The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

4. Grant this, O Father ever blessed;

And Holy Son, our heavenly friend;

And Holy Ghost, Thou comfort best!

Now and until all time shall end.

CHAPTER IV.
POPE DAMASUS AND THE BEGINNING OF RHYME.

Contemporary with Hilary of Poitiers, but probably a younger man, as he survived him by seventeen years, was Damasus of Rome. Like many other Romans of the imperial period, he was a Spaniard by birth; or, at least, he was the son of a Spaniard who had removed to Rome and had become a deacon or presbyter of the church dedicated to the memory of the Roman martyr, St. Lawrence. Of his own earlier life we know very little. An extant epitaph records the fact that he had a sister who became a nun and died in her twentieth year. He himself served in the Church of St. Lawrence until his sixtieth year, when he was chosen Bishop of Rome; and in the accepted catalogue, which begins with the Apostle Peter, he ranks as the thirty-sixth bishop of the see.

He was chosen bishop in A.D. 366, because of the position he had taken with reference to the controversy which then agitated the diocese, and because of the firmness and weight of character he had displayed in the troubles of the years before his election. The great Christological controversy was agitating the Church of both East and West. The West was substantially in agreement with Athanasius, against both the Arians and the semi-Arians, and would have been entirely so but for the influence exerted by semi-Arian or Arian emperors and the courtly bishops of their party. Constantius, the last surviving son of Constantine the Great, was exceedingly zealous for the semi-Arian doctrine, which rejected the statement of our Lord’s substantial identity with His Father, but was willing to assert His substantial likeness. It was only the difference of an iota in a Greek word—ὁμοουσιος or ὁμοιουσιος—but if there ever was a case in which neither jot nor tittle must be allowed to pass away, it was this.

Liberius, who was elected Bishop of Rome in 352, was the victim of Constantius’s policy. In 353 the East and West were united under his rule, and that year at Arles, as in 355 at Milan, councils were called, in which the condemnation of Athanasius was procured by imperial blandishments. In the former the presbyter sent by Liberius to represent the Roman see subscribed with the majority. But in the second his three representatives obeyed their instructions, and accepted disfavor and exile rather than subscribe. Then Liberius himself was summoned to Milan, and the weight of imperial threats and persuasions was brought to bear upon him. He withstood both manfully, and demanded as a preliminary to any discussion of the charges against Athanasius, that the Nicene Creed should be subscribed by all parties, and the banished bishops returned to their sees. When given his choice between submission and exile, he chose the latter.

The Emperor now sought among the Roman clergy for a man to put into Liberius’s place. In Rome, as in most of the cities of the West, Arians were not to be found. But in the Deacon Felix the court party obtained a candidate who, while himself a Trinitarian, was willing to hold communion with the Arians, and presumably to condemn Athanasius. Of the details of his election and ordination little is known, but we find him installed in the Roman see with the vigorous support of the civil authority, although not with the assent of the Roman people. The great body of the Christians in Rome are said to have refused communion with him because he was tainted by communion with heretics; and when Constantius came to visit the city, he was besieged by the Christian ladies of the city with appeals for the restoration of Liberius.

In the mean time three years of exile to Thrace, where he was thrown of set purpose into constant association with bishops of the semi-Arian party, and isolated from his friends, had broken the spirit of Liberius. He was not a man of strong character, and, unfortunately for the theory of papal infallibility, he yielded. He signed a creed compiled for the occasion, which described Christ as of like substance with the Father, and condemned Athanasius.[1] He then was allowed to return to Rome, although Felix II. was still the recognized bishop. Constantius seems to have foreseen the difficulties which would attend the presence of the two bishops in the city, and he consented to the return of Liberius unwillingly. The body of the people and of the clergy at once rallied around Liberius, and rejected Felix altogether; and of this party was Damasus. But while they were willing to condone his weakness in the matter of condemning Athanasius, there was a party of more determined Athanasians who refused to do so, and the diocese now was divided between the three factions. That of Felix disappeared with his own death in 360 and the death of Constantius in 361. But the extreme Athanasians, although they did not attempt to set up a rival bishop while Liberius lived, perpetuated their party, and they probably received aid and comfort from a similar party which had arisen in the East, in opposition to the wiser and more charitable policy of Athanasius himself. This party was called the Luciferians, from Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari, in Sardinia, who was in exile in the East at the time when this question was raised there after the death of Constantius.