Simplician

Saint Simplician (Latin Simplicianus) was a priest and later bishop of Milan in the late fourth century, known above all as the spiritual father of Saint Ambrose and as a counselor whose conversation helped prepare Saint Augustine of Hippo for conversion. Reliable sources do not record the year or exact place of his birth. He belonged to the church of Milan and was already an elderly and respected priest when, in 374, Ambrose, then a high civil official and still a catechumen, was chosen bishop of that city. Writers of the period present Simplician as a man of scriptural learning and of long pastoral experience, familiar with both the Latin Christian tradition and the philosophical culture of the late Roman West.

Ambrose, who had to be baptized and hastily prepared for episcopal office, relied on Simplician for instruction and advice. Ambrose later spoke of him with filial reverence, treating him as a father in the faith rather than as a mere subordinate. During the years of Ambrose’s episcopate Simplician remained a leading priest of Milan. He is associated in later Milanese memory with the reception of relics and with the continuity of the local church’s teaching. Nothing in the surviving evidence indicates that he belonged to a monastic order; he was a member of the secular clergy of the Milanese church.

Augustine, who came to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric in the mid-380s, sought Simplician out and heard from him the account of the conversion of Marius Victorinus, the famous Roman rhetorician and translator of Neoplatonic works who had publicly professed Christianity in old age. Augustine included that narrative in his Confessions as a decisive encouragement on his own path to baptism, which Ambrose administered in 387. In the following decade Augustine addressed to Simplician a set of questions on difficult passages of Saint Paul, especially from the Epistle to the Romans, published as De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. That work, composed about 396, already shows Augustine’s developing doctrine of grace and is an important witness to Simplician’s reputation as a theological interlocutor.

After Ambrose died on 4 April 397, Simplician was elected to succeed him as bishop of Milan. He was then of very advanced age and governed the see for only a few years. His episcopate continued the Ambrosian defense of Nicene orthodoxy and the pastoral customs of the Milanese church. He died in Milan about the year 400. He was buried in a basilica on the north side of the city, later dedicated to him and known as San Simpliciano, which tradition links with the Ambrosian building program of the late fourth century. His cult is ancient in Milan; the Ambrosian tradition commemorates him as a saint and predecessor among Ambrose’s successors. A precise feast date appears in later martyrologies, commonly 15 August, though local calendars have varied. No contemporary source records a wife or children, and no medieval legend supplies a detailed early biography. What can be said with confidence rests on Ambrose, Augustine, and the subsequent liturgical memory of the church of Milan.