History
A Catholic History of Milan
Milan's Catholic story is built around Saint Ambrose, the governor acclaimed bishop in 374, who ringed the city with basilicas and baptized Augustine, and whose Church kept its own rite through emperors, Lombards and popes. The Magi relics were taken to Cologne in 1164 and the Duomo was begun in 1386. Charles Borromeo made Milan a model diocese and stayed through the plague of 1576, Napoleon closed convents, and the city then answered with congregations, a Catholic university, archbishop popes and, in 2025, a canonized teenager, Carlo Acutis.
To 313
Mediolanum and the First Christians
Mediolanum was the seat of the Western Roman emperors from 286 to 402, and Christians lived here by the middle of the third century. Milanese tradition names the apostle Barnabas as the first missionary, but the diocese itself accepts that its early list of bishops was stretched backward to claim apostolic roots. What is secure is a Christian epitaph dated to 244, kept in Sant'Ambrogio, and the presence of Bishop Merocles at the Roman synod of 313.
The soldier martyrs Victor, Nabor and Felix, Moors who refused to sacrifice to the emperor, died under Maximian around 303. Victor's shrine is San Vittore al Corpo, built over a late imperial mausoleum. Milan buried its martyrs in cemeteries outside the walls, which is why its oldest churches stand on the roads leaving the city.
