The powerful Mariology of Ambrose of Milan influenced contemporary Popes like Pope Damasus and Siricius and later, Pope Leo the Great.

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, the Bishop of Rome in 382, promulgated a list of books which contained a New Testament canon identical to that of Athanasius.

** Pope Damasus I

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

Theodosius committed the matter to Ascholius, the much respected bishop of Thessalonica, charging him to seek the counsel of Pope Damasus I.

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.

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

Two letters to Pope Damasus ( 15 and 16 ) complain of the conduct of both parties at Antioch, the Meletians and Paulinians, who had tried to draw him into their controversy over the application of the terms ousia and hypostasis to the Trinity.

* Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus

* Jerome's Letter to Pope Damasus: Preface to the Gospels

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.

In the 16th century, Onofrio Panvinio attributed the biographies after Damasus until Pope Nicholas I ( 858 – 867 ) to Anastasius Bibliothecarius ; Anastasius continued to be cited as the author into the 17th century, although this attribution was disputed by the scholarship of Caesar Baronius, Ciampini, Schelstrate and others.

Great defenders of Trinitarian faith included the Popes, especially Pope Liberius, who was exiled to Berea by Constantius II for his Trinitarian faith, Damasus I, and several other bishops.

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

Damasus is known to have been raised in the service of the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls in Rome, and following the death of Pope Liberius, he succeeded to the papacy amidst factional violence.

When Pope Liberius was banished by Emperor Constantius II to Berea in 354, Damasus was archdeacon of the Roman church and followed Liberius into exile, though he immediately returned to Rome.

Pope Damasus appointed St Jerome as his confidential secretary.

Writing in 409, Jerome remarked, " A great many years ago when I was helping Damasus, bishop of Rome with his ecclesiastical correspondence, and writing his answers to the questions referred to him by the councils of the east and west ..." If " east and west " do not betray the passage as an interpolation, Jerome spent three years ( 382 – 385 ) in Rome in close intercourse with Pope Damasus and the leading Christians.

Apart from a short poem attributed to Mark of Monte Cassino, the only ancient account of Benedict is found in the second volume of Pope Gregory I's four-book Dialogues, thought to have been written in 593.

Whatever the fortunes of the rites in the meantime, in the last decade of the 5th century they prompted Pope Gelasius I's taunt to the senators who were intent on preserving them: " If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion ; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery.

This status as a secular and civil ruler was vividly displayed by Pope Leo I's confrontation with Attila in 452.

Pope Urban I's feast day is on 25 May

As a result of the dispute, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II ordered Sergius I's abduction ( as his predecessor Constans II had done with Pope Martin I ), but with the assistance of the exarch of Ravenna, Sergius I was able to avoid trial in Constantinople.

Sergius I's objections, however, did not extend to the anathemization of his predecessor, Pope Honorius I, who at the time was also condemned in Western formulas.

Otto I's actions in breaking tradition were likely caused by the high-risk associated with his expedition into Italy to claim the Imperial title from the Pope.

In the meantime other causes of disagreement appeared when the Pope refused to comply with Frederick I's wishes as to the regulation of German episcopal elections which had taken place during the schism, especially as regards a contested election to the See of Treves in 1183.

According to the Pope Gregory I's letters, in the island co-existed a Romanized and Christianized area ( that of the provinciales ) with, in the interior, pagan or semi-pagan cultures ( Gens Barbaricina ).

Ercole I's successor was his son Alfonso I ( 1476 – 1534 ), third husband of Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, sister to Cesare Borgia and the patron of Ariosto.

Totila's meeting with Benedict of Nursia at Monte Cassino is preserved in Pope Gregory I's Dialogues ( ii. 14-15 ).

In 1279 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Nicholas III who had prohibited the election of Robert Burnell, Edward I's preferred candidate.

However, King Henry I and the Emperor Henry IV, Henry I's son-in-law, persuaded the pope to overlook the irregularities of the election, with the proviso that William swore to obey " all things that the Pope imposed upon him.

After John Paul I's sudden death, Pope John Paul II told the congregation at the solemn inauguration of his pontificate:

In June 2004, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I's visit to Rome for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul ( 29 June ) afforded him the opportunity for another personal meeting with Pope John Paul II, for conversations with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and for taking part in the celebration for the feast day in St. Peter's Basilica.

Every November, on the anniversary of Elizabeth I's accession, they organised huge processions in London in which the Pope was burnt in effigy.

From about the end of the 10th century, reliquaries in the shape of the relics they housed also became popular ; hence, for instance, Pope Alexander I's skull was housed in a head-shaped reliquary.

To the flourishing state of learning thus introduced into England, and for a short time maintained, King Alfred appears to allude in the preface to his translation of Pope Gregory I's Liber Pastoralis Curae, in the latter part of the ninth century, where he says that it often came into his mind what wise men there were in the country, both laymen and ecclesiastics, in a former age ; how the clergy in those happy times were diligent both to teach and to study, and how foreigners then came hither to acquire learning and wisdom ; whereas now, in his own day, if any Englishman desired to make himself a scholar, he was obliged to go abroad for instruction.

However, the Franciscans celebrated his feast day on 12 November, and Saint Didacus's feast day was finally placed on 12 November for the whole of the Church in the 1969 revision of the General Roman Calendar, which also moved Pope Martin I's feast day to his dies natalis, 13 April.

* Audio of Pope John Paul I's first Urbi et Orbi blessing following his election as Pope

John was by now an extremely famous lord in the east, corresponding also with Henry III of England and Pope Innocent IV, who had confirmed Henry I's grant to John.

* Before returning to Tanzania after the August 1978 conclave, he visited the United States, where he then received word of Pope John Paul I's death.

As Charles I's intentions for a new offensive were stopped by the Pope and there was a general discontent within Albania, Michael VIII caught the occasion and began a campaign in Albania in late 1274.