The Basilica of St. Ambrogio
“Regina delle chiese lombarde.”

In a quiet plebeian quarter, remote from the bustle of the city, surrounded by a wide piazza and a pleasant grove of lime-trees, stands the old basilica of St. Ambrogio. It is reached in a few minutes from the Duomo by the S. Vittore tram. This church, architecturally and historically, ranks first among all in Milan. The Duomo, foreign in material and bastard in style, cannot compare in interest with this grand product of the Lombard soil and the Lombard spirit. The story of St. Ambrogio reaches back through the long centuries of Milan’s modern and medi?val life to the time of the saintly Doctor himself. It was in 386 that St. Ambrose founded it beside the already existing basilica Faust?. Here he buried, in the place which he had prepared for himself, the bodies of the martyr saints Protasio and Gervasio, whose resting-place had been revealed to him just at the crisis of his struggle with the Empress. Two men of marvellous stature such as the first age bore, so he describes the bodies in a letter to his sister Marcellina. We carried them, as the evening was falling, to the basilica Faust?.... The following day we removed them to the church which they call Ambrosianam. They were laid beneath the altar, where Christ is offered up, and Ambrose commanded that when his own time came he should be buried in all humility beside them upon their left hand.

257The church was dedicated to the martyrs. Nevertheless, it continued to be called the Basilica Ambrosiana according to the fashion of that day, when the churches were called after their founders, as for example the Basilica Faust?, otherwise S. Vittore in Cielo d’Oro, the Basilica Porciana, also dedicated to S. Vittore, and the Basilica Paulina, or SS. Felix and Nabor. To later centuries it has become unalterably Sant Ambrogio.

Being in a peculiar sense the church of the patron saint and protector of the Milanese people, the basilica held from the first a very prominent place in the life of the Ambrosian city. Here the Primates gathered their suffragans to those synods and provincial councils, in which in the days of ecclesiastical rule the affairs of North Italy were decided. The foundation of a monastery of the powerful Benedictine Order in connection with the church, in 783, added to its importance. The archbishops of the reviving See of Milan, in the ninth century, restored it and bestowed upon it the utmost honour and reverence, endowing it with great riches. Here Otho the Great was crowned King of Italy by Archbishop Walperto in 961, and from that time, whenever a coronation took place in Milan, it was performed in St. Ambrogio. Perhaps the curious privilege which the city enjoyed, of keeping all sovereigns excluded from its precincts, was the reason why the Cathedral church was never chosen for the ceremony. In 1186, Frederick Barbarossa was present here when with immense splendour Henry of Suabia wedded Constance of Sicily, the Constance who is moon-arrested in Dante’s Paradise, because of her supposed inconstancy to monastic vows, though the old tale of her being dragged from a convent to marry the Emperor’s son has been proved a fable.

During the factious age of liberty St. Ambrogio was the church in which the popular party gathered, to seek 258the sanction and protection of the patron saint and to discuss their affairs, being shut out from the Duomo by the Archbishop and the aristocratic party. Here the short-lived reconciliation of 1258, called the Pace di St. Ambrogio, was completed and sworn to before the Altar with great solemnity by the representatives of both factions.

In St. Ambrogio Henry of Luxemburg, the looked-for peacemaker, was crowned in 1311, with his consort, Margaret of Brabant, in the presence of all the great nobles of Italy and characters conspicuous in the history of the time. A strange and somewhat ominous circumstance of this occasion was that the crown always used for the coronation of the Kings of Italy—which had become, though only shortly before this time, known as the Iron Crown—was missing. With the rest of the treasure of the Cathedral of Monza—where it was kept then, as to-day—it had been pawned by the Torriani.[8] So a new iron crown, in the form of a laurel wreath, was forged to encircle the brow of Henry VII. The newly anointed monarch created two hundred knights in the church, the first upon whom he laid his sword being Matteo Visconte. From this time the ceremony of knighting was customarily performed in St. Ambrogio, and later on those who received the dignity there were called the Knights of St. Ambrogio.

8.  The treasure was recovered later from Avignon by Matteo Visconte.

It was in St. Ambrogio that Gian Galeazzo Visconte, newly created Duke of Milan, knelt before the altar while the Archbishop of Milan and a splendid array of prelates chanted hymns and offices in celebration of his elevation to the ducal dignity, in the presence of princes and ambassadors from all the States of Italy and Europe. Here, in 1477, the young Republicans 259who had sworn to avenge the wrongs of their city upon the tyrant Galeazzo Maria Sforza, bowed themselves before the image of the Saint, patron of the Milanese liberties, and besought his blessing upon their enterprise. In the sixteenth century St. Ambrogio was the goal of the pathetic penitential processions which used to wind their way from the Duomo day after day during the visitations of the plague and the persecutions by the Spaniards.

The Basilica as we see it now shows no trace, it need hardly be said, of the church which Ambrose himself built. But it still contains his bones. An interesting proof of his actual burial there beside the two martyrs, according to his directions, was the discovery, in 1864, beneath the High Altar, of two cavities of unequal size, the larger in the middle, the smaller on its left hand, evidently burial-places. There were no bodies in them, but the remains of the three saints were found in a sepulchre of porphyry above the cavities. It was known that they had been removed and laid in one tomb together by Archbishop Angilberto in the ninth century, probably at the time when the floor of the sanctuary was raised and the golden altar set up. The church appears to have been completely rebuilt at this time by Angilberto (824-859) and Ansperto (868-881), after the instalment of the Benedictines, in order to suit it to the requirements of monastic ritual. Angilberto had the main part built, it is supposed, and Ansperto added the atrium—Atria vicinas struxit et ante fores,—as is recorded in the lengthy epitaph of the said prelate inscribed above his tomb on the south side of the nave.

But the noble building of to-day, with its grand forecourt, or atrium, is almost certainly not the ninth century church of Angilberto and Ansperto, but a reconstruction on the same lines in the eleventh or early twelfth century. The date of St. Ambrogio has been 260a much-disputed point, and some authorities still cherish the theory that it is in the main the ninth century building, and as such, the prototype of all the many churches of the Romanesque style scattered throughout Europe. But the advanced system of vaulting, and the compound form of the pillars, as seen in St. Ambrogio, are said not to appear in other Italian churches until a good deal later than the ninth century—later, in fact, than in more northern countries. If the Basilica be of this early date, it must have remained for two hundred years a solitary example of a splendid style of architecture which had arrived at completeness without leaving any traces of preliminary stages. There are many tenth and eleventh century churches, however, which show what would naturally seem the early and undeveloped stages of the style, which is in favour of the belief held by most of the writers on the subject, that St. Ambrogio follows rather than precedes them in date, and stands at the zenith and not at the dawn of Romanesque architecture. The style of most of the decorative sculpture on the building also points to a later origin.[9]

9.  The exponents of the ninth century theory are Dartein, Landriani, and Mongeri, among others, and more recently, Luca Beltrami; and of the theory of a later origin, Kügler, Viollet-le-Duc, Stielh, Cattaneo, Adolfo Venturi, etc.

There is no actual record, it is true, of a restoration in the eleventh or twelfth century, but the patriotism and fervour of vitality which animated the Milanese in that epoch, and brought them into conflict with Barbarossa, may well have induced them to rebuild and beautify this church, which, being the resting-place of their Patron, was to them as the sanctuary of their liberties. Italian enthusiasm has always memorialised itself in brick and stone, and, moreover, in the twelfth century architecture was the only art in which they 261could fully express themselves. Not only in Milan, but throughout Lombardy, the churches of this period are a grand and enduring testimony to the great era of the Italian Communes, and in St. Ambrogio, queen if not mother of them all,[10] surely we have before us the noblest artistic embodiment of the spirit which produced the Lombard League.

10.  Madre e regina delle chiese lombarde—Dartein.

The outward form of the church—the large Romanesque style—is in keeping with that great patriotic thought and resolve. It is essentially of the soil. The grand curves of the arches, the massive pillars, the sense of space and freedom seem the proper expression of the medi?val Lombard character, in their union of Latin breadth and clearness with the picturesque ruggedness, and the rich effects of light and shade of Northern building. Above all, the material—brick and stone, that fortunate combination which produces such glory and enchantment of colour—is peculiarly Lombard. The effect of it in St. Ambrogio is most beautiful and satisfying. Even the newness of much of the brick at the present time—crude evidence of restoration—cannot destroy the charm.
262

SIDE AISLE OF ATRIUM, ST. AMBROGIO.
263

CAPITAL IN ATRIUM OF
ST. AMBROGIO.

The atrium or forecourt is surrounded on three sides by arcades supported on massive pillars. It is rather later in date than the fa?ade of the church, which rises up in a wide gable, pierced with lofty round-headed openings above the shadow of the narthex or portico, triple-arched, which forms the eastern side of the atrium. On either hand of the church rises a campanile of characteristic Lombard type. The lower one is the Monks’ Tower, and dates from the eighth or ninth century. It is probably the first thing which the Benedictines built on entering into possession of the church in 783, bells being a necessity of the monastic ritual. The tall tower on the left, which, with its ornamental arcading and delicate ribs of brick and stone, shows an advance of some centuries on the simplicity of the older one, was built in 1128 by Archbishop Anselmo for the Canons, to vindicate the ancient rights of these, the original servants and custodians of the basilica, against the encroaching monks, who are said to have pulled down the pre-existing belfry of the secular priests. The struggles between these two bodies of secular and regular clergy, established side by side and sharing the privilege of serving the church, were very fierce and continuous through the Middle Ages. The monks are long gone now, and the Canons remain in peaceful possession of the altars and of the quiet courts and shrunken cloisters of the old place. Both towers have been restored in recent times. The atrium and fa?ade have also been restored, but show more vestiges of the original work. In the fantastic sculptured imagery which ornaments the capitals of the great columns, in the curling foliage patterns of the friezes on archivolts and architraves, in the endless knots and intricate web of the ribbed stems upon the lintels and jambs and columns of the great middle doorway, in the grotesque beasts and human creatures which course up pillars, or writhe round capitals, we see the hand of the twelfth century craftsman still shaping the stone into the forms of religious symbolism, but expressing also his own satiric and pessimistic views of life, of nature ever at war with itself, and at the same time beginning to subordinate spiritual ideas to a desire for decorative effect. The attempts seen here at representing human figures are still of the rudest and most primitive, as for example the figure—perhaps Salome—dancing, while another plays the lyre, on a capital to the left of the middle door, the Adam and Eve (?) on either side of the Tree on one of the middle capitals of the narthex, the huntsman standing triumphant above a crowd of horned beasts—symbolic of 264the victory of the human over the animal nature. But many of the capitals are purely fanciful and decorative; the grotesque creatures writhe into graceful and symmetric designs, and that sort of flat-ribbed cord that appears so constantly, and in its endless windings is emblematic of eternity, is led into graceful curves and develops into leaves and stems which, growing bolder and freer, become finally beautiful foliage designs with masks and grotesques that seem to herald the Renaissance. This more advanced decoration is probably thirteenth century. Some fragments of the more archaic ornament, especially round the middle doorway, which has the appearance of being pieced together in places, seem to be survivals of an earlier existence of the church, which were embodied in the twelfth century reconstruction—the symbolic Lion of St. Mark, for example, and the Abbot’s Cross on a column on the right hand, which belongs perhaps to the period of the rebuilding for the monks. The name of Adam Magister, inscribed round a slender column on the left of the door, upside down, is no doubt that of the architect or sculptor of the present or some former phase of the building.

CAPITAL IN ATRIUM OF
ST. AMBROGIO.

The walls of the atrium and round the doorways of the church show everywhere traces of fresco paintings of various periods, from Byzantine to Giottesque and the fifteenth century Lombard school, carefully uncovered in recent times, but all hopelessly ruined. The two large half-obliterated scenes in chiaroscuro on 265either side, at right angles to the front wall of the church, have been attributed tentatively to the little-known painter, Zenale. They represent the story of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. That on the right hand, which is the least spoilt, shows three devotees kneeling before St. Ambrose, who are supposed to be the three successive dukes, Francesco, Galeazzo Maria, and Gian Galeazzo Sforza. On the left of the principal door, supported on four columns, is the sarcophagus of the humanist, Pier Candido Decembrio (died 1477), secretary and biographer of Duke Filippo Maria, and of his successor, Francesco Sforza. It is a graceful Renaissance work, perhaps by the Lombard sculptor, Tommaso da Cazzaniga,[11] and has bas-reliefs on the front, showing the Virgin, with Decembrio kneeling before her protected by St. Ambrose, and the journey of Tobias and the Angel, signifying the soul’s journey into eternity. A very archaic bas-relief representing St. Ambrose, with the triple-thonged scourge in his hand, is on the wall beyond the left-hand door. The atrium is a museum of sculpture of many periods. Here are monuments and shields of medi?val and Renaissance days—tombstones cast out from this and neighbouring churches—the broken original of the carven beasts over the right-hand door, and various unburied fragments of that dead Roman world which underlies Milan.

11.  See Malaguzzi Valeri, G. A. Amadeo, p. 295.

The great wooden door of the church, carved all over with small scenes, and of very ancient origin, has lost its interest by a too complete restoration. An unrestored fragment which is kept in the Archivio Capitolare has been pronounced to be of the time of Theodosius.

The interior of the basilica has the same noble effect of largeness, dignity, and repose as the atrium. In the solemn obscurity and devout silence one becomes 266aware of massive arches and deep vaulting, of great spaces and dim, far-off recesses, of rich colour and gilding, of grotesque forms and wreathing serpentine stems in the pallid stone of capitals and pulpit and screen. The careful restoration of half a century ago has repaired as much as possible the mishandlings which the church suffered from the zeal of Carlo Borromeo, and again two hundred years later, though the modern decoration of the cupola cannot be admired. We now see the Lombard basilica in its twelfth century form, with a great central nave of four bays, and side aisles with matronei—galleries for the women—above them, an essential feature of a Romanesque church. The nave is roofed with cross vaults springing from enormous pilasters, except the last bay before the choir, which opens up into a lofty cupola, whence a circumscribed light pours down from a circle of windows high up, illuminating the beautiful canopy of the High Altar beneath. This cupola, carried up to a height not in accord with the rest of the church, is a thirteenth century restoration, following a disastrous fall of the roof of this part in 1196.
267

CIBORIUM, ST. AMBROGIO.

The eastern portion of the basilica, which has three apses, is a survival of the ninth century building. The apses do not exactly correspond in direction with the later built body of the church, as is easily seen in looking up from the nave to the central apse. That they belong to the church built for the monks, and not to an earlier basilica, as their obvious priority to the rest of the building has led the supporters of the ninth century theory to suppose, is shown by there being three............