Through the political history of the memory of Ambrose, holy bishop and patron saint of the city of Milan, we aim to critically analyze the notion of civic religion and, more generally, the relationship between sovereignty and sacredness. Drawing on the results of individual research and collective reflection [1], the lecture will attempt to shape a history of the social availability of a disputed memory, in the form of a genealogical inquiry and with a view to a forthcoming book.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries constitute the crucial period in the invention of the Ambrosian tradition, but in piercing this communal stratum, the archaeology of memory quickly stumbles upon a first layer of memorial sedimentation during the Carolingian period, which itself contains traces of an earlier past, pointing to the time of Ambrose himself. Subjected to the regressive temptation of the archaeological motif, the writing of this story faces a number of narrative challenges. Is it possible to tell the story in any other way than that of a jumbled chronicle of the manipulation of memory, as each era invents the Saint Ambrose it needs for its political purposes ? The patron saint of civic liberties of the communal era would be succeeded by the cavalier hero of the lords of Milan, whose militarization of memory would struggle to neutralize the subversive charge of a disputed memory. It would erupt again during the " Ambrosian Republic " of the years 1447-1449, opening a breach in the facade of unanimity and prompting those who claimed to do without princes to take shelter in the shadow of this great name. Hence the relative weakening of Ambrosian remembrance during the restored principate of the Sforza family, before it was revived in the 16th century by Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, to exalt the man who then became a new champion of the Counter-Reformation.
However, this reconstruction of the political uses of Ambrose's figure, articulating the arts of governing, the arts of recounting and the arts of remembering, does not tell the whole story of his memory. For the latter must also identify the anchors of memory, preventing it from drifting too far from the past as it was. In the liturgical sense, these places are first and foremost loci : a certain way of singing hymns underpins the tradition of the Ambrosian rite in the ideal of a continued past. Secondly, they are textual sites : Ambrose's work, one of the first to be compiled in the 12th century as an opera omnia, was canonized at an early date and preserved in situ in the treasury of the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, where the corpus is housed alongside the saint's body. Finally, they are the sites of a monumental configuration, turning Milan into a machina memorialis where remembrance clings to buildings, forming what we might call, paraphrasing the title of Maurice Halbwachs' book, a legendary topography. In this way, this story, running the gamut of powers, hopes to do nothing more than approach the very texture of time itself.