Saint Galdinus of Milan

The quarrel that shaped his life began over who would govern Milan. Benigni's article on the archdiocese, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, says that Frederick Barbarossa made the city swear allegiance to him in 1158 and accept an imperial governor, and that the governor was soon driven out. ⁴ Butler adds that Milan offended the emperor in 1159 by claiming the right to choose its own magistrates. ²

A papal schism followed. Butler tells it from the Roman side: on the death of Adrian IV in 1159, Alexander III was chosen pope, and a handful of cardinals set up a rival under the name of Victor, whom the emperor took under his protection. ² santiebeati.it names him as Ottaviano de' Monticelli, the German party's candidate, who took the name Victor IV. ³ Milan openly acknowledged Alexander, and Galdinus and his archbishop, Oberto, stood with him. ²³

Frederick laid siege to the city, and in 1162, after a long siege, Milan surrendered. ²⁴ What happened next is told differently. The encyclopedia says only that the city was "in part destroyed." ⁴ Butler tells the harder version: the emperor razed the town, leveled its walls and houses, and had salt sown on the ground as a sign that it was never to be rebuilt. ² Archbishop Oberto was exiled. ⁴

Galdinus was born at Milan. ²³ Butler says he came of the illustrious house of the Vavassors of La Scala; santiebeati.it calls the family minor nobility, and gives the year of his birth as 1096. ²³ After his ordination the archbishop made him his chancellor and archdeacon, and Butler says that from then on he bore the chief weight of the diocese. ² santiebeati.it finds him archdeacon of the cathedral in 1160, with Oberto in the Milanese camp, and there in 1162 to see the city fall. ³

The sources tell his promotion in different orders. santiebeati.it says he was made a cardinal in 1165 and followed Alexander III on his travels, and that when Oberto died at Benevento in March 1166, with the pope, Alexander named Galdinus to succeed him. ³ Butler says that when the archbishop died in 1166, Galdinus was chosen in his absence, and that the pope then consecrated him with his own hands, made him a cardinal, and named him legate of the Holy See. ² The encyclopedia says that he was elected at Rome by the Milanese in exile, and that he was able to take possession of his see in 1167. ⁴

santiebeati.it adds that he had to make his way back into Lombardy in secret, dressed as a pilgrim, and that ruins were what met him in the city. ³

The Lombard cities had joined in a league to rebuild Milan, and Butler says that when its walls and moats were finished, the people came home to it with great joy on April 27, 1167. ² santiebeati.it says that 1167 was the year the rebuilding began and that Galdinus was one of the leading figures in it. ³

His first work, by Butler's account, was to comfort his scattered people, and to end the schism wherever he had any influence; Butler says he succeeded throughout Lombardy. ² santiebeati.it says he reorganized the Church in the region and kept it faithful to Alexander III. ³ He also restored the cathedral, and santiebeati.it says the women of Milan helped him by giving up the little jewelry they had saved from the soldiers. ³

santiebeati.it also says he started over with the basics: teaching the prayers again, and insisting on singing in church that was worthy of God and of the people. ³ He preached without tiring, and Butler says he restored discipline among the clergy. ²³

Every source that tells his life at any length puts the poor at the center of it. Butler says they "had always the first place in his heart," and that he sought out the wretched in the worst places of the city and saw that they had what they needed. ² santiebeati.it lists who they were after the war: the poor who had always been there, those newly ruined, people imprisoned for debt, and those too ashamed to ask. ³ The encyclopedia says he reorganized the hospital del Broglio. ⁴

Once the basic institutions of relief were working again, santiebeati.it says, he told the men who ran them, and had it carved in stone: "You are here only to serve the poor." ³ That is our translation of the Italian it quotes. It also says that for a long time afterward the bread given to the poor in Milan was called "Saint Galdinus's bread," in our translation again. ³

The other battle of his years as archbishop was over doctrine. Butler says he zealously refuted the heretics called Cathars, a kind of Manichees, whom he says had been left in Lombardy by the emperor's army. ² The encyclopedia explains the background differently: the reform movement called the Pataria had left an anticlerical feeling in Milan that made people open to Manichaean ideas, and the Cathars of Italy were often called Patari after it; in Milan, one of their chief centers, they kept what the encyclopedia calls "a kind of university." ⁴

Butler says prayer was the chief means of his work. ² He compares him to Moses coming down the mountain with his face shining, and says that when he preached, his ardor "both struck and attracted the most obstinate." ²

On the last day of his life, Butler says, he was too weak to say Mass, but he went up into the pulpit at the Gospel and preached a long sermon with great force. ² Toward the end he fainted, and about the end of the Mass he died there in the pulpit, on April 18, 1176. ² santiebeati.it names the church as Santa Tecla. ³ The Martyrology says that he gave up his spirit to God at the end of a sermon against the heretics. ¹

It was the year of Legnano, the battle that, in the encyclopedia's words, "secured their rights to the Lombard cities." ³⁴ Butler says the emperor came to terms with the pope at Venice in 1177 and gave up the schism, and he dismisses, at length, the story that Alexander III set his foot on Frederick's neck in the porch of Saint Mark's, which he calls a "notorious forgery." ²

Butler says many miracles followed Galdinus's death, and that he was honored in the old missals and breviaries of Milan and in the Roman Martyrology. ² santiebeati.it says Alexander III himself proclaimed him a saint. ³ It also says that as late as 1847, when Milan was under Austrian rule, an arch raised for a new archbishop's entry carried an inscription to Galdinus that the government had removed, because his name was still bound up with Milan's resistance to an emperor. ³ Alessandro Manzoni gave his name to the talkative friar who goes begging for alms in The Betrothed. ³

santiebeati.it lists Saint Galdinus as patron of the Archdiocese of Milan. ³ None of the other sources used for this page names a patronage for him. ¹²⁴

Saint Galdinus's feast is April 18, the day he died in 1176. ¹²³ The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, commemorates him at Milan on that day, as the bishop who worked to rebuild the city destroyed by the wars for power. ¹

He became archbishop of a city that had been knocked down, at a time when the Church itself was split between two popes. ²³⁴ The work in front of him was ordinary and enormous at once: walls, a cathedral, a hospital, prayers taught again from the beginning. ³⁴

What his biographers kept is how much of it went to the poor, and to the people who were least visible after the war, the debtors in prison and those ashamed to beg. ²³ The words he had carved in stone put the whole of his charity in one line, addressed to the people doing the serving. ³

He also argued, hard, with the Cathars, and his last act was a sermon. ¹² Butler's account of it is plain: a sick man who could not say Mass went up to preach anyway, and did not come down. ²