Venerius of Milan

Saint Venerius was archbishop of Milan from 400 or 401 to 408. He is honoured as a saint in the Catholic Church and commemorated on 6 May, or according to other sources on 4 May, the day of his repose.

Almost nothing is known of his life before his election as bishop. According to the fifth-⁠century historian Paulinus, Venerius was a deacon and was present at the repose of Saint Ambrose in 397. He was elected bishop after the death of Simplician, in the winter between 400 and 401. He was already bishop when a provincial synod, held on 18 June 401 at Carthage, asked him to send some clerics from Milan to North Africa, among them Paulinus. Pope Anastasius I wrote him a letter about the condemnation of the ideas of the Origenists, and he is also mentioned in a letter of the same pope to John II, bishop of Jerusalem.

In 404 Venerius, with Pope Innocent I and Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia, took the part of Saint John Chrysostom, unjustly driven from Constantinople, writing in his favour to the Western emperor Honorius, who sent the letter to his brother Arcadius, the Eastern emperor. The intercession availed nothing. Venerius fell asleep on 4 May 408 and was buried in the church of Saints Nazarius and Celsus in Milan. His relics rest in a sarcophagus in the church of Sant'Ambrogio, with those of the bishops Marolus, Glycerius and Lazarus. A late tradition, with no historical basis, links him with the Milanese family Oldrati.