Today is the feast of St. Ambrose. I have a 1st class relic in the Two Trinities Chapel, so he is, in a sense, a homie.
St. Ambrose of Milan (+4 April 397), was a titanic figure of the late 4th century who changed the shape of Church and State relations for a thousand years. He brought much of the wisdom of Greek writings to the West. He helped God bring St. Augustine of Hippo into the fold.
There are many things to write about Ambrose. Here are a few.
Legend has it of baby Ambrose that once when he was sleeping, bees swarmed in and out of his mouth, foretelling that his preaching would be as sweet as honey. St. Bernard is the called Doctor Mellifluous, however. On the theme of bees, the Exsultet has bee imagery and the text is sometimes attributed to Ambrose.
There is a famous moment recounted by St. Augustine in his Confessions (6.3) about visiting St. Ambrose. Firstly, you should know that, in the ancient world, when people read, they read aloud, or at least moved their lips. It helped the memory in a time when written works were precious. One day Augustine walked into the room where Ambrose was sitting and saw him staring at a book! Ambrose was reading and not even moving his lips! Augustine was so impressed by this that slipped silently out of the room without saying anything to Ambrose, lest he disturb him.
Ambrose had a remarkable poetic gift. Western congregational hymnody was revolutionized by him, with rhythmic, metrical hymns so effectively that frightened imperial officials once complained that the people were being “bewitched” by singing. His hymns survive in the Office today.
Ambrose was an insightful biblical interpreter. While many Latin contemporaries favored moral summaries, Ambrose applied an Alexandrian method learned from his reading of Origen and Philo, blending allegory with pastoral insight. His exegesis of Genesis, for example, insists that paradise is at once a real garden and the interior landscape of the soul. His approach attracted and then shaped Augustine’s own hermeneutics and, through Augustine, the medieval West.
Ambrose son of Roman provincial governor and himself once a high official, was a political beast. His famous rebuke of Emperor Theodosius is well known, but were other moments too. Once he calmly continued preaching when soldiers entered a church to arrest him. He once stopped an imperial official from seizing a synagogue by arguing that even the protection of non-Christian worship served public justice. He won a war over the reinstallation of a pagan altar in the Senate of Rome.
In 385–386, Milan witnessed a dramatic clash between Arian imperial power and the Ambrose. When the Arian Empress Justina demanded that he surrender the Portian Basilica for Arian worship, Ambrose refused, declaring that “the emperor is within the Church, not above it.” Imperial officials sent soldiers to seize the church, but the faithful barricaded themselves inside with their bishop, keeping vigil day and night. Ambrose preached to steady them, and, according to Augustine (conf 9.7), introduced antiphonal hymnody so the frightened congregation could strengthen one another through sung scripture.
Non tamen succumbebat Ambrosius; custodiebatur et ipse a fidelibus, animo prompto ut moreretur pro altari tuo. Tunc hymni et psalmi, sicut in Oriente, ut ferunt, instituti, ne populus maeroris taedio contabescat; ex illo usque in hodiernum diem retentus est mos multisque iam populis per totum orbem imitandus provenerat. … Yet Ambrose did not yield; he too was guarded by the faithful, with a mind ready to die for Your altar. Then hymns and psalms were instituted—after the manner of the Eastern Churches, as they say—so that the people might not waste away under the weariness of sorrow. From that time to the present this custom has been preserved and has come to be imitated by many peoples throughout the whole world.
The standoff intensified when Justina ordered the seizure of another church, the Basilica Nova. Again the people occupied it, and the soldiers hesitated to force entry. The risk of harming unarmed Christians, including women and children, created public pressure; even some guards began sympathizing with the Catholics.
Ultimately the imperial court backed down. Ambrose remained in possession of the churches, and the Arian attempt to impose control on Milan collapsed.
Ambrose use of Eastern writers irritated St. Jerome, who pretty much despised Ambrose. I have a theory about that. Anyway… of Ambrose, Jerome wrote that he was like a raven croaking ill omens and a jackdaw who dressed himself in the feathers of other birds (i.e., he was a plagiarist… of Eastern writers). Of Ambrose’s swift rise from being unbaptized to be the mighty bishop of the imperial city Milan within one week, Jerome savagely wrote:
Heri catechumenus, hodie pontifex; heri in amphitheatro, hodie in ecclesia; uespere in circo, mane in altari; dudum fautor strionum, nunc uirginum consecrator: num ignorabat apostolus tergiuersationes nostras et argumentorum ineptias nesciebat?
One who was yesterday a catechumen is today a bishop; one who was yesterday in the amphitheater is today in the church; one who spent the evening in the circus stands in the morning at the altar: one who a little while ago was a patron of actors is now a dedicator of virgins. Was the apostle ignorant of our shifts and subterfuges? Did he know nothing of our foolish arguments?
Ambrose’s friendship with his sister, St. Marcellina, shows a tender domestic dimension. Her consecrated life profoundly shaped his spirituality, reminding us that the lion-bishop of Milan was also a man schooled in holiness at home. Ambrose complained to his sister St. Marcellina about being in pain from his right shoulder. In 2018 there was a forensic examination of the remains of Ambrose. They found that his right clavicle had been broken (an injury in his youth) and it hadn’t healed properly. This also explains his asymmetrical posture in a mosaic of him – probably while still alive – in the chapel of S Vittore in Ciel d’Oro in the Basilica of St Ambrose in Milan.
Want to read more about him? The best you can find is Ambrose by Boniface Ramsey. US HERE – UK HERE
I also have several old PODACAzTs in which I speak of Ambrose. HERE
There’s not a single bishop alive today who can vaguely approach Ambrose for either brains or b****. Shall we see his like again?
