A Reliquary from the Time of St Ambrose

Today is the feast of a group of four Saints, the martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, who are traditionally said to have died at Milan in the middle of the first century, and Popes Victor I (ca. 189-99) and Innocent I (401-17). On the Ambrosian Calendar, the two martyrs have the day to themselves, and their feast is kept with a vigil; there is also a feast of the translation of Nazarius’ relics on May 10th.

The high altar of the church of the Holy Apostles and St Nazarius, commonly known as “San Nazaro in Brolo”, with the relics of St Nazarius.

In 395 AD, their bodies were discovered by St Ambrose in a garden outside the city; when the tomb of Nazarius was opened, his blood was seen to be as fresh as if he had just been wounded. His relics were then taken to a basilica which Ambrose had constructed about 15 years earlier, and dedicated to the Twelve Apostles; a large apse was added to the church, and the relics laid to rest in a crypt in the middle of it. In 1578, in the course of building a new altar for the church, a silver reliquary contemporary to the original construction of the basilica was discovered under the high altar, with relics of the Apostles Ss Peter and Paul inside it. St Ambrose himself attests that these relics had been given to him by Pope St Damasus I, for the first dedication of the church to the Twelve Apostles; St Charles was rather disappointed to find that they were not relics of their bodies, but relics “by contact”, pieces of cloth that had touched the Apostles’ bones. Nevertheless, he donated one of his own copes to wrap up the relics of St Nazarius, the Apostles, and four of his Sainted predecessors among the archbishops of Milan, who were buried in the church. The reliquary is now displayed in the museum of the Archdiocese of Milan; thanks to Nicola for all of these pictures.

On the lid of the reliquary are shown Christ and the Twelve Apostles. On the lower left are seen the baskets of fragments collected by the Apostles after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; on the lower right, the six vessels of water turned into wine during the Wedding at Cana. The custom of representing Christ beardless to distinguish Him from the Father was still common in this era, although soon to fade away. The classical style of all five of the panels is very typical of the highest quality artworks of the era, as one would expect from a work commissioned by a man of aristocratic background and high political rank like St Ambrose; this is particularly evident in the pose of the standing figures, which are very reminiscent of the better Roman statues.

Joseph sitting in judgment on his brothers; the young prisoner on the left is Benjamin, the older one on the right is Judah. The hat worn by Joseph and the other brothers, known as a Phrygian cap, was generically associated by the Romans with peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and often adopted by the Christians to represent the characters in the Old Testament.

The Three Children in the Furnace, also wearing the Phrygian cap, and the angel that comes to make the inside of the furnace cool.

The Judgment of Solomon.

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A Reliquary from the Time of St Ambrose

Today is the feast of a group of four Saints, the martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, who are traditionally said to have died at Milan in the middle of the first century, and Popes Victor I (ca. 189-99) and Innocent I (401-17). On the Ambrosian Calendar, the two martyrs have the day to themselves, and their feast is kept with a vigil; there is also a feast of the translation of Nazarius’ relics on May 10th.

The high altar of the church of the Holy Apostles and St Nazarius, commonly known as “San Nazaro in Brolo”, with the relics of St Nazarius.

In 395 AD, their bodies were discovered by St Ambrose in a garden outside the city; when the tomb of Nazarius was opened, his blood was seen to be as fresh as if he had just been wounded. His relics were then taken to a basilica which Ambrose had constructed about 15 years earlier, and dedicated to the Twelve Apostles; a large apse was added to the church, and the relics laid to rest in a crypt in the middle of it. In 1578, in the course of building a new altar for the church, a silver reliquary contemporary to the original construction of the basilica was discovered under the high altar, with relics of the Apostles Ss Peter and Paul inside it. St Ambrose himself attests that these relics had been given to him by Pope St Damasus I, for the first dedication of the church to the Twelve Apostles; St Charles was rather disappointed to find that they were not relics of their bodies, but relics “by contact”, pieces of cloth that had touched the Apostles’ bones. Nevertheless, he donated one of his own copes to wrap up the relics of St Nazarius, the Apostles, and four of his Sainted predecessors among the archbishops of Milan, who were buried in the church. The reliquary is now displayed in the museum of the Archdiocese of Milan; thanks to Nicola for all of these pictures.

On the lid of the reliquary are shown Christ and the Twelve Apostles. On the lower left are seen the baskets of fragments collected by the Apostles after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; on the lower right, the six vessels of water turned into wine during the Wedding at Cana. The custom of representing Christ beardless to distinguish Him from the Father was still common in this era, although soon to fade away. The classical style of all five of the panels is very typical of the highest quality artworks of the era, as one would expect from a work commissioned by a man of aristocratic background and high political rank like St Ambrose; this is particularly evident in the pose of the standing figures, which are very reminiscent of the better Roman statues.

Joseph sitting in judgment on his brothers; the young prisoner on the left is Benjamin, the older one on the right is Judah. The hat worn by Joseph and the other brothers, known as a Phrygian cap, was generically associated by the Romans with peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and often adopted by the Christians to represent the characters in the Old Testament.

The Three Children in the Furnace, also wearing the Phrygian cap, and the angel that comes to make the inside of the furnace cool.

The Judgment of Solomon.

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A Rare Historical Photograph from Milan Cathedral

On September 10, 1910, His Eminence Andrea Cardinal Ferrari, Archbishop of Milan, initiated a special series of celebrations to commemorate the third centenary of the canonization of St Charles Borromeo, which took place on All Saints’ Day of 1610, in the reign of Pope Paul V. The relics of St Charles are in a large urn which is normally over the altar of a chapel in the crypt of Milan cathedral; for centuries, it was the custom that bishops would celebrate at this altar when visiting the city. For this special centenary celebration, the urn was brought up to the main church, and set in front of the large preaching pulpit at the edge of the principal sanctuary. At the time, it was still very unusual for photography to be allowed at all in churches, even for major events, but our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi just found this very nice photo of the relics thus exposed, although the figures in the foreground have clearly been retouched.

Here is another view of the relics displayed, with the Cardinal kneeling before them, attended by several mitred canons. When Andrea Ferrari was appointed to the see of Milan in 1894, he took an extra name “Carlo” as a sign of devotion to his sainted predecessor in the see of St Ambrose. At a guess, this image would probably have been made for an Italian period similar to the old Life Magazine.

And here is a collage of images which show the relics displayed in the cathedral, the decoration of the church’s façade and interior, and a group of civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries with Cardinal Antonio Agliardi, the Papal envoy to the centenary celebrations.

Pray for Italy

The following has been reported on several news sites, and confirmed by an official communication of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (in Italian, on the website of their newspaper, Avvenire). In obedience to a decree of the Italian government, as part of the effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, “all civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals”, are officially suspended until April 3rd. This includes all public celebrations of the Mass, not excluding Sundays; the country is effectively under interdict. As this epidemic gets worse on a global scale, which it seems certain will continue for the foreseeable future, the hierarchies of other nations will have to address what it means for the religious life of their people. Obviously, there are innumerable Saints who have intervened in times of plague, but I would recommend that we also ask, on behalf of our bishops, for the intervention of St Charles Borromeo, a model bishop in so many ways. When Milan was struck by a plague in 1576-77, the city was largely abandoned by the civil authorities, and St Charles was the first not only to aid the afflicted, but also to lead the Church in prayer for deliverance from the plague.

St Charles Borromeo leading a procession with the relic of the Holy Nail during the great plague which struck Milan in 1576-7; by Giovanni Battista Della Rovere (also known as “il Fiamminghino - the little Fleming”, since his father was born in Antwerp), 1602. This is one of several paintings of episodes of St Charles’ life which every year are hung from bars between the columns of the Duomo for his feast day (November 4th), and left up until the Epiphany.

The same subject by Guglielmo Caccia, known as “il Moncalvo”, 1614

The cross carried by St Charles during one of the processions in the summer of 1576, when the plague hit particularly hard, now at the sanctuary of Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso in Milan.

 

The Shrine of Santa Maria del Fonte in Caravaggio, Italy

In the year 1432, the northern Italian city of Caravaggio, about 22 miles to the east of Milan, was at the center of a long-running conflict between the Duchy of Milan and the Venetian Republic, a conflict attended by frequent seiges and sacks, violent faction-fighting within the cities and towns of the whole area, and plundering by bands of mercenaries roving the countryside. On May 26th of that year, the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl named Gianetta de’ Vacchi as she was kneeling in a field to say the evening Angelus. In tears, the Virgin consoled Gianetta for the ill-treatment she was then suffering at the hands of her alcoholic husband, and asked her to deliver a message aimed at putting an end to the conflict. The words of the Virgin were as follows: “The Most High and Almighty, My Son, intended to destroy this land, because of the iniquities of men, since they do evil every day, and fall from sin to sin. But for seven years, I have implored My Son for mercy for their sins. Therefore, I wish you to tell each and all to fast on bread and water every Friday, in honor of My Son, and after Vespers, out of devotion to me, to keep every Saturday as a feast day. They must dedicate half of that day to me, in gratitude for the many and great favors obtained from My Son through My intercession.” In accordance with this charge, Giannetta did as she was asked, and implored the civil authorities to make a permanent peace settlement.

As would later happen at Lourdes, a spring of water rose up out of the ground, in which many people were healed of various infirmities; a hospice and church were erected on the site very shortly thereafter. In 1575, St Charles Borromeo began a new and far grander church, according to a design by the architect Pellegrino Tebaldi, but the project was only completed in the early decades of the 18th century; the site of the apparition is directly behind the high altar. It is now the second most visited Marian shrine in Italy after the Holy House of Loreto; here are some recent pictures from our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi. (By the way, the painter Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan in 1571 to a couple from Caravaggio, and used the name of their native place as his nom de plume to distinguish himself from the other, more famous Michelangelo.)

The church is set at the center of a wide piazza, and surrounded by symmetrical tree-lined porticos on all four sides. The fountain of water runs through a corridor underneath the church (photos below), then passes out into this area on the side of the building, and is collected in a large pool surrounded by a marble balustrade.

The site of the apparition, known as “Il Sacro Speco” in Italian, “the Holy Cave.” (The same term is used for the shrine of St Benedict at Subiaco.) The wooden statues of the Virgin Mary and Giannetta (who has never been canonized, but is popularly called a Blessed), the work of Ortisei Moroder, were inaugurated in 1932, during the celebration of the fifth centenary of the apparition. The Blessed Card. Ildephonse Schuster, as Papal Legate, personally crowned the statue of the Virgin.

The nave and high altar.

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St Charles’ Final Retreat: The Monte Sacro di Varallo (Part 2)

Last Sunday, on the feast of St Charles, we posted some photos of the Monte Sacro di Varallo, where he spent some time in retreat in October of 1584, shortly before returning to Milan to die. Since there are 44 shrines on this “sacred mountain”, as the Italians called them, representing episodes the life of Christ, we couldn’t show the whole series in a single post; here are some of Nicolas’ photos, from the “Ecce homo” to the Holy Sepulcher. At the end are photos of the main church, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

“Ecce homo”  (John 19, 5)

Pilate washes his hands

Christ is condemned to death

The carrying of the Cross; Christ meets Veronica

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St Charles’ Final Retreat: The Monte Sacro di Varallo

In the Breviary lessons for the feast of St Charles Borromeo, whose feast is today, it is stated that towards the end of his life, “he withdrew to the solitude of Monte Varallo, where the mysteries of the Lord’s Passion (inter alia) are represented in life-size sculptures; and there for some days, lived a life made harsh by voluntary penances, but sweetened by meditation on Christ’s sufferings.” This was in October of 1584; he then returned to Milan, and died there on the night between the 3rd and 4th of November.

A representation of St Charles praying at the chapel of Christ’s Agony in the Garden.

Monte Varallo is one of the group of nine pilgrimage shrines in the northern Italian provinces of Lombardy and the Piedmont (three in the former, six in the latter) known as the “Sacri Monti - Sacred Mountains.” It is also the most elaborate, with 44 chapels representing the life of Christ from the Annunciation to His burial, and the Fall of Man as a prelude. Inside each chapel, one of the sacred episodes is represented by a group of life-sized painted statues, and frescoes on the walls; some of these are quite small and simple, others very large indeed. Here are some photos taken by Nicola, which get us up to the Scala Sancta, the stairs that Christ climbed on the way to his trial before Pilate. A second set will be posted later in the week. (The chapels, by the way, are so called because of their architectural structure, but they don’t have altars and are not set up for the celebration of Mass.)

The Fall of Man

The Annunciation

The Visitation

The Arrival of the Three Kings

The Adoration of the Shepherds

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A Reliquary from the Time of St Ambrose

On the calendar of the Extraordinary Form, today is the feast of a group of four Saints, the martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, who are traditionally said to have died at Milan in the middle of the first century, and Popes Victor I (ca. 189-99) and Innocent I (401-17). On the traditional Ambrosian Calendar, the two martyrs have the day to themselves, and their feast is kept with a vigil; there is also a feast of the translation of Nazarius’ relics on May 10th.

The high altar of the church of the Holy Apostles and St Nazarius, commonly known as “San Nazaro in Brolo”, with the relics of St Nazarius.

In 395 AD, their bodies were discovered by St Ambrose in a garden outside the city; when the tomb of Nazarius was opened, his blood was seen to be as fresh as if he had just been wounded. His relics were then taken to a basilica which Ambrose had constructed about 15 years earlier, and dedicated to the Twelve Apostles; a large apse was added to the church, and the relics laid to rest in a crypt in the middle of it. In 1578, in the course of building a new altar for the church, a silver reliquary contemporary to the original construction of the basilica was discovered under the high altar, with relics of the Apostles Ss Peter and Paul inside it. St Ambrose himself attests that these relics had been given to him by Pope St Damasus I, for the first dedication of the church to the Twelve Apostles; St Charles was rather disappointed to find that they were not relics of their bodies, but relics “by contact”, pieces of cloth that had touched the Apostles’ bones. Nevertheless, he donated one of his own copes to wrap up the relics of St Nazarius, the Apostles, and four of his Sainted predecessors among the archbishops of Milan, who were buried in the church. The reliquary is now displayed at Museum of the Archdiocese of Milan; thanks to Nicola for all of these pictures.

On the lid of the reliquary are shown Christ and the Twelve Apostles. On the lower left are seen the baskets of fragments collected by the Apostles after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; on the lower right, the six vessels of water turned into wine during the Wedding at Cana. The custom of representing Christ beardless to distinguish Him from the Father was still common in this era, although soon to fade away. The classical style of all five of the panels is very typical of the highest quality artworks of the era, as one would expect from a work commissioned by a man of aristocratic background and high political rank like St Ambrose; this is particularly evident in the pose of the standing figures, which are very reminiscent of the better Roman statues.

Joseph sitting in judgment on his brothers; the young prisoner on the left is Benjamin, the older one on the right is Judah. The hat worn by Joseph and the other brothers, known as a Phrygian cap, was generically associated by the Romans with peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, and often adopted by the Christians to represent the characters in the Old Testament.

The Three Children in the Furnace, also wearing the Phrygian cap, and the angel that comes to make the inside of the furnace cool.

The Judgment of Solomon.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Relics of St Charles Borromeo

Our thanks once again to Fr Adrian Hilton of the Cincinnati Oratory for sharing with us these photos from his relic collection, this time of St Charles Borromeo, whose feast is today. It is a letter written and signed by the Saint on December 26th, 1561, in which he communicates to certain persons that the Pope has given permission to an archbishop to delay his departure for the Council of Trent, in order to attend to some business matters of great importance to said persons. At the time, St Charles was only 23 years old, and although not yet ordained a priest, had already been appointed a cardinal, and administrator of the archdiocese of Milan. He was retained by his uncle, Pope Pius IV, in Rome, and constantly occupied with the affairs of the Church, not least among them the push to reconvene Trent, which at that point had been suspended for almost 10 years.

From our Ambrosian correspondent Nicola de’ Grandi, here are two historically interesting photos. (And my thanks to him for deciphering the letter!) The first shows the relics of St Charles as they were formerly seen in the crypt chapel of the Duomo of Milan. In 1957, Archbishop Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, ordered that the skull be covered by a mask with the likeness of the Saint’s face.

This photograph shows the Blessed Ildefonse Schuster giving the solemn blessing at the end of a solemn Pontifical Mass on November 4th. The silver statue of St Charles seen on the far left of the altar was formerly placed on the Gospel side only for his feast day; it is now permanently left in the church.

And several more relics of St Charles from various places: first, a biretta kept at the Collegio Papio in Ascona, Canton Ticino, Switzerland. The boundary between Ambrosian territory and the Roman Rite diocese of Como passes through the college’s church; therefore, the main altar on the Ascona side is Ambrosian, and the altars of the chapels in the nave are Roman. St Charles left this biretta behind in Ascona while traveling back to Milan during his final illness, dying just a few hours after returning to his episcopal city.

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An Unusual Viennese Liturgical Use, with a Close-Up View of the Baroque Dome of the Karlskirche

The "liturgical study day" in which I took part on Sunday, April 2 in Vienna, was prefaced with a visit to the dome of the Karlskirche and concluded with a glorious Solemn Mass for Passion Sunday, in the Viennese style: the so-called "Fünfherrenamt" (literally, "five lord worship"), which calls for five vested ministers to serve the altar, rather than the usual three. There was a surprising amount of changing of vestments, which I didn't understand, but hope someday to receive an explanation of!

My hosts told me that this use or custom is uniquely Viennese and that it has unexpectedly survived to the present, in spite of so many pressures, old and new, to abandon it. Before the Council, there were ultramontanists arguing that Vienna should conform to the Roman Rite as celebrated everywhere else; whereas after the Council, the notion of any sort of Tridentine Mass, with one, three, five, or ninety-five ministers, was verboten. Yet the Fünfherrenamt continues to be celebrated several times each year. I cannot comment in detail on the ceremonies but I can at least share some of the splendid pictures taken by Una Voce Austria, as well as a brief video of highlights.

Beneath these photos, I will place and comment on several close-ups that I took of the dome frescos of the same church, dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo.

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