The Ambrosian Rite

A Latin rite, but not a Roman one

A liturgical rite is not a mere variant of ceremonies: it is, in the magisterial definition, "the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage" proper to a Church. The Ambrosian Rite belongs to the Latin tradition — it shares with the Roman rite the liturgical Latin, the Eucharistic canon of Roman origin and its Western roots — but it constitutes a distinct rite, with its own missal, its own office and its own calendar^[1][2].

This distinction is doctrinally important. The Second Vatican Council laid down as a principle the equal dignity of all legitimately recognised rites:

"Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity, and wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way." — Second Vatican Council, constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium § 4^[3]

The Ambrosian Rite is therefore neither a Roman "sub-rite" nor a folkloric curiosity, but a full and entire form of the prayer of the Church, on the same footing as the Roman rite or the great Eastern liturgies^[4].

Where is the Ambrosian Rite celebrated today?

The area of the Ambrosian Rite covers most of the Archdiocese of Milan, with the notable exception of certain districts — the former deaneries of Monza, Treviglio and Trezzo sull'Adda — which follow the Roman rite for historical reasons of earlier affiliation^[5][6]. Beyond the borders of the archdiocese, a few Ambrosian-rite parishes survive by historical contiguity in the dioceses of Bergamo (Valle San Martino, Valtorta, Val Averara), Lodi (Colturano, Balbiano, Riozzo) and Novara (Cannobio, Cannero Riviera)^[7].

The rite also extends into Italian-speaking Switzerland: the diocese of Lugano, in the canton of Ticino, historically depends on Milan, and several of its valleys — the Capriasca, Brissago, Ascona, and above all the Leventina, Blenio and Riviera valleys — celebrate according to the Ambrosian Rite, for a total of some fifty Ticinese parishes^[8].

Altogether, the Ambrosian Rite gathers around five million faithful — the estimate of the baptised of the Archdiocese of Milan^[9]. This is what makes it, by number, the second Latin rite in the world, and a case without equivalent: nowhere else has a great Catholic city preserved, as the common-law liturgy of its cathedral and parishes, a Latin rite distinct from the Roman rite^[10].

The bishop of Milan, tutelar figure

The rite bears the name of Saint Ambrose, born around 340, bishop of Milan from 374 until his death in 397, one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church in the West. A consular governor turned bishop by popular acclamation before he was even baptised, Ambrose made Milan — then the imperial capital of the West — a theological centre of the first rank, and it was he who baptised Saint Augustine on Easter night in 387^[11].

Yet liturgists are unanimous: there is no evidence that Ambrose personally composed the rite that bears his name. His name is not stably associated with it before the 8th century^[12]. What Ambrose most probably did was reform and stabilise an already existing Milanese liturgy — notably by purging the alterations introduced by his Arian predecessor Auxentius (bishop from 355 to 374) — and impress upon it a lasting orthodox orientation^[13]. The rite then developed organically from the 4th to the 8th century. Ambrose is therefore its tutelar figure and doctrinal guarantor, far more than its line-by-line author.

The decisive contribution: hymnody and chant

If there is one field in which Ambrose's personal contribution is historically assured, it is liturgical chant. At the height of the Arian crisis, when the Empress Justina sought to hand a Milanese basilica over to the Arians in 385-386, the Catholic people kept watch in the church around their bishop. It is from this episode that Saint Augustine, a direct witness, dates the introduction into the West of the chanting of hymns and psalms:

"Then it was instituted that hymns and psalms should be sung after the manner of the Churches of the East, lest the people should pine away with the tedium of sorrow; and from that day to this the custom has been retained." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IX^[14]

Ambrose himself composed several hymns — brief stanzas of four lines, of great sobriety — which set such a school that the word "Ambrosian" long designated, by extension, all Church chant in the West^[15]. Tradition even attributes to Ambrose and Augustine, as they came out of the latter's baptism, the spontaneous composition of the Te Deum: while historians hold this account to be a fine legend rather than an established fact, it shows well the place Ambrose occupies in the singing memory of the Church. For Ambrose, psalmody is never a mere ornament: in his commentary on Psalm 1, he sees in it the prayer of the whole people — blessing, praise of God, voice of the Church and sung confession of faith^[16].

The origin of the Ambrosian Rite is one of the great enigmas of liturgical science. For want of manuscripts earlier than the 9th century, scholars are reduced to reconstructions, and two great schools have opposed each other for more than a century^[17]. The question is not one of erudition alone: it touches the very genealogy of the Western liturgies.

The thesis of Eastern and Gallican origin

The first thesis, defended by the great liturgist Louis Duchesne (and taken up by Paul Lejay), sees in the Ambrosian Rite a liturgy of Eastern origin, imported or reworked at Milan — perhaps precisely through the Cappadocian bishop Auxentius — then radiating from the imperial capital towards Gaul, Spain and Britain. Milan, by its position as a crossroads towards the East (Aquileia, Illyricum), would thus have been the hearth from which the whole family of the so-called "Gallican" liturgies of the West issued^[18][19]. On this hypothesis, the Ambrosian Rite would be the direct cousin of the ancient Gallican, Celtic and Mozarabic rites.

The thesis of Roman archaism

The second thesis, upheld by the Milanese scholars Antonio Maria Ceriani and Marco Magistretti, holds on the contrary that the Ambrosian Rite preserves pre-Gelasian and pre-Gregorian Roman forms — in other words, that it would be an archaic witness of the Roman usage itself, fixed at Milan before the great pontifical reforms of the 6th-7th centuries^[20][21]. Ceriani and Magistretti supported this reading with a methodical comparison against the oldest Roman ordines, in the monumental Monumenta Veteris Liturgiae Ambrosianae (Milan, 1897-1905)^[22].

An undecided enigma

The debate remains open, and caution is called for: the composite elements of the rite — a canon of clearly Roman origin, but office structures and Eucharistic formulas reminiscent of the East and Visigothic Spain — could reflect a layered history, in which several contributions were superimposed over the centuries^[23]. Far from being a weakness, this richness makes the Ambrosian Rite a living conservatory of very ancient liturgical forms, sometimes lost everywhere else. It is this conviction that animated the Milanese scholars — foremost among them a future pope, as will be seen below.

The very existence of the Ambrosian Rite today is something of a prodigy. On at least four occasions, powerful authorities tried to suppress it in favour of the Roman rite; each time, Milan resisted. This story deserves to be told step by step.

The legend of Charlemagne's ordeal

The most famous account of this resistance is the one reported by the chronicler Landulf Senior in the 11th century^[27]: confronted with Charlemagne's will to standardise the liturgy, Milan is said to have obtained from God, through the ordeal of the two books opened upon the altar of St Peter's, the confirmation of its right^[28]. The same tradition adds that the Ambrosian manuscripts were then destroyed, and that the Manuale had to be reconstituted from memory, priest by priest^[29]. The historian Walafrid Strabo (d. 849), though close to the events, breathes not a word of it: liturgists therefore see in it an edifying legend rather than a verified event — but a legend that speaks of Milan's acute awareness of the worth of its heritage^[30].

The two-century clause and Saint Charles Borromeo

In the end it was a juridical decision, not a prodigy, that secured the permanence of the rite. In promulgating the bull Quo primum tempore on 14 July 1570, Saint Pius V imposed the unified Missale Romanum on the whole Latin Church, except for liturgical usages able to claim an antiquity of more than two hundred years^[31]. This clause, which also saved the Mozarabic rite of Toledo and the rites of the great religious orders, placed the Ambrosian Rite — attested since the early Middle Ages — definitively beyond reach^[32][33].

It remained to put it in order. This was the work of Saint Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), archbishop of Milan and great artisan of the Tridentine reform. Far from romanising the rite, Borromeo revised its books with a deliberate conservatism, fixed the printed editions and instituted a Congregazione del Rito Ambrosiano to guarantee its fidelity^[34][35]. It is essentially the form issued from this revision that would be celebrated until the conciliar reform.

For a faithful of the Roman rite attending an Ambrosian Mass for the first time, the disorientation is real: the framework is recognisable, but the order of the parts, certain prayers and several gestures are proper to Milan. The table below sums up the main differences; the following sections detail them. These features are those of the received rite, whose substance the 1976 reform preserved^[36].

The Ingressa and the Lenten litanies

The Ambrosian Mass opens not with an introit but with the Ingressa: a simple antiphon drawn from Scripture, sung without psalm, without Gloria Patri and without repetition^[37]. Then comes, on the days that include it, the Gloria in excelsis, followed by the Kyrie eleison — repeated, but without the Roman Christe eleison. More singular still: on the Sundays of Lent, the Gloria is replaced by two litanies with alternating responses (one on "Domine, miserere", the other on "Kyrie eleison") which closely recall the great synapte of the Greek liturgies^[38]. This detail, as can be seen, feeds the debate on the Eastern affinities of the rite.

Three readings and the prophetic reading

The Ambrosian liturgy of the Word is fuller than the pre-Vatican II Roman one: Sundays, feasts and solemnities include three readings. Before the epistle properly so called, a prophetic reading (lettura) is proclaimed, drawn from the Old Testament, the Acts of the Apostles or the Apocalypse^[39]. Between the readings come a Psalmellus and verses serving as a gradual; on penitential days, a Cantus replaces the alleluias. Notable feature: the Ambrosian Rite wholly ignores sequences, those sung poems which the medieval Roman rite had multiplied^[40].

The oratio super sindonem and the rite of peace before the offertory

Two particularities strike at the threshold of the Eucharistic liturgy. First, the rite of peace is placed before the offertory, not before communion as at Rome: peace is exchanged at the end of the liturgy of the Word, just before presenting the gifts — an order which many liturgists judge more in keeping with the spirit of the Gospel ("go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and present your offering")^[41][42]. Second, after the preparation of the gifts, the celebrant says a proper prayer, the oratio super sindonem ("prayer over the cloth" spread upon the altar), a formula with no equivalent in the present Roman rite and which some hold to be a vestige of a very ancient Roman practice^[43].

The Ambrosian offertory otherwise preserves an archaic communal rite: members of the Scuola di Sant'Ambrogio — by tradition old men and old women, the vecchioni — solemnly present the bread and wine, while the faithful file past to kiss the corner of the altar^[44].

The canon, the institution narrative and the fraction

The Ambrosian Eucharistic canon begins word for word like the Roman canon, which constitutes the strongest argument in favour of a common Roman root^[45]. But it departs from it on remarkable points. On Easter night, a Post Sanctus of Mozarabic form is interpolated, found nowhere else in the West^[46]. Above all, the institution narrative ends with an amplification absent from the Roman missal, in which Christ himself proclaims the scope of the memorial:

"As often as you do these things, you will do them in memory of me: you will proclaim my death, you will announce my resurrection, you will hope for my coming, until I come to you again from the heavens above." — Ambrosian institution narrative^[47]

This formula, very close to those of the Irish Stowe Missal and the Jacobite Syrian anaphoras, is one of the most discussed indications of the rite's Eastern affinities^[48]. Finally, the fraction of the bread and the commingling take place before the Pater noster, not after as in the post-Gregorian Roman rite: the priest breaks the host saying "Your body is broken, O Christ, the chalice is blessed"^[49].

The absence of the Agnus Dei and the dismissal

Unlike the Roman rite, the ordinary Ambrosian Mass includes no Agnus Dei: this invocation survives there only at the Mass for the dead (whereas the editions before Charles Borromeo, between 1475 and 1560, still knew it)^[50]. Likewise, traditionally, no bell rings at the elevation^[51]. The Mass ends with a proper dismissal — "Procedamus in pace" / "Let us go forth in peace" — the sober signature of a liturgy which, down to its details, asserts its identity.

If the Ambrosian Mass disorients, the Ambrosian calendar disconcerts still more: the Milanese liturgical year does not overlap with the Roman year. Several of its high points fall on different dates, and some familiar landmarks — Ash Wednesday, for instance — are simply absent from it.

A six-week Advent

The Ambrosian liturgical year opens with a six-Sunday Advent — against four at Rome. It begins on the Sunday following Saint Martin's day (11 November), so that it lasts nearly six weeks^[52]. This long Advent, sometimes called the "Advent of Saint Martin", is a very ancient heritage once shared by several Churches of the West, and it brings Milan closer to Gallican and Hispanic usages^[53].

A Lent with no Ash Wednesday

This is the best-known singularity of the rite: Ash Wednesday does not exist in the Ambrosian Rite^[54][55]. The Ambrosian Lent begins on the first Sunday of Lent, with fasting starting on the following Monday. A visible consequence in the streets of Milan: carnival lasts there a few days longer than everywhere else, until the famous sabato grasso ("fat Saturday"), the Ambrosian carnival ending on the Saturday following the Roman Ash Wednesday^[56]. The Sundays of Lent moreover bear names drawn from the Gospel of the day — De Samaritana, De Abraham, De Caeco, De Lazaro — and not from the introit, in the manner of the Greek Churches^[57].

Another notable displacement: the Rogations (the Triduum Litaniarum) are celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after the Ascension, not before, as in the Roman rite^[58].

The Authentic Week and the Triduum

Holy Week is called at Milan the Authentic Week (Hebdomada Authentica). The Ambrosian paschal Triduum preserves archaic structures inherited from Christian antiquity: the eve of Palm Sunday is the Sabbatum in traditione Symboli (the Saturday of the "handing over of the Creed" to the catechumens), and around Easter the rite multiplies remembrances of the ancient paschal baptisms, with proper baptismal Masses throughout Easter week^[59]. Saturday, in the Ambrosian Rite, is not an ordinary ferial day: the Saturday evening Mass, preceded by a rite of light (lucernarium), is already the first Mass of Sunday, centred on the Gospel of the Resurrection^[60].

The time after Pentecost in three sections

Where the Roman rite unfolds a uniform long "Ordinary Time", the Ambrosian calendar structures the time after Pentecost in three successive sections: the time after Pentecost properly so called, the time after the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist (29 August), and the time after the Dedication of Milan Cathedral (third Sunday of October)^[61]. Sunday enjoys a marked primacy there: it takes precedence over almost all feasts, except the great Solemnitates Domini^[62].

Ambrosian chant (or Milanese chant) is the plainchant repertory proper to the Ambrosian Rite. It is, alongside Gregorian chant and the Mozarabic chant of the Hispanic rite, one of the rare Western plainchant traditions to retain an official liturgical use in the Catholic Church today — the other ancient traditions (Gallican, Old Roman, Beneventan) having been absorbed or lost^[63][64][65].

Ambrosian chant stands out from Gregorian chant by a twofold physiognomy, paradoxical in appearance: it is at once more frankly syllabic in certain pieces and more protractedly melismatic in others — its Alleluias, with their verse sung before the Gospel, deploy melismas of an amplitude far exceeding the Gregorian alleluias^[66]. Its deepest singularity is of a modal order: whereas in Gregorian chant the mode precedes and governs the melody, in Ambrosian chant it is the melody that precedes the mode, which lets itself be carried by the inflections of the chant without theoretical preoccupation^[67]. Musicologists see in it a more archaic state than the Gregorian — the latter resulting from a later reform of simplification and systematisation^[68].

This repertory has come down to us through remarkable manuscripts, including the 12th-century Antiphonarium Ambrosianum (British Museum, Add. 34209)^[69]. It is still sung today in several Milanese basilicas, a living sounding witness to a tradition which Saint Ambrose himself had inaugurated.

Like the Roman rite, the Ambrosian Rite underwent after the Council a liturgical reform conducted according to the principles of Sacrosanctum Concilium. But this reform was carried out by the Archdiocese of Milan itself, in respect of its age-old particularities — proof, were any needed, that the rite is treated by the Church as a living heritage to be cultivated, not as a survival to be aligned with Rome.

The reformed Missal of 1976

On 11 April 1976, Cardinal Giovanni Colombo, Archbishop of Milan, promulgated under the authority of Paul VI the new Messale Ambrosiano, covering the whole liturgical year^[70]. The reform introduced the vernacular language, enriched the lectionary and simplified the ordo, while preserving the essential particularities of the Milanese tradition: proper calendar, specific Triduum, Ambrosian euchology, Ambrosian chant^[71]. A 1978 retouching notably restored the proper place of the Creed after the offertory. The reformed Ambrosian Divine Office followed in 1984-1985, and a proper marriage rite in 2006^[72].

The new lectionary of 2008

Until the early 21st century, the reformed Ambrosian Rite still borrowed in part from the Roman lectionary. Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi put an end to this by promulgating, on 20 March 2008, an entirely proper Lezionario Ambrosiano, which entered into force on 16 November 2008, the first Sunday of the Ambrosian Advent^[73]. A proper calendar of saints and its corresponding lectionary followed in 2010, completing the rite's endowment with a full and coherent liturgical corpus^[74].

The ancient form of the Ambrosian Rite

Alongside the reformed form subsists the ancient form of the Ambrosian Rite — the Ambrosian vetus ordo, in its state prior to the reform (1954 missal). In the wake of Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (7 July 2007), the Archdiocese of Milan framed the celebration of this ancient form, celebrated notably at the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Milan and in a few other places^[75][76]. The Milanese Curia even granted the imprimatur to an edition of the Ordinarium Missae of the ancient form. In recent years, a renewed interest — notably among young faithful — has grown around this ancient form, a sign that the Ambrosian Rite keeps living in all its dimensions, ancient and reformed.

The Ambrosian Rite owes much to a line of Milanese scholars who, from the 16th to the 20th century, edited, studied and defended it. Saint Charles Borromeo had fixed its books in the 16th century; in the 19th and early 20th century, Antonio Maria Ceriani and Marco Magistretti published its critical sources in the Monumenta Veteris Liturgiae Ambrosianae, defending the thesis of its Roman archaism^[77].

Among these scholars figures an unexpected name: that of Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI. Before ascending the throne of Peter in 1922, Ratti was a liturgist and librarian of the first rank: prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan from 1907 to 1911, he devoted part of his scholarly work to the Milanese liturgy and published in 1913 the fruit of Ceriani's long labour on the Ambrosian Missal^[78]. That a future pope should have been one of the great connoisseurs of the Ambrosian Rite says enough about the esteem enjoyed in the Church by this venerable liturgy — not as a relic of the past, but as a precious witness to legitimate diversity within the one Catholic faith.

• The Catholic liturgical rites — the overall panorama: Roman rite, particular Latin rites and five Eastern traditions.
• The Mozarabic Rite — the other great surviving Latin rite, preserved at Toledo, likewise saved by the two-century clause of Quo primum.
• The Dominican Rite — the most famous of the religious-order rites preserved by the same Tridentine clause.
• The Eastern liturgy — to situate the Ambrosian Rite against the great liturgical traditions of the Christian East.
• The Liturgical Movement — the 19th-20th-century renewal of liturgical studies, which rediscovered the value of the ancient rites.