Auxanius of Milan

Auxanius was archbishop of Milan in the middle of the sixth century, in whose time the heated dispute over the "Three Chapters" took place. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, which commemorates him on 3 September. His name also appears in the Italian form Ausano.

According to the Catalogue of the Archbishops of Milan, his episcopate falls between those of Vitalis and Honoratus, a little after the middle of the sixth century. The same catalogue gives him two years of rule and says that he was buried on 3 September in the church of Saint Stephen "ad Rotam". Traditionally his episcopate is set in the years 566 and 567, but more recent studies place it between 556 and 559 or between 558 and 561, in the time of Pope Pelagius I. From our sources we cannot choose between these dates.

It is thought that the unnamed Milanese bishop mentioned in some letters of Pope Pelagius I (556 to 561) must be Auxanius. In a letter dated between September 558 and March 560, the pope complained to the patrician John that Paulinus I, bishop of Aquileia, had ordained a bishop not at his own see, as was the custom, but at Milan, together with a "schismatic bishop" who had refused to sign the condemnation of the "Three Chapters", decided at the Council of Constantinople in 553 and confirmed by Pope Vigilius. In a second letter, from the spring of 559, Pelagius asks the patrician Valerian to seize the two bishops and bring them to the emperor at Constantinople.