human
They employed their revenues in maintaining the poor, the sick, the infirm, the widows, orphans, and prisoners, in burying the martyrs, in erecting and embellishing oratories, in comforting and redeeming confessors and captives, and in sending aid of every description to the suffering churches of other provinces. [Footnote 136] Thus, in the wise order of providence, papal civilization began in the moral world before it extended to the intellectual. Yet in the middle of the fourth century, the pope and his coadjutors in different quarters of the globe, presented a striking spectacle, when considered merely in their intellectual aspect. St. Damasus, the thirty-eighth pope, occupied the see of St. Peter. While he zealously promoted ecclesiastical discipline, he won for himself general admiration by his virtues and his writings. His taste for letters carried him beyond the sphere of theological labor; he composed verses, and wrote several heroic poems. [Footnote 137] He was the light of Rome, while St. Augustine, the brightest star that ever adorned the Catholic episcopate, shone at Hippo. St. Ambrose, at the same time, was the glory of Milan; St. Gregory taught at Nyssa; St. Gregory Nazianzen {643} wrote in Constantinople; St. Martin evangelized the Gauls; St. Basil composed his
gpt
Moralia