Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 374–397

Ambrose, bishop of Milan

Acclaimed bishop of Milan while still an unbaptized governor, Ambrose led the Nicene party in the West for more than twenty years: he had the pagan senators’ plea for the Altar of Victory rejected, refused a church to the Arian court (“the emperor is in the church, not over the church”), baptized Augustine and made Theodosius I do public penance.

Date

7 December 374 – 4 April 397exact date · duration: ≈ 22 yearsDate in the Julian calendar

Place

Milan (Mediolanum)today: Milan, Italy · Western and Central Europe

Participants

Ambrose, Gratian, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, Augustine of Hippo

Threads

Europe in the Roman age (1st–5th c.)

Also known as

Saint Ambrose; Ambrose of Milan; Aurelius Ambrosius; Святой Амвросий; Амвросий Медиоланский

When Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan, died in 374, the election of his successor threatened to end in a riot. Ambrose, then governor of Aemilia-Liguria with his seat at Milan, went to the church to keep order, and the assembly took up the cry “Ambrose, bishop!”. He was only a catechumen, but within a week he was baptized, ordained and, on 7 December 374, consecrated. Milan was an imperial residence, and its bishop became the counsellor — and at times the opponent — of the emperors Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I.

In 384 the senator Symmachus asked Valentinian II to restore the Altar of Victory, which Gratian had removed from the Senate house in 382; Ambrose persuaded the young emperor to refuse. In 385–386 he would not give up churches to the Arians of the court of Valentinian and his mother Justina and stayed with his congregation in a basilica ringed by soldiers, declaring in a sermon of 386 that “the emperor is in the church, not over the church”; Augustine recalls that the people shut up inside sang hymns and psalms in the Eastern manner. Ambrose is credited with at least four hymns, among them Veni redemptor gentium. At Easter 387 he baptized Augustine. After the massacre at Thessalonica in 390 he demanded that Theodosius do penance, and the emperor came to church without his imperial robes until Ambrose openly readmitted him to communion at Christmas; the famous scene of the bishop barring the emperor at the church door comes from Theodoret, writing some sixty years later, and modern historians regard it as a pious fiction.

Theodosius died at Milan in January 395, and on 25 February Ambrose delivered his funeral oration. Ambrose himself died on 4 April 397. With Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great, the Western Church counts him among the four great Latin Fathers.

Connections

Related events

First Council of Nicaeabetween May and June 325 – between July and August 325 · Balkans and AnatoliaAmbrose defended the Nicene creed against the Arians of Milan and of the court

Martin of Tours founds the monastery of Ligugé361 · Western and Central Europeboth bishops protested against the execution of Priscillian at Trier in 385

Division of the Roman Empire17 January 395 · Western and Central EuropeTheodosius died at Milan in 395, and Ambrose delivered his funeral oration

Augustine’s Confessionsbetween 397 and 400 · Africathe Confessions tell how Ambrose’s preaching in Milan won Augustine over; Ambrose baptised him at Easter 387

Same participants

Same place

Establishment of the Tetrarchy1 March 293 · Western and Central Europe

Edict of MilanFebruary 313 · Western and Central Europe

Siege of Pavia and fall of the Lombard kingdomSeptember 773 – June 774 · Western and Central Europe

Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supperc. 1495 – 1498 · Western and Central Europe

Voltaic pile20 March 1800 · Western and Central Europe

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Ambrose, bishop of Milan

Connections

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Meanwhile in the world

Eastern Europe

Balkans and Anatolia

Middle East and Egypt

Africa

Central and Northern Asia

South Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia and Oceania

North America

Latin America

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Sources