Damian of Pavia

Saint Damian of Pavia (also Damianus Ticinensis) was bishop of Pavia (Ticinum) from the year 680 and died on 12 April 710. He succeeded Bishop Anastasius. He mediated between the Lombards and the Byzantine emperors. He is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church; our sources mention no Orthodox veneration. His commemoration is on 12 April.

His life is known from two reports of Paul the Deacon in the History of the Lombards (written before 796). In 679, at the Council of Milan, in preparation for the Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, Damian wrote, on behalf of the bishop of Milan, Mansuetus, a letter to the emperor Constantine IV, against Monothelitism. This letter, in a Latin edition, is the only extant writing from the hand of Damian (sometimes attributed to Mansuetus, on whose behalf Damian wrote). The letter was approved by the participants of the council of Milan.

Besides the confession of faith, which was an extended exposition of the Incarnation of Christ, the letter contained a preamble, an address to the emperor, in which the author formulated the teaching on the conciliar voice of the Church, which is expressed through the Fathers at the Ecumenical Councils. He urged Constantine IV to follow the example of the emperors Constantine the Great, Theodosius I, Marcian and Justinian I, who, to resolve questions of faith, convened Ecumenical Councils and followed their decisions. Damian did not mention, however, the emperor Theodosius II the Younger, with whose name the convening of the Third Ecumenical Council and of the Monophysite Robber Council (449) is linked. Damian's letter was read at the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

Damian made a great contribution to the normalization of relations between the Lombards and Byzantium. In the epitaph of Damian in the church in Pavia, there is linked with his name the wonderful stopping of a plague, after the translation from Rome of a part of the relics of the martyr Sebastian and the consecration, in the martyr's name, of an altar beside the church of the Apostle Peter in Ticinum (now Pavia).