The legendary topography of Ambrosian memorabilia in Milan

The city, as a fictional space, can be defined as a constellation of biographemes attached to places. The session is devoted to a re-reading of early Christian archaeology in Milan (based in particular on recent work by Silvia Lusuardi Siena and her students), from a perspective inspired by the urban sociology of recollection proposed by Maurice Halbwachs in La Topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte (1941). It's a question of testing the "resistance of things", not from places of memory, but from itineraries, circulations, correspondences and starbursts. Through a methodical analysis of the Christianization of Milanese space by the Ambrosian basilicas, its imprint on urban development and its reactivation by liturgical time (up to Charles Borromeo's policies of remembrance), we seek to illustrate the three phases of a policy of remodeling: reinvestment, transactions, consolidation. Ambrose, defensor civitatis, has already accomplished this program in his policy of land occupation and relic translation. The Basilica of San Nazaro, its monumental portico and the Constantinian model of theApostoleion bear witness to the reinterpretation of the imperial capital ad modum crucis (Marco Sannazaro).

Contents

• Place-based biographems: the city as fictional space
• First scene of the golden altar: the omen of the bees and sacred eloquence as a common theme in the "lie-truth" of Late Antique literary traditions
• Infans or puer ? the question of Carolingian replacement
• Seventh scene of the golden altar, "a kind of consecration of the bond between Martin and Ambrose" (Paolo Tomea)
• De Vita et meritis Ambrosii : why Paulinus of Milan is no longer enough
• "The emperor is in the Church, not above it"(Apologie de David): the political and memorial stakes of Ambrosian collusion between anti-heretical struggle and opposition to the emperors
• Pastoral authority and imperial power: a case-by-case policy and texts of circumstance
• The "basilica conflict", the altar of Victory, the synagogue of Callinicum and the circus of Thessalonica: the monumental challenge of urban order
• Is remembrance an object of history? Maurice Halbwachs between Henri Bergson and Marc Bloch
• From the social framework of memory to collective memory
• A long-ignored book, La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte (1941) ( The legendary topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land )
• Traces, territories and duration: "It is the image of space alone which, because of its stability, gives us the illusion of not changing through time and of finding the past in the present; but this is how memory can be defined" (Bernard Lepetit)
• Halbwachs and the "resistance of things
• Not places of memory, but itineraries, circulations, correspondences and starbursts
• The three phases of a politics of reworking (Éric Brian): reinvestments, transactions, consolidations
• Back to Milan: Ambrose defensor civitatis, land occupation and the transfer of relics
• Early Christian archaeology in Milan: contributions from Silvia Lusuardi Siena's recent work
• The Ambrosian basilica in its archaeological context: the great martyrs' cemetery of the western suburbium
• The basilica of San Nazaro, the monumental portico and the Constantinian model of theApostoleion : reinterpreting the imperial capital ad modum crucis (Marco Sannazaro)
• The Christianization of Milanese space by Ambrosian basilicas, its imprint on urban development and the metaphorical displacement of the Corpi santi (Marco Sannazaro)
• Civic festivals, itineraries, identifications: a structure of prestige
• "Remember!" in the time of Charles Borromeo, a circuit of remembrance
• A name, a city, the impossibility of leaving: "he prepared to flee: he left the city in the middle of the night..."(Vita ambrosii)
• The beautiful escapes of Ambrosian memory outside the city: Petrarch and Sant'Ambrogio ad Nemus : "Since then, the forest has been cleared; the place having changed its appearance, only the name remains"
• A legendary topography : "sometimes rites, formulas, which are mechanical, material, here ancient commemorations, fixed in stones, churches, monuments, where the beliefs and testimonies of yesteryear have taken the form of solid, lasting objects" (Maurice Halbwachs)