medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
In both the Roman and the Ambrosian rites today (17. September) is the feast day of Satyrus of Milan (d. 377 or 378). Uranius Satyrus was an older brother, or perhaps half-brother, of St. Ambrose of Milan, from whom we have most of our limited information about him. Born at Trier in about 330, he had the same sort of education as did Ambrose and rose through the imperial civil service to a high position in the prefecture of Italy. When in 374 Ambrose became bishop of Milan Satyrus assumed the management of the family's estates. In the exercise of this responsibility he traveled to Africa in 376/77 or 377/78. On the return voyage his vessel encountered a severe storm and was shipwrecked off Sardinia. Satyrus, at the time still a catechumen, obtained from baptized Christians a sacred host, wrapped it in a napkin, and, trusting in its power alone, jumped with it into the sea. Safely on shore, the grateful survivor had himself baptized by the local bishop -- but only after first satisfying himself that this worthy was not schismatic. He returned to Milan and died not long afterward.
Ambrose's two books of consolation on his brother's death (_De excessu fratris sui Satyri_) as well, perhaps, as the fact that he had his brother buried next to what was recognized as the grave of the Milanese martyr Victor led in time to Satyrus' veneration as a saint with an Office in the Ambrosian Missal. He is depicted at center just below the Pantocrator's throne in the probably earlier thirteenth-century apse mosaic of Milan's basilica di Sant'Ambrogio (restored in the eighteenth century and again in the twentieth):
http://tinyurl.com/qdn2zpu
The saint at Satyrus' right is his and Ambrose's sister, the consecrated virgin Marcellina. The saint at his left is Candida, a consecrated virgin living in Carthage whose sister is said by Paulinus of Milan to have lived with Marcellina.
Satyrus' relics now repose in an effigy reliquary in the cappella dei Santi Bartolomeo e Satiro in Milan's basilica di Sant'Ambrogio:
http://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/90298/90298A.JPG
Satyrus' chief physical monument is the originally ninth-century archiepiscopal chapel dedicated to him in Milan and now usually known as the sacello di San Satiro (a.k.a. cappella della Pietà). It was reconsecrated in the eleventh century. Prior to the early 1480s, when it was given a circular outline and attached to the then newly built church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro, this was a small separate church with a central plan consisting of a Greek cross opening into lobes of differing dimensions. Below the base of the later sixteenth-century lantern it is still essentially an early medieval structure. A plan is here:
http://tinyurl.com/5oulcl
Some exterior views:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/26688567@N04/3177142871/lightbox/
http://www.globopix.net/foto/lombardia/cappella-san-satiro.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/8ko9hrs
The building was restored in the nineteenth and again in the twentieth century (1880; 1939-1942). Here's a view of it in less palmy days:
http://www.milanofree.it/images/fotomilano_home/san_satiro_milano.jpg
Interior views, showing Agostino de Fondulis' late fifteenth-century polychrome terracotta Lamentatio Christi (1482-1483) and remnants of ninth- and eleventh-century frescoing:
http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/img_db/bca/LMD80/1/l/13_lmd80-00013_08.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/nufmu2f
http://tinyurl.com/plurgjv
http://tinyurl.com/ndkwe5u
Best,
John Dillon
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