Simplician of Milan

d. AD 400 · Bishop of Milan · Mentor of Ambrose and Augustine · Rome → Milan

The Nicene Age

Who Simplician of Milan was

The old priest who had instructed Ambrose and who, in Augustine's Confessions VIII, told the seeker the story of the rhetor Victorinus's public conversion — the goad that broke Augustine's last delay. He succeeded Ambrose in the see of Milan in 397 and died in office; Ambrose's letters address him as father.

Also listed in bishops beyond the great sees.

Common questions

When did Simplician die?

Simplician of Milan is dated d. AD 400 in the archive, which places Simplician in the Nicene Age (AD 313–400).

What did Simplician write?

Simplician of Milan has 1 catalogued writing in the archive: Letters and questions to Ambrose and Augustine. All are lost, known only from later citation.

Which early sources mention Simplician?

Simplician of Milan is named in 2 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Where was Simplician from?

The archive associates Simplician of Milan with Rome, Milan. The sources record more than one location, so the places are listed in the order the record moves through them.

Writings (1)

Letters and questions to Ambrose and Augustine

The mentor's side of two great correspondences — lost, but answered

You bade me, father Simplicianus — the queries survive only in the replies they drew: Augustine's To Simplicianus and Ambrose's letters. (after De Diversis Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum)

Lost — known only from later citation.

Primary-source mentions (2)

Every passage below is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Ambrose, Letters to Simplician (Epp. 37–38, c. AD 387; original Latin, summarized)

c. AD 385

[Contemporary correspondence: Ambrose, already bishop, still writes to him as to his teacher — sending him letters on true freedom 'because thou didst urge me,' and greeting as a father the old priest from whom he first drew the mysteries.]

Ambrose of Milan · source text

Augustine, Confessions VIII.2 (c. AD 397–400; Pusey translation, public domain)

c. AD 410

To Simplicianus then I went, the father of Ambrose (a bishop now) in receiving Thy grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. To him I related the mazes of my wanderings.

Augustine of Hippo · source text

Connected in the archive

People

Events in this lifetime

Place

Others of Rome → Milan in the The Nicene Age

Places served

The 2 places the sources put Simplician, in the order the record moves through them. This is what the sources attest, not a reconstructed route.

See these places on the atlas →