DAMASCENUS THE STUDITE. - Greek preacher of the 16th century, born in Thessalonica in an unknown year but in 1577. He was exarch in Little Russia under Metrophanes, Patriarch of Constantinople (1565–72), bishop of Lita and Rendina, and finally metropolitan of Naupactus and Arta, where he died (cf. E. Legrand, *Bibliographie hellénique des XVe et XVIe siècles*, IV, Paris 1906, p. 165).
His principal work is a collection of 36 sermons, mostly ascetical, first published in 1568 under the title: *Βιβλίον χαλώνειον ὀγχουρός*, and reprinted many times thereafter up to the present day, being one of the spiritual reading books of modern Greeks. In the third sermon he enumerates the seven Sacraments but lists monastic habit as the sixth and omits Penance. However, in recent editions Penance has been substituted for the monastic habit. D. acknowledges the qualification of Sacrament only to first marriages.