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(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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St. Ambrose (c.340-397)

Feast day: December 7

St. Ambrose is the patron saint of learning because all his life he pursued knowledge as ardently as others pursue wealth or fame. Like all wise persons, he was aware of his shortcomings: his first act as bishop of Milan was to hire a tutor to instruct him in theology so he would never, through his own ignorance, teach his people false doctrine.

St. Ambrose's family had been Christians for several generations. It was a source of pride to him that among his ancestors was the virgin martyr St. Soteris, who had been tortured and beheaded at Rome about the year 304.

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Ambrose was born in Trier in Germany, the youngest of three children. His father,also named Ambrose,was prefect of Gaul. We don't know his mother's name. The family was not aristocratic, but members of the well-to-do administrative class that ran Rome's empire.

When Ambrose was fourteen his father died. His mother took the family back to Rome where Ambrose's education began in earnest. He studied the Latin classics, of course, but he also learned Greek, an accomplishment which eluded St. Augustine and many other bishops of the West. On this solid liberal arts foundation Ambrose moved on to study the law.

Ambrose was still a novice lawyer when he was called upon to argue a case before a judge named Anicius Probus. Impressed by the young lawyer's intelligence and eloquence, Probus became Ambrose's patron. He wrote to Emperor Valentinian recommending Ambrose for the post of prefect of the provinces of Liguria and Aemilia in northern Italy. His residence would be in Milan, a city which had been torn by religious strife for twenty years. The bishop, Auxentius, was an Arian, a member of the heretical sect which denied the divinity of Christ. To the outrage of Milan's Catholics, the Arians were in possession of the city's main basilica. An outspoken Catholic priest named Filastrius had been badly beaten by Arians and driven out of Milan. Probus, a Catholic, was sending Ambrose to govern a city where the heretics had the upper hand.

Ambrose had not been in town long when Auxentius died. According to the custom of the time, the Christians of Milan,Catholics and Arians,met in the main basilica to elect a new bishop. Ambrose went to the church, climbed into the pulpit and addressed the congregation. Although the Arians were the ruling party in Milan, Ambrose insisted that they could not exclude the Catholics in this election. The Catholic voice must be heard. No sooner had he finished speaking than the voice of a child cried out in the basilica, "Ambrose for bishop!" The Catholics in the church took up the cry. They would accept no one as bishop but Ambrose.

Ambrose was not a priest. He had not even been baptized,a common practice in the early days of the Church when many people put off baptism until they were on their deathbed. Not only did he feel unqualified for the sacred office, he was afraid that the emperor would interpret his speech in the basilica as gross official misconduct, a not-too-subtle hint to the crowd to elect Ambrose.

Ambrose hurried out of the church and back to his tribunal. The crowd followed. He ordered several of the noisiest people in the crowd arrested and punished for inciting a riot. Even this did not dissuade the Christians of Milan. Ambrose then made a series of pathetic gestures to dampen the crowd's enthusiasm. He claimed that he was about to retire to become a full-time philosopher. The crowd did not believe him. He invited prostitutes into his house to prove that he was unworthy to be bishop. Out in the street the people shouted, "Your sin upon our heads!" He waited until nightfall and tried to escape the city, but the people had posted their own guards at the city gates who stopped Ambrose and escorted him back to his home where they kept him under house arrest. Meanwhile, the clergy and people of Milan sent a message to Emperor Valentinian declaring that there would not be "one people and one faith" in Milan unless Ambrose became their bishop. The emperor replied promptly: Ambrose must accept the election. And so Ambrose gave in.

Over the course of a week Ambrose was baptized, ordained a priest, and consecrated bishop. As a clear sign of the direction he would lead the Church in Milan, Ambrose insisted that only Catholic clergy could officiate at these ceremonies.

As a lawyer and a governor, Ambrose felt entirely at ease. As a bishop, however, he believed he was out of his depth. He began a period of intense study of theology, and set to work improving his Greek. He asked a learned priest, St. Simplician, to act as his tutor.

Every day Ambrose said Mass, offering it for the intentions of his people. He established an open door policy, literally. Anyone of any rank could see him at any time, no appointment or introduction was necessary. Satyrus, Ambrose's older brother, moved to Milan and took over the tedious administrative affairs of the diocese so Ambrose could focus on pastoral and intellectual pursuits.

The first book Ambrose published was De virginibus, in praise of a life of consecrated virginity. Years before, when he as a teenager, Ambrose had seen his sister, St. Marcellina, take her vows in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome where she had receive the veil from {ln:Pope} Liberius. Throughout his life Ambrose took every opportunity to express his admiration for women who dedicated their lives to Christ. He preached on the subject so eloquently that mothers would not take their unmarried daughters to church if Ambrose was scheduled to say the Mass.

We can see how far Ambrose progressed in his study of theology by a small book he wrote for the 25-year-old Emperor Gratian. Gratian was about to join his Arian uncle Valens in a war against the Goths. Gratian asked Ambrose to write a summary of the Catholic faith he could refer to in the religious arguments that were bound to come up. Ambrose produced a bold statement of orthodox belief that was also a stylistic masterpiece for its time. Ambrose's comparisons of Arianism with monsters from classical mythology may strike modern readers as a little over the top, but the style was fashionable at the time. Ambrose's book won the admiration of the literary connoisseurs of Gratian's court. Gratian, however, seemed less impressed by Ambrose's book,assuming he read it. The emperor never committed himself to either the Catholic faith or to Arianism. Three years later, he was killed in a military coup.

The new emperor, Valentinian II, was openly sympathetic to the Arians. His mother, Justina, fervent Arian, urged her son to demand that Ambrose turn over Milan's Portian Basilica to the Arians. Ambrose refused. Then Justina demanded the Church of the Holy Apostles for Arian worship. Again Ambrose refused. When Valentinian sent officers of the court to occupy Holy Apostles, a Catholic mob seized an Arian priest and held him hostage.

Ambrose defused the situation by sending an embassy of priests and deacons to win the Arian priest's freedom. He never backed away from his refusal to turn over any church in his diocese to the Arians, but he also declined all invitations to come and say Mass in any of the disputed churches for fear of starting a riot.

In 386 Valentinian published a new law that forbade any person, under pain of death, from interfering with the transfer of Catholic churches to the Arians. Two days before Palm Sunday, a delegation from Valentinian asked Ambrose to permit the Arians to use his cathedral on the upcoming holy day. He refused. On Palm Sunday, imperial servants began to prepare the Portian Basilica for Arian services. When word reached Ambrose at the cathedral, part of his congregation hurried to the Portian, occupied the church, and refused to let the imperial court enter. Imperial troops surrounded the church, while ultimatums passed back and forth between the emperor's representatives and Ambrose. It was a tense Holy Week. Ambrose was determined not to give in, even if the crisis compromised the emperor's authority. "The emperor is in the Church," Ambrose said, "not over it." The stalemate lingered until Holy Thursday when the imperial troops were recalled to their barracks. No blood had been spilled, and no Milan church was in Arian hands.

Present in the cathedral during that anxious Holy Week was St. Monica. For years she had wept and prayed that her brilliant son, Augustine, would repent his sinful life, give up his Manichean heresy, and accept baptism. In the learned, eloquent, and courageous Ambrose she believed she had found the bishop who could at last convert her son.

To please his mother, Augustine began attending Ambrose's sermons. He was impressed by Ambrose's style which blended the philosophy of Plato with the revelation of Sacred Scripture. Soon Augustine was being instructed in the Catholic faith by Ambrose personally. At the Mass of the Easter Vigil, the night of April 24-25, 387, Ambrose led Augustine into the baptistery of the cathedral. There Augustine removed his clothes and stepped naked into the deep pool. Three times Ambrose immersed Augustine in the water, baptizing him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Of all the great things St. Ambrose accomplished for the Church, the conversion of St. Augustine is the most significant and the most enduring.

Valentinian II was deposed in 387 and the staunchly Catholic Theodosius I became emperor. When Ambrose and Theodosius locked horns, it was not over heresy, but over religious authority.

The first confrontation occurred in 388. In the town of Callinicum in what is now Iraq, a Christian mob, led by their bishop, had attacked and destroyed a synagogue. The imperial representative in the region wrote to Theodosius asking what he should do. To Theodosius, it was a simple case: punish the mob and make the bishop pay the cost of rebuilding the synagogue. Ambrose disagreed with the emperor's verdict.

He approached the case as if he were a lawyer arguing before a court. He offered precedents,no compensation had ever been paid for Christian churches destroyed by Jewish mobs during the reign of Julian the Apostate. He presented shrewd arguments,no Christian should be compelled to build a house of worship "where Christ is denied." He warned Theodosius against setting a precedent his successors would deplore,by forcing the bishop of Callinicum to rebuild the synagogue, the emperor would be setting non-Christians over the Church of Christ. "Will you give the Jews this triumph over the Church of God?" he asked.

Whether Ambrose's heart was in these arguments we don't know. He may indeed have hated the Jews and found the idea of rebuilding a synagogue offensive. Or perhaps he felt like a lawyer stuck with a thoroughly unpleasant client,the rabble-rousing bishop of Callinicum. Whatever his feelings, Ambrose was determined to preserve the independence of the Church, to keep the state from telling it what it must do.

In the end, Theodosius backed down. The Jews of Callinicum had to find the money to rebuild their synagogue themselves.

Most contemporary readers will feel comfortable with Ambrose's second confrontation with Theodosius. In the summer of 390, Theodosius unleashed his troops stationed in Thessalonika on the inhabitants of the city. Seven thousand men, women, and children were massacred in the space of only three hours.

The massacre had its roots in a rebellion in Macedonia and a series of raids by the Goths. To safeguard Greece, Theodosius had stationed a large number of troops under General Butheric in Thessalonika, a city that had never been a garrison town. The Thessalonians resented having to maintain the army, and tensions mounted as quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens increased in number. The trouble came to a head when a popular charioteer made a sexual advance to one of Butheric's attendants. The general took the incident as a personal insult. He had the charioteer thrown into prison. When a mob gathered to protest the confinement of one of their favorite athletes, the demonstration degenerated into a riot in which Butheric was killed. In retaliation for the murder of his general, Theodosius loosed his troops on the city. No attempt was made to sort out the guilty from the innocent.

Ambrose insisted the only way the emperor could make restitution and be permitted once again to received Holy Communion was to do public penance. At Sunday Mass in Ambrose's basilica, Theodosius stood before the congregation, stripped off all the signs of his imperial office, confessed his responsibility for the massacre, and with tears begged the people to pray to God for him. The traditional interpretation has viewed Theodosius' penance as a complete victory for Ambrose. He had compelled a Roman emperor to humiliate himself before his subjects. But a modern biographer of St. Ambrose sees the event in a different light. Neil B. McLynn argues that Ambrose "turned the catastrophe [of the massacre] into a public relations triumph" for Theodosius. The emperor's dramatic gesture in the basilica won the admiration of his Christian subjects: he had confessed his guilt like any other sinner and his sin had been forgiven. Theodosius' public repentance was so successful that no surviving contemporary source mentions the massacre without also telling of the emperor's penance.

In Lent 397, Ambrose fell ill. During Holy Week it became clear that Ambrose was dying. Bishops came from the surrounding dioceses to be with the holy man at the end. Ambrose's friend, Honoratus, bishop of Vecelli, gave him the Last Rites. His old tutor, St. Simplician, was at his side. Ambrose died on Good Friday. On Holy Saturday his body was carried to his basilica where the Mass of the Easter Vigil blended seamlessly into Ambrose's funeral Mass.

On Easter Sunday an enormous procession followed the cortege to a basilica Ambrose had built outside the walls of Milan. There he was buried beside the martyrs St. Gervasius and St. Protasius, the two patron saints of Milan whose relics Ambrose himself had discovered.

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