Evidence ID
E07151Saint Name
Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix, martyrs in Rome : S00886Saint Name in Source
Faustinus, ViatrixType of Evidence
Inscriptions - Inscribed architectural elements
Literary - PoemsEvidence not before
366Evidence not after
384Activity not before
366Activity not after
384Place of Evidence - Region
Rome and regionPlace of Evidence - City, village, etc
Suburban catacombs and cemeteriesPlace of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Suburban catacombs and cemeteries
Rome
Rome
Roma
Ῥώμη
RhōmēMajor author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poemsCult activities - Places
Cult building - independent (church)Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs
Prayer/supplication/invocationCult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Ecclesiastics - PopesCult Activities - Cult Related Objects
InscriptionSource
The poems of Damasus
The 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
Two conjoining fragments of an inscription on a marble block, probably an architrave, in Philocalian script (letters X.XX high), found at the site of the basilica of the Cemetery of Generosa, also known as the cemetery ad sextum Philippi, located about six miles south-west of Rome on the via Portuensis (Lapidge 2018, 599). The use of Philocalian script points to a Damasan origin for this inscription and it is widely believed that the church, a large basilica with three naves, was constructed on top of an existing catacomb during the papacy of Damasus. The fragments join between the I and N. For a photograph, see the inscription's EDB entry.
The most recent excavator of the site declares Damasus' responsibility for the building to be certain (Pergola 1986, 224), although Trout 2015, 91, is slightly more reserved ('Damasus' involvement can only be conjectural but is highly likely'). For detailed discussion of the catacomb of Generosa and its basilica, see Loreti and Martorelli 2003, 381-89, with discussion of this inscription pp. 386-7; and Loreti and Martorelli 2008, with discussion of the inscription pp. 72-4, and an illustration of it, fig. 40 (p. 305).
The lack of a conjunction between the two names suggests that at least one other person was named in the inscription. Other sources, such as the Liber Pontificalis (E01678), the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (E04897), a passio (E04650), and the De locis sanctis (E06988), consistently associate Faustinus/Faustinianus and Viatrix/Beatrix with a third saint, named Simplicius or Simplicianus, and sometimes with a fourth, named Rufus/Rufiinus/Rufinianus (see Lapidge 2018, 598-600). At the time of the excavation of the Cemetery of Generosa in the 1860s, De Rossi discovered a 6th century fresco in the catacomb there, depicting Christ with four martyrs. The martyrs were labelled with their names, of which two, Faustinianus and Rufinianus, were fully legible, while another ended in -tris. On this basis he argued (De Rossi 1869) that our inscription could be reconstructed: sanctis [or beatis] martyribus Simplicio Faustino Viatrici et Rufo / Rufino / Rufiniano]. For photographs of the fresco, see Martorelli and Loreti 2008, figs. 43-44 (pp. 306-7). According to Lapidge 2018, 639, n. 12, the spelling Viatrici for Beatrici 'reflects the Vulgar Latin pronunciation of the stonecutter'.Bibliography
Editions and translations:
Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), no. 6, 90-91.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB13469, see http://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/13469
Ferrua, A., Epigramata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), no. 6.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, n.s., vol. 2: Coemeteria in viis Cornelia Aurelia Portuensi et Ostiensi et tabulae Nr. 1-34 (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1935), no. 4747.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1; Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), no. 6.
Further reading:
de Rossi, G.B., in: Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 1 (1869), 1-9.
Josi, E., "Cimitero di Generosa. Sterro della basilica cimiteriale dedicata ai martiri Simplicio, Faustino, Viactrice sulla via Portuense," Rivista di archeologia cristiana 16 (1939), 323-326.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations and Commentary (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 598-600.
Loreti, E.M., and Martorelli, R., "La via Portuense dall’epoca tardoantica all’eta di Gregorio Magno: Continuità e trasformazioni," in: P. Pergola, R. Santangeli Valenzani, and R. Volpe (eds.), Suburbium: Il suburbio di Roma dalla crisi del sistema delle ville a Gregorio Magno (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2003), 367-97.
Loreti, E.M., and Martorelli, R., "Sextum Philippi (ad), coemeterium," in: Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae: Suburbium 5 (Rome: Quasar, 2008), 72-81.
Pergola, P., "Nereus et Achilleu martyres: L'intervention de Damase à Domitille (avec un appendice sur les résultats des fouilles récentes de la Basilique de Damase à Generosa)," in: Saecularia Damasiana. Atti del convegno internazilonale per il XVI centenario della morte di Papa Damaso I (11-12-384–10/12-12-1984) (Vatican: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1986), 203-224.
