DUOMO OF MILAN 

 

 

 

Construction began in 1386.

Excavated Site of St. Augustine's Baptism by St. Ambrose: April 24, 387:

"The time arrived for me to give in my name for baptism, so we left the country and moved back to Milan. Alypius had decided to join me in being reborn in you, and was already clothed with the umility that befitted your mysteries ..... We associated the boy Adeodatus with us as well, my son according to the flesh, born of my sin. Vary fair had you fashioned him. He was then about fifteen, but surpassed many educated men of weighty learning .... We included him in the group as our contemporary in the life of your grace, to be schooled along with us in your doctrine." (Confessions IX, 14)

 

In the year 1879, a trench was dug in front of the façade of the Cathedral (Il Duomo) of Milan to put in a new rain sewer for the piazza or square. In the course of the work, some ancient ruins were discovered from an octagonal shaped building. No one knew what the building was, and the trench was soon after filled in again, in 1943, the same area was dug up to install an air raid shelter and the ruins came to light a second time. But it was not until 1962 that scholars concluded that this was most likely the baptistery where St. Arnbrose, the bishop of Milan, had baptized St. Augustine and his two companions at the Easter Vigil on the night of 24-25 April in 387.

At the rededication ceremony held on the vigil of Easter, Cardinal Colombo, the bishop of Milan, baptized three neophytes from Africa and gave them the Christian names of Augustine, Alypius and Adeodatus.   Augustine had been converted in the garden of Milan in the late summer of 386. He then resigned from the imperial chair of rhetoric and went with his mother and friends to a villa some 30 miles northeast of the city in a rural area in the foothills of the Alps called Cassiciacum (=Cassago Brianza), to spend some time in quiet reflection and to assimilate the meaning of all that had happened to him. He left as a catechumen and used those months to prepare himself for the important step in his conversion of baptism. When he returned, it was in all likelihood to this spot, now excavated beneath the present Cathedral, that he came to received the sacrament of baptism at the hands of Bishop Ambrose. What are the arguments for saying that this is the place? First of all, we know that in Ambrose's time the baptistery of Milan had this octagonal shape. Ambrose himself wrote: "This temple with eight niches was raised up for a holy purpose, and the octagonal font is worthy of such a function. It was appropriate that this number form the basis for the hall of holy baptism, through which true salvation comes to all the nations in the light of the risen Christ, who opens the doors closed by death and calls the dead out of their tombs; while he frees those who acknowledge themselves to be sinners from their ugly guilt and washes them in the stream of the purifying font." (Inscription from the early cathedral of Milan about the year 386)

Furthermore, it has been established that it was here under the present cathedral that the early cathedral of Ambrose was located. This comes from the fact that Ambrose and others spoke often of the Basilica Maior as the church where the most important events of the Milanese Church tool place. Documentary evidence from a century later tells us that the Basilica Maior was given the new name of a local martyr, St. Tecla, and that is the name that was found attached to the church beneath the present day cathedral. The baptistery would have been adjacent to the cathedral, for, as Ambrose said in several of his baptismal writings, as soon as the neophytes were baptized, they would proceed directly into the cathedral to participate fully in the Eucharist for the first time. In the baptistery as it is today, one can get a good impression or its location. The walls of the apses or the old cathedral are in view about twenty yards or so away. Six of the niches of the octogon are still visible, as well as some or the mosaic floor. One can even see traces of the Roman road that went along the outside or the building and the threshold of the baptistery's entrance. However, the most important detail is in the center where the attual baptismal font was situated and the baptism of Augustine, Alypius and Adeodatus took place. It is circular and deeply recessed in the floor. There is a canal coming in from the outside that brought running water to the font. All this is in keeping with the ancient rite of Christian baptism, in which the bishop and the neophyte went down into the water and there, the bishop, reciting the Trinitarian formula, poured the water of baptism over the entire body of the person. The form of the font corresponds to Ambrose's own words to the baptized: "You come to the font, you went down into it, ... you rose up again." (De Mysteriis 4, 23) "This is a descent and an ascent in the Jordan; for whoever descends into the font and ascends ... " (In Ps. 37, 10)

The Milanese are particularly proud that it was in their city that St. Augustine was converted and it was their bishop, Ambrose, who brought him to the font of life from which he rose "a servant of God" and of God's whole Church. A brief Prayer Service ror the Renewal of one's own Baptism The following passage is the one which Augustine read when he heard the voice in the garden singing: "Tolle Lege; Tolle Lege" as recorded in Book VIII: 29 of Confessions: "Suddenly I heard a voice from a house nearby - perhaps a voice of some boy or girl, I do not know - singing over and over again, "Pick lit up and read, pick it up and read. " ... believing that this could be nothing other than a divine command to open the Book and read the first passage I chanced upon; ... Stung into action, I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting, far on leaving it I had put down there fIle book of the apostle's letters. I snatched it up, opened it and read in silence the passage on which my eyes first lighted: ..." A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans 13: II -14 "You know the time in which we are living. It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith. The night is far spent; the day draws near. Let us cast off deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorable as in daylight; not in carousing and drunk- enness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. "

A reading from one of Augustine's Easter homilies: "Such is the power of this sacrament: it is a sacrament of new life which begins bere and now with the forgiveness of all past sins, and will be brought to completion with the resurrection of the dead. You have been buried with Christ by baptism into death in order that as Christ has risen from the dead, you also may walk in newness of life. You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who are in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope. And so your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and certain, because you have received the sacrament of sign of this reality, and you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, appears, then, you too will appear with him in glory."