Saint Eugene of Milan

We have almost no reliable information about Eugene. What is told about him comes from Landulf Senior, an eleventh-century Milanese chronicler, and concerns an episode that Milan has been handing down for a thousand years. Eugene is said to have been a bishop who came to Italy in Charlemagne’s retinue, and who was also his spiritual father. The issue was this: Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I wanted to unify the liturgy of the whole empire under the Roman Rite, and that meant abolishing the Ambrosian Rite, which had been used in Milan since the days of Ambrose. Eugene defended it at a council in Rome. To settle the matter, the story goes, the council fathers laid the two missals, the Roman and the Ambrosian, on the altar of Saint Peter’s. Then they shut the doors of the basilica, had them guarded, and for three days everyone prayed and fasted. When they opened the doors again, the two books were still there, and both of them flew open at the same moment. It was read as a sign that the two rites had equal dignity. The Ambrosian Rite is still used today, in the diocese of Milan and in a few nearby parishes: it is the oldest non-Roman Western liturgy still in use. If your name is Eugene, today is your name day.