Abstract

This article aims through a study of the epigraphy of Pope Damasus, to reconstruct the ideal society that was shown to the pilgrim who went to the loca sanctorum in the Urbs. Taking into account the pastoral, political and ideological elements of Damasian epigraphy, it shows that the choice of martyrs and subjects which were celebrated responded to the increasing numbers of nobles within Roman Christian society after the peace of Constantine. Damasus tried to accommodated himself to the sensibilities of the minor aristocracy of Rome and the emerging clergy, without renouncing its hierarchical organization of the Church in line with the social and ecclesial tendencies of the second half of the fourth century, when Roma christiana came into being.