Santa María de los Milagros next to San Celso (Milan)

Where is he?

The church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso is located in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. The building is identified in OpenStreetMap as a place of worship for Via Giuseppe Vigoni.

Documented history

The regional tourist page dedicated to the sanctuary reflects the memory of a Marian event registered on December 30, 1485 and the continuity of the cult in Milan. It also places a procession linked to San Carlos Borromeo during the plague of 1576 and a tear attributed to the image in 1620. These data are presented here as a documented history of the cult and its sources, not as an automatic test of supernatural.

Tradition

Tradition relates the attributed apparition of 1485 to the cessation of an epidemic. The chronicles of the sanctuary also convey the veneration of the image and the episode of the tear.

Legend

There is no independent legend in the consulted source that should be separated from these devotional traditions.

Ecclesial State

It consists of the public Catholic cult in the church and sanctuary of Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso. The sources consulted do not contain a specific decree on the assigned apparition or on the tear; no formal approval of the phenomenon is inferred.

Anecdotes and stories

During the plague of 1576, the historical tradition of the sanctuary recalls that Saint Charles Borromeo carried the image in procession through Milan.

Prayer

Holy Mary, Mother of the Miracles, pray for us and intercede before your Son for those who suffer sickness, fear or loneliness. Help us to serve others with charity and to remain in Christian hope. Amen.

Sources

Region Lombardy, Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso; OpenStreetMap, iglesia.

Documented extension

The official tourist description of the Lombardy Region places this whole in a place considered sacred from the early days of Milanese Christianity. The same source relates the place to the memory of the martyrs Nazaro and Celso and tells that Saint Ambrosio would have moved the body of Nazaro to the so-called Basilica Apostolorum, while that of Celso remained there; in that context an image of the Virgin as a sacred sign would also have been arranged. These data are presented as the history transmitted by the institutional source, not as an archaeological reconstruction added by this sheet.

The complex was expanded at different stages: the regional source mentions a major construction promoted by Archbishop Landolfo II between 996 and 997, a Benedictine monastery and, in 1430, a small building commissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti to protect the old Marian image. The annals place the Marian episode of December 30, 1485 during the government of Gian Galeazzo Sforza; the tradition of the sanctuary relates it to the end of a plague. Then, in 1493, Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono and Cristoforo Solari were commissioned for a new construction, which continued to grow during the 16th century.

The artistic history also helps to understand the place: the Lombardy Region attributes the portico started in 1513 to a work continued in 1556, and places the façade of Galeazzo Alessi between 1565 and 1568. The devotional memory also retains two different episodes: the crucifix that Saint Charles Borromeo carried in procession for Milan during the plague of 1576 and the tear attributed in 1620 to an image of the Virgin between Saint Nazaro and Saint Celso. The same source describes a decline since the 18th century, a recovery at the beginning of the 20th century and the commission of the attention of the sanctuary to the Vicar Oblate Fathers in 1947.

Thus, the historical existence of the sanctuary, its architecture and its Milanese cult are reflected in an institutional tourist source; the episodes of apparition and tear remain differentiated as stories transmitted by the chronicles and do not receive here a supernatural approval that does not contain.