AMBROSE, SAINT bishop of Milan, one of the greatest Fathers of the Church, was born a Roman citizen about 33 in Treves, where his father was prefect of Gallia Narbonensis. His mother was a woman of intellect and piety. Ambrose was intended to follow his father's career and accord ingly educated in Rome. He became consular prefect of Liguria and Emilia, with headquarters at Milan, where he made an ex cellent administrator. In 374 Auxentius, bishop of Milan, died, and the orthodox and Arian parties contended for the succession. An address delivered to them at this crisis by Ambrose led to his nomination to the see; though only a catechumen, he was baptized and duly installed as bishop of Milan. Having appor tioned his money among the poor, he settled his lands upon the Church, but leaving his sister Marcellina tenant for life and com mitting the care of his family to his brother, he entered upon a course of study under Simplician, a presbyter of Rome, and de voted himself to the labours of the episcopate. An invasion of Goths compelled Ambrose and other churchmen to retire to Illyricum for a time. His eloquence soon found ample scope against the Arians. Gratian, the son of the elder Valentinian, took the same side; but the younger Valentinian, now a colleague in the empire, adhered to the Arians, and Ambrose failed to win him to orthodoxy. The Arian leaders Palladius and Secundianus, confident of numbers, persuaded Gratian to call a general council from all parts of the empire; but Ambrose in the end prevailed upon the emperor to remit the matter to a council of the Western bishops alone. A synod, composed of 32 bishops, was held at Aquileia in the year 381. Ambrose was elected president; and Palladius, being called upon to defend his opinions, declined, in sisting that the meeting was a partial one, and that, since not all the bishops of the empire were there, the sense of the whole Christian Church could not be manifest. A vote was then taken, and resulted in Palladius and Secundianus being deposed.
Ambrose was zealous in combating the pagan reaction. Quintus Aureiius Symmachus, consul in 391, besought Valentinian II. to set up again the altar of Victory in the hall of the senate, to provide for the support of seven vestal virgins and to revive the pagan ceremonies. Ambrose, in a letter to Valentinian, countered this petition : both documents are extant.
Although the court rejected the religious tenets of Ambrose, it respected his statesmanship. When Maximus usurped supreme power in Gaul and meditated a descent upon Italy, Valentinian sent Ambrose to dissuade him : Ambrose was successful. On a second attempt of the same kind Ambrose was unsuccessful; the enemy entered Italy; Milan was taken. Justina and her son fled; Ambrose remained, and for the relief of the suffering populace he did not hesitate to cause the consecrated vessels used in the most sacred rites of the Church to be melted down : a memorable precedent often to be cited in Church history. Theodosius, emperor of the East, espoused the cause of Justina, and regained the kingdom.
In 392, after the assassination of Valentinian and the usurpation of Eugenius, Ambrose fled; but when Theodosius proved victor ious, the saint became a suppliant to the emperor for the pardon of those who had followed Eugenius. Theodosius died at Milan in 395, and two years later (April 4, 397) Ambrose also passed away.
A man of pure character, vigorous mind, unwearying zeal and uncommon generosity, Ambrose ranks among the Fathers of the ancient Church, with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great; as one of the Latin "doctors," he is fitly compared with Hilary, whom he surpasses in statesmanship, if he falls below him in theology. Even in theology, however, his achievements are of no mean order, especially when we remember his juridical train ing 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., of the Hexaemeron and of Abra ham, 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 specula tions of which he treats. This is particularly manifest in the 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 Gratianum Augus tuin, De Spiritu Sancto, De incarnationis Dominicae sacramento, De mysteriis. His great spiritual successor, Augustine, whose con version was helped by Ambrose's sermons, owes more to him than to any writer except Paul. Ambrose's intense realization of the dignity of the episcopal office furthered the growing doctrine of the church and the sacerdotium, 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 rninistrorum, De viduis, De virginitate and De paenitentia.
Ambrose has also left several funeral orations and 91 letters. Catching the impulse from Hilary and confirmed in it by the success of Arian psalmody, Ambrose composed several hymns, marked by dignified simplicity, which served as a fruitful model for later times. We cannot certainly assign to him more than four or five (Deus Creator Omniurn, Aeterne rerum conditor, Jam surgit horq 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. The attribution of the Te Deum to him, either as sole author or in collaboration with St. Augustine, has long since been discredited by all competent scholars.
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. Ba11erini (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, Gesch. der christlichlatein. Litt. (2nd ed., 1889) . O. Barden hewer, Patrologie (2nd ed., 1891) ; A. Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, esp. vol. v.; W. Bright, Age of the Fathers.