In the Company of Wisdom: Transforming Cemeteries into Spaces of Learning in Late Antique Milan

The intellectualization of Christianity and the cult of martyrs are often studied as separate phenomena. Using Milan as a case study, I argue that the didactic, exegetical, and aesthetic practices associated with the classrooms of ancient grammarians and philosophers were imported into cemeteries and martyrial shrines by elite, educated bishops. The article begins with a review of theoretical models, drawn largely from the field of geography, which guide the analysis of Milan’s western (ad martyres) cemetery. This is followed by four sections, each of which highlights a stage in the cemetery’s development: 1) a presentation of evidence for burial and care for the dead in the pre-Ambrosian era; 2) an analysis of the pedagogical methods employed by Ambrose in the two parts of De excessu fratris; 3) a review of Ambrose’s interventions at the site in the 380s; and 4) a discussion of the post-Ambrosian decoration of the shrine of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro in the trajectory of a process of intellectualization. The result was a transformation of cemetery space where two sets of practices, funerary and pedagogical, merged and co-existed, sometimes in harmony, and oftentimes in conflict, both contributing to the evolution and “becoming” of the funerary space.