In 366, the death of the bishop of Rome, Liberius? led to a division in the church. One side supported Ursinus?, while the other supported Damasus. This climaxed in a riot in a church which led to the death of 137 people and the rare intervention of the Emperor ??? to uphold public order. The church become discredited somewhat through this. Damasus was accused or murder at one point, but his rich friends got the Emperor to intervene.
Damasus contributed greatly to the liturgical enrichment of the city churches. He employed a calligrapher, one [Dionysius Philocalus]?, to adorn the shrines of martyrs with poems etc. This adornment and and the emphasis on the Roman legacy of Peter and Paul led to the claim that the real glory of Rome was Christian and not pagan. He spoke of Rome in terms of the "apostolic see", as his predecessor Liberius? had.
Damasus was the one who encouraged Jerome of Dalmatia (roughly modern Albania) to revise the available Old Latin versions of the Bible into the contemporary Latin - hence Vulgate, into the "vulgar", common language.
Damasus is noted for making the church more socially acceptable for the upper classes of Roman society to convert to Christianity. The general pattern within these upper classes was that women were the first to abandon pagan ways, while the men tended to to hold onto them longer, often for aesthetic and civic reasons, rather than strictly religious ones. These sort of citizens would have seen the pagan zeal of the previous Emperor, Julian as an embarrassment.
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