Laureshamensis. A manuscript produced at the monastery of Lorsch in the 9th/10th century (Vatican, Pal. Lat. 833; digitised: digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat_833). De Rossi (1888) believed that it contained material from four earlier collections, of which the one that he denoted Laureshamensis IV, dating from the 7th century, contained most of the Damasan material.
The Sylloge Centulensis. Produced in the monastery of St. Riquier in the 9th/10th century, held for most of its existence in Corbie, and now in the Russian National Library at St. Petersburg (Codex Petropolitanus F XIV 1).
The Sylloge Turonensis. Produced at Tours in the 7th century, but surviving only in two manuscripts from the 11th/12th century (Klosterneuburg Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 723; Göttweig Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 64 (78), digitised: manuscripta.at/diglit/AT2000-64).
The Sylloge Virdunensis. Produced at Verdun in the 10th century (Bibliothèque de Verdun, ms. 45, digitised: www1.arkhenum.fr/bm_verdun_ms/_app/index.php?type_recherche=cote&choix_secondaire=Ms. 45).
The Sylloge Einsidelnensis. Produced at the monastery of Einsiedeln in the 9th century (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 326, digitised: www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/sbe/0326).
It is certain that most poems in the corpus are by Damasus, either because they survive, wholly or partly, in their inscribed form or because Damasus refers to himself in the text (which he does frequently). In other cases his authorship has been assigned to poems on stylistic grounds. Since Damasus' style is quite distinctive (see Trout 2015, 16-26), this can usually be done reasonably securely, but there are instances where there is disagreement among editors as to whether poems are genuinely by Damasus.
Discussion
The poem is in hexameters. The text is preserved by the Sylloge Laureshamensis, the Sylloge Turonensis and a sylloge compiled in 1494 by the scholar Petrus Sabinus, who stated that this was one of the inscription he copied ex lapidibus ('from the stones'). The inscribed tablet was then in the church of S. Martino ai Monti, where it remained until it was apparently lost during renovations in the mid 17th century (Trout 2015, 137). It thus survived until relatively recent times, although no physical trace of it is known to exist today.The tablet must have been moved to S. Martino ai Monti at some point in the middle ages: it would originally have been at the martyr's tomb, which was in the cemetery of Marcellinus and Peter (also known as ad duas lauras) on the via Labicana, east of Rome. Its location is known from Gorgonius' entry in the Depositio martirum (E01052), from the itineraries (E00680, E06994, E07890), and from a surviving wall-painting in the cemetery (E05246). The site of Gorgonius' tomb within the cemetery has not been identified. For more detail, see Guyon 1986, 244-5, and Guyon 1987, 409-410.
The lack of biographical detail in the poem suggests that Damasus knew nothing about Gorgonius or the circumstances of his martyrdom. No vita or other account of Gorgonius' martyrdom is known.
Bibliography
Editions and translation:Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry: Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), no. 32, 136-137.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB2411, see http://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/2411
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, n.s., vol. 6: Coemeteria in Viis Latina, Lubicana et Praenestina (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1975), no. 16962.
Ferrua, A., Epigramata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), no. 32.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), no. 31.
Further reading:
Guyon, J., "L’oeuvre de Damase dans le cimetière ‘aux deux lauriers’ sur la via Labicana," in: Saecularia Damasiana: Atti del convegno internazionale per il XVI centenario della morte di Papa Damaso I (11-12-384-10/12-12-1984) (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1986), 225-258.
Guyon, J., Le Cimetière aux deux lauriers: Recherches sur les catacombes Romaines, vol. 7: Roma sotterranea cristiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1987).
Record Created By
David Lambert, Katarzyna Wojtalik
Date of Entry
19/08/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00576 | Gorgonius, martyr of Rome, buried on the via Labicana | Gorgonius | Certain |
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