Ambrosian Rite
In the 20th century, it also gained prominence and prestige from the attentions of two other scholarly Archbishops of Milan: Achille Ratti, later Pope Pius XI, and the Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, both of whom were involved in studies and publications on the rite.
It is possible that Ambrose, who succeeded the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan, may have removed material seen as unorthodox by the mainstream church and issued corrected service books which included the principal characteristics distinguishing it from other rites.
[4] According to St. Augustine (Confessiones, IX, vii) and Paulinus the Deacon (Vita S. Ambrosii, § 13), St. Ambrose introduced innovations, not indeed into the Mass, but into what would seem to be the Divine Office, at the time of his contest with the Empress Justina, for the Portian Basilica which she claimed for the Arians.
However, St. Simplician, the successor of St. Ambrose, added much to the rite and St. Lazarus (438-451) introduced the three days of the litanies (Cantù, Milano e il suo territorio, I, 116).
After the manner of the time, an ordeal, which reminds one of the celebrated trials by fire and by battle in the case of Alfonso VI and the Mozarabic Rite, was determined on.
Two books, Ambrosian and Roman, were laid closed upon the altar of St. Peter's Church in Rome and left for three days, and the one which was found open was to win.
But the destruction had been so far effective that no Ambrosian books could be found, save one missal which a faithful priest had hidden for six weeks in a cave in the mountains.
As part of his plan for reconciling Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, and the Holy See, he endeavoured to substitute the Roman Rite for the Ambrosian.
The Rule of that Council, that local uses which could show a prescription of two centuries might be retained, saved Milan, not without a struggle, from the loss of its Rite, and St. Charles Borromeo though he made some alterations in a Roman direction, was most careful not to destroy its characteristics.
A small attempt made against it by a Governor of Milan who had obtained permission from the Pope to have the Roman Mass said in any church which he might happen to attend, was defeated by St. Charles, and his own revisions were intended to do little more than was inevitable in a living rite.
[4] Since his time the temper of the Milan Church has been most conservative, and the only alterations in subsequent editions seem to have been slight improvements in the wording of rubrics and in the arrangement of the books.
The last of these was the final edition in the form of the Ambrosian Rite that preceded the Second Vatican Council and is now used mainly in the church of San Rocco al Gentilino in Milan.
On 20 March 2008 the new Ambrosian Lectionary, superseding the 1976 experimental edition, and covering the whole liturgical year, was promulgated, coming into effect from the First Sunday of Advent 2008 (16 November 2008).
[5] It is based on the ancient Ambrosian liturgical tradition and contains in particular, a special rite of light ("lucernarium") and proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, for use before the Saturday-evening celebration of the Mass of the Sunday, seen as the weekly Easter.
J. M. Neale and others from the Anglican tradition referred the Hispano-Gallican and Celtic family of liturgies to an original imported into Provence from Ephesus in Asia Minor by St. Irenæus, who had received it through St. Polycarp from St. John the Divine.
[4] Louis Duchesne in his "Origines du culte chrétien" theorizes that the rite was imported or modified from the East, perhaps by the Cappadocian Arian Bishop Auxentius (355-374), the predecessor of St. Ambrose, and gradually spread to Gaul, Spain, and Britain.
