Saint of the Day – 4 May – Saint Venerius (Died 408) Bishop of Milan, Italy from c400 until his death in 408.
St Venerius had been a Deacon under St Ambrose. He followed St Simplician in the office of Bishop. He conducted his pastoral ministry with the greatest diligence and tireless zeal.
The Roman Martyrology reads today: “At Milan, St Venerius, Bishop, whose virtues are attested by St John Chrysostom in the epistke which he wrote to St Venerius.”
Almost nothing is known about the life of St Venerius prior to his election as the Bishop of Milan. A late tradition, associates him with the noble Milanese family of the Oldrati. According to the 5th Century Historian and Biographer of St Ambrose, Paulinus, whose work is the only Life of St Ambrose based on a contemporary account and was written at the request of St Augustine. St Venerius was the Deacon assisting St Ambrose and he was present at the death of his beloved master in 397.
St Venerius was elected Bishop after the death of St Simplician in the winter between 400 and 401. He was already the Bishop of Milan when he received a request by a Council held on 18 June 401 at Carthage, to send Clerics from Milan to North Africa. One of the Clerics who was sent was actually our Paulinus mentioned above.
St Venerius is also known from a letter written to him by Pope Anastasius I concerning the condemnation of the heresy of the Origenists. Again, he is mentioned in a letter of the same Pope to St John II, Bishop of Jerusalem.
In 404 St Venerius, along with Pope Innocent I and St Chromatius, the Bishop of Aquileia, protested in support of St John Chrysostom who has been unjustly banned from Constantinople, writing in his favour to Honorius, the Western Emperor, who sent this letter to his brother, Arcadius, the Eastern Emperor. This intercession, however, availed nothing.
St Venerius died on 4 May 408 and was buried in the Church of Saints Nazarius and Celsus in Milan.
AnaStpaul 