Ambrosian Milan (standalone)

Milan, not Rome, was the western emperors' working capital in the late fourth century, and in 374 its people acclaimed as their bishop a provincial governor named Ambrose who had not yet even been baptized. He was baptized and consecrated within a week, and spent the next twenty-three years working out — mostly in public confrontations — what a bishop could say to power. He refused to hand a basilica over to the Empress Justina's court in 386, and his congregation occupied the building for days, singing hymns he wrote to keep their spirits up. In 390 he required the emperor Theodosius to do public penance for a massacre of civilians at Thessalonica. He was also a preacher who opened up Scripture for a restless African rhetorician sitting in his congregation — Augustine, whom Ambrose baptized at Easter in 387. And the city he shaped still carries his stamp in the rite that bears his name.