The commentary itself was written during the papacy of Pope Damasus I, that is, between 366 and 384, and is considered an important document of the Latin text of Paul before the Vulgate of Jerome, and of the interpretation of Paul prior to Augustine of Hippo.

Pope Damasus I either was not invited or declined to attend, so this council is sometimes called the " unecumenical " council.

Damasus condemned the translation of bishops from one see to another and urged Theodosius to " take care that a bishop who is above reproach is chosen for that see.

“ He that is not of Christ is of Antichrist ,” he wrote to Pope Damasus I.

Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above, or, if not, the list is at least a 6th-century compilation.

He was the only Portuguese Pope, although Damasus I can also be considered Portuguese, as he was born in territory that is nowadays in Portugal, and Paul IV had a Portuguese grandmother.

Pope Saint Siricius, Bishop of Rome from December 384 ( the date in December — 15 or 22 or 29 — is uncertain ) until his death on 26 November 399, was successor to Damasus I and was himself succeeded by Anastasius I.

Pope Damasus I placed an epitaph of eight hexameters over his tomb ; the epithet " martyr " contained in them is not to be

He had been commissioned by Damasus I in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus ' death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter which is now lost.

Damasus had instructed Jerome to be conservative in his revision of the Old Latin Gospels, and it is possible to see Jerome's obedience to this injunction in the preservation in the Vulgate of variant Latin vocabulary for the same Greek terms.

* Pope Damasus I is accused of adultery but is exonerated by Gratian.

* October 1 – Pope Liberius dies after a 14-year reign and is succeeded by Damasus I as 37th pope.

It is said that Pope Damasus I was the first Bishop of Rome to assume the title, Other sources say that the use of such titles by bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, came later.

In Emperor Theodosius's edict De fide catholica of 27 February 380, enacted in Thessalonica and published in Constantinople for the whole empire, by which he established Catholic Christianity as the official religion of the empire, he referred to Damasus as a pontifex, while calling Peter an episcopus: "... the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria ... We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians ..." Some see in this an implied significant differentiation, but the title pontifex maximus is not used in the text ; pontifex is used instead: "... quamque pontificem damasum sequi claret et petrum alexandriae episcopum ..." ( Theodosian Code XVI. 1. 2 ; and Sozomen, " Ecclesiastical History ", VII, iv.

Pope Damasus I rebuilt or repaired the church, now known as San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, while the minor basilica of San Lorenzo in Panisperna was built over the place of his martyrdom.

Ursicinus, also known as Ursinus, was elected pope in a violently contested election in 366 as a rival to Pope Damasus I.

It is generally stated that the most ancient decretal is the letter of Pope Saint Siricius ( 384-398 ) to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona in Spain, dating from 385 ; but it would seem that the document of the fourth century known as " Canones Romanorum ad Gallos episcopos " is simply an epistola decretalis of his predecessor, Pope Damasus ( 366-384 ), addressed to the bishops of Gaul ( Babut, La plus ancienne décrétale, Paris, 1904 ).

The text includes, in addition to the Gospels, the letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus ( known by its first two words Novum opus ), the prologue to Jerome's commentary on the Book of Matthew, the letter of Eusebius of Caesarea to Carpianus ( Ammonius quidam ) in which Eusebius explains the use of his Canon Tables, prologues to each of the Gospels, tables of capitula for each of the Gospels, tables for each of the Gospels indicating the festivals at which portions of that Gospel should be read, and the Eusebian Canon tables.

He seems to have spent two years there, then left, and the next three ( 382 – 385 ) he was in Rome again, attached to Pope Damasus I and the leading Roman Christians.

Damasus would have been in his twenties at the time.

Others that are said to have been the first to bear the title are Pope Callistus I, Pope Damasus I, Pope Leo I, and Pope Gregory I.

An epigram by Pope Damasus I ( 366 – 384 ) in honor of Peter and Paul reads: " You that are looking for the names of Peter and Paul, you must know that the saints have lived here.

Thomas Shahan says that, according to Photius too, Pope Damasus approved the council, but he adds that, if any part of the council were approved by this pope, it could have been only its revision of the Nicene Creed, as was the case also when Gregory the Great recognized it as one of the four general councils, but only in its dogmatic utterances.

Arevalo's conclusions were widely accepted, and the text of these first three chapters, given the title of " The Roman Council under Damasus " have often been reprinted.

The town is reputed to have been the birthplace of the famous Visigothic King Wamba, as well as the fourth century Saint Pope Damasus.

Damasus faced accusations of murder and adultery ( despite having not been married ) in his early years as pope.

The shortness of Damasus II's reign led to rumors that he had been poisoned by a man named Gerhard Brazutus, a friend of Benedict IX and a follower of Hildebrand.

Through the exertions of Hydatius of Emerita, the leading Priscillianists, who had failed to appear before the synod of Hispanic and Aquitanian bishops to which they had been summoned, were excommunicated at Zaragoza in October 380, according to Sulpicius, a conclusion that was emphatically denied in a letter to Damasus, Liber ad Damasum episcopum ( McKenna, note 14 ).

A modern staircase, on the site of an ancient one, was built by Pope Damasus I, giving access to the region of the Popes, in which is to be found the crypt of the popes, where nine pontiffs and, perhaps, eight representatives of the ecclesiastical hierarchy had been buried-along its walls are the original Greek inscriptions for the pontiffs Pontian, Anterus, Fabian, Lucius I and Eutychian.

In the region of Saints Gaius and Eusebius are some crypts set apart, opposite each other, with the tombs of Pope Gaius ( with an inscription ) and Pope Eusebius, who died in Sicily where he had been exiled by Maxentius and whose body was translated to Rome during the pontificate of Militiades ; on a marble copy of the end of the 4th century ( of which fragments may be seen on the opposite wall ) may be read of an inscription by Damasus on the schism provoked by Heraclius over the matter of the lapsi.

It was to the " Gallican " bishops that Pope Damasus addressed the most ancient decretal which has been preserved to our times ( Babut 1904 ).

" It has been asserted by many that a synod held by Pope Damasus I in the following year 382 protested against this raising of the bishop of the new imperial capital, just fifty years old, to a status higher than that of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and stated that the primacy of the Roman see was established by no gathering of bishops but by Christ himself.

The 5th-century church ( its interior has been rebuilt ) sits, like the church of Saint Clement among others, upon a Roman mithraeum ( pagan sanctuary ); excavations beneath the cortile in 1988 – 1991 revealed the 4th-and 5th-century foundations of the grand basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso, founded by pope Damasus I, and one of the most important early Christian churches in Rome.

At some period in the fourth century — it has been conjectured that it was in the papacy of St. Damasus ( 366-84 ) -- reforms were made at Rome, the position of the Great Intercession and of the Pax were altered, the latter, perhaps because the form of the dismissal of the catechumens was disused, and the distinction between the missa catechumenorum and the missa fidelium was no longer needed, and therefore the want was felt of a position with some meaning to it for the sign of Christian unity, and the long and diffuse prayers were made into the short and crisp collects of the Roman type.

There existed in Rome from the 4th century, at the foot of the Palatine Hill and above the Circus Maximus, a church which had been adorned by Pope Damasus ( 366-384 ) with a large mosaic.

The remains asserted to be those of Sebastian are currently housed in Rome in the Basilica Apostolorum, built by Pope Damasus I in 367 on the site of the provisional tomb of St. Peter and Saint Paul.

During the Middle Ages, Saint Jerome was considered the author of all the biographies up until those of Pope Damasus I ( 366 – 383 ), based on an apocryphal letter between Saint Jerome and Pope Damasus published as a preface to the Medieval manuscripts.

Pope Saint Damasus I ( ) was the Bishop of Rome from 366 to 384.

* Saint Damasus, pope ( 366 — 383 )

At the urging of Basil of Caesarea, Meletius wrote to Saint Athanasius, who however continued to support the Eustathians, and whose successor, Saint Peter of Alexandria, together with Pope Damasus I suspected Meletius of Arianism.

However, they sent three -- Syriacus, Eusebius and Priscian -- with a synodal letter to Pope Damasus I, archbishop Saint Ambrose and the other bishops assembled in the council at Rome.

* 386: Saint Jerome moves to Jerusalem in order to commence work on the Vulgate, commissioned by Pope Damasus I and instrumental in the fixation of the Biblical canon in the West.

The continuous use of Greek in the Roman Liturgy came to be replaced in part by Latin by the reign of Pope Saint Damasus I.