Saints Nazarius and Celsus

Martyrs of Milan
(1st century)

Saints Nazarius and Celsus are Roman martyrs whose bodies were discovered by Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, around the year 395 in a garden outside the city walls of Milan. Ambrose, who was himself one of the greatest of the Latin Fathers of the Church, recorded the discovery with great excitement, describing how the blood of Nazarius was found still fresh and the body fragrant after three hundred years, a miraculous preservation that he regarded as a divine testimony to the martyrs' sanctity.

According to the tradition preserved by Ambrose and later hagiographers, Nazarius was the son of a Roman soldier named Africanus and a Christian woman named Perpetua. He was baptised by Saint Peter himself, according to some accounts, and from his youth devoted himself entirely to preaching the Gospel in Rome, in Gaul, and in northern Italy. He is said to have taken with him as a companion the young Celsus, a child who had been given to him by his Christian mother to receive a religious education and who became his inseparable companion in his missionary journeys.

The two were eventually arrested and brought before Nero, or according to some accounts before local magistrates, and after suffering various torments they were beheaded outside the walls of Milan. Their bodies were buried in the garden where Ambrose would find them centuries later. He translated their relics with great solemnity to the basilica he had built outside the city, which has ever since borne their names as the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus, still standing in Milan today.

The discovery and translation of these martyrs was one of the important events of Ambrose's episcopate, strengthening the faith of the Milanese Church and providing a powerful witness to the antiquity of Christianity in northern Italy. Their feast is observed on July 28th.