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Biography

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Dacius (also known as Datius or, in Italian, Dazio) was Archbishop of Milan in the sixth century, holding the see from about 530 until his death in 552. He lived through one of the most violent periods in the history of northern Italy, as the Ostrogothic Kingdom was destroyed in the Gothic War, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) campaign to recover Italy. Nothing reliable is known of his birth, family, or early career; surviving sources first attest him as bishop of Milan. He is remembered as a supporter of imperial authority and of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and he has long been venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, especially in the Ambrosian tradition of Milan, with a feast on 14 January.

During the Gothic War Dacius sided with the Byzantine cause. In 538 he went to Rome to urge the general Belisarius to send a garrison to protect Milan, which had opened its gates to the imperial forces. A contingent was sent, but in 539 the Ostrogoths under Uraias besieged the city. After the garrison surrendered, Milan was sacked with a great massacre and largely destroyed. Dacius was not in the city during the catastrophe, having remained in the south seeking aid. He did not resume residence in the ruined see; the church of Milan effectively continued in exile, and he spent the rest of his episcopate in the East.

From the mid-540s Dacius lived in Constantinople. There he was drawn into the Three Chapters controversy, which arose from Emperor Justinian I’s effort to condemn certain writings associated with the Antiochene school in order to conciliate miaphysite Christians. Western bishops, Dacius among them, feared that the condemnation would undermine the Council of Chalcedon. He stood with Pope Vigilius in resisting imperial pressure. In 551 he was among those who accompanied Vigilius when the pope took sanctuary, first in a church in Constantinople and then in the church of Saint Euphemia at Chalcedon, in protest against Justinian’s policy.

Dacius died in Constantinople in 552, before the Second Council of Constantinople met the following year. A generation later Pope Gregory the Great, in his Dialogues, related that Dacius, travelling toward Constantinople and lodging in a house at Corinth that people would not inhabit because of evil spirits, expelled a demon by his episcopal authority; the story shows the reputation he later enjoyed in Latin tradition. He was entered in the Roman Martyrology as a bishop and confessor. Precise facts about his birth, family, and place of burial are not preserved in the surviving historical record.

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