Although the court was displeased with the religious principles and conduct of Ambrose, it respected his great political talents; and when necessity required, his aid was solicited and generously granted. When Maximus usurped the supreme power in Gaul, and was meditating a descent upon Italy, Valentinian sent Ambrose to dissuade him from the undertaking, and the embassy was successful. On a second attempt of the same kind Ambrose was again employed; and although he was unsuccessful, it cannot be doubted that, if his advice had been followed, the schemes of the usurper would have proved abortive; but the enemy was permitted to enter Italy; and Milan was taken. Justina and her son fled; but Ambrose remained at his post, and did good service to many of the sufferers by causing the plate of the church to be melted for their relief. Theodosius, the emperor of the East, espoused the cause of Justina, and regained the kingdom. This Theodosius was sternly rebuked by Ambrose for the massacre of 7000 persons at Thessalonica in 390, and was bidden imitate David in his repentance as he had imitated him in guilt.
In 302, after the assassination of Valentinian and the usurpation of Eugenius, Ambrose fled from Milan; but when Theodosius was eventually victorious, he supplicated the emperor for the pardon of those who had supported Eugenius. Soon after acquiring the undisputed possession of the Roman empire, Theodosius died at Milan in 395, and two years later (4th April 397) Ambrose also passed away. He was succeeded by Simplician.
A man of pure character, vigorous mind, unwearying zeal and uncommon generosity, Ambrose ranks high among the fathers of the ancient church on many counts. His chief faults were ambition and bigotry. Though ranking with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, as one of the Latin "doctors," he is most naturally compared with Hilary, whom he surpasses in administrative excellence as much as he falls below him in theological ability. Even here, however, his achievements are of no mean order, especially when we remember his juridical training and his comparatively late handling of Biblical and doctrinal subjects. In matters of exegesis he is, like Hilary, an Alexandrian; his chief productions are homiletic commentaries on the early Old Testament narratives, e.g. the Hexaemeron (Creation) and Abraham, some of the Psalms, and the Gospel according to Luke. In dogmatic he follows Basil of Caesarea and other Greek authors, but nevertheless gives a distinctly Western cast to the speculations of which he treats. This is particularly manifest in the weightier emphasis which he lays upon human sin and divine grace, and in the place which he assigns to faith in the individual Christian life. His chief works in this field are De fide ad Gratianuni Augustunn, De Spiritu Sancto, De incarnationis Dominicae sacramento, De mysteriis. His great spiritual successor, Augustine, whose conversion was helped by Ambrose's sermons, owes more to him than to any writer except Paul. Ambrose's intense episcopal consciousness furthered the growing doctrine of the Church and its sacerdotal ministry, while the prevalent asceticism of the day, continuing the Stoic and Ciceronian training of his youth, enabled him to promulgate a lofty standard of Christian ethics. Thus we have the De officiis ministrorum, De viduis, De virginitate and De paenitentia.
Ambrose has also left several funeral orations and ninety- one letters, but it is as a hymn-writer that he perhaps deserves most honour. Catching the impulse from Hilary and confirmed in it by the success of Arian psalmody, Ambrose composed several hymns, marked by dignified simplicity, which were not only effective in themselves but served as a fruitful model for later times. We cannot certainly assign to him more than four or five (Deus Creator Omnium, Aeterne rerum conditor, Jam surgit hora tertia, and the Christmas hymn Veni redemptor gentium) of those that have come down to us. Each of these hymns has eight four-line stanzas and is written in strict iambic tetrameter.
On the Ambrosian ritual see LITURGY; on the Ambrosian library
see LIBRARIES; on the church founded by him at Milan in 387 see
MILAN. Editions: The Benedictine (4 vols., Venice, 1748 ff.);
Migne, Patrol. Lat. xiv.-xvii.; P. A. Ballerini (6 vols.,
Milan, 1875 ff.). LITERATURE: Th. Forster, Ambrose, B. of
Mailand (Halle, 1884), and art. in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk.,
where the literature is cited in full; A. Ebert, Glesch. der
christlich-latein. Litt. (2nd ed., 1889); O. Bardenhewer,
Patrologic (2nd ed., 1891); A. Harnack, Hist. of Dogma,
esp. vol. v.; W. Bright, Age ofthe Fathers. (A. J. G.)
This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.
