Saint Ambrose of Milan (339-397)

The bishop who stood up to emperors

Ambrose holds a unique place in the history of the Church: he is the first great bishop to have affirmed, in deeds and not only in words, that spiritual authority does not bow before political authority. At a time when the Christian emperor could believe himself master of the Church, Ambrose reminded him that he was first of all a son of the Church, subject like every baptized person to the law of God. This principle, laid down at Milan in the 380s, would shape relations between priesthood and Empire in the West for centuries^[7].

There was no political ambition in him. Ambrose never sought power: he even fled from it on the day of his election. But once bishop, he held that the things of God are not at the emperor's disposal, and he paid for it at the risk of his life, barricaded in his besieged basilica, ready for martyrdom rather than surrendering it to the Arians.

The master of Saint Augustine

Had he done only that, Ambrose would already be a great saint. But Providence had reserved for him another role, perhaps even more decisive for the history of Christian thought: forming Augustine. The young African rhetorician, still Manichaean and sceptical, came to Milan in 384 and heard the bishop preach. The allegorical preaching of Ambrose, which opened to him the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament, removed the objections that kept him away from the Church^[8]. It was Ambrose who baptized him on Easter night 387, with his mother Monica as witness. Without Ambrose, there might have been no Augustine — and therefore no Latin theology as the West received it.

It is also to Ambrose that we owe, through Augustine, one of the most famous counsels of practical wisdom in history. As Monica wondered about the practice of fasting — Saturday was a fast day at Rome, but not at Milan — Ambrose answered her to follow the custom of the place where she found herself: "When I am here, I do not fast on Saturday; when I am in Rome, I fast on Saturday." This is the origin of the proverb "when in Rome, do as the Romans do"^[9].

"That man of God received me as a father, and the coming of so good a bishop made me taste his kindness. I began to love him, not at first as a teacher of the truth [...], but as a man who showed me kindness." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, V, 13^[10]

The sources of his life

The life of Ambrose is solidly attested, by converging and ancient sources.

First, his own writings: his abundant correspondence, his treatises, his sermons and his funeral orations (on his brother Satyrus, on Valentinian II, on Theodosius) abound in first-hand details of the conflicts he went through. Then, the testimony of Saint Augustine, who knew Ambrose personally and speaks of him at length in books V, VI and IX of the Confessions. Finally, the Vita Ambrosii of Paulinus of Milan, his former secretary (notarius), who wrote this biography at the very request of Saint Augustine, around 422: it is this work that hands down most of the accounts of his childhood, his election and his miracles^[11].

A family of the high Christian aristocracy

Ambrose was born around 339-340, probably at Trier (Augusta Treverorum), then one of the capitals of the Western Empire. His family belonged to the highest Roman aristocracy, and it had long been Christian: his father was Praetorian Prefect of the Gauls, one of the highest offices of the Empire, governing an immense jurisdiction stretching from Britain to Spain and Mauretania^[12][13].

When his father died prematurely, his mother brought her children back to Rome. Ambrose grew up there in a milieu where faith and classical culture met. His elder sister, Marcellina, consecrated her virginity to Christ and received the veil from the hands of Pope Liberius; his brother Satyrus would give up a career to assist him. The family thus counted three saints: Ambrose, Marcellina and Satyrus^[14].

The legend of the bees

The Vita of Paulinus reports a famous marvel of his childhood. One day, as Ambrose slept in his cradle, a swarm of bees settled on his face, going in and out of his mouth without stinging him, and left as it were a drop of honey there before flying away so high that they were lost from sight. His father saw in it the announcement of a future eloquence:

"If this little child lives, he will become something great." — Paulinus of Milan, Life of Ambrose, on the marvel of the bees^[15]

Hence the iconography of Ambrose with a beehive at his feet, and his patronage of bees and beekeepers; hence too the nickname of "doctor with the honeyed tongue". The episode cannot be verified in detail, but it expresses a truth that all antiquity recognized: the speech of Ambrose was of exceptional sweetness and power.

Advocate, then governor of Liguria and Aemilia

As an adult, Ambrose followed the path of his caste. Trained in law and rhetoric, he first pleaded as an advocate before the tribunal of the Praetorian Prefect of Italy, at Sirmium, where he attracted notice. Around 370, the emperor appointed him governor (consularis) of the province of Liguria and Aemilia, whose capital was precisely Milan, then an imperial residence and one of the greatest cities of the Empire^[16][17].

His administration remained in memory as just and benevolent, which earned him the affection of the people — an affection that would play a decisive role in what followed. Nothing, however, destined him for the episcopate: he was not even baptized, which was nothing exceptional at the time for a son of a good family, since the custom of the day was often to defer baptism.

Milan torn between Arians and Catholics

In 374, the bishop of Milan, Auxentius, died. He was an Arian, imposed in his time by the imperial power; the city was deeply divided between Catholics and Arians, and the election of his successor threatened to degenerate into riot. As governor, it fell to Ambrose to keep order: he went in person to the basilica where the assembly was gathered and spoke there to calm minds^[18].

"Ambrose bishop!"

It was then that the event occurred which would overturn his life. In the middle of his speech, a child's voice — according to Paulinus — rose in the assembly: "Ambrose bishop!" The cry was at once taken up by the whole crowd, Catholics and Arians together, as one man. The just and beloved governor achieved unanimity where civil war had been feared^[19][20].

Ambrose was appalled. He who was not even baptized evaded by every means: the Vita recounts that he tried to pass himself off as cruel by ordering punishments, that he sought to flee by night, that he hid himself — in vain. The emperor Valentinian I confirmed the election, seeing in it the will of God; the neighbouring bishops pressed Ambrose to accept. He ended by yielding, understanding that it was no longer a matter of his own will but of God's will for him^[21].

Baptized and consecrated within eight days

Everything then followed at a staggering speed. Ambrose was first baptized; then, in the space of a week, he passed through all the degrees of holy orders — lector, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, priest — to be finally consecrated bishop on 7 December 374^[22]. It is this date, that of his consecration and not that of his death, that the Church has kept for his liturgical feast.

Aware of his theological inexperience, the new bishop at once distributed his patrimony to the poor and to the Church, and set himself to the intensive study of Scripture and the Greek Fathers — Origen, Basil, Athanasius, Philo — under the direction of the priest Simplician. From this relentless labour would be born one of the greatest Latin doctors: Ambrose would hand on to the West, in a limpid language, the best of Greek theology^[23][24].

It is in the showdown with imperial power that Ambrose reveals his full stature. Three great crises mark his episcopate, and in each he lays down the same principle: the freedom of the Church.

The disputed basilica (385-386): "The emperor is in the Church"

At the court of Milan reigns the empress Justina, mother of the young emperor Valentinian II and a staunch Arian. In 385 and again in 386, she demands that a basilica of the city be handed over to Arian worship. Ambrose refuses: one does not surrender the house of God. Ordered to yield, he answers with a formula that sums up his whole doctrine of the two powers:

"If I am asked for what is properly mine — my estate, my money, all that is mine — I do not refuse, although all I have belongs to the poor. [...] The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church." — Saint Ambrose, Sermon against Auxentius, 36^[25]

The Catholic people crowd into the basilica to protect it. Ambrose shuts himself in with the faithful, day and night, surrounded by soldiers. It is during this siege that, to sustain the courage of the people, he has them sing psalms and hymns in alternation — a liturgical innovation that would lastingly mark the West, as Augustine, an eyewitness of the scene, reports^[26]. The court ends by backing down: the basilica remains Catholic.

The Callinicum affair (388)

In 388, at Callinicum, on the Euphrates, Christians burn down a synagogue. The emperor Theodosius orders the local bishop to make good the damage and rebuild the edifice at his own expense. Ambrose vigorously opposes this, in a letter and then from the pulpit, judging that a bishop cannot be compelled by the State to finance a worship he holds to be false. The episode is, to modern sensibility, the most delicate of his life, and it must be judged without evasion: the fire was an injustice — the arsonists were guilty — and the order to repair the damage was just in itself. What Ambrose contested is not that the wrong should be repaired, but that a bishop should be compelled by the State to pay out of his own pocket for a non-Christian place of worship: a question of conscience and of the Church's freedom, at the heart of his whole episcopate. The Church, for her part, has never authorized violence against the Jews: she condemns it and owes them charity, as Vatican II solemnly recalled^[27]. It remains that, on this point, his firmness served a just cause by a questionable means — defeating the reparation that was due: the episode is to be understood within fourth-century relations between civil authority and the bishop's conscience, without being proposed as a model. Theodosius ends by yielding. But this first clash prepares the major confrontation^[28].

The massacre of Thessalonica and the penance of Theodosius (390)

The most famous act of Ambrose's life occurs in 390. At Thessalonica, after the riot in which an imperial officer had been killed, Theodosius orders a dreadful reprisal: the population is invited to the games of the circus, then soldiers massacre several thousand people in the hippodrome, without distinction^[29].

Ambrose reacts with unheard-of firmness. He leaves Milan so as not to have to receive the emperor, and addresses to him a confidential letter, heartrending in respect and firmness: he refuses to celebrate the Eucharist in the presence of Theodosius until the latter has done public penance for his crime^[30]. The emperor, the most powerful man in the world, submits. For several months he abstains from Communion; then, stripped of the imperial insignia, he makes honourable amends in the cathedral of Milan before being reconciled. In the funeral oration he would later pronounce over Theodosius, Ambrose would recall this greatness of imperial repentance:

"I loved the man who, with his last breath, still asked for my presence [...] and who was not ashamed to do publicly the penance that private individuals are ashamed to do." — Saint Ambrose, On the Death of Theodosius^[31]

The image of the emperor kneeling before the bishop has become, for Christian posterity, the symbol of the primacy of conscience and divine law over force. It inspired even the greatest painters, from Rubens to Van Dyck.

A considerable theological and moral work

As bishop, Ambrose never ceased to write — not from literary taste, but to feed his people. Most of his treatises are former sermons reworked. Several great veins can be distinguished in them.

The common trait of this work is the transmission of Greek theology to the Latin West. Ambrose reads Origen, Basil, Athanasius, Philo, and puts them within reach of a Roman public. He is no speculator like Augustine or the Cappadocians would be: he is a pastor-theologian, whose doctrine is always ordered to the concrete salvation of souls.

The cantor of the Church: hymns and Ambrosian chant

Ambrose is one of the creators of Latin hymnody. To sustain the faith of his people, notably during the siege of the basilica, he composes hymns in regular stanzas easy to memorize, several of which are authentically his — Aeterne rerum conditor, Deus creator omnium, Veni redemptor gentium. This form, called "Ambrosian", would fix the model of the liturgical hymn for the whole Western Middle Ages^[36][37].

"How I wept at Thy hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of Thy sweet-singing Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and Thy truth distilled into my heart." — Saint Augustine, Confessions, IX, 6^[38]

Tradition also attributes to him, by legend, the composition of the Te Deum improvised with Augustine on the night of the latter's baptism — a pious but late account, which criticism has not confirmed: the authorship of the hymn remains uncertain — once proposed for Nicetas of Remesiana, this attribution is today controversial^[39]. The Ambrosian chant, the repertory proper to the Church of Milan, and more broadly the Ambrosian Rite still in use today, perpetuate his name in the liturgy; on this point, see Catholic liturgical rites.

The discovery of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius (386)

In 386, in the midst of the crisis with the Arian court, Ambrose makes a discovery that electrifies the Catholic people: guided, he says, by an inward presentiment, he has exhumed in a church of Milan the bodies of two forgotten martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius. The transfer of the relics is accompanied by healings reported by many witnesses, including Augustine himself, who mentions them in the Confessions and the City of God^[40]. For Ambrose, these martyrs are the heavenly defenders of the Nicene faith, given at the right moment to confound the Arians.

Christ, "all things to us"

At the heart of Ambrose's spirituality stands the person of Christ, contemplated as the unique source of every good for the soul. A famous page of his commentary on virginity gathers his whole spiritual christology into a few words:

"Christ is all things to us. If you wish to heal your wound, He is the physician; if you burn with fever, He is the fountain; if you are weighed down by iniquity, He is justice; if you need help, He is strength; if you fear death, He is life; if you desire heaven, He is the way; if you flee darkness, He is the light." — Saint Ambrose, De virginitate^[41]

Virginity, penance and Mother Church

Ambrose profoundly marked the Western spirituality of consecrated virginity. His treatises De virginibus and De virginitate, addressed notably to the virgins of Milan, nourished generations of nuns and made him one of the great masters of this path. In them he presents the Virgin Mary as the model of every consecrated soul and of the Church herself.

As pastor, he was also a master of mercy. Against the rigorists who refused all reconciliation to grave sinners, he defended in the De paenitentia the power of the Church to remit sins, grounding this confidence in the tenderness of God. He himself, says Paulinus, wept with the penitents who came to confess their faults, as if he had himself been guilty.

"Where Peter is, there is the Church"

Deeply attached to Catholic unity, Ambrose sees in the see of Peter the criterion of true faith. Attributed to him, in his commentary on Psalm 40, is the formula that became classic in Latin ecclesiology:

"Where Peter is, there is the Church; where the Church is, there is no death, but eternal life." — attributed to Saint Ambrose, Explanation of Psalm 40, 30^[42]

This conviction illuminates his whole struggle: if he stood up to emperors, it was not from a spirit of independence, but because the Church, being the Body of Christ and the house of Peter, cannot be subject to any earthly power.

An end on a Holy Saturday (4 April 397)

The last years of Ambrose are darkened by the death of his imperial protégés and the decline of the Western Empire. Exhausted, he falls ill at the beginning of 397. Count Stilicho, fearing for Milan the loss of such a bishop, has Ambrose begged to ask God for a delay; but the saint answers that he has lived in such a way that he is not ashamed to live, and that he is not afraid to die, because he has "a good Master"^[43].

He dies in the night of 3 to 4 April 397, at the dawn of Holy Saturday, after receiving the viaticum from the hands of Saint Honoratus, bishop of Vercelli, hastened to his bedside^[44]. The whole city hastens, Christians, Jews and pagans mingled; his body is laid in the basilica that today bears his name, the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, where his relics still rest, between those of Gervasius and Protasius^[45][46].

Doctor of the Church, patron of Milan

The cult of Ambrose is immediate and has never faltered. Patron of Milan, he is honoured throughout the Latin Church. In 1298, Pope Boniface VIII officially proclaims him Doctor of the Church, enrolling him among the four great Latin Doctors with Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great^[47]. His feast is celebrated on 7 December, the vigil of the Immaculate Conception, the anniversary of his episcopal consecration.

His legacy is immense: the freedom of the Church in the face of power, Latin hymnody, the Ambrosian Rite and chant, the conversion of Augustine, and a doctrinal work that brought the treasure of the Greek Fathers to the West. Few bishops have weighed so heavily on the history of Christendom.

Sixteen centuries later, Saint Ambrose remains strikingly relevant. He reminds us first that the Church is not a department of the State. His phrase — "the emperor is in the Church, not above it" — founded in the West the distinction of the two powers, the distant source of freedom of conscience. Facing the powerful of all times, tempted to bend faith to their interests, Ambrose remains the model of the free bishop, respectful of civil authority but inflexible on what belongs to God.

He reminds us then that a convert can change everything. This unbaptized magistrate, torn from his office to become bishop in spite of himself, became one of the greatest doctors of the Church. His life says that God chooses whom He wills, when He wills, and that holiness does not wait for long preparation but for a generous answer to the call.

"Christ is all things to us." — This word of Ambrose sums up his life as much as his doctrine: a man who had received everything from the world — birth, culture, power — and who referred everything to Christ, until he became, for Augustine and for the West, the father who opens the door of faith.

• Arianism — the heresy Ambrose fought all his life, at Milan as before the imperial court.
• Saint Augustine of Hippo — the most famous disciple of Ambrose, whom he baptized at Easter 387.
• Saint Monica — the mother of Augustine, witness of that baptism and figure of persevering prayer.
• Saint Athanasius of Alexandria — the Greek Father whose theology Ambrose handed on to the Latin West.
• Catholic liturgical rites — for the Ambrosian Rite and chant, still alive at Milan.
• Saint Martin of Tours — his contemporary, another great figure of the fourth-century episcopate in the West.
• The Doctors of the Church in history — the group of the four great Latin Doctors to which Ambrose belongs.