Latin poem by Pope Damasus for an inscription commemorating *Marcellus (bishop and confessor of Rome, ob. c. 307, S00529). Originally inscribed at his tomb in the basilica of Silvester in the cemetery of Priscilla, via Salaria nova, Rome, but surviving only through manuscript transmission. Written in Rome 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07191
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 40 (ICVR IX, 24830)
Veridicus rector labsos quia crimina flere
praedixit, miseris fuit omnib(us) hostis amarus.
hinc furor hinc odium sequitur, discordia, lites,
seditio, caedes, solvuntur foedera pacis.
crimen ob alterius Christum qui in pace negavit, 5
finibus expulsus patriae est feritate tyranni.
haec breviter Damasus voluit conperta referre,
Marcelli ut populus meritum cognoscere possit.
‘Because the bishop, truthful, demanded the lapsed lament their
faults, he was a bitter enemy to all the wretched.
Hence fury, hence hatred follow, discord, quarrels,
sedition, slaughter, the bonds of peace dissolve.
Through the accusation of another, who in the time of peace denied Christ,
he was driven from the borders of his homeland by the tyrant’s savagery.
These things that he uncovered, Damasus wished to relate in brief
so that the people may recognize the merit of Marcellus.’
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 157-158.
Cult PlacesRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related ObjectsInscription
Source
The poems of DamasusThe poetry of Damasus is the first substantial corpus of texts devoted specifically to the cult of saints. All but a handful of his surviving poems were written to be inscribed on stone and displayed at the tombs of the martyrs. The installation of these inscriptions formed part of a programme of monumentalisation of the sites of martyr cult, most of which originated as ordinary tombs in the cemeteries and catacombs around the city of Rome, and it was often accompanied by major remodelling and rebuilding of the tombs and their physical surroundings (see Trout 2015, 42-47). The poems were inscribed on marble plaques with very distinctive lettering ('Philocalian script') by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus (Trout 2015, 47-52). This characteristic script makes it possible to identify fragments of inscribed text as Damasan even when the surviving remains are too small and fragmentary for the content of the inscription to be reconstructed.
Damasus' poems are of great importance for the history of saints' cult at Rome because, aside from what their content tells us, they are securely datable to his papacy (366-384). If a martyr is the subject of a poem by Damasus, it means 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 (E01051, E01052). By contrast, the surviving Roman saints' lives are of very uncertain date and in most cases much later than Damasus' poems (which they sometimes used as a source: Lapidge 2018, 637-8).
There are two criteria by which poems can reliably be attributed to Damasus' authorship (or, at the very least, to production under his direct aegis): either because the inscribed text (or a fragment of it) survives, with its highly distinctive Philocalian lettering; or because Damasus refers to himself in the poem (which he does frequently). In other cases his authorship has been assigned on stylistic grounds. Since Damasus' style is quite distinctive (see Trout 2015, 16-26), this can usually be done reasonably securely, but there are a few instances where there is disagreement among editors as to whether poems are genuinely by Damasus (see E07149; E07190; E07503).
Survival of the poems
Only two of Damasus' inscriptions on the martyrs have survived more or less intact, those to Eutychius (E07169) and Agnes (E07189); a few others exist in fragments substantial enough to piece together most or all of the text, including the inscription from the crypt of the popes in the catacomb of Callixtus (E01866), and the poem to Felicissimus and Agapitus (E07170). But most of his poems either do not survive at all in their inscribed form, or do so only in small fragments of a few words or letters. Their survival is the result of their inclusion in syllogae – collections of inscriptions from the martyr shrines and churches of Rome, which were transcribed by pilgrims and then circulated in manuscript. The earliest syllogae seem to have been compiled in the 7th century, at the same time as the earliest pilgrim itineraries, and like the itineraries they were organised geographically, following the routes used by pilgrims around the city and its suburbs. Poems by Damasus therefore appear scattered through the collections according to their location.
No sylloge survives in its original form: those now extant were compiled from earlier manuscript collections (whose traces are sometimes evident in their structure). They 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 they contain). For a descriptive account of the syllogae containing Damasus’ poems, see Trout 2015, 63-65; more briefly, Lapidge 2018, 638. The most important syllogae for the transmission of Damasus' poems are as follows:
The Sylloge Laureshamensis. A manuscript produced at the monastery of Lorsch in the 9th/10th c., now in the Vatican Library (Vatican, Pal. Lat. 833; digitised: digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat_833). De Rossi believed it was a compilation of four existing collections, which he denoted as follows: Laureshamensis I (de Rossi 1888, 144-153), dating from the 9th c. (ibid. 142); Laureshamensis II (de Rossi 1888, 126-130), from the 7th c. (ibid. 124); Laureshamensis III (de Rossi 1888, 161-173), a collection of inscriptions from northern Italy, dating from the late 8th c. (ibid. 160); and Laureshamensis IV (de Rossi 1888, 98-118), dating from the 7th c. (ibid. 97), and the one that contains most of the Damasan material.
The Sylloge Centulensis (de Rossi 1888, 78-94). Produced in the monastery of St. Riquier (Centula) 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 (de Rossi 1888, 62-71). Produced at Tours in the 7th century, but surviving only in two manuscripts from 11th/12th c. Austria (Klosterneuburg Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 723; Göttweig Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 64 (78), digitised: manuscripta.at/diglit/AT2000-64).
The Sylloge Virdunensis (de Rossi 1888, 134-141). 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 (de Rossi 1888, 18-33). Produced at the monastery of Einsiedeln in the 9th century (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 326, digitised: www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/sbe/0326).
Edition and formatting
Our entries use the edition of Damasus' epigrams by Dennis Trout (Oxford University Press, 2015). In his Latin text, Trout uses lower case to indicate material transmitted only in manuscript and upper case to indicate letters which survive on stone. We have used standard capitalisation, with material from inscribed fragments in underlined upper case. Apart from this, both text and translation follow Trout unless otherwise indicated.
Discussion
Original location: the basilica of Silvester in the cemetery of Priscilla, via Salaria nova, just outside Rome to the north.Physical remains: none.
Manuscript transmission: Sylloge Turonensis, Sylloge Laureshamensis IV, Sylloge Virdunensis.
The poem is in hexameters. Its subject, Marcellus, was bishop of Rome in the early 4th century. The evidence for his precise dates in office is fragmentary and conflicting, but he was evidently consecrated just after the end (in Italy) of the Great Persecution, either early in the reign of Maxentius (306-312) or (as suggested by Davis 1997, 464-5) during that of his predecessor Severus (305-306) and then, after a fairly brief tenure, exiled from Rome by Maxentius. He died in exile, presumably by the time his successor Eusebius was consecrated in 308 (see E07167).
Damasus' poem focuses on the repercussions of the persecution within the Christian community, which centred on the treatment of the lapsed (labsos, l. 1): those who had compromised in some way during the persecution, either by actually sacrificing or by acts such as handing over copies of the scriptures for destruction. Marcellus' demand that they 'lament their faults' led to conflict and even violence (caedes, l. 4). Marcellus was sent into exile by 'the tyrant' (Maxentius), as the result of the accusation of an unnamed 'other' (alter, l. 5), who Damasus claims had denied Christ 'in peace' (i.e. at a time when the church was not being persecuted); his place of exile is not specified. A similar chain of events is depicted in Damasus' poem on Marcellus' successor Eusebius (E07167), and the two poems resemble each other closely, with identical or near-identical wording in several places.
These divisions in the Christian community and the resultant disturbances are not attested elsewhere, but are credible in the light of well-documented parallels such as the outbreak of the Donatist schism in Africa, and of later outbreaks of violence in Rome sparked by divisions within the Christian population, including those which accompanied Damasus' own election (see E03995 and Sághy 2000). The identity of Marcellus' unnamed opponent is not known; identifying him with Heraclius, the opponent of Pope Eusebius in Epigram 18 (as by Davis 1997, 468, n. 87), is plausible but inevitably speculative. Marcellus would later be the subject of an 'epic' Martyrdom (E02501), probably written in the 5th or early 6th century; its author seems to have known virtually nothing about the historical Marcellus, and shows no knowledge of Damasus' poem or the events narrated in it.
The absence of Marcellus' name from some of the earliest lists of bishops of Rome has led to occasional suggestions that he did not actually hold the office. Thus, Mommsen, in his edition of the Liber pontificalis (Mommsen 1898, liii-lv), posited that he was a presbyter who carried out some episcopal functions during the interregnum following the death of Pope Marcellinus (ob. probably 303) and thus came to be regarded erroneously as an actual pope. Agostino Amore (2013, 70-71) suggested that Damasus' poem commemorates a Marcellus who was bishop of a see other than Rome, and was exiled to Rome and buried there. The overall issue is too complex to be discussed here (for an overview, see Di Berardino 2000), but nothing in Damasus' poem suggests that he saw Marcellus as anything other than a full bishop of Rome. The close resemblance between the poems on Marcellus and Eusebius (E07167) implies that he saw them as holding the same office and dealing with the same situation. Nor can any weight be placed on the fact that he refers to Marcellus as rector of the church in Rome, not episcopus (cf. Lapidge 2018, 392, n. 5), since the same is true of his references to Pope Xystus (see E07166, E07170), whose status as bishop of Rome is undisputed.
Marcellus' tomb is not documented before the itineraries and syllogae were compiled in the 7th century, when it was in the basilica of Silvester, built in the cemetery of Priscilla by Pope Silvester I (314-335). Although this was an important church in late antiquity, it was abandoned in the 8th century and there are no surviving remains of the tombs it once contained. Questions about the early history of the tomb – for example, whether Damasus translated Marcellus' body to the basilica from a previous burial in the catacomb of Priscilla, or embellished an already existing tomb in the basilica – are therefore unanswerable. We are better informed about the basilica as it was in the 7th century, thanks primarily to the Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (E00637), which lists its tombs and their positions in relation to each other, stating that 'bishop Narcellus' (sic) lay to the right of Pope Silvester, and that a later pope, Celestine I (422-432) was buried beside him. For further information see the discussion and references in Trout 2015, 157, especially Giuliani 2006 and 2008.
Bibliography
Editions and translations:de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 62, no. 4; 103, no. 35; 138, no. 22.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 51, no. 48.
Diehl, E., Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), 176-177, no. 962.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 181, no. 40.
De Rossi, G.B., Ferrua, A. (eds.) Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, n.s., vol. 9: Viae Salariae coemeteria reliqua (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1983), no. 24830.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 87-88, no. 40.
Aste, A., Gli epigrammi di papa Damaso I (Tricase: Libellula Edizioni, 2014).
Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 157-158, no. 40.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 646-647 (English translation).
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/15999
Further reading:
Amore, A., I martiri di Roma: A cura di Alessandro Bonfiglio (Todi: Tau Editrice, 2013). [Original edition 1975]
Davis, R., "Pre-Constantinian Chronology: The Roman Bishopric from AD 258 to 314," Journal of Theological Studies 48:2 (1997), 439-470.
Di Berardino, A., "Marcello I, santo," in: Enciclopedia dei papi, vol. 1 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2000), 307-313. Available online: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/santo-marcello-i_(Enciclopedia-dei-Papi)/
Giuliani, R., "Priscillae coemeterium," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 4 (Rome: Quasar, 2006), 262-269.
Giuliani, R., "Silvestri ecclesia, basilica," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 5 (Rome: Quasar, 2008), 86-90.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Mommsen, T., "Prolegomena," in: idem (ed.), Liber pontificalis, pars prior (MGH Gesta Pontificum Romanorum I; Berlin, 1898).
Sághy, M., "Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome," Early Medieval Europe 9:3 (2000), 273-287.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
New entry 10/12/2025, replacing an earlier entry.
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00529 | Marcellus, bishop and confessor of Rome, ob. c. 307 | Marcellus | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E07191 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07191