Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres
- Ambrosius, Hymn 10
Today, December 7, is the feast-day of Ambrose (d.397), bishop of Milan. At this time, Milan was one of the most important cities in the western part of the Roman Empire, along with Trier and Ravenna, while Rome was predominantly important as the symbolic heart of the empire, and as a bishopric. This was also a period where the bishops had become increasingly important political figures, as the old aristocracy had in many cases left the city for their villas and manors, and as the emperor was often preoccupied with military threats from the Sasanians in the East and the Germanic and Slavic tribes along the northern border. This situation would continue into the fifth century. Aside from the problems coming from outside of the empire, the stability within the empire was also shaken by the rivalries between Catholic and Arian factions. Such rivalries also bled into the political sphere, since both camps could count important political figures among their members. In an important imperial city as Milan, this was particularly destabilising because both factions were more numerous there than elsewhere, and because there was still a considerable pagan faction. Ambrose was actively involved in these controversies, and much of his writing and much of his work as bishop must be understood in light of this religio-political context. And it is the backdrop of the present blogpost.
Despite its opening paragraph, this blogpost is not primarily about Ambrose but about two saints that were important to him, namely Nabor and Felix. According to their legend, they were soldiers serving in the Roman army at the beginning of the fourth century, while Maximian was co-augustus of the western part of the empire, and while Diocletian was the main augustus. As Christians, Nabor and Felix were among the victims of the Diocletian persecution, and they were martyred in Milan, the traditional year of their death being set to 304. Nabor and Felix were then venerated as saints in Milan, and by the time Ambrose had accepted the position as bishop, the two soldier-saints were an established part of the tapestry of Catholic religion in the city. Accordingly, Ambrose actively supported and expanded their cult, and he even wrote a hymn in their honour, the opening part of which serves as this blogpost's epigraph. This hymn is the foundation for what I want to talk about here.
The hymn in honour of Nabor and Felix begins with a greeting to the saints, which also provides the main biographical details provided by their story. The first verse runs accordingly:
Victor Nabor Felix pii
Mediolani martyres,
solo hospites, Mauri genus
terrisque nostris aduenae
Victory, pious Nabor and Felix,
martyrs of Milan,
lonely guests of the land of the Mauritanian people
and you came to us
(The translation is open to other renditions; "Victor" might be a third saint excluded in later renditions of the legend.)
Nabor and Felix
Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.254v, Roman missal, c.1370, Bologna
(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)
The biographical information provided in the beginning serves, as I have argued elsewhere, to demonstrate to the saints that the singer of the hymn is familiar with the saints and therefore worthy of receiving their help. What I want to emphasise in this biographical information is the fact that Ambrose addresses Nabor and Felix as being from the land of the Mauretanian people. This means the Roman province of Mauretania, and not the modern country. (I use "Mauretanian people rather than the outdated and problematic "Moor".) This trait of soldier-saints originating in Africa is a common feature of several saints' legends, most famously that of Saint Mauritius and the Theban legion, who have provided patron saints for countless religious houses, villages and cities throughout the Alps.
Ambrose states that Nabor and Felix were guests in the land of the Milanese, thus emphasising their origin in a different part of the world from the foothills of the Alps. Yet they are also Milanese martyrs, and by their death in that very city, it is in that city they reside as saints and it is there that they perform their patronage. They are foreigners becoming Milanese, they are Mauritanian and Milanese at one and the same time.
There are two main points I want to make here. First of all, we see in the legend of Nabor and Felix yet another example of the multicultural world of Late Antiquity, where people from all over the Roman Empire moved and were moved throughout its breadth and width. This multicultural world is accessible through a variety of sources, and the cult of saints is a particularly good one. Secondly, Ambrose was a participant in this multicultural world, and to him there was no contradiction in coming as a stranger from the Mauritanian people and becoming a saint for the Milanese. They were Christian martyrs who had a special bond with the city of Milan, and accordingly he was their venerator, and so were the Catholics of Milan.
To Ambrose, Nabor and Felix were important parts of the Catholic civic identity that he sought to strengthen throughout his tenure as bishop, in part as a bulwark against Arianism. As a part of this construction of a Milanese Catholic civic identity, Ambrose composed hymns and established the liturgical standard known as the Ambrosian liturgy, and he also promoted the cults of other saints. And it should be mentioned that although Nabor and Felix were undoubtedly Milanese, they were not natives to the city, and so Ambrose sought to establish cults of native saints as well. This quest would eventually result in the suspiciously fortuitous discovery of the skeletons of SS Gervasius and Protasius, which I have written about here. Ambrose's biographer, Paulinus, also records the finding of another pair of saints, Nazarius and Celsus, about whom I have written here. This shows that despite venerating the two Mauretanian Milanese, he also sought to provide the city with saints who were born in it - possibly as a way to emphasise the Catholic nature of Milan as a counter-argument to the Arian faction.
Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430
(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)
Nabor and Felix, likely drawn from an illuminator's generic model rather than the legend
Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f.535v, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430
(Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)
Nabor and Felix remained important to Milan, and their importance spread elsewhere too. Frederick Barbarossa brought their relics back to Köln when he had sacked Milan, while a monastery in Bologna was named after the two Mauretanian Milanese, a monastery in which the jurist Gratian was a monk. So in addition to their importance in Milan, Nabor and Felix also were important in other parts of Christendom, but that is a story to which I might return some other day.
For similar blogposts, see:
Gervasius and Protasius
Nazarius and Celsus
Thomas of Canterbury in Chiaravalle
Bartholomew in Il Duomo
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